The Magnates of Jiangdong (5)
Facing the Inspector of Yangzhou, Liu Yao, I gave him a careful once-over. Black hair, black eyes, and a bearing of unmistakable nobility—every detail attested to the imperial blood running in his veins.
Black hair truly was a rare thing in this day and age. Aside from the imperial family, the only black-haired figures left in the world were me and the Peach Sisters. And frankly, as far as appearances went, there wasn't a problem in sight.
Except for exactly one thing.
So what was the flaw that caught my eye? It was remarkably simple.
"You don't look at all well."
"...So you noticed."
Liu Yao took my question without so much as a flicker of discomfort, carrying on as if we were discussing the weather. "If the General-in-Chief himself can see it, then I suppose my condition must truly be dire."
"I can hold out at least until another Inspector of Yangzhou is appointed, so please, worry yourself with nothing."
He had already accepted, with perfect composure, that he was not long for this world. It was the kind of serene detachment you might see in an old man making his peace with death.
...Come to think of it, hadn't the Liu Yao of the original history died young as well? I was fairly certain he had passed away in his early forties.
News that Liu Yao—the man who had come here representing the great clans of Jiangdong—would not live long was bad news for me indeed. A slave he could run ragged with a clear conscience... no, scratch that. What ruler anywhere would celebrate the death of a capable, talented man?
How was I supposed to put this situation into words? Yes. I had no choice but to seize him by the trouser leg and cling on for dear life, wailing, "If you die, the development of Jiangdong dies with you!"
It was a rather cheap way to phrase it, but what could I do? No more fitting expression came to mind.
Watching Liu Yao, I tossed out a question, partly as a little test. "Inspector of Yangzhou, Liu Yao."
"Yes."
"In your eyes, what sort of land is Jiangdong?"
He was, quite literally, a man of the field—someone who had administered the region for years and weathered everything it could throw at him. I wanted the honest assessment of just such a man.
"That is simple."
Liu Yao answered in a voice that suggested the question posed him no difficulty whatsoever. "The lands north of the Huai River and the lands south of it are ground that may share with one another whatever each happens to lack."
"The north receives grain and fruit in abundance from the south, and the south receives labor and learning in abundance from the north."
In other words, north and south could each supply what the other needed. Back in my old life, I'd heard someone compare the Jiangdong of antiquity to America's Wild West—the frontier era, you know the one. The age every cowboy movie conjures up. The only real differences were that the arid plains had been swapped for humid wetlands, and the guns for spears and blades.
When America first threw itself into westward expansion, law and order out on the frontier was an utter shambles. Settlers brawled day in and day out with the Native Americans who had dwelt on that land long before them, and anyone they took a dislike to simply got buried out back where no one would look. Survival of the fittest, in the most literal sense of the phrase. That was precisely the situation in Jiangdong at this very moment.
The one merciful difference was that the Shanyue Tribe, cast in the role of the Native Americans, had already been knocked out of the running. All that remained, just as the gunslingers of the West had done, was to quietly bury whoever rubbed you the wrong way, and the Chinese edition of the frontier era would be complete. ...Though I supposed here it would have to be a "southern frontier era" instead.
While I was entertaining these idle thoughts, I turned my head toward my little strategist. "Zhuge Liang. What do you think?"
In the original history, she had been the prodigy of statecraft who folded together Nanzhong and Yi Province—two lands divided by stark cultural differences—and made Shu Han flourish. No sooner had my question left my lips than she favored me with a faint smile.
"There is not a single flaw in what he says."
Masking her lips behind her White Feather Fan, the white-haired little strategist continued. "Lands of deep forest, such as Jiangdong, are graced with rains that fall in even measure through the turning of the year, and so they suffer the ravages of famine far less than most."
"And when one considers how densely the people now crowd the country north of the Yangtze, it is certain that the land's vitality—its power to nurture crops—will one day be spent to the very last measure."
She had a point. The region north of the Huai, cold and dry as it was, had never been kind ground for raising crops. Only the sweat and toil of the dynasties that came before had coaxed harvests out of it at all—turning the soil over and over, digging irrigation works by the dozen, and thrashing senseless anyone fool enough to ruin a growing season. But no amount of human effort could overcome a limit a land was born with. Farming was precisely the sort of enterprise that collapsed outright the moment nature stopped cooperating, however many hundred days a man bent his back to it. A long drought would parch every field to dust; a locust swarm could descend out of a clear sky and strip the grain to the stalk. And when famine came, countless souls would starve.
In the end, the only way to secure a stable supply was to bind this vast territory into one whole and artificially govern the flow of grain across it. A wide country really did have its uses—whatever ran short in one place could simply be hauled in from another.
"The north imparts to the south the culture and learning it lacks; the south furnishes the north with the manifold goods it wants in return." Echoing Liu Yao's own words, Zhuge Liang laid out her view with unruffled calm. "Does this not mirror the very manner in which we govern Yi Province at present?"
"So it does."
I nodded slowly at her assessment. Yi Province was land so well situated that the Zhuge Liang and Pang Tong of the original history had chosen it over Jing Province. The sole difference was that Jiangdong had received none—not one whit—of the development Yi Province enjoyed.
Yi Province was well-tilled ground, seeing as it was where Liu Bang, founder of the Han, had first raised his banner after being driven back by the Hegemon-King of Western Chu. That was why Liu Bang, even after the Battle of Pengcheng dealt him a defeat like a bases-loaded, walk-off grand slam against him, had not been annihilated—Xiao He, holding Yi Province behind him, had kept feeding him soldiers and supplies as though he were running cheat codes.
In any case, development aside, the two regions shared a great deal. Yi Province guarded itself behind towering mountain ranges while Jiangdong barred invaders with the broad expanse of the Yangtze; Yi Province had swept in wealth through luxuries like salt and silk while Jiangdong amassed it through staggering agricultural output. The parallels were positively mouthwatering.
And if maritime trade with foreign lands were layered on top of that... wow. Jokes aside, it could become a nation whose coffers never ran dry. Silk out of China was the sort of commodity that made the merchants arriving from the far West lose their minds and lunge for it—even now, word had it that Rome traded silk weight for weight against gold. Porcelain, spices, tea—every one of them fetched prices so handsome that the money practically photocopied itself.
The problem was what to do about the parties squatting in the middle of the road to the West. The overland route was beset by the Xiongnu—a name I'd grown tired of even repeating by now—sitting down hard and bellowing, "None shall pass." And the sea route required slipping neatly past Tianzhu... India, in other words, which lay in wait to skim a cut from everything in transit. ...Though come to think of it, trading with India wouldn't be such a bad arrangement either. Buddhism had been born in India and had already found its way into the Han, proof enough that China and India had been exchanging hearty laughter and goods since ages past. The two countries weren't even so terribly far apart. It was simply that the profits paled beside what Rome could offer.
When I reminded myself that most matters of state could be settled, one way or another, given enough budget and enough time, only one decision remained open to me.
"Liu Yao."
"You called."
Liu Yao answered my summons in a level, measured voice. I looked upon his gaunt, hollowed face and asked, "Will you devote the remainder of your life to the Han?"
"...?"
A trace of puzzlement crossed his face at so abrupt a question, but he soon replied in that same calm tone. "I will. Though this mortal illness of mine means I have not many years left me, I shall offer up this body for the country until the day I close my eyes for good."
The words were steeped through and through in the sentiment that a life soon to be laid in the grave hardly mattered either way. So completely had he let go of any hunger for living that I could tell the sickness had been gnawing at him a long, long while.
"Hmm..." Even so, that was no reason not to try at all. After a moment's deliberation, I turned to the adjutant at my side. "Someone go fetch brush and paper. I have several letters to write."
"Yes, General-in-Chief!!! Leave it to me!!!"
Hardly had the words left my mouth before Sun Quan, hovering nearby, snapped out her answer and shot from the room. ...Her enthusiasm, at the very least, was second to none. Mindful of the leadership the Sun Quan of the original history had displayed, I had taken to keeping her at my elbow to handle the Jiangdong workload, and judging by that bottomless reservoir of drive, there was little fear she would flag halfway and drop out on me.
She came bounding back in short order—evidently she had long since memorized where everything was kept. "Here they are!!"
"Oh... right. Good work."
"Thank you for your kind words, General-in-Chief!!!"
Why was her voice growing louder by the sentence? And why did it feel as though the exclamation marks were multiplying with each one?
It was then that Cao Cao, who had been observing the whole spectacle, remarked, "My, what a lively young thing. Is she your next target?"
"...What on earth are you saying all of a sudden?"
"Fufu. You know perfectly well."
Though she knew the answer to my question full well, Cao Cao merely laughed in wicked delight.
"Wh-what?! M-me?!"
"That's right. My darling husband does so adore the young ones."
"I-I am honored!!!"
No, that is not what that meant. Yes, I was fond of young people—in the entirely wholesome sense. Not in whatever sense she was insinuating. Did she want me dragged off by the police?
...
"...So younger really is better after all?"
Now even Seo Yeo and Lü Bu had begun acting strange.
"...I swear I'm losing my mind."
Watching the scene descend into utter bedlam over a single quip from Cao Cao, I could do nothing but bury my face in my hands.