Chapter 571: For You |
Cheng Xu cheerfully took the paper, using his bamboo hat to shield it from the rain. With a flourish of his pen, he signed his name. By habit, he almost wrote his full signature but managed to pull back just in time to leave only “Cheng.”
However, Cheng’s writing clearly showed it was only part of the character.
Wang Tang glanced at it and instantly knew what had happened. He smiled without saying a word, accepting the paper and storing it away.
Cheng Xu: “With you keeping the books now, every granule of rice going in and out of camp must be recorded and signed. Would-be thieves of army provisions will find things much harder.”
Wang Tang smiled: “The Deity says our generation are the new intellectuals. Yours?” He paused. “You’re relics of the old society. If we acted as thoughtlessly as you elders, nothing would ever progress.”
Cheng Xu: “Speaking ill of seniors in such a roundabout way! I will report this to your father!”
Wang Tang smiled wider. “That’s the Deity’s exact quote! Not a single word changed. Even my father would have to listen.”
The silver-embroidered Deity on his chest chuckled. “Quite right. Verbatim.”
Cheng Xu had no choice but to relent.
Ma Xianglin watched from afar, amazement stirring. This Xing Honglang… unusual! Officially listed as an appeasement bandit, yet her operations followed stricter procedures than the imperial court itself.
The imperial forces wallowed in rot—embezzling provisions, smuggling military horses, collecting ghost payrolls—every rotten trick played. Yet Xing Honglang’s people handled everything methodically. Which side was truly the bandits here?
His wife Zhang Fengyi thought exactly the same. The couple met each other’s eyes, silently acknowledging their admiration. We must study these management practices when we return to the Shizhu Tujia tribe’s Wanshou Village.
Xing Honglang approached them, beaming. “General Ma! Our grain has arrived. Two hundred crates of flour, fifty of luncheon meat—each crate weighs a hundred twenty jin.” She gestured grandly. “Thirty thousand jin right here! How many troops have you brought?”
Ma Xianglin: “Three thousand White Standards Troops.”
“Three thousand?” Xing Honglang nodded briskly. “Then take sixty crates of flour and ten of meat as your share.”
Ma Xianglin calculated silently: seven thousand two hundred jin flour… twelve hundred meat…
A staggering figure!
An almost impossible amount in these famine years.
When his White Standards Troops first marched to Enter the Capital to Serve Wang, they’d provisioned themselves. Staying in Shanxi afterward for bandit suppression finally shifted the burden to Song Tongyin, Provincial Governor of Shanxi.
Song Tongyin remained honest and diligent as administrators went. Yet his provisions arrived like water wrung from a sponge: squeezed hard for a trickle, squeezed harder for a few drops more… The White Standards Troops were perpetually stretched thin on rations.
But this Xing Honglang distributed such wealth unbidden!
Ma Xianglin flushed uneasily. “This grain… I must owe it to you. Once I return to Sichuan, I’ll arrange repayment.”
Xing Honglang waved dismissively. “No hurry. Trivial.”
Ma Xianglin hesitated. “Are these provisions… rebel resettlement grain from the court?”
He’d heard days earlier: Inspector Wu Shen, dispatched with one hundred thousand taels of silver, was bribing surrendered rebels in Xi’an Prefecture—funds ostensibly to help the bandits reclaim wasteland, buy seeds, purchase draft animals… Now? One hundred thousand taels clearly wielded wild influence.
Xing Honglang laughed and shook her head. “Resettlement grain? Wu Shen’s so broke he’s hugging Shi Kefa in Xi’an Prefecture crying.”
Ma Xianglin: “…”
Xing Honglang grinned. “This grain? I earned it myself…as a salt smuggler.”
Ma Xianglin stared. “…Is it too late to switch careers into salt smuggling?”
Zhang Fengyi said, “Hey, what foolish talk is this? If it gets spread around and heard by the officials, they’ll impeach you, and who knows how much trouble that’ll cause.”
Xing Honglang laughed and said, “General Ma speaks straightforwardly, it’s quite good, hahaha.”
Ma Xianglin summoned the White Standards Troops to transport the grain. He moved all sixty baskets of flour and ten baskets of luncheon meat that Xing Honglang had given him over. They first set up a shed to shelter from the rain, and only then carefully lifted the oilcloth covering the bamboo baskets.
“Wow! The flour is snow-white snow-white!”
“This is top-grade fine flour!”
“I’ve never eaten such good flour in my entire life!”
“What we ate before was always a bit yellowish.”
The White Standards Troops let out embarrassed exclamations of wonder.
A White Standards soldier lifted the cover of the luncheon meat baskets. The baskets were filled with one by one square boxes. Opening one box, inside was a neat, square piece of meat, cut very uniformly.
Immediately, loud sounds of swallowing saliva rang out from beside them.
They had seen this kind of cubed meat before; in Puxian and Daining City, they had watched Xing Honglang’s forces distributing this meat to the common people for them to eat. They were observing and smelling it from the side, filled with envy, jealousy, and resentment, but the White Standards Troops had strict discipline; they weren’t rotten like other officials.
They wouldn’t snatch food from the common people, so they had to look on sorrowfully from the side.
“Finally, my turn has come!” a White Standards soldier held a square box and laughed heartily towards the sky. “These ten baskets of meat weigh twelve hundred catties; we three thousand White Standards Troops, each should get nearly half a catty.”
“Let me heft it… um… almost two boxes each per person!”
The White Standards troops were overjoyed, wiping their drool. “Let’s eat meat!”
“Let’s eat meat-meat!”
A large group of soldiers cheered aloud.
The group set up field stoves beneath the rain shelter and lit the fire to cook. Nearby was the Yellow River water; they fetched turbid river water to make do with. They threw the entire wooden box into the pot to cook, then fished it out, made do with the wooden box as a bowl, and ate directly from it—what an incredibly convenient design.
“So fragrant!”
“It smells heavenly to me!”
“Haven’t eaten meat in such a long time.”
“Never expected we’d get to eat meat while marching and fighting.”
Just as they were celebrating joyously, the over three thousand refugees who had followed the army from Daining City in the distance also had envious and jealous glints in their eyes. But they were used to being oppressed; how could they dare come and beg for food from the officials? They only dared watch from afar, not even having the courage to approach and sniff it.
At this time, they saw Zheng Daniu walk up, carrying a large basket on his shoulder. He thumped the basket down firmly in front of them and grinned with a wide smile. “All three thousand refugees, your treatment is the same as that of the three thousand White Standards Troops. Giving you sixty baskets of flour and ten baskets of luncheon meat. Organize yourselves and send people to the ship to move it.”
The refugees were briefly stunned, then overjoyed. “Thank you, Military Gentleman.”