Chapter 132: New Official (III)

Wei Yixian picked up his teacup: "With such a ragtag crew, can they really pull off a big show in front of the Emperor?"

He took a sip of tea and smiled: "Either our new boss is crazy capable, or you're just real happy with your new gig."

Wei Qi's stomach dropped, catching the ominous undertone, and quickly said, "Sir, your subordinate—"

"No need to rush to swear your loyalty." Wei Yixian cut him off. "I've never put stock in loyalty that's just talk."

He picked up an exquisite tea canister and handed it to Wei Qi: "This is this year's fresh Biluochun—top-shelf stuff, just about as good as what gets sent to the Emperor. The tea from Nanting is nothing but tree scraps next to this. Give it to the Prefect as a welcome gift—it won't make you look bad."

Wei Qi didn't dare—and couldn't—say another word, so after a string of thank-yous, he scurried off clutching the tea canister.

He nearly collided with Li Jingsheng at the door.

Unlike Wei Qi's sour face, Li Jingsheng looked a whole lot more at ease.

Wei Yixian asked him: "What'd the Prefect say? Does he like the place?"

Li Jingsheng shook his head: "I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I could tell the boss really liked the garden out back."

"He didn't like the house?"

"Said it was too small."

Wei Yixian smiled: "Pretty picky, huh. Pick the biggest of the other three places we've got ready and have him go check it out."

Li Jingsheng: "The boss said he's staying at the government office today. I'll bring him by the day after tomorrow."

"Mm. Good call—keeps him from getting suspicious." Wei Yixian shot him a sidelong glance. "What's your read on him?"

Li Jingsheng said respectfully: "I've got a dull eye, sir—can't see much, and I wouldn't dare guess."

"Go on. I won't hold it against you if you're off."

Li Jingsheng pursed his lips, weighing his words, then said, "If you ask me, he's at least not one of those book-smart types who've read themselves stupid."

"Whether he's a fool or not, we'll see how he runs things from here." Wei Yixian waved a hand. "Go double-check the boss's quarters at the government office—make sure nothing's been overlooked."

With that, he smiled slightly: "After tonight, he probably won't get a decent night's sleep again. So we'd better take good care of him."

...

That night.

Le Wuya stood in front of the Tongzhou map in the government office, his fingertip landing on a corner of Sanjiang Prefecture.

Hua Rong came over with a cup of tea, craning his neck: "Sir, what are you staring at?"

"Ever heard the tale of a chaste woman?"

Le Wuya said slowly: "In Sanjiang Prefecture, Tongzhou, there was a chaste woman named Jin, who built a straw hut by her dead husband's grave, raising their fatherless child until the boy passed the imperial exams—then she slit her own throat at her husband's tomb. The late Emperor, touched by her virtue, granted her a memorial arch, had her written into the *Records of Virtuous Women*, and renamed the county..."

Le Wuya's finger slid down, uncovering the name: "...Tonglu."

The name Tonglu comes from "the woman who built a hut in Tongzhou."

Hua Rong went "ah" and scratched his head: "Then... her kid must've been so heartbroken."

Le Wuya didn't answer.

His thoughts ran deeper, further.

The old Emperor's reason for shipping Sister Qi out here was plain as day.

He was probably genuinely hoping this dutiful daughter—who'd killed a man in the street for her mother—would get the hint, follow Lady Jin's example, and die for her husband.

Too bad Sister Qi didn't play along—she lived loud and proud.

"Tonglu, Tonglu..." Hua Rong rolled the name around, it felt familiar to both eye and ear. Then his eyes lit up: "Wait, isn't that the lady magistrate who's famous for growing camellias—"

"Yeah." Le Wuya nodded. "That's her."

Running into someone he knew in a strange place, Hua Rong perked right up and said eagerly, "Are we gonna plant 'Endless Thought' here too?"

"Silly kid. The south's got camellias coming out of its ears—Sanjiang Prefecture even throws two camellia festivals a year. Our 'Endless Thought' is a fancy rarity back in Yizhou, but transplant it here and it probably won't survive."

"What about the tea—"

Le Wuya held up the teacup and swished it under Hua Rong's nose: "Smell that—that's top-grade Biluochun. Got anything that can beat that?"

Hua Rong hadn't figured the money-making scheme the magistrate had painstakingly built in Nanting would hit a dead end somewhere else, and he felt deflated: "So we gotta start all over from nothing?"

Le Wuya pinched his nose: "Kid, what're you scared of? Ain't every road in this world carved out by folks walking it?"

Hua Rong was rubbing his nose, mulling over Le Wuya's words, when Yuan Zijin stormed through the door, furious, pointing at Le Wuya and shouting, "Well, well! I hear you've been taking bribes the second you got here—what a fine official you turned out to be!"

Le Wuya shot back coolly: "You finish today's homework?"

Yuan Zijin choked, then squared up: "Don't dodge the question! I thought you were some once-in-a-generation genius, but turns out you've got your eyes on the gutter. So you made a name for yourself in Nanting just to climb to a richer spot and rake in cash hand over fist!"

Le Wuya shot back: "If I don't rake it in, are you gonna cover the five-thousand-tael shortfall in the books?"

Yuan Zijin: "...What?"

Yuan Zijin: "...What five thousand taels?"

Le Wuya pointed at the mountain of ledgers stacked on the side table: "The mess three former prefects left behind—I did a rough count, comes to about four thousand eight hundred taels. There's gotta be more I haven't tallied, so rounding up to five thousand ain't a stretch."

While Yuan Zijin stood there dumbstruck, Hua Rong's head was spinning, and he nearly bit his tongue: "How the hell—"

Five thousand taels!

For a commoner like Hua Rong, he hadn't even dared burn that much paper money for the dead.

Back then, the magistrate's father had pawned half his family fortune to donate for an official post—that was only a thousand taels of silver!

Hua Rong looked at Le Wuya, almost on the verge of tears.

The magistrate knew all this—how could he still look so unconcerned?

Le Wuya, however, was not surprised in the least.

If this place were well-governed and harmonious, would it have fallen to him?

The Japanese pirate raids were merely the surface.

In simple terms, the root problem here was poverty.

When poverty hits, people get desperate—and desperation breeds chaos.

Yuan Zijin didn't dare trust what Le Wuya was saying. He strode forward and flipped open the ledger sitting right on top of the stack.

Le Wuya had already circled the anomalies with an erasable charcoal pencil, which made the problem spots pop right out.

Yuan Zijin ran the numbers in his head and found that this single ledger alone showed a deficit of three hundred taels of silver. His face went white.

He wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he knew damn well that somebody was going to have to make up that shortfall.

The last three Prefects had all died before their time, and even if Wen Ren Ming Ke were capable, he couldn't exactly go down to the underworld to shake them down for the cash, could he?

Yuan Zijin's head was starting to throb too. "Go find that Assistant Prefect, Wei! He's the one who was running things!"

Le Wuya replied in a light tone: "Oh, so you know he was just filling in. Would you want to be the sucker left holding the bag? He'd wait for the actual person in charge—me—to show up, wouldn't he?"

Yuan Zijin stammered: "Then... then what? Raise taxes?"

"Exactly. I barely got my feet in the door, and boom—new taxes and levies." Le Wuya nodded. "I can tell you really hate me. You want the folks out there cursing my name behind my back as a skin-flaying, family-ruining, corrupt piece of crap."

Yuan Zijin dropped the scolding for a second. "Quit being so damn mysterious! If you've got a plan, just say it!"

"I do."

Le Wuya put a hand on Yuan Zijin's shoulder and, with a grin, spun him around.

Yuan Zijin's head was spinning, and seeing this gesture, he figured Le Wuya was pulling some kind of stunt, so he turned around, totally baffled.

Then, Le Wuya didn't hold back—he kicked him square in the ass. "Now get your ass out of here and do your homework!"

Yuan Zijin stumbled forward a couple steps and plowed right into Qin Xingyue, who was just walking in.

The moment Qin Xingyue's eyes met Le Wuya's, he gave the wobbly Yuan Zijin a quick, slick shove out the door, then swiftly shut it.

Yuan Zijin, thrown out by those two partners in crime, was both hurt and furious. Rubbing his tailbone, he hollered at the top of his lungs across the yard: "Wen Ren, you just wait, you bastard!"

When no reply came from inside, Yuan Zijin, sulking, rubbed his lower back and headed for the back courtyard.

Zhong Piaoping was already out back, methodically drilling his sword forms with a lead-weighted white waxwood staff.

Seeing Yuan Zijin hobble over, all dusty and disheveled, Zhong Piaoping stopped. "Master Yuan, what's wrong?"

Yuan Zijin snapped: "Ran into a dog! I'm Lü Dongbin, and I got bit by a mutt!"

With that, he snatched a weird-looking weapon off the rack.

The hammerhead looked small, but it weighed a solid twenty catties, with a hole drilled through the handle, strung with a two-foot hemp rope soaked in tung oil and tied off in a slipknot.

This was the "training tool" Le Wuya had made for him.

Yuan Zijin lugged it over to a bronze bell that had its clapper taken out, and, gripping one end of the rope with a single hand, full of spite, whipped the hammer through the air.

—His assignment: swing the rope and smack the hammer dead-center on that little bronze bell.

At first, he just had to hit the bell twenty times a day to get his meals and a bed.

Now he had to nail that coin-sized mark in the middle of the bell ten times before he could hit the sack.

Zhong Piaoping's job was to drill his sword forms and keep an eye on him.

Yuan Zijin had no clue what the point of this training was. He just figured that damn Wen Ren Ming Ke was messing with him.

So, gritting his teeth, he grabbed the rope with both hands, pictured the mark as Wen Ren Ming Ke's face, and swung the hammer in two big loops over his head, the air whistling as it cut through.

Clang! Right on the bullseye!

The clang rattled Wei Yixian, who was night-fishing just on the other side of the wall, and made him spit out a mouthful of hot tea.

He'd already had a headache from Yuan Zijin's yelling, and now this jolt made him jump. "What the hell was that?" Had the Japanese pirates come knocking at the prefectural gate?

The page boy scurried off to check.

A bit later, he came back and said, "It's the Prefect's man out there training."

Wei Yixian stared at the ink-black fish pond and shook his head with a sigh: "Well, looks like no fishing for the next couple of days."

...

Qin Xingyue came from the Tianlang Camp and was quite skilled at gathering intelligence.

In the span of half a day, he had already brought back plenty of valuable information.

For instance, in three days, it would be the birthday of the Provincial Governor—Le Wuya's current immediate superior.

On the three festivals and two birthdays, gifts to one's superiors were indispensable.

Unlike managing the remote little county of Nanting, far from the capital, Le Wuya now had the Provincial Judge, the Provincial Governor, the Commander, and several other lords above him, seven or eight fellow prefects at his level, and a pack of hungry officials below.

Simply put, without money, he couldn't move an inch.

The previous three Prefects had all died, more or less, over the word "money."

After sending Qin Xingyue off to rest, Le Wuya stood alone in the courtyard, thin-robed, bathed in moonlight.

He reached into his robes and pulled out a roll of banknotes.

That was the road-repair fund Xiaoliu had given him.

He had intended to save it up as a nest egg for Xiaoliu's marriage.

Now, it seemed it couldn't be kept.

Le Wuya pinched the small jade chess piece from his collar, held it against his fingertip, and slowly rubbed it.

Sigh. He wanted to write to Xiao Qi.

How did one get reborn as the God of Wealth scattering coins?

He'd like to learn that too.