Chapter 56: Master Yun Recruits Soldiers, Responding Crowds Gather in Their Masses

Ziming says in his letter that if the rebel forces happen to roam in and the situation becomes untenable, we should simply seal our official seals and depart.

In less than two months, this Li Weiyue had stirred up such a tremendous commotion, and now he even styled himself the Mountain Ghost King, boasting a million troops. Although this million troops was heavily exaggerated and mostly consisted of coerced refugees, such a massive crowd was just like a plague of locusts, presenting a densely packed and terrifying sight.

Zheng Zuosheng was a scholar among scholars, utterly inept at any military operations. Based on his understanding, Li Fu was likewise a civil official unversed in military affairs. When encountering those bloodthirsty and unhinged refugees, it was best to keep out of their way.

The practice of abandoning one's post by resigning and returning the seal had been immensely popular since the early days of the Liang Dynasty. Who could blame the founding emperor of Liang for being so overbearing, setting so few holidays while cracking down harshly on corruption? At the slightest provocation, he would confiscate an entire family's assets and hang everyone on the city gates to bake in the sun.

Consequently, officials taking office back then, some fearing punishment and others simply finding Zhu Yuan too brutal and unwilling to serve under such a monarch, would simply pack up their seals and leave.

At the time, they feared Zhu Yuan would issue a nationwide manhunt for the officials who had resigned. To everyone's surprise, Zhu Yuan was not angry upon hearing the news. He merely said, "Very well, you want to leave, do you? Those who leave are simply incompetent. If you cannot do the job and choose to leave, at least you have some self-awareness. But if you cannot do it, it means you are no good, and your entire family is no good either. After all, genetics are hereditary."

Thus, an imperial decree was issued: whoever abandoned their seal and left would find their entire family, down to the nine degrees of kinship, forever barred from entering the imperial examinations. Furthermore, their households were forbidden from engaging in commerce and were forced into agriculture, to till the soil honestly for him!

That was ruthless.

Once anyone took to their heels, the path to upward mobility for nine generations of their family was virtually severed, and the bitterness in their hearts could only be known to themselves.

Later on, perhaps to make themselves feel better, those who had resigned began to secretly spin the narrative, claiming that their departure with the seal was akin to civil ministers dying for their principles, and that they possessed scholarly pride, which was why they preferred a life of poverty over serving that tyrannical monarch.

Of course, such things could only be whispered in private.

Yet as time went on, and the emperors of Liang grew increasingly weak one after another, the tone of the scholars grew bolder.

Now, they could stand up and speak loudly: "Our great-great-great-grandfather was precisely this principled back then!"

By the present day, resigning and leaving not only no longer brought a ban on official careers and promotions for one's nine relations, but it had instead become a romanticized tale—a symbol of personal integrity and a willingness to embrace poverty.

This also imparted a lesson to Young Master Yun: he must grasp the reins of information and public opinion in the future. He might not live for thousands of years, but the brushes and words of scholars certainly could. They might lie low for a time or even perish in frustration, but after your death, their writings would spring forth to vindicate them while effortlessly splashing a bucket of filth upon you.

To return to the present moment, influenced by prevailing values, Zheng Zuosheng could not remain aloof either. He rationalized that this was not cowardice, but merely the realization that it was pointless to reason with people who refused to listen to reason. Otherwise, how would it differ from lowering oneself to the opponent's level of stupidity and letting them defeat you with their vast experience in being foolish?

When a scholar meets a soldier, even the clearest reasoning fails to make things clear.

"Father, this is a fine opportunity," Young Master Yun said thoughtfully as he put down the thick stack of letters written by Old Man Zheng.

Seeing Li Fu adopt a listening posture, Young Master Yun immediately continued: "Since the Prefecture Governor is conscripting troops to suppress the rebels, we can logically recruit our own forces under the guise of answering the Governor's call."

As a mere county yamen, Long County possessed no independent authority to levy troops.

The reason Young Master Yun had consistently referred to the local braves as local braves was to outwardly deny that they were Li Fu's private militia. Moreover, it was only by claiming the purpose was to protect Long County from bandits—under the banner of bandit suppression—that he dared let the people of Long County know of this group's existence.

Now they had over four hundred horses being raised right here in Long County, yet the local braves numbered barely a hundred and seventy. Did it make any sense to have many horses and few men?

Previously, when the Liang Dynasty was on the verge of chaos and the Liangzhou Prefecture Governor held absolute sway, Young Master Yun dared not act with undue haste. He had originally planned to petition the Prefecture Governor through Li Fu during next year's bandit suppression campaign, arguing that the bandits were rampant and asking whether he might recruit a few more local braves.

As it turned out, a ready-made excuse had now presented itself.

Young Master Yun's plan was to recruit a full four hundred men, and then add another hundred as reserves. Sustaining these five hundred men to the utmost of its ability was sufficient for a small place like Long County, especially since the county was still recovering from devastation and could not afford an excessive number of soldiers.

"Why wouldn't we be able to afford them?" Li Fu remained somewhat surprised by this.

Take that fellow Li Weiyue, for instance, who outwardly claimed to have gathered nearly a million followers. Although there was exaggeration involved, the population was still substantial.

"The method Young Master Yun thought of before proved extremely useful. A mere iron token compelled the entirety of Long County to vie to lay down their lives. As long as we issue a call for recruitment, respondents will surely gather like clouds."

"Father, the soldiers we recruit must be fed three meals a day, given meat once every three days, and paid a monthly salary. In the event they are killed or wounded in battle, we must spend money to secure a livelihood for them or their families. Furthermore, those four hundred-odd horses must be properly cared for, and the construction of the new villages outside will take at least another year. We still need to economize somewhat on our grain reserves and silver."

Listening to Young Master Yun speak of salaries, Li Fu thought to himself that Young Master Yun was using those strange invented terms of his again. However, Young Master Yun had previously explained what they meant; to put it bluntly, it was military pay.

Hearing this now, Li Fu realized that Young Master Yun actually intended to pay regular wages to those local braves every month?

In truth, previously, those corvée laborers belonged to the three yamen rosters, yet they were neither employed by the court nor regarded as regular soldiers. They did receive a tiny stipend, but it was so meager that supporting a family of three was fundamentally impossible. Yet compared to them, soldiers of the Liang Dynasty received no pay during times of peace.

This was explicitly stipulated in the *Regulations on Official Duties*. Generally, troops were divided into two kinds: one was border defense troops. Because these border troops had to fight, regulations dictated they were paid six coins of silver during peacetime, and double—1.2 liangs—when at war. The other kind consisted of non-border troops; such soldiers were required to till the fields in peacetime, embodying self-sufficiency, with the imperial court providing only basic weaponry and equipment along with two sets of clothing per year.

Still, this was vastly superior to previous dynasties. At least they had a stable path for promotion, and not being border defense troops meant they did not have to supply their own rations and clothing out of their own pockets.

Consequently, back in those days of Liang, many people vied to become border defense soldiers. Not only was there pay, but there was also an unwritten rule in Liang that when defending the borders and fighting external tribes, soldiers could keep one-third of the seized spoils. The more they captured during a victory, the more belonged to them. Thus, people could not only rise in rank but also grow rich; back then, men truly sprang into action at the sound of war and strove to be the first.

As for the present situation? It was all empty talk.

The current predicament was not entirely due to the emperor being utterly devoid of virtue; take the current young emperor, for instance—at such a tender age, what did he know? Even if the Daoist Emperor wished to practice Daoism, he had been driven to it in the first place by the ministers at court.

Day in and day out, they put on long faces, and since he could not out-argue them, he plunged into the pit of Daoism, thinking to himself: *Just you wait, once I attain immortality, I'll split you all apart with a single palm strike.*

He practiced Daoism for a long time without building any grand temples; he merely secluded himself within the rear palace to practice, at most searching the realm for so-called enlightened masters.

Thus, he spent little money because the national treasury was empty, and his private treasury was impoverished as well.

He genuinely had no money to give those border defense troops.

In the end, driven to desperation by poverty, he impulsively instituted the Prefecture Governor system. But power was such that while it was easy to give away, taking it back was difficult. Regardless, it was precisely during his tenure as emperor that the carriage of Liang rolled completely down the slope, impossible to pull back.

Young Master Yun's intention now was that, regardless of whether it was wartime or peacetime, the four hundred men to be recruited would each receive 1.2 liangs of silver—silver, mind you, not copper coins—while the reserves would receive half that amount. In addition, they would be provided with a set of regular uniforms every season, not to mention the extra provisions of grain, meat, and cloth during festivals.

Li Fu was stunned by Young Master Yun's lavish expenditure.

If these rules were firmly established, supplemented by honors such as the "Family of Valor," which recruited soldier would dare not fight to the death?

Yet because of this, the expenditures would indeed be colossal. While the numbers were small now, what would happen when they grew larger in the future?

Yet Young Master Yun declared that quality mattered more than quantity, and moreover, he felt this sum was not much. Granting this amount was equivalent to purchasing their lives at a rate of 24 liangs a year. Yet looking at himself, Xin Niang was having new clothes made for him almost every other day; Young Master Yun rarely saw clothes he had worn once or twice ever again. At this rate, his annual expenses probably exceeded a hundred liangs. By comparison, these soldiers were receiving very little indeed.

Very well.

Li Fu was ultimately persuaded, and thus the grand recruitment campaign commenced.

On the following day, instead of training, the local braves set out to publicize the recruitment message throughout Long County and its subordinate two towns and seventeen villages.

Young Master Yun instructed them to form teams of ten, and set up a table at the entrance of each village to facilitate consultations for anyone interested in enlisting.

Yet Young Master Yun also laid down strict requirements.

Those wishing to be recruited must be between eighteen and forty-five years of age; furthermore, they could not be an only son, nor could they suffer from any physical disabilities regarding their hands or feet.

Once someone registered, the recruiters were required to explain in detail the salary they would receive upon enlisting, while also warning them of how grueling the training would be. If they could not endure it and started grumbling, they would face military floggings. Moreover, once the recruitment was finalized, they had to secretly investigate the registered soldiers to prevent false reporting of ages or concealment of family circumstances.

Consequently, Long County, which had been quiet for half a month, grew lively once more.

This time, everyone's lips were once again filled with Magistrate Li and Young Master Yun. However, they were no longer speaking of suppressing bandits, but rather of responding to the Prefecture Governor's special call to raise troops and march against the Mountain Ghost King.

Although the rumors grew increasingly absurd, one fact remained: the information regarding this recruitment had been posted on the yamen's bulletin board, laying out the soldiers' welfare and allowances in crystal-clear terms. A scribe had also been assigned there to read it aloud and patiently explain it to the illiterate townsfolk.

Such wages and benefits were truly unprecedented; even during the founding glory of the dynasty under Taizu Zhu Yuan, the common foot soldiers had never enjoyed such conditions.

In any case, they had never seen an ordinary corvée laborer die only for the magistrate and his young son to personally support the coffin; even if it were an act, he was the first to do it.

And look at what times they were living in now.

If one enlisted in response to the call, that was 24 liangs a year.

Tsk, tsk.

Such a vast sum! A family of several mouths could go through an entire year doing nothing else and still drink thick porridge at every meal, perhaps even managing to save a considerable amount. Even if a famine struck and grain prices soared, they could still drink thin gruel and avoid starvation. Should they die in battle, not only would their vacancy be filled, but they would also receive compassionate compensation. Most importantly, a great and glorious honor awaited their entire family.