The Magnate of Jiangdong (6)
Having traded all manner of words with Liu Yao, I gave a slow nod. From everything our conversation had surfaced, he really did seem to be a man of genuine ability. Then again, that much was only to be expected — had he lacked it, Liu Yao would have been found lying dead in some corner of Jiangdong long ago. The era was such a free-for-all that even men seated in high office died off with perfect equality the moment competence deserted them.
Take Liu Yao's own elder brother, Liu Dai, Inspector of Yanzhou — hadn't he gone and died on a battlefield putting down the Yellow Turbans? ...Though in this world, he had tried to harm Cao Cao and been the one done in instead. What confidence on earth had possessed the man to attempt something so utterly senseless?
"Hm? If you keep gazing at me with such passionate eyes, you'll make me blush, you know."
"..."
At least wet your lips before you tell a lie that shameless. The instant Cao Cao's eyes met mine, she had put on the same impish smile she'd worn only moments before. ...Fine. What could I possibly say to that? In all the time she had kept me before her, not once had Cao Cao failed to smile. Whether she was simply that liberal with her smiles by nature, or whether it was only in my presence, I couldn't say. Could it be she knew perfectly well that no one spits in a smiling face?
Resigning myself to it, I took the brush Sun Quan had brought in my right hand and wrote out the letter without hesitation.
"...?"
Curiosity flickered across Liu Yao's face at my abrupt move, yet he never once pressed me with a question. He seemed to let it pass with perfect calm, as if to say I surely had my reasons for everything. I couldn't have told you why, but the man before me plainly trusted me. ...And if so, then repaying that trust was my duty as a human being.
Turning the problem over in my head — what to write, and how — I murmured half to myself.
"I intend to summon physicians to this place before long."
"..."
"It is mere hearsay, but they say this land of Jiangdong, its climate being what it is, teems with people laid low by sickness."
I stilled my writing hand and looked at Liu Yao.
"Do you know of the Divine Physician?"
"...I have heard tell of her renown, but never had the honor of meeting her in person."
"I see."
At Liu Yao's answer, I nodded.
"Come to think of it, the sick overflow even north of the Huai River, so nothing about it surprises me."
"..."
Hearing me out, Liu Yao offered no reply, as if to concede the point. I regarded him a moment, then spoke.
"In that case, take this opportunity to meet her."
"Truly, General-in-Chief?"
"It happens the Divine Physician and I are acquainted."
Not so acquainted that "friends" would be the right word, mind you. Hua Tuo dealt with people wearing an expression so bloodless she might have transcended the mortal world altogether, and gauging the distance between us was no simple matter — a far cry from Zhuge Liang, who carried much the same air about her yet smiled her soft smile and let her feelings show. Still, whenever I summoned her she arrived punctual to the tick, so I could venture that her opinion of me was not so poor.
"Come to think of it, I have heard it said that the General-in-Chief treats his physicians most generously."
As if something had just come back to him, Liu Yao asked in his level voice:
"Might I ask what moved you to such a decision?"
"Ah, that."
The real reason was nothing worth telling.
"On the contrary, that is a question I would like to ask of you."
"..."
"Is there any reason I should not treat generously the men and women who cure disease and injury and pull lives back from the brink?"
Even those scholars who strutted about day after day with spines ramrod straight, proclaiming thus spoke Confucius, thus spoke Mencius, were, the moment their own bodies ached, the first to come running to a physician. There were still plenty of days when the way these ancient people thought defeated me entirely. But what could I do about it? To the people of this era, I was surely the strange one. Gaps in perspective were never bridged easily, and so all I could do was press forward with stubborn persistence.
"...Most admirable, General-in-Chief."
I couldn't tell what Liu Yao had taken from my answer, but at the very least he showed no disapproval. Watching him, I said in my usual tone:
"Then I'll be counting on you from here on as well."
"Yes. Entrust it all to me."
So — had I dealt with everything urgent? I had wrung a promise of cooperation from Liu Yao, a fixture of the Jiangdong establishment; what remained was to draw up a plan for developing the region and to open contact with the power in Jiaozhou away down south. And by my reckoning, Shi Xie, the master of Jiaozhou, would be sending someone to me first. In every Romance of the Three Kingdoms adaptation he was as invisible as air, but in sheer ability the man was unmistakably first-rate.
I had been calling the territory Shi Xie governed Jiaozhou all this time, but in this era it went by Jiaozhi, not Jiaozhou. Which made him Shi Xie, Inspector of Jiaozhi — not Inspector of Jiaozhou. The previous Inspector of Jiaozhou... no, the previous Inspector of Jiaozhi, Zhu Fu, was said to have wrung crushing taxes out of the people together with his cronies, only to be set upon by hostile tribes and die adrift at sea. A fitting end for a corrupt official if ever there was one.
I remembered the scene quite vividly: Zhu Fu's father, Ju Jun, on hearing the news, flew into a rage — that creature is my son? — and disowned him on the spot. That was the Ju Jun, the same man who had served as General of the Household alongside Lu Zhi and Huangfu Song. ...Since failures in the business of raising children were hardly a rarity, I would offer no commentary on the matter. Seen one way, it might even be my own future.
It was fine if a child of mine lacked extraordinary gifts. After all, with a father like me, my genes might well have devoured every last trace of their mother's splendid ones. But please — let their character, at the very least, not turn out crooked. If they oppressed and tormented the powerless, then child or no child, I would have no choice but to take up the rod. No — precisely because they were my children, all the more so. For now they were little rascals too busy beaming at me every time they saw my face, but still.
Once I had finished a round of talk with Liu Yao, I turned straight to Zhuge Liang.
"In your view, what is most urgent right now for governing Jiangdong?"
"First we must sweep away the bandits who bar the roads between city and city, together with the remnants of the Shanyue tribes."
Zhuge Liang answered the instant my question left my lips, without a flicker of hesitation.
"And once the overland routes are joined, we dig canals."
"...Canals?"
The word might sound faintly daunting, but the meaning was simple enough: waterways dug by human hands for the passage of boats, or for irrigation — channeling water into the paddies and fields that farming required.
"Is there a reason it must be done?"
I asked Zhuge Liang why the canals were necessary. Digging one meant, in the end, tearing the natural landscape apart with human hands, and so it devoured staggering amounts of time and resources. The moment I started barking faster and hounding the laborers, I would be Qin Shi Huang reborn. Beyond the Great Wall of China, that man had forced through one colossal construction project after another and worked people to death by the tens of thousands. Come to think of it, the uprising of Chen Sheng and Wu Guang — the signal flare of the Qin dynasty's collapse — was, when you got right down to it, raised by laborers too. With precedents like those, I had no intention of piling up strange karma of Qin Shi Huang's variety.
Zhuge Liang, the edge of her mouth hidden behind her white feather fan, answered with perfect composure.
"As you will see at a glance upon the map, Jiangdong is generous in territory compared with other regions."
That much was true. In sheer size alone it rivaled Jing Province, the most populous land in all the realm.
"And what we seek from the Jiangdong region is a vast quantity of crops."
"..."
"Hauling all of it overland, load by load, would squander far too much time and manpower."
In other words: dig canals for stable bulk transport. Jiangdong's climate was warm enough for deep forest to grow of its own accord — which, flipped around, meant the terrain was every bit as wild. Push through the woods and over the mountains, and no doubt the crops would rot before they ever arrived. They hadn't named the Shanyue — the "Mountain Yue" — for nothing. As a side benefit the work would yield irrigation works for farming, so it was no bad proposal. ...Though the time it would take was another matter entirely. Unless I meant to grind human beings into the digging itself, the canal would not be finished until I had become a bent-backed old man.
"A great waterway, running from Jiangdong all the way up to Jizhou."
Zhuge Liang traced the map laid out on the table from bottom to top.
"Once this canal exists, even should a great famine strike someday, the people will never go hungry."
"Hmm..."
When she argued her case that far, what reason had I to refuse? China's population scale was monstrous to begin with, and feeding that monstrous population demanded a proper system of transport if nothing else. But a waterway from Jiangdong all the way to Jizhou? Wasn't that the very Grand Canal Emperor Wen of Sui dug in the original history? And what manner of man was Emperor Wen of Sui? A terrifying figure — the man who reunified a China that had stood divided for a full four hundred years, counting from the Yellow Turban Rebellion. An emperor perfect at everything except the raising of sons. ...Ah, and the Goguryeo campaigns too.
In any case, the Grand Canal that Emperor Wen of Sui began and his son Emperor Yang completed would go on to shape the Chinese economy for ages to come. Though the Sui dynasty itself toppled soon after, and the rewards fell to other dynasties of China. Perhaps truly exceptional minds really do run along the same rails. Money had been quietly piling up ever since I took Yi Province and Jing Province, both famed as the wealthiest lands under heaven — and now I would have to shake it all out again for this. The restoration of Chang'an, dragging on these several years, would wrap up before long, so the funds pouring in there could be diverted here as well. It felt like overkill, but canal-digging had always been the sort of undertaking that swallowed wealth on this scale.
Having finished thinking it through, I nodded and spoke.
"Very well. One more bottomless pit for our money, then."
"But posterity will extol this achievement far and wide, my lord."
I didn't need any of that. ...Now that I thought of it, with the Civil Service Examination System and the Grand Canal both to my name, I was tracing Emperor Wen of Sui's achievements stroke for stroke. A faint guilt stirred in me — but then, if Emperor Wen of Sui ever did go on to found his own dynasty, he would simply pocket these two gains for himself, so let us call it square. If that rankled, he should have been born four hundred years earlier. That the only ground on which I could claim superiority over Emperor Wen of Sui was a head start of four centuries left my conscience pricking me all the same.