At noon they had meat. In the evening, they received their pay.
The copper coins were strung together with red thread.
Each string held over fifty copper coins, and it felt heavy in their hands.
Everyone was overjoyed—speechless.
Several families had previously had their children taken for corvee labor because they couldn't pay taxes, and they'd harbored deep resentment toward the officials above. At first, they'd suspected that with payouts every six days, the authorities would find excuses to deduct some later on. But now, holding the silver in their hands, they counted—not a single copper coin missing. A full fifty-four coins.
Even the women and fulangs who'd come later were holding their money, trembling with excitement, their eyes shining with a light that words could hardly describe.
They, too, could earn money—just like the men.
Zhao Ger noticed several fulangs secretly wiping away tears, and he understood the reason.
Back in Xiaohe Village, people could grow vegetables, and those skilled in needlework could embroider pouches and handkerchiefs to sell in town, earning a little money of their own.
But here, that wasn't possible. The land was dry, and whatever vegetables they planted wilted and drooped. After spring passed, there were no wild greens left in the mountains. The chickens they raised didn't eat well and stopped laying eggs—they were skinnier than the people, and once plucked, looked no bigger than quails. It was hard for women and gers to earn even a single copper coin here.
The soil here was compacted and hard. Digging the canal was pure brute labor. After just a few days, everyone's palms were covered in blisters. When the blisters burst, one could see the raw red flesh underneath. Some of the younger gers and girls were crying from the pain—but not a single one stopped. Zhao Ger told them that if it was truly unbearable, they could go home, and they'd still be paid for the work they'd already done—but no one left. Watching them, Zhao Ger felt uneasy. He had some experience, so that evening he told everyone: if they had old clothes they no longer wore, they could cut strips of fabric and wrap them around their hands—that might help.
Some tried it. The next day, when they started digging, they found their hands really didn't hurt as much. They asked Zhao Ger how he knew that trick. He smiled and said, "Back when I used to harvest rice in autumn and my hands hurt too much to bear, that's what I did."
That seemed hardly believable.
The prefect's fulang had done farm work before?
They all glanced toward Guaizai without saying a word. He was huffing and puffing away at his work, and when he dug up another rock, he tossed his little hoe aside, didn't mind the dirt at all, picked up the rock, and went tata-tata trotting off with it.
If the prefect’s own son could do this kind of work, and the prefect’s fulang also did manual labor—well, perhaps it was not so strange after all.
They were truly different from what anyone had expected.
They'd never seen the previous prefect, but they'd seen the county magistrate's wife in town. She had come to buy rouge, stepping down from her carriage attended by three maids, draped in rich, opulent fabrics the likes of which they had never even seen. The embroidery on her clothes was exquisite. Her hands were fair and delicate. The little young master following her was very arrogant—when people nearby merely looked at them with curiosity, he snapped, "What are you looking at?" and even threatened to have the magistrate send men to gouge out their eyes.
If even a county magistrate's household carried itself with such arrogance, one could only imagine how overbearing a prefect's family would be.
But the prefect's son...
He was like a child from their own village. Anyone could tell he was good-natured.
Their gazes were so intense that when Guaizai came back from tossing the rock, he got embarrassed and gave a shy little smile.
"Big brothers and big sisters, why you always look at Guaizai? Don't tell me you're falling in love with Guaizai!"
Before they could even respond, his face turned bright red and he ran off, hiding behind Zhao Ger's legs.
With over a dozen ger and girls staring at him, he really couldn't take it—his backside felt like it was on fire.
No can do.
These big brothers and sisters must have been bewitched by my dashing and handsome charm while I was working. Now they're probably head over heels for me.
And I'll have to break their hearts again. Oh dear, oh dear.
Several of the gers and girls saw him peeking out at them secretly and had to hold back their laughter.
Maybe Young Master Guaizai had no temper at all—or maybe his head was just so full of narcissism that everything else got squished flat.
After paying out wages to several hundred people across nine villages, over a hundred taels of silver were gone in one go.
Sure, each person only got a little over fifty copper coins, but with so many people, plus food costs and miscellaneous expenses, it added up quickly. One Imperial Guard muttered quietly to his commander: "Boss, these villages are so poor—why don't they just move away? They've been poor for generations."
"Yeah, yeah. If it were me, and I couldn't even get a full meal at home, I'd have gone out to seek my fortune long ago." These Guards were also worried that in the end, they'd spend all that silver and it would all be for nothing.
Over a hundred taels of silver was a fair amount to them, but not shockingly so. The Guards who'd made it into the palace and into the Emperor's presence came from decent families with respectable backgrounds, not to mention their own skills.
Spending that much in just six days—and at this rate, the canal wouldn't be finished in under a month—meant a huge amount of silver might end up wasted for nothing. But watching everyone work so desperately, then count their tiny wages of a few dozen copper coins with trembling hands and red-rimmed eyes—a sum the Guards themselves wouldn't even spare a glance at—it was hard not to feel a pang of sorrow.
This place was incredibly poor. The people lived worse than pigs.
If it was so dry, why hadn't they moved away in the first place?
Zhang Quan had wondered the same thing before. He'd asked Fang Zichen, and after hearing the explanation, he understood.
Anhe County hadn't always been this poor. In the beginning, people could still barely fill their stomachs. Later, taxes grew heavier, and everyone became poorer and poorer.
They say it's hard to leave your homeland—but when you truly can't get enough to eat, even your homeland becomes somewhere you can leave. But where could they go? The common folk had no silver. If they went to town, what would a whole family eat? What would they drink? They could hire themselves out for work, but were jobs easy to find? Could they count on work every day? Even if there was work, most of it went to men. And living in town, besides air, everything—food, clothing, shelter—cost money. With only a few coins' wages per day, how could they support a whole family?
What about moving to another village?
That was also difficult.
Most villages were exclusive. Each village had only so much land and resources. And again—no silver meant no house, no land to buy. They still couldn't survive. Unless, like Uncle Liu's family, they'd suffered a disaster and the officials arranged for them to be placed somewhere. The villagers had no choice but to accept them. Then they received relief grain, opened up wasteland, and slowly got back on their feet.
Villages like Ronghe Village hadn't suffered any disasters. Their household registries were rooted here, and they couldn't easily leave. If large numbers of people flooded into other villages or towns, it could easily cause unrest.
There were complexities involved. One, they had no means to move. Two, the authorities didn't permit it either.
Only after hearing this did the Imperial Guards realize—the common folk weren't foolish. They wanted to leave but couldn't. And so, generation after generation, they remained trapped in this place.
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