Chapter 1593 IF Scenario: What if Shen Tang woke up earlier (Part 7)
"So, you're here to buy the land?"
The man dressed as a manager glanced at Shen Tang and his group with disdain.
Finally, it fell on Wei Lou.
To be precise, it was Wei Lou's signature on his waist.
His expression changed, shifting from initial disdain to a hint of respect. He cupped his hands and asked, "May I ask how this gentleman is addressed?"
Wei Lou said, "This is my lady."
The steward gave a meaningful smile, clearly not taking Shen Tang seriously. Firstly, Shen Tang was a woman, and secondly, her clothes weren't as fine as Wei Lou's. How could a lord be so down on his luck? Wei Lou, as a scholar with a literary heart, could rise again even if he fell from grace, and naturally deserved his respect and admiration more. However, since it was Shen Tang who came to buy the land, he would give her some face.
"How much land does Your Majesty wish to purchase? And what quality is it?"
Shen Tang: "How many properties does your master own?"
The steward's expression suddenly changed, and he sneered, "Your Majesty, you have quite the nerve. How much land does my master own? You think you can buy it all?"
Shen Tang: "It's not impossible."
The manager slammed his fist on the table and shouted, "You're asking for it!"
Don't let his status as a servant in the master's household fool you; among the tenant farmers and commoners, he's a person of high standing. Everyone addresses him with respect. Shen Tang's attempt to make fun of him from the start shows no sincerity in any business transaction. In Shen Tang's eyes, this is an offense, and it would be strange if he could tolerate it.
They called for their men to throw her out.
It was true that Wei Lou, who was accompanying them, was a scholar of the Literary School, but the steward had also met many scholars of the Literary School while serving his master. He had a sense of awe towards scholars of the Literary School, but not much. Before the guards entered, Shen Tang was still leisurely admiring the interior decoration of the hall: "Exquisite decoration, not bad."
Although the Gongxi family was wealthy, they were still living off their savings until they found a way to make money, so they had to save money wherever possible. Shen Tang planned to move in directly, saving the budget for rebuilding the house. The existing mud walls could also be reused.
Shen Tang was making plans in her mind.
Meanwhile, the nearest guard heard the commotion and rushed over.
Shen Tang raised her eyelids.
He quipped, "Tsk, so few people?"
Wei Lou: "Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Order men to build an earthen wall around it, so that not even a mosquito can escape!"
Seven or eight human skeletons hanging on the earthen wall, exposed to the scorching sun, silently emitted a stench of decay. After an unknown amount of time, the screams and pleas for mercy that suddenly erupted from within the earthen wall gradually subsided, and the stench was slowly replaced by the fresh stench of blood. Shen Tang sat imposingly on the eaves, looking down at the kneeling or fallen "spoils of war," listening to his subordinates report the inventory. The family's lord was not among them.
Shen Tang: "They escaped?"
"Two days ago, he visited a renowned scholar with generous gifts, hoping to send his child to the scholar's home for private education. He has not returned yet. Judging by his journey, he should be on his way back now. My lord, should we send someone to intercept and kill him? We can eliminate him completely and then rest easy."
"An ambush might alert the enemy."
If they escape, it will be troublesome to catch them again.
"First, wash away the bloodstains here, keep it as it is, lure the person back and lock them up—" Shen Tang quickly came up with an idea, making a throat-slitting gesture with his right hand at his neck, "The others are fine, but we must catch this ringleader."
Wei Lou: "Arrest the person and then threaten their relatives and friends?"
It is indeed a good way to extort money.
How could that be?
Shen Tang prided himself on not being that greedy.
Wei Lou looked at him questioningly, and Shen Tang chuckled.
"Naturally, it's for the sake of winning hearts and minds. To the locals, the Gongxi clan is just an unknown, small outsider. Their customs and lifestyle are completely out of step with ordinary people. If they want to be accepted, they'll need some tricks. Since this family has done so many evil deeds, there are plenty of tenants who want them to get their comeuppance. In that case, why can't I use their lives to bribe the tenants?" Shen Tang already had a general plan in mind. "However, extortion is also an option!"
Even a tiny mosquito is still meat.
Even a small amount of money is still money.
The large landowner family that was attacked by Shen Tang owned 70% of the land in the county. Their uncles, aunts, and relatives all lived together, and including women and children, the family numbered nearly a thousand. Most of the men joined the armed guards, and with the addition of hired martial arts masters and strong men, the more than a thousand retainers were all under the command of their master.
No one expected that such a big guy would collapse in half a day.
They were defeated by a group of less than ten thugs.
The parents hadn't expected this either.
On the way back, he noticed the quietness. As he passed the earthen gate, he saw seven or eight pairs of dark feet dangling in the air. He covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve in disgust. He sighed and said, "Later, I'll untie these troublemakers and send them back to their homes for burial. I'll also send some burial and compensation food to each household."
The attendant who accompanied him out readily agreed.
"This can be considered a blessing for my son." He sighed again, lamenting the boundless love of parents, and instructed his attendant, "Go back and tell the tenants in the village to pray for my son. If he is accepted into the tutelage of a famous teacher, give them credit for their efforts as well."
The attendant said, "The parents are kind-hearted and treat them so well. I only hope that these ungrateful wretches will have a conscience and not let them down."
As they talked, the master and servant rode their horses in one after the other.
The people who are usually there to greet me didn't come.
The attendant cursed, "Are all these cunning thieves dead? The parents are back and they're not even here to greet them!"
Their response was a net of vines falling from the sky.
Before they could recover from the shock, a phantom several meters tall slapped them across the face.
The next day, the earthen wall was covered with a dense mass of fresh dried meat, each one struggling and jumping around. The tenants who saw this numbly looked away and hurriedly tried to walk away along the wall, afraid of being implicated. Some of them were bolder and wanted to lie in wait.
The weather was getting colder, and they couldn't even scrape together enough clothes to cover their vital parts, let alone keep warm. When they saw another unfortunate soul appear on the earthen wall, they could wait until late at night, when all was quiet, and steal the dead people's clothes when the guards were off guard.
Upon closer inspection, I recognized several familiar faces.
What's even more terrifying is the pile of corpses stacked under the earthen wall.
"Who...who slaughtered the master's family?"
The news quickly spread far and wide.
The tenant farmers racked their brains but couldn't recall a large influx of outsiders in the past two days, nor had they heard any sounds of battle. How could their master have been wiped out overnight? That was over a thousand men! Last year, the county magistrate's daughter was abducted, humiliated, and taken as a concubine by the master's son, and the magistrate didn't dare utter a sound. Who could possibly wipe out such a master? Should they run away too?
Why are we running?
They had no choice but to stay.
The whole family couldn't scrape together enough food for just a few days. Leaving the land and fleeing meant certain death on the road. Those who stayed behind at least had a few acres of land to cultivate, and there was hope for the autumn harvest. Some tenants were terrified, while others were bold, thinking of sneaking into the mud wall area to scavenge for some cheap food.
The next day, I received an even more terrifying message.
The villains who had captured the entire family were put into a prison van half the height of a person.
The head of the household, direct male descendants, and prominent members of collateral branches would all be put inside. These prison carts would parade around the village and farmland, and tenants with grudges against them could watch. When the message was being relayed, they were specifically told not to pick up stones and throw them at people.
In addition, the villains have new information to release.
Every single tenant farmer in the village must be present!
The tenants: "..."
Even more horrifying was that the villains' henchmen who delivered the message distributed bolts of cloth according to the number of people in each family. These bolts of cloth were not for them to make new clothes, but rather for them to simply tear off some cloth to cover their indecent items. The men were to wrap their genitals, and the women were to cover their upper and lower body.
"No one is allowed to offend the master's eyes tomorrow."
The scene that Shen Tang had seen earlier by the field was truly shocking.
One prison van after another arrived as scheduled.
The people inside the prison van all looked haggard and disheveled. Their hands and heads were bound outside the van, while their bodies were crouched and curled up inside, unable to stand upright or squat down to conserve energy. Wei Lou bluntly stated that this was the effective prison van.
What Shen Tang described as making people stand upright in cages was a luxury, at most making prisoners look like monkeys, with no real harm.
Many tenants initially didn't even dare to look directly at it.
After all, the memories these people left them with were too painful. Some children were kicked and sent flying just for blocking the sedan chair carriers' way, their sternums caved in. Other tenant farmers' children were bitten to death by vicious dogs when they tried to chase after their forcibly taken mothers.
Anyone who dared to harbor the slightest dissatisfaction risked the destruction of their family. The foreman of the estate, or any male member of the main household's collateral relatives, would come directly to a tenant's house demanding their wives and daughters if they were beautiful. If the male tenant was also handsome, he couldn't escape either. No one dared to sue them in court.
The county magistrate's daughter's fate served as a warning to him for interfering in his affairs.
Until a child, with red eyes, threw a handful of sand.
She was weak, and the sand scattered before it even touched the prison cart.
Her action nearly scared the adults around her out of their wits, who almost grabbed her arm and pulled the child back into their arms.
Strangely enough, no one scolded or reprimanded them.
Once there's a first one, there will naturally be a second.
The person who threw the stone was a thin, middle-aged man.
His aim was excellent; he struck one of the men squarely in the eye socket, causing a deafening scream as blood gushed from the mangled eye. The piercing scream sent chills down everyone's spines and ignited a deeper, more intense, and more venomous hatred within the crowd.
The guards escorting the prisoner jumped to higher ground.
At that moment, without any slogans, the crowd surged forward.
The procession of prison vans was completely surrounded.
Those with stones used them to throw; those without stones used their fingers to grab, scratch, and pinch. The sounds of tearing cloth mingled with the shouts and screams; soon the prison cart was completely naked. Legs, hands, and hair were grabbed until blood flowed freely.
Qin You, who was watching the commotion from a distance, closed his eyes and turned his face away.
I felt a slight pain down there as well.
"How horrible." He had just witnessed a middle-aged woman with long limbs but a thin body climbing up the crowd, grabbing the penis of a prisoner in the first prison van, trying to use it to climb up further, but she ended up tearing his penis off.
Wei Lou: "..."
Qin You asked, "Can they still live?"
Wei Lou: "It all depends on whether Lady Shen is willing."
Shen Tang was naturally unwilling.
Especially when she discovered from the confiscated items that these people were actually colluding with bandits in the mountains near the county, she was even more determined not to let them live: "What I need are people who can do the work, not useless people who have no other use except for producing manure. I don't have so much food that I can't use it all. If they survive this ordeal, release them back into the mountains. If they don't survive, finely chop them into minced meat."
Qin You clicked his tongue: "You've chopped them all up into minced meat, aren't you going to cook them?"
Shen Tang: "I'm not eating it, so you are?"
"When I was young, my family couldn't survive. My father once traded my youngest brother, who was the last in line, with my second-to-last sister for a bowl of rice." Because he was the eldest, he was already considered half a laborer and thus escaped death. Later, he joined the army and worked for a warlord. The military rations issued by the higher-ups were often adulterated. However, he hasn't eaten them since following his current lord. To be honest, that stuff doesn't taste good either.
Shen Tang: "...People shouldn't act like this."
Qin Youhun said nonchalantly, "Actually, there aren't many soldiers under the warlords who haven't eaten, especially those from poor families who have worked their way up from the bottom. While eating, they've eaten someone's fingernails, someone's teeth, someone's... oh my, there's so much of it."
It's as commonplace as eating animals.
Some warlords would even pick out a fresh dish on the spot when hosting banquets.
Using enemy heads as wine cups and food platters was even more fashionable.
Shen Tang said, "I won't allow it here."
Qin You: "Of course I know you won't allow it."
His lord, Ji Sunyin, also forbade it. To show his determination, he ate as little as possible each day, occasionally just having some soup or broth to tide him over. He relied on cultivation for his daily energy needs, and for a long time, he lived on air and dew. Qin You was influenced by him and also became a vegetarian for a long time.
This is presumably a custom of the Gongxi tribe.
The same applies to the lord and his clansman, Lady Shen.
Of course, it's also possible that the Gongxi clan was simply too wealthy. Neither the lord nor the Queen Shen used any food other than refined flour to fill their stomachs, and they certainly couldn't accept cannibalism.
When the prison van returned, there were only a few survivors left.
Some were missing limbs, with only their grotesque heads remaining on the prison van, their necks and other parts gone.
Shen Tang: "...Where are the things?"
Qin You munched on a large steamed bun: "The tenants probably snatched it back for an extra meal. It's not easy for ordinary people to eat meat, let alone these tenants. Has Lady Shen ever seen an execution ground? When a condemned prisoner is taken there and beheaded, if the prisoner's family refuses to pay to take the body away, the executioner will chop the body into several large pieces and sell them cheaply by weight. That's a rare source of profit."
Shen Tang swept his gaze over the numerous prison carts.
Even though she felt these people deserved to die, the situation she encountered today still stirred her compassion. Killing someone is just a matter of beheading them; this torture was too much. She sighed and ordered her men to burn and bury the dead bodies, and to finish off the still-breathing ones.
Qin You stopped eating his steamed bun. He probably didn't expect that someone would take "crushing bones to ashes" as a sign of compassion.
The tenants from the village arrived one after another.
They expected to see a hideous villain, but instead, the leader was a fair-skinned, stunningly beautiful queen. The queen ordered a box to be brought in: "Inside this box are the IOUs you were tricked and forced into owing."
She held up a torch and burned it to ashes.
"Now, all debts are wiped out!"
She then had several boxes containing land deeds brought up.
"These lands now belong to me!"
"I allow you to continue farming here now and in the future! Every household, regardless of gender, will be allocated land based on age; all adults will receive their own plots. I haven't finalized the specific regulations yet, but we can roughly set a figure: you'll only need to pay 30% of your harvest as rent each year. Remember, this rent percentage is the upper limit, the maximum, not the future lower limit. It can only decrease, not increase! I will provide you with free farming tools and find people to dig irrigation ditches and build reservoirs, so you won't have to worry about whether the weather is favorable or not; every household will have water to drink every year..."
─=≡Σ(((つω)つ
The cover is out, and it looks alright. I'll discuss making some minor modifications with the shop owner.
(End of this chapter)
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