Early morning, south of Jiangning City.
Thick fog rolled along the ground.
Several black-canopied carriages drawn by pairs of horses stood beside the crumbling walls of an old granary.
The northern warhorses pulling the carriages could not endure the damp chill of the Jiangnan wind. They snorted loudly and pawed the earth restlessly.
The fair-faced steward flipped through the hemp-paper ledger in his hands, rubbing them anxiously.
“We’ve bought up all the small plots and shanty lots that could be taken. Eighty thousand taels in banknotes have been spent, and every blank official deed from Yingtian Prefecture has been filled out. But the main stretch of land…”
Before the steward could finish, a green-lacquered carriage came swaying from the direction of the northern city. It came to a steady stop in front of the granary.
The curtain was lifted, and Xu Youde ducked out.
Today he wore a fine padded coat and held a small purple-clay hand warmer. His entire bearing was calm and imposing, commanding respect without anger.
“How did things go?” Xu Youde asked, dispensing with even the customary pleasantries and going straight to the point.
The fair-faced steward hurried forward, his voice edged with anxiety. “My lord, we’ve cleared out all the scattered plots around the perimeter. But the most important parcels—the dry, contiguous tracts right beside the canal waterway—haven’t yielded an inch.”
Xu Youde raised an eyebrow and took the map the steward handed him.
The map was covered in dense vermilion circles, each marking a scattered plot they had already purchased. Yet—
At the very center of those red circles, three enormous blank spaces stood out like gaping holes.
The Yang clan, the Chen clan, and the Fang clan.
These three prominent Jinling families controlled more than ninety percent of the finest farmland south of the city.
“Do they know whose orders we’re carrying out?” Xu Youde asked, his finger tapping lightly on the three blank spaces without looking up.
The steward shook his head. “As you instructed, we’ve kept our lips sealed.”
A glint flashed through Xu Youde’s eyes.
He rolled up the map and casually tucked it into his sleeve, then brushed the dust from his hands.
“Good. Don’t alert them yet. You won’t need to show your face today. I’ll make the visit myself.”
…
Near noon, the fog finally dispersed. The pale winter sun hung in the sky, offering not the slightest warmth.
Xu Youde spent the entire morning walking around the southern outskirts with a clerk.
The clerk was a wiry man carrying a heavy iron measuring bow on his back. He clutched a roll of measuring tape in one hand. The tip of his nose had turned red from the cold, but he did not dare utter a word of complaint.
The two of them followed the canal embankment southward and eventually stopped at a barren rise outside the Yang family estate.
Xu Youde stood at the top, his hands tucked into his sleeves, looking down from above.
One glance was all it took. The entire shape of the deadlock unfolded clearly beneath his feet.
“They have a sharp eye…” Xu Youde narrowed his eyes and breathed out a plume of white vapor. “These old families certainly knew how to choose their land.”
The clerk took the iron measuring bow from his back and made a rough estimate using the terrain. He drew in a sharp breath.
“My lord, the Yang clan chose an exceptionally strategic site! The eastern edge touches the canal’s main wharf, while the western edge bites directly into the official road leading out of the city. From north to south, it stretches more than two hundred zhang.”
He stamped hard on the earth beneath his feet, his eyes filled with astonishment.
“The ground here stands a full three chi higher than the surrounding rice paddies! Floods can’t reach it, and during a drought, waterwheels from the canal can irrigate it directly.
“Just this one estate contains at least two thousand three hundred mu of level, contiguous farmland!”
Xu Youde did not respond. His gaze shifted toward the very center of the estate.
Jiangnan was crisscrossed by waterways. There were only two essential conditions for building a city: land that was high and dry enough to avoid flooding, and a location close to the waterways used for grain transport.
Such golden sites had been claimed centuries ago.
By whom?
By the prominent families standing before them.
The imperial court now wanted to build a city laid out like a chessboard: a central axis, straight avenues, government offices, and military camps. The small farmers’ three- or five-mu plots, tangled together in an irregular patchwork, were completely unsuitable for constructing a straight imperial avenue.
Only the great clans’ square, contiguous tracts of two or three thousand mu could serve as the foundation of the new capital.
Yet there was not the slightest hint of delight at acquiring such land in Xu Youde’s eyes. Only unfathomable calculation lay there.
At the center of that perfect tract stood a vast ancestral shrine.
Behind it, pines and cypresses grew in dense ranks. Three tombs with steles of white marble rose starkly from the ground, like iron nails driven into place, pinning down the land’s entire geomantic layout.
Even from this distance, the names of six generations of Yang ancestors could just barely be made out on the steles.
The land was too perfect.
And yet that perfect land was covered in ancestors.
The clerk swallowed and cautiously moved closer. “My lord, this land… will be difficult to obtain. Those are their ancestral graves and clan shrine, not a few mu of grain fields.
“No matter how much silver we offer, they may not be willing to yield…”
“Difficult?” Xu Youde said coldly.
“Good. It should be difficult.”
He turned and looked once more at the tombs concealed among the pines and cypresses. His official authority began to show in full.
“If a few scraps of silver were enough to buy it, why would we need the immeasurable merit of helping establish a new dynasty? If it were easy, would I need to travel south in person under the title of imperial commissioner?”
Xu Youde shoved the purple-clay hand warmer into the clerk’s arms and strode down the rise.
“Come. We’re going to knock on their door.”
…
That afternoon, at the main gate of the Yang family estate.
The vermilion gates were tightly shut, flanked by two imposing stone lions.
Xu Youde stood below the steps with only the clerk carrying the iron measuring bow at his side. This time, he did not have the clerk deliver a merchant’s calling card.
Instead, he took an official document from his sleeve and tossed it to the gatekeeper.
The document bore no merchant’s name at the top.
But in the lower right corner was a bright-red seal bearing the official insignia of the governor of Yingtian Prefecture—the highest authority in all of Jiangning.
The wording was deliberately vague, consisting of only two short lines:
“Pursuant to an imperial edict, preparations are under way for a construction project of state importance. Local worthies are invited to lend their assistance.”
The moment the gatekeeper saw the official seal representing the highest authority on Jiangning soil, he scrambled into the inner residence to report.
Before long, the main gate opened.
The Yang clan leader, Yang Bonian, received Xu Youde in the main hall.
Yang Bonian was already past sixty, but his body remained remarkably strong.
He wore a sauce-brown silk robe embroidered with round floral patterns. His hair was tied neatly with a wooden hairpin, not a strand out of place.
Seated upright in a huanghualiwood chair, he held a cup of Guzhu Purple Bamboo tea. His eyelids hung slightly lowered, his bearing naturally dignified and imposing.
Xu Youde crossed the threshold and gave a slight cupped-fist salute, doing no more than courtesy required.
He dropped heavily into the guest’s seat. Without sparing so much as a glance for the tea on the small table, he looked directly at the other man and got straight to the point.
“Yang clan head, I did not come today to exchange pleasantries.”
Xu Youde looked down at him imperiously.
“The imperial court has a monumental construction project destined for Jiangnan. It has set its sights on your Yang family’s estate.”
Yang Bonian said nothing as he used the lid of his teacup to skim away the foam.
Xu Youde calmly raised two fingers.
“The Ministry of Revenue has allocated a special fund in hard currency. For these two thousand three hundred mu, the court will pay twice the market price. The Jiangnan Grand Exchange’s official bank drafts can be delivered and settled immediately.”
He leaned forward slightly, fixing his eyes on Yang Bonian.
“With this money, the Yang family will have enough to purchase three times as much prime rice land outside the city.
“And the fortune left over will be more than enough for your descendants to squander for three generations.”
“This is a blessing from the state, the sort of fortune your ancestors must have prayed for across several lifetimes.”
Had he offered these words to an ordinary wealthy merchant, they would have been enough to make the man kneel and give thanks.
Yang Bonian, however, set down his teacup, clicked his tongue, and cast Xu Youde a sidelong glance.
Afterward, Yang Bonian slowly rose to his feet, clasped his hands behind his back, and paced toward the rear of the main hall.
There, mounted on a wooden-paneled wall, hung an exquisitely framed portrait of an ancestor.
The old man in the painting wore the blue-green official robes of a seventh-rank official from the Xuande era, his face lean and refined.
Yang Bonian pointed directly at the portrait.
“This man was the first ancestor of the Yang clan to register his household in Jiangning.”
“In the third year of Xuande, our ancestor brought his clansmen here to settle. At the time, this place was nothing but a reed marsh. It was the people of the Yang family who carried basket after basket of mud and soil, reclaiming the wasteland and turning it into fields. Later, they built this ancestral hall and established the burial ground behind it.”
“Six generations—one hundred and seventy years.”
Xu Youde leaned back in his chair, the corner of his eye lifting slightly.
“The first article of the Yang clan’s regulations states it plainly,” Yang Bonian said heavily, his expression filled with reminiscence. “The ancestral sacrificial fields and burial grounds shall never be mortgaged or sold.”
“Anyone who violates this rule shall be expelled from the clan register! After death, their spirit tablet shall not be placed in the ancestral hall, nor shall they be buried beside the ancestral graves!”
