Chapter 140: Demanding Back Pay (II)

Wei Yixian just grumbled under his breath.

In contrast, Mu Jiazhi was more straightforward and blunt, saying, "If you, my lord, are unwilling to step forward, Liang Xian can go chase them off."

Le Wuya repeated with a wry, unreadable smile, "'Chase them off'?"

Mu Jiazhi took a deep breath and explained patiently, "Blocking the yamen gate and raising a ruckus is just not acceptable."

Le Wuya: "'Raising a ruckus'?"

After being needled twice, Mu Jiazhi's patience snapped.

He asked bluntly, "If you want to split hairs, my lord, I've got just one question: Can you rustle up the back pay and plug the shortfall right now?"

Le Wuya: "So how big is the shortfall right now?"

Mu Jiazhi: "Tongzhou has two garrisons—Puluo and Sanjiang. Each garrison oversees five thousand-household units, totaling twelve thousand military families. Each man's due is one tael and two mace a month..."

"How long have they been owed pay?"

Mu Jiazhi slowly realized Le Wuya was all business, his eyes sharp as torches, his mind clicking like an abacus.

He straightened up a bit and replied, "The last prefect, Lord Qian, scraped together funds by borrowing left and right, and managed to cover two years' worth of back pay. But after Lord Qian left, the funds sent down from above came to nearly forty thousand taels, mostly going to buy horses and fix up weapons and boats. The rest came from garrison farming, and every bit of income went straight to plugging holes—but it was never enough. Right now, Puluo's owed two months, Sanjiang three. Even after counting the grain we've already handed out, we're still short over twenty-six thousand taels."

"Why's Puluo owed less?"

Before Mu Jiazhi could answer, Le Wuya figured it out himself: "Oh, right—the pirates we beheaded a few days back were brought in by Puluo, so they'd have earned a bounty."

Mu Jiazhi said nothing.

That so-called "reward" was just the pay they were owed anyway.

That money never showed up in the books Wei Yixian handed over.

Le Wuya turned to Wei Yixian: "Lord Wei, you've been sitting on this huge shortfall—were you just waiting for me to cover it?"

"Let me explain, my lord." Wei Yixian put on just the right look of guilt and rushed to answer, "In the last five years, counting you, four prefects have come and gone. You know that, right?"

Le Wuya gave a nod.

Wei Yixian blinked, and real urgency crept into his eyes: "The prefect before you was Qian Shihui, style name Wanli—a genuinely good official who wore himself out for the people. But the one before that, Wu Yichun, got impeached for skimming public funds. That ticked off the emperor, who ordered a full probe, and it uncovered a massive conspiracy. The former vice-prefect Xin Shen, Sanpu Prefect Wang Yusheng, and the magistrates of Pingxi, Panwa, Qiyu, Jingdong, and Heyin—all got hauled to the capital and executed. Tongzhou was gutted by it. Ask Assistant Prefect Mu—he only got here after all that."

Le Wuya looked at Mu Jiazhi.

Even though Mu Jiazhi and Wei Yixian never saw eye to eye, he still nodded quietly.

Wei Yixian wasn't lying.

Mu Jiazhi had been shoved into the vice-prefect role during a crisis.

He'd never seen Tongzhou in its good times.

He'd lived through Tongzhou's hardships himself, and it stuck with him.

Wei Yixian's expression turned sorrowful: "The emperor made it crystal clear that Tongzhou's officials had let him down—'Plant an orange in Tongzhou and you get a bitter trifoliate orange'—meaning we're beyond saving. With that kind of judgment from on high, our lives... have been rough ever since."

Bottom line: that huge conspiracy case dragged in a lot of people, crushed the realm's hopes, and cost Tongzhou the emperor's goodwill.

So whenever good deals or favorable policies came around, Tongzhou never got a slice.

Even the higher-ups skimmed extra off Tongzhou's already thin share.

Tongzhou had no cash and no clout, with tough bandits outside and an empty treasury inside—things just kept getting worse.

Wei Yixian sighed: "Prefect Qian was a good man. He took over this mess, poured his own fortune into covering the shortfall. He also busted his tail to stay friendly with officials in nearby prefectures. Tongzhou had nothing to offer, so we just gave our all—being extra attentive at banquets, hustling for whatever scraps we could get... Who'd have guessed he'd end up drowning after a drinking session?"

At that, Mu Jiazhi's face went pale.

He dropped his head, fists tightening on his knees.

Wei Yixian continued: "When Prefect Qian died so suddenly, I stepped in to run things, but I wasn't up to it. Before Lord Wenren showed up, we were robbing Peter to pay Paul, just barely keeping the hole from getting bigger. But to fill that years-deep pit, we'd need heaven to send us a lucky star or a money god—otherwise, Tongzhou's done for."

Le Wuya watched the two of them put on their act, a faint, unreadable smile tugging at his lips.

He recalled the opera at Lord Feng's residence earlier today.

The actors on stage, heavily made-up and costumed, spoke every line beautifully and pleasingly.

Wei Yixian was no different.

Strip away all the words, and the front side said six characters: "We're sorry, we can't help."

The reverse side said: "If you're so capable, you do it."

Le Wuya lifted the carriage curtain and called out to Brother Guo, who had driven the carriage some distance away: "Brother, would you kindly turn the carriage back and stop about twenty paces from the yamen gate? In case things get rough later, we don't want your fine carriage damaged. You heard it too—our yamen is poor as can be. If it gets blockaded or smashed, we've no money to compensate you."

His tone was lively, and Brother Guo grinned broadly, replying with simple honesty: "Lord Wenren does love his jokes."

He turned the horse around, and the carriage rumbled back toward the noisy yamen gate.

Qi Hongzhuang had watched and listened throughout with a cold, detached expression, not uttering a word.

As Le Wuya stood up to disembark, Qi Hongzhuang suddenly spoke: "You said earlier the total shortfall is twenty-six thousand taels, correct?"

Le Wuya's legs nearly gave out, and he almost fell back into his seat.

The other two also stared at her as if they'd seen a ghost.

Qi Hongzhuang said, "You Que, you can come to me for it. I am a merchant under your jurisdiction—it's only fitting that I bear some of the burden."

She said this with complete composure.

Without Le Wuya, Qi Shi's daughter would have died twice—once on the execution platform for her mother, and once at the hands of the sovereign of the realm.

Qi Hongzhuang knew nothing of his reincarnation, but she saw in him a shadow of someone from her past, and felt a hint of sibling-like closeness and familiarity.

For that closeness and familiarity, she was willing to part with fifty thousand taels.

Her life, ever since she killed that County Clerk with her own blade, had already been lived beyond its worth. From then on, every day she lived was a day gained.

She made money for the sheer pleasure of spending it freely.

Le Wuya gazed at her sharp, resolute features and smiled slightly: "Then I thank the Countess. If I have any need, I won't stand on ceremony."

Wei Yixian's brow twitched almost imperceptibly.

…So this Wenren Mingke wielded that much influence—securing nearly thirty thousand taels of silver without uttering a single word?

But the doubt vanished in an instant.

This was merely filling the gap.

No matter how wealthy County Princess Qi was, how many thirty-thousand-tael sums could she possibly produce?

Moreover, the trap he’d laid was layered—scheme within scheme. How could simply repaying wages resolve everything?

Wei Yixian, brimming with anticipation, watched Le Wuya descend from the carriage.

Wasn’t the young prefect supposed to be capable and accomplished?

Capable? Then let him get to work.

…

Le Wuya stepped lightly toward the yamen gate, gliding through the crowd as if parting flowers and willows, until he reached the heart of the commotion.

As he drew nearer, a sharp, pungent smell of alcohol hit him.

He paused at a distance, observing for a moment—then, with deliberate calm, smiled before speaking: “Well, well—quite the uproar here.”

Wei Qi was tearing his hair out—calming one person only for another to erupt, like extinguishing one fire while another blazes—and for a moment, he didn’t even notice Le Wuya’s arrival.

Startled to see Le Wuya materialize seemingly out of thin air, Wei Qi hastily bowed in greeting.

The highest-ranking among them were two men dressed as battalion commanders; the rest were junior officers and soldiers.

With a single sweeping glance, Le Wuya surmised they were likely off-duty today, had come into town to drink, and—emboldened by liquor—had begun venting about unpaid wages. The more they talked, the angrier they grew, until they rolled up their sleeves and stormed the gate.

One battalion commander sported unusually thick, bristly hair—his locks and beard stiff as pig bristles, sticking out in every direction. His expression said he’d pick a fight over anything.

Seeing Wei Qi bow to the newcomer, he hazarded a rough guess as to the man’s identity.

Yet with that handsome face and flamboyant attire, he dared not be certain—so he leaned further into his drunken act and slurred thickly: “You—who the hell are you?!”

Le Wuya shot back, “Aren’t you looking for me? The one who just returned from delivering gifts—that’s me.”

The thick-browed, bristly-bearded commander blinked twice, thrown off by this young prefect who looked soft enough to squeeze water from.

The feigned drunk still retained some wits—but the truly intoxicated cared for nothing.

A young soldier, seventeen or eighteen, was already dead drunk. Through his haze, he heard that the man who owed them had arrived—lunged forward, seized Le Wuya’s collar before anyone could react, and snarled: “Finally caught you! You hand out fine things to big shots—but don’t give a damn about us who do the fighting?”

He yanked open his collar, revealing two arrow wounds on his shoulder, and slurred, “I’ve got three war wounds—these two, and one more where some bastard sliced my gut open… You’ve got the nerve to let me starve?”

Le Wuya had been reborn—if not, he could have stripped down and compared scars with the youth, forcing him to concede defeat fair and square.

He shifted tactics and spoke gently: “I didn’t give away anything valuable.”

“Bullshit!” the young soldier spat. “I heard it was a seal—Eastern Han or Southern Han, something like that! Worth a fortune! If you’d just sold it, my mother could’ve gotten two more rounds of medicine…”

Wei Yixian, eavesdropping from the carriage window, felt his scalp crawl and cursed under his breath: *That ringleader’s a damn fool—why spill all the details to his men?*

Then he reconsidered—and let it go.

Had he not embellished what the prefect had given away, how else would he have roused these men?

Qin Xingyue knew the unpaid wages mess was a tangled web—not something to wade into lightly.

To avoid causing trouble for Le Wuya, he stayed on the periphery—saying nothing, doing nothing, doing his utmost to appear uninvolved.

But the moment he saw Le Wuya grabbed by the collar, fury flared within him. He stepped forward, seized the soldier by collar and belt, and hoisted him clean off the ground!

No one expected this quiet, seemingly feeble man to snap so suddenly. The youth dangled midair, dumbstruck—frozen, too shocked even to kick.

Le Wuya said calmly, “Put him down.”

The order came—and was obeyed instantly.

Qin Xingyue set him down without fuss.

“All you know is charging in and fighting like an idiot, huh?” Le Wuya said, straightening the young soldier’s loosened, slipping clothes. “Merit lies in how many heads you take, how many ears you slice off—not how many times you’re wounded yourself. If someone grabs your waist and you can’t even fight back—what good are you? Fail to fix that, and you won’t just earn more scars—you’ll get yourself killed.”

The young soldier stood there, mouth agape, still reeling from what had just happened.

Wei Yixian’s brow furrowed slightly.

He’d deliberately selected hot-blooded, battle-scarred youths to raise hell at the yamen—giving himself a righteous pretext.

How terrible would it look to drive away soldiers who’d bled for their country and now demanded their pay?

And now Wenren Yue had turned the tables with just a few words—proving he truly possessed a silver tongue.

Wei Qi hesitated, then asked, “Prefect, what should we do now? Please advise.”

“What to do?” Le Wuya replied briskly. “You owe—it’s simple. You pay. That’s what we’ll do.”

The crowd—and the soldiers demanding their wages—stood stunned.

They hadn’t expected such boldness from a prefect so young.

He claimed he’d pay—would he really follow through?

“Ridiculous,” Mu Jiazhi muttered to himself inside the carriage. “Pay up just because they make a scene? Where’s all that money supposed to come from?”

Qi Hongzhuang chimed in helpfully from behind: “I am.”

Mu Jiazhi choked on his words, thinking: *That much silver couldn’t be for nothing—could it?*

Prefect Wenren using his looks to win favor—how was that any different from being a kept man?

Seeing everyone exchange incredulous glances, Le Wuya’s eyes slid sideways, corners tilting up slyly like a fox’s—and, as if it were nothing, dropped another bombshell: “If we’re paying, we’ll pay in full. And not just in full—we’ll add rewards on top!”

With that, Le Wuya turned to Wei Qi and smiled. “Summon the two garrison commanders—and bring me the muster rolls for all ten battalions for review.”

“These twelve thousand military households—they’re all brave sons and daughters who’ve bled and sweated for Tongzhou Prefecture. How can we owe them and leave them feeling betrayed?”

“Select fifty outstanding soldiers from each battalion—and send me their names along with the rolls. I’ll reward them—I won’t let their patriotism and loyalty go unrewarded!”

Cold sweat poured down Wei Qi’s back.

If he were merely fabricating wages, handing out money would suffice—so why demand muster rolls by name?

…Could it be that the prefect, under the guise of paying wages, was actually preparing to expose long-standing corruption within the army?

As far as he knew, the two Tongzhou garrisons listed twelve thousand men—but only about half were fit for combat.

Of the rest, two or three out of ten were severely wounded or elderly veterans too worn out to fight.

The remaining seven or eight out of ten? All phantom names—ghost soldiers padded onto the rolls to collect pay for nothing!