Hot flashes

Liu Man sat there, going over Zheng's words in his mind, and the more he thought about it, the more something seemed off. He couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong, but he felt like something had been overlooked.

Wei Zhong stroked his beard and suddenly spoke. "Brother Zheng is right, Wu Huai Ren's matter has nothing to do with us." He paused, his voice lowering slightly, "But there is one thing that concerns us."

Liu Man and Steward Zheng both looked at him. Wei Zhong's gaze fell on the gray sky outside the window, where the distant rooftops were only blurry outlines in the twilight, like a lurking giant beast.

"Those wealthy gentry," Wei Zhong said, "were thoroughly searched by Wu Huai-ren. He took everything he could—silver, grain, medicine. Those wealthy gentry were our people."

Their businesses were our foundation. Wu Huai-ren emptied their coffers; how will they pay rent, tributes, and support their private armies in the future?

These words were like a bucket of cold water poured over Liu Man's head. He stood up abruptly, his chair tipping backward and crashing to the ground with a thud.

He didn't bother to help her up; his face was ashen, his lips trembled, and he managed to squeeze out, "That beast Wu Huai-ren."

Those wealthy gentlemen were the foundation of aristocratic families in Jiangnan.

They had been operating in the area for generations, even more than a dozen generations, with farmland, shops, pawnshops, money exchanges, grain stores, cloth shops, tea shops, and salt shops. Their businesses were spread across seven prefectures in Jiangnan, and the rent and tribute they paid to these powerful families each year amounted to an astronomical sum.

Wu Huai-ren's trip, ostensibly a "fundraising" operation, was in reality no different from robbery.

The list he issued ranged from several thousand taels to tens of thousands of taels per household. Not paying was considered "disregarding the court's hardships," but paying didn't necessarily bring any benefits.

Those wealthy gentlemen dared not speak out in anger, and could only grit their teeth and move their silver out. After moving it all out, their fortunes were gone. How would they pay rent and tributes in the future?

Wei Zhong stopped stroking his beard. "There's one more thing," he said, his voice even lower than before, "If word gets out that the grain shops were vandalized and disaster victims were looting food, who will be most affected?"

Liu Man looked at him. Wei Zhong's gaze swept across his face, landing on the increasingly dark night outside the window. "It's not Wu Huai Ren, it's us."

He spoke slowly, as if savoring the weight of each word. "The common people don't care who sold the grain in the government granaries to the grain merchants. They only know that the grain shops are their grain shops, and the grain in the grain shops comes from the government granaries."

Liu Man's face turned pale.

Wei Zhong continued, "Popular support may seem useless in ordinary times, but once lost, it can never be regained."

The room fell completely silent. The three of them sat there, and none of them spoke again.

The sky outside the window gradually darkened, turning from gray to leaden gray, and from leaden gray to inky black, like a piece of cotton cloth soaked in ink, enveloping the whole world.

Another incident has occurred in Jiangning Prefecture.

This time it wasn't the grain shops that were smashed, but the soup kitchens that were overturned.

At the porridge stall in the west of Jiangning Prefecture, the clerk who was distributing the porridge added a large pot of water and a small handful of rice to the pot as usual. He stirred it with a long-handled wooden spoon. The porridge, so thin that you could see your reflection in it, had a few grains of rice floating on the boiling water, like a few fallen leaves floating in an autumn pond.

As the disaster victims lined up looked at the pot of porridge, a young man as thin as a bamboo pole rushed forward, snatched the wooden ladle from the constable's hand, and scooped it up from the bottom of the pot—what the wooden ladle scooped up was not porridge, but a spoonful of clear soup with a few grains of rice floating in it, so few that you could count them.

He held the wooden spoon above his head, letting everyone see what was inside. A roar erupted from the crowd, like a caged beast that had been chained for too long finally breaking free of its shackles.

The soup kitchen was overturned. The iron pot was smashed, and the soup spilled all over the ground, seeping into the mud and mixing with the rainwater to form a muddy puddle.

The constables were beaten black and blue. Some lay on the ground, too afraid to get up, while others scrambled away and disappeared into the narrow alley, not daring to look back.

That very night, Wu Huai-ren wrote a memorial and sent it to the capital by express courier.

In his letter, he attributed all the incidents of the grain shop being smashed and the soup kitchen being overturned to "troublemakers causing trouble," saying that he had "exhausted his energy and worked day and night," but the people of Jiangnan were fierce and their problems had been ingrained for a long time, and it was not something that could be reversed overnight.

He requested the court to allocate another 300,000 taels of silver, another 100,000 shi of grain, and another 500 soldiers to maintain order in Jiangnan. At the end of his memorial, he wrote: "Even if I were to give my life, I could not repay even a fraction of Your Majesty's grace."

The handwriting was messy, and the ink was of varying shades, as if the hand was trembling while writing.

It was raining in the capital that day, not heavily, just a fine, dense drizzle that pattered on the glazed tiles, like the sound of silkworms gnawing on mulberry leaves.

Xiao Jue was reviewing memorials in the East Warm Pavilion, while Zhou Heng sat on the couch next to him, flipping through a mathematics textbook. Chen Shen entered, presented the urgent memorial, stepped aside, and stood with his hands at his sides.

Xiao Jue took the folded book, opened it, and read it from beginning to end. After reading it, he put the folded book on the table, without commenting or saying anything, and just leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a while.

Zhou Heng looked up at his profile. The candlelight cast a warm yellow glow on his face, softening his sharp features.