Chapter 72: 72

[Getting~ back on track~

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Zhou Zizhu and Hong Feng were greatly pleased to see me. Xiao Lu cried, first hugging my legs, then going to hug Jinfeng. Jinfeng was a bit uncomfortable, but he was clearly pleased that his little comrade was all right, too.

From the intermittent speech within Xiao Lu’s tears of joy, I’m able to roughly learn that on that day, Jinfeng was being difficult and had climbed up on the mast. When the boat started taking water and sinking, Xiao Lu had sensed something wrong and ran out to find Jinfeng, leaving Xiao Zhu by herself in the cabin. He didn’t find Jinfeng in the end, and eddies and broken wooden planks came up from the sunken ship, so he had to swim far away to avoid them and only ended up finding Hong Feng and the two horses. After they came ashore, they ran into Zhou Zizhu and his servant.

No one had seen Jinzi.

They were very surprised to see that Jinzi wasn’t with me, but they didn’t dare open their mouths to ask, probably because I had a very bad look on my face. In short, we went back to the inn first, and then Zhou Zizhu recounted their experience on the road: turns out he’d been met with an attack when he fell in the river, though fortunately Ah-San was at his side to protect him – using his own words, “fortunately, this one still has some usefulness” – and wrestled with them in the water. Zhou Zizhu glossed over the thrilling scene, only saying that Ah-San had suffered some minor injuries and beat back the enemy to the shore, then meeting up with Hong Feng and Xiao Lu. During their journey, they ran into countless assassination and poisoning attempts, but thanks to Ah-San and Hong Feng being jianghu veterans with excellent martial arts, they avoided danger time after time.

I didn’t suffer any sort of sniping, so apparently the person who bore a hole through the boat was going for Zhou Zizhu, which is baffling, and quite suspicious. Zhou Zizhu said that they had been organized and ferociously unafraid of death, and if caught alive they’d kill themselves: they were all death-wards. Seems their master’s ambition isn’t small.

I’m concerned for Jinzi, but I also can’t stop being deeply concerned about this, too. I frown in consideration, and say, “Who is this person, really? Were you made a part of a contingency plan, Brother Zhou?”

He also wrinkled his brow, hesitated, and shook his head.

I think over it deeply and without words, my mind cut with worry, suspicion, and confusion. My thoughts frequently sink into and float out of Jinzi’s life and death, interrupting my ponderings and making me completely unable to think of anything else, to say nothing of the string of matters of life and death outside the city and the mournful howling of the starved people. It’s capsizing my state of mind and I can’t stop it.

Zhou Zizhu says, “It’s fortunate that Miss Hong Feng stuck by to help, otherwise, at this time today, this lower one would have been forever separated from Brother Zhang as yin and yang are. I give my thanks to Brother Zhang for this great kindness.” I promptly deflect the thanks, then noticed Hong Feng sitting to the side and looking wan. Her sight has, for the most part, been glued onto me, and thought there’s only light worry between her brows, there’s a deep pain within her eyes.

I rebuke myself for only thinking about Jinz in this post-catastrophe regrouping and treating her with inexcusable indifference. I quickly grip both her hands. “Thank you for your hard work, Hong Feng.” She trembled, choking up with sobs. “Qing, you… it was nothing, Sir.”

She has deep feelings for Zhang Qinglian, though she oridinarily doesn’t show it and expresses it just in life-or-death situations. She’s also hurting and depressed, but I think that though she’s forlorn, she can see that nothing’s happened to me in the end and her heart can be calmed down. Yet I don’t know where Jinzi is or whether he’s alive or dead; how long am I going to suffer this uncertainty? I feel my heart clench paifully, and I can’t help but look towards Jinfeng. His feelings are also a mix of grief and joy from seeing Xiao Lu but not his big brother. His gaze met mind, and it surprisingly wasn’t a glare and didn’t have his normal obstinance, but was scared and at a loss. I almost welled up with tears seeing it.

I was miserable with worry, but I have things I can’t not do. Zhou Zizhu and I dressed up a bit, changed into our official’s clothes, and went to visit the Xinyang governor.

The governor’s residence can’t be said to be big, as Xinyang isn’t a big city with endless amounts of people. The governor received notice of our visit and not even a few minutes later was rushing out, scared out of his wits and clothes in disarray.

That’s natural, as I’m a first-tier official, after Zhou Zizhu’s ascension to Imperial Censor he also newly ascended to the second-tier, and this very minor Xinyang governor is only the fourth-tier, not to mention that Zhou Zizhu and I are untouchably mighty characters.

I don’t say much, asking him why he’s refusing the victims outside the city. He danced around the subject, saying that Guo Zhengtong had come to borrow food from him half a month ago, and, in the same way a bandit would, had incited rioteers to come stir up trouble following his rejection. He feared public security would be compromised in Xinyang and thus shut the city’s gates tight, then wrote a memo to the Palace accusing Guo Zhengtong of misconduct to wait for a bigwig to come handle it. I mentally sneer upon hearing that.

Zhou Zizhu’s brow furrows, and he reprimands, “Fool! What sort of rioteer would toy around with their own life? How could Guo Zhengtong have the ability to bribe so many people for this? Are those people who are starving to death fake?”

The governor is not as respectful to Zhou Zizhu as he is to me, shooting back a few retorts of veiled sarcasm, their connotations more or less being that he and Guo Zhengtong are of the same age group so of course he’d side with him, all the while passingly giving a few praises to me. Zhou Zizhu nearly explodes into anger.

I give an indifferent smile. “I’m also just a tad suspicious. This precedent of hungry people starving to death isn’t one I’ve seen before. Why not release relief aid?” My tone is packed with ice.

The governor snuck a slightly fearful glance at me, then quickly indicated that he didn’t have enough power in this matter, and the relief money truly wasn’t under his control. If Guo Zhengtong wasn’t embezzling it, then it was in his superior, Lu Liang’s hands, and as of right now, the latter possibility is clearly much more likely. Furthermore, the foodstuffs raised from those buying noble titles should have been shipped over by now.

The governor then mentioned that Lu Liang would be coming in three or four days, as Guo Zhengtong is making urgent repairs to a section of the dam, and he has to wait until the water level settles down a bit to make the trip. He urges me to wait for them.

I can wait, but the victims can’t. I don’t know how many lives would be lost with a day of delay.

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I sternly instruct him to open the gates immediately and organize for the victims to come in, as well as to open the Xinyang government storehouse and set up congee kitchens to feed them. Zhou Zizhu nods in agreement with my plan.

The official thusly said that there wasn’t a single grain of rice in the storehouse, all because of the Xinyang’s citizens mass panic. They bought up all the rice, causing the price to skyrocket, and in order to level it he had to throw out all the governmental rations.

I don’t believe a single one of his words. This official looks like the kind of goods that has the multiple functionalities of being both a corrupt official and a useless, wine-guzzling, food-horfing sack of trash, who’s very unlikely to have the qualities of ‘efficiency’ and ‘competency’. We stubbornly go to the storehouse to see, and there’s indeed not a single speck of rice. Heaven knows it’s because of that abhorrent practice of selling the rice at a high price to whatever food merchants for a profit.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, but that means that it’s impossible to maintain established laws in an emergency. You won’t be able to get much evidence for many of the things going on, allowing people to jump through loopholes. This is the core reason why it’s always been easy for those sorts to immorally and unlawfully extort money during conflict.

The governor gave a fake smile and urged us to wait a few days as Sir Lu would be more able to deal with it, thereafter inviting the two of us to come stay at his residence. Zhou Zizhu coldly refused, saying that he would relocate into a courier station.

Upon leaving, I secretly vow to make this official look real good in the future.

Zhou Zizhu and I are now both incredibly gloomy and deeply concerned. My thoughts come and go; it’s nothing but those two words – food and money – that makes one heartless. After we get back to the inn, I go straight to Zhou Zizhu’s room to find him, and got right to the point as soon as I opened the door.

“I have a way to transfer over a couple hundred thousand liang. There isn’t much in the way of food to buy from here, whether the price is low or high, but this is a dire situation. Would you dare to undertake this with me, Zizhu?”

Zhou Zizhu is startled yet delighted, quickly raising his head. “You can transfer that much silver, Brother Zhang? Here? Now?”

I nod.

“Why would I not dare?” He responds, looking tranquil yet holding extreme determination.

“It’s just that what will happen in the future in regards to this is unclear. At worst, official status will be lost, and there will at least be rumors that’ll be difficult to stop. Have you thought it through, Zizhu?”

He smiles faintly. “There’s not a doubt in my mind.”

I nod once again, giving him a smile right back.

I take out 500,000 liang worth of banknotes and had Zhou Zizhu write a receipt for it, drawing up a mortgage for me so it would be considered a loan to the Court.

In the afternoon, we took the huge amount of banknotes and split up to go talk business with every major grains merchant and supplier in the city. After hard bargaining, we purchased a current total of 7,000 dan in grains, which cost us nearly 300,000 liang, with the average price of a dan being a shockingly-high 40 liang or more; that’s ten or so times the normal price. This is the only way, though, as that’s the lowest price we could get it down to.

Food in hand, the next part is easier to run. People were transferred from the official’s to set up congee kitchens, get the pots boilings, and start handing out congee. It’s at that time I forced the governor to let the victims into the city. There were some very small disturbances in the process of entry, but as I had foreseen that happening and had ordered reinforcements in the form of troops to keep the peace, control was still completely maintained.

When night fell, the first pot of congee was sent over, and the victims formed a long queue before the kitchen. The soldiers continued to keep control over the situation. Because I feared a plague outbreak following the flood, I hired trained specialists to clean up the bodies of those that had starved, and then spent a lot at various medicine shops to buy large quantities of inexpensive, high-quality herbs that could resist illness, and have them boiling within the big pots of congee to be distributed.

It’s almost midnight when everything calms down. The heavens are emptying buckets onto the world below, waves of white suffusing onto the ground, the restless hustle and bustle of the daytime washed away into nothing. Mostly everyone has snuffed out their oil lamps. Some are packed tight within the city’s blocks, some people are making a racket in the soup kitchen’s area, and some of the refugees who had already eaten their fill of thin congee are curled up under the eaves of other people’s homes to hide from the rain and catch some sleep. The majority of them don’t make a sound.

I heave an extra long sigh of relief, slightly comforted when I think of how no one should be dying of hunger tonight. It’s only when I’m thinking about my busyness that I don’t once again suffer the apprehensive worry of how Jinzi is doing, so now the pain that I had diverting for a while starts a wave of subconscious torment within my heart.

The exact number of the disaster victims is unknown, but it’s overall likely to be 120,000. 7,000 dan of food, cooked into thin congee that can barely sustain life, could probably support them for nearly ten days. By that time I should have solven the issue with the relief provisions and funds, so I’m not too worried about it.

But the next day, Xinyang city had an unexpected guest.

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