Extra Chapter Five Kings: The Plowshare Startles the Dream
During the spring plowing season of the eleventh year of Taichu, the southern suburbs of the capital were colder than in previous years.
Wang Mengzi, a First-Class Duke and General of the Cavalry, rolled up his trouser legs and stepped onto his "penalty field." The cold muddy water, laced with unmelted ice, gave him a shudder.
This feeling is both strange and familiar.
He should have been training new recruits in the drill grounds, listening to the thunderous shouts of the soldiers; or arguing with Su Qingfan about next year's military expenditure, fighting for every penny; at the very least, he should have been in the back garden of his own mansion, playing out the situation on a sand table.
Instead of being here, worrying about one acre and three mu of land like a real old farmer.
Of course he knows how to farm the land.
The memories engraved in the bones cannot be erased even after ten years of war and armor.
But he was holding back a lot of anger.
He refused.
Why? He, Wang Mengzi, was a refugee on the verge of starvation outside Mingzhou City. He followed His Majesty through a sea of blood and corpses, with countless scars and arrow wounds on his body. In exchange for this Duke's robe, wasn't it all for the sake of protecting the people who followed His Majesty and protecting this peaceful country that was fought for with great difficulty?
"Just two common people..." He stared at the muddy water under his feet and muttered to himself, "Your Majesty, are you willing to let your old brothers down for such a trivial matter?"
In a fit of anger, he scattered the seeds randomly in the first year. The grass grew taller than the seedlings. In the autumn harvest, there were only a few sparse ears of grain, not even enough to fill the gaps between teeth.
He scoffed, "What's so difficult about farming? It just takes some effort."
The next year, he paid a little more attention and his harvest was better. He looked at the real farmers busy in the fields and thought they were stupid.
"Having been trapped in a small space all my life, how could I possibly know the joy I once felt in taking the enemy general's head amidst a vast army?"
The third year, the fourth year... time flows silently like a stream beside a field.
The calluses on his hands thickened again, and his back was slightly hunched from years of bending over. He began to understand the difference between clay and sandy soil, and once again learned to read the clouds to predict whether it would be sunny or rainy.
Occasionally, he would chat about the solar terms with the old farmer in the next field.
The old farmer, whose surname was Zhang, had a very hunched back and wrinkles on his face like cracked earth.
Wang Mengzi didn't pay much attention to him at first. He was just a taciturn old man who worked day after day on a piece of land that was even poorer than the fine land.
It was not until the autumn of the fourth year that Old Man Zhang collapsed in the field while harvesting and never got up again.
When Wang Mengzi ran over to help him, the old man was still clutching a handful of rice ears tightly in his hand. His cloudy eyes looked up at the sky, and he finally uttered only two words: "Food..."
Wang Mengzi helped to take care of the funeral and found out that Old Man Zhang's son had died in the war years earlier and his daughter-in-law had remarried, leaving him alone as an old man to look after these few acres of land until his death.
At that moment, a string in Wang Mengzi's heart was gently plucked.
He remembered that many years ago, in Mingzhou, he and his mother were in the same situation, guarding a few acres of thin land and depending on the weather for their food. After a cold, his mother coughed for half a month, but was reluctant to buy medicine; during a drought, the fields had no harvest, and they could only eat tree bark.
He should have been like them, born silently and died silently, like weeds, one crop after another.
It was Your Majesty who gave them the land and allowed them to live like human beings.
But what about him? After becoming a general and holding the power of life and death, he began to despise life.
Who isn’t born and raised by parents? Who doesn’t dream of buying a few acres of land and living a stable life?
In the spring of the fifth year, Ning Lingyi arrived shortly after the seedlings were planted in the fields.
Wearing only a bamboo hat and coarse cloth, she walked to the edge of the field and carefully observed the growth of the seedlings: "These seedlings are growing well."
Wang Mengzi was stunned and wanted to salute, but was stopped by her look.
That day, the Emperor and the Duke were busy working in the fields side by side.
Ning Lingyi's movements were not very skilled, but she was extremely serious.
As she bent over to weed, beads of sweat from her forehead dripped into the soil.
During a break, she sat on the edge of a field, drinking the coarse tea Wang Mengzi handed her. Looking at the lush green rice seedlings, she suddenly said, "Mengzi, look at these seedlings. Each one depends on the sky for its survival. The people of the world are the same."
Wang Mengzi followed her gaze and saw thousands of seedlings swaying gently in the breeze, full of vitality.
Ning Lingyi didn't say anything else. After finishing her work, she washed her hands and feet and left.
He came and went like the wind, leaving behind only the lush green fields and Wang Mengzi's heart full of turmoil.
At night, he lay on the hard bed, tossing and turning.
His Majesty's muddy hands, the image of him drinking tea while sitting on the edge of the field, and those meaningful words, kept circling in his mind.
She doesn't look like an emperor, but more like a peasant woman.
What about him?
"If I take off this duke's robe, who am I, Wang Mengzi?" he asked himself in the darkness.
He had long forgotten that the soil was his roots.
He was originally a man who grew out of the soil. Fortunately, he was blessed with rain and dew and grew into a towering tree. However, he turned around and despised the soil that nourished him and looked down on the plants and trees that came from the same origin as him.
*
In the 20th year of Taichu, Wang Mengzi, who had been silent for many years, was re-employed and appointed to the Ministry of War, in charge of military farming and military discipline inspection.
When he returned to the court, most of his brutality had dissipated.
The first time a general was court-martialed for allowing his troops to disturb the people, the man stared at him in disbelief: "Duke, you were never like this before!"
Wang Mengzi's eyes were like knives: "I risked my life to fight Your Majesty, not to let you bully the people and bully them!"
He implemented a new military farming system, distributed the barren military land to landless people, and personally went down to supervise.
At a newly opened farming site, he helped up an old farmer who was kneeling in gratitude. Looking at the other's calloused hands, he seemed to see Old Man Zhang and himself back then.
"Old man, is this land... still fertile?" he asked softly.
The old farmer was flattered: "Fat, fat! Thank you very much! With this land, the children can survive!"
He finally understood that His Majesty's own people were all the common people in the world, not just them.
In the end, he did not let down this land and His Majesty.
It turns out that he has always been just a farmer.
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