Chapter 374
After Old Master Qiu slowly came to his senses, he recalled the harsh words Fang Zichen had left behind before departing. His face turned ashen, and he felt like crying but had no tears left.
A young servant came in to report: "Master, Village Chief Qiu is here."
Village Chief Qiu was the head of Daoxiang Village and also a distant cousin of Old Master Qiu's—they shared the same great-great-grandfather. Thanks to Old Master Qiu's influence, Village Chief Qiu held considerable authority in the village.
The moment Old Master Qiu heard that Village Chief Qiu had arrived, he knew exactly what it was about.
Sure enough, Village Chief Qiu rushed in without even stopping for a drink. No sooner had he sat down than he said urgently: "Second Brother, now that all the other villages have had their cement roads built, when will it be our turn in Daoxiang Village? Is the prefect not planning to build one for us at all?"
Old Master Qiu said nothing.
At this point, it certainly seemed that way. If the prefect had intended to build a road for Daoxiang Village, there would have been some sign of activity by now. But instead, the prefect was acting as if Daoxiang Village didn't exist—neither asking nor caring. His attitude was clear enough.
Village Chief Qiu looked like he was about to cry: "Second Brother, you have to think of something! It can't be that every other village gets a road and we're the only one left out! You don't know how people are talking outside—they're saying the folks from Daoxiang Village have borrowed a dog's courage, gone mad with greed, and tried to take advantage of the prefect. And now it's that saying—steal a chicken and end up losing the rice used to catch it—it's so embarrassing! When our people come to town, they don't even dare say which village they're from, afraid of being mocked."
But even if they didn't say it, people could guess. Everyone else was clean and tidy, while their shoe soles were caked with mud. Folks in town would laugh and, after guessing correctly, ask them: "What were you thinking back then? How could you even say such a thing? You Daoxiang Village folks sure know how to calculate!"
"Then why don't you just come to town on days when the weather is good?" Old Master Qiu said irritably.
Village Chief Qiu's face fell, clearly displeased: "Second Brother, that's not right. It rains off and on these days. If we all waited for good weather, how could the vegetables in the fields wait to be sold? And the eggs we've been saving for half a month—can they wait?"
Village Chief Qiu thought to himself, How could Second Brother say such a thing? He used to live in the village—he of all people should know what it's really like out here!
Sometimes it rained through the night and cleared by morning, but the road stayed muddy and took ages to dry. The beans and cabbages in the fields were tender and green, and of course everyone would have preferred to wait until the road was dry. They all knew how exhausting it was to trudge through mud. But vegetables turned day by day, and in just a day or two they would grow tough and overripe, and then no one would want to buy them.
For villagers, there weren't many ways to make money—the only income they had all year came from selling their vegetables and grain. No matter how hard it was, they had to come to town; they couldn't afford to wait.
Village Chief Qiu continued: "Back then you said the prefect was after political achievements, that leaving was just a scare tactic, and that he'd definitely come back later to build our road. You told us not to panic and to stay patient. But now it's not turning out the way you said at all!"
Old Master Qiu sighed.
A miscalculation!
At the time, he had truly believed that the prefect wanted to build roads for political achievements and would come back to negotiate—either force the land acquisition or agree to their price. They had held what they thought was the man's "lifeline," so they hadn't been in a hurry. But now...
One by one, the surrounding villages had all gotten their roads built. At first, no one knew what cement roads were—they'd never seen one, and hearing the word "cement" just made it sound like dirt, so they figured it didn't matter either way. But later, when they went to other villages to see for themselves—those roads so wide, so smooth, so clean—and came back to look at their own village's potholed little dirt path, with weeds creeping all the way to the middle and cutting at their ankles as they walked through, they couldn't stand the sight of it anymore. It looked shabby and wretched.
[In Chinese, the word for cement is 水泥 (shuǐ ní), which literally translates to water mud or water clay.]
Everyone wanted cement roads now, so they kept running to Village Chief Qiu, asking:
"When's our turn? Why aren't the soldiers and the prefect coming anymore? Are they still building this road or not?"
Just the other day, an old woman had been on her way to town to sell eggs when she slipped on the road and broke every single one. She came back crying so hard she couldn't even eat and went straight to Village Chief Qiu's house, saying she wanted a cement road—she was done with that muddy dirt road.
At first, the villagers hadn't pressed the matter too hard. But after being laughed at by outsiders and visiting other villages, they grew anxious. Now they came knocking on Village Chief Qiu's door every single day.
Village Chief Qiu had no answers, so he could only come to town to see Old Master Qiu.
Old Master Qiu was deeply troubled, but he knew full well that this whole affair had been his idea and he'd been the one to start it. His family's ancestral graves for generations were in that village, and when he himself passed on, he'd be carried back there too. If he truly drove the villagers to their limit, they might just dig up his family's tombs.
He was just a commoner with no status whatsoever—there was no way he could see Fang Zichen directly. He'd gone down to Xiaping Village to request an audience, but the man hadn't summoned him. Left with no choice, he'd had to pull some connections and ask someone to pass a message to Zhang Jiahui on his behalf.
The man came back and told him straight:
"You thought the prefect was building roads for political achievements? You thought you were holding his 'lifeline' and that he'd eventually come back to bargain with you? That's the problem with people like you who have no real connections—you hear a whisper of something and take it for the whole truth. Do you even know where this prefect comes from? You didn't investigate properly, just heard a few rumors from outside, and dared to play this game."
The man sighed: "Lord Fang doesn't need political achievements—he'd be able to return to the capital in five years regardless. The reason he was sent to Hezhou was because His Majesty overruled all objections to let him gild his resume here. The man had only been in the Hanlin Academy for a year—do you know what the Hanlin Academy is? Almost all of our Da Xia's Grand Secretaries came out of the Hanlin Academy. His Majesty wanted to promote him but couldn't find a pretext, so he sent him to Hezhou for a brief tour of duty. You didn't think he was like those other officials who came before, did you?"
"Then what do I do?" Old Master Qiu grew frantic. Though he didn't fully understand what the Hanlin Academy or the Grand Secretaries were, seeing the reverence and longing on the man's face as he spoke told him these were clearly very formidable things.
"I don't know. Lord Zhang had him investigated—all we found out is that this man holds grudges," the man said. Seeing that Old Master Qiu still did not fully understand, he put it in plain and simple terms: "Let me put it this way—if you cross him, he'll remember even your dog. And on top of that, this prefect is especially fond of taking petty advantages."
People who are fond of petty advantages are usually obsessed with money—they treat silver like their very lifeblood.
And he had dared to touch the man's lifeblood—of course the prefect would come down on him.
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