On the third day, in the afternoon.
Steward Hu Shun stood before the desk, his expression grave.
“My lord!” Hu Shun stamped his foot anxiously, his voice bitter. “Two more people showed up at the entrance of the alley first thing this morning, kneeling there stiff as boards. They brought every last bit of silver their families had scraped together overnight—even copper coins—and insisted on redeeming the land deeds they signed over a few days ago.
“I sent men to drive them away, but they just kept kowtowing until their scalps were split open!”
Hu Shun paced back and forth, complaining bitterly. “Counting those who came yesterday to return their silver, there are more than a dozen households now! Word has spread like wildfire outside. They say the heads of the three clans south of the city swore a blood alliance last night.
“At a time like this, anyone who dares sell land to us is effectively declaring war on those three clans! How could the common people dare? All they can do is obediently come and return the money!”
“Are you finished?”
Xu Youde calmly cracked sunflower seeds as he sorted through the papers on the desk.
“There is no deadlock in this world that cannot be resolved. If you cannot resolve one, it only means you have not found the other side’s weak point.”
Xu Youde patted the square oil-paper parcel and smacked his lips.
“The Yang family relies on its numbers and influence, as well as the empty prestige of a clan with a century-old pedigree. They think the law cannot punish everyone, and that the imperial court would never dare risk the censure of the entire realm by digging up their ancestral graves.”
Xu Youde rose, slipped the oil-paper parcel into his sleeve, and walked over to the mirror to straighten his appearance.
“Today, I shall teach the Yang family what rules mean under the Great Qian.”
Hu Shun’s spirits lifted. Though he had no idea what Master Xu was talking about, he hurriedly turned to retrieve the saber hanging on the rack.
“I’ll summon the men at once! How many armored soldiers should we bring?”
“Bring armored soldiers to the Yang residence? How would this imperial assignment get done then?” Xu Youde picked up his hand warmer and gave Hu Shun a cool glance. “I am going alone.
“You are not to follow me either. Stay at the relay station and guard it.”
Hu Shun stared at him in astonishment, mouth hanging open. Before he could voice an objection, Xu Youde had already turned and walked into the cold wind filling the courtyard.
Two incense sticks’ worth of time later.
The main gate of the Yang family estate.
The sky had grown even darker. The northern wind sent dead branches and withered leaves spinning across the ground before hurling them against the base of the walls.
With his hands tucked into his sleeves, Xu Youde stood alone beside the stone lion on the left.
The gatekeeper, hiding behind a crack in the vermilion gate, spotted this menacing official from a distance.
The day before yesterday, he had witnessed the spectacle involving this man with his own eyes. And now the man actually dared come back?
“Go and announce my arrival!” Xu Youde said as he climbed the steps. “Xu Youde has come to pay a visit.”
The gatekeeper hunched his shoulders. He furtively squeezed half his body through the crack in the gate and cupped his hands in greeting, forcing himself to speak.
“My lord, my master already made it clear the day before yesterday that he would be receiving no guests for the next few days. The clan has important ancestral rites to attend to, so he truly cannot see you. Perhaps you could…”
“Go announce me,” Xu Youde said with a cold snort.
The gatekeeper felt a chill run down his back beneath that piercing gaze.
He no longer dared to stop him. He hurriedly pushed open half the side gate and ran toward the inner residence as fast as his legs could carry him.
Xu Youde stood atop the high steps, listening to the disorderly footsteps recede inside. A cold smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
A moment later, the gatekeeper emerged through the side gate, panting heavily. His face was gloomy as he stepped aside and hurriedly opened the main gate.
“My lord, this way, please! This way! Master is waiting for you in the main hall.”
Xu Youde gave a slight nod.
He went around the carved screen, then passed through two hanging-flower gates. The flagstones were laid with such precision that not even a seam showed. On either side, expensive guest-welcoming pines remained lush and upright despite the bitter winter.
The doors to the main hall stood wide open.
There was not a single coal burning inside. The cold was biting.
The Yang clan leader, Yang Bonian, sat at the head of the hall in a rosewood grand armchair.
He was dressed warmly today, but his aged face was dark with anger.
Xu Youde had barely stepped into the main hall when Yang Bonian suddenly raised his cane and struck it against the floor.
Bang!
“Lord Xu!”
Yang Bonian attacked first, his voice cold and sharp enough to freeze the air.
“I made myself perfectly clear in your presence the day before yesterday! The Yang family’s ancestral fields and graves are not for sale, dead or alive!”
Yang Bonian lifted his chin high, his eyes filled with disgust and contempt.
“This is the unbreakable bottom line of the Yang clan, a line that has stood for a hundred years! No matter what official seal you carry today or whose command token you bear, the Yang family will never bow!
“You have come to pester us again today. Forgive me, but I have no way to receive you. My lord, you should leave.”
His dismissal was decisive and absolute. He did not even bother with the most perfunctory courtesy.
Xu Youde was speechless when he heard this.
You had better be capable of pulling out the command token behind me!
He walked straight to the guest chair on the right and sat down in it with his legs spread wide.
The bare wooden chair was hard and cold.
Yet Xu Youde showed not the slightest displeasure. Instead…
Smack.
He pulled out an oil-paper parcel bound tightly with fine hemp cord and tossed it casually onto the tea table between them.
Xu Youde rubbed his hand warmer and leaned back comfortably in his chair. His eyelids drooped as his gaze drifted lightly toward the parcel.
“Master Yang,” Xu Youde said with a broad smile. “I have not come today to discuss a sale with you.
“I did not bring a single coin to purchase land.”
His expression turned cold.
“I came here alone today to discuss an old account with Master Yang. An account… left behind by your Yang family’s ancestors—a muddled account.”
Yang Bonian’s eyelid twitched, and a vague sense of alarm rose in his heart.
An old account?
The Yang family had been rooted in Jiangning for a hundred and seventy years, passing down a tradition of scholarship from generation to generation.
All records of land transfers, tax payments, and the movement of money and grain had always been handled flawlessly.
Every prefectural official who had come to inspect them had failed to find even the slightest fault.
What old account could possibly have fallen into someone else’s hands?
“Lord Xu, this bluff of yours is rather clumsy,” Yang Bonian sneered coldly, his face full of disdain. “The Yang clan is innocent and above reproach. We have never owed the Great Qian a single grain of imperial tax!
“If you cannot obtain the land and intend to extort this old man with fabricated charges, then I am afraid you have knocked on the wrong door!”
Xu Youde did not grow angry.
He leaned forward by half an inch.
Then, slowly, he extended a hand and placed it on the oil-paper parcel.
The hemp cord came loose, and Xu Youde casually brushed it onto the floor.
Next, he began peeling away the paper, layer by layer.
He moved so slowly that Master Yang’s temper began to flare. What in the world was Xu Youde trying to do?
At last, every layer of oil paper had been removed.
An old volume bound in hemp cloth was revealed.
Xu Youde lifted the volume in both hands.
“Compiled in the twenty-sixth year of the Xuande era.”
He softly read the words on the cover, the ink long since faded to a hazy gray. His voice was as light as a passing chill wind.
Yang Bonian’s pupils instantly contracted to pinpoints.
The twenty-sixth year of the Xuande era?
That document was more than a hundred years old!
Xu Youde carefully turned the pages.
“Master Yang.”
“Open your eyes and examine it properly. This is the original register from the Jiangning County yamen’s household records archive, buried beneath a pile of dust at the very bottom.
“It records everything clearly, in black and white.”
The killing intent in Xu Youde’s voice suddenly intensified.
“Yang Family Manor south of the city, including the towering ancestral hall your family now occupies, and the ancestral graveyard behind it where six generations of your forebears lie buried!”
“An entire one hundred and twenty mu!”
Xu Youde fixed Master Yang with a stern gaze and said in an imposing voice, “When the registers were compiled, the land classification was written in plain terms: ‘reclaimed wasteland assigned as state-owned farmland’!”
At those words, Yang Bonian’s body swayed.
Xu Youde snorted and clicked his tongue.
“I’m told Master Yang has studied the statutes and imperial edicts extensively. Surely you know exactly what those four words mean.”
“That was state land leased to commoners!”
Xu Youde shouted, “The land rights belong to the imperial court! This realm belongs to the imperial court, and so does this land!
“When the Yang family first came to Jiangnan, you were nothing but a group of starving refugees. You accepted the wasteland allocated by the imperial court and cultivated it merely to survive!”
“Say whatever you like, but the Yang family has only possessed permanent tenancy rights over this land!”
“From beginning to end, you never held the title or ownership rights to this land!”
All color drained from Yang Bonian’s face in an instant, leaving him as pale as a corpse.
State-owned land assigned as reclaimed wasteland!
Yang Bonian’s breathing grew rapid, and even his speech became halting.
“No... Impossible...”
His voice began to tremble. His shaking hand reached toward the register, only to recoil as though struck by lightning when it was still half an inch away.
“This... this is an ancient record from a hundred and seventy years ago!”
Yang Bonian let out a hoarse roar and gripped his cane, trying to stand. His legs, however, suddenly went weak.
So it was true! He vaguely remembered his elders mentioning this when he was a child.
Yet until he had taken over as clan head, he had never paid it the slightest attention. Who in Jiangning County would have bothered to dig through such old accounts?
His lips trembled uncontrollably, but he forced himself to remain composed and argued, “Ridiculous! Utterly absurd! How can a register from the Xuande era determine matters today?
“Over the past hundred and seventy years, every successive county magistrate of Jiangning and prefect of Yingtian has recopied the land registers. This land was long ago entered entirely under the Yang family’s private holdings!
“For a hundred and seventy years, not a single official has come forward to pursue the matter! This land has long since become ours! That is an established fact recorded in black and white, and no one can change it!”
His roar, full of empty bluster, only revealed how panicked and powerless he truly was.
Looking at him in such a rage, utterly thrown into disarray, Xu Youde gave a cold, sinister laugh.
“An established fact?”
Xu Youde slowly straightened and pointed outside the window.
“Master Yang, you have lived sixty years and weathered more than your share of storms. How can you spout such foolishness that even a three-year-old would not believe?”
Xu Youde pressed forward step by step. “How do you suppose the successive registers came to list it as private land? Surely you know the answer.
“Your Yang family merely relied on its money to bribe those corrupt vermin in the Jiangning County land office. Whenever a new register was being copied, you took advantage of the confusion to erase the words ‘state land’ and quietly fold the property into the category of ‘private farmland’!”
“Deceiving the imperial court? Altering official records?”
Xu Youde jabbed a finger through the air, straight at Yang Bonian’s face.
“No one pursued the matter for a hundred and seventy years because no one had bothered to search through the moldy old accounts buried at the very bottom of the archives! Because the dozen or so prefects before me did not wish to provoke local tyrants like your family!”
Xu Youde lowered his voice, filling it with a chilling menace.
“But the laws of Great Qian are the laws of Great Qian! The nature of land assigned as reclaimed state farmland has never been changed by an imperial decree. As long as this original register exists, as long as these four words remain written here, this land is state property in life and state soil in death!”
Yang Bonian had gone completely rigid.
Large beads of sweat appeared on his forehead and streamed down his face.
“You... You think this one tattered book is enough to strip my family of its century-old estate? You are a cruel official fabricating charges! I’ll take you before the Nanzhili authorities! I’ll go to the capital and petition the emperor himself!”
“Go ahead!”
Xu Youde sneered and stepped forward instead of retreating.
“Not only do I want you to go and complain, I intend to submit this register, together with the memorial I wrote late last night, to the Yingtian authorities. I will also send a copy by urgent courier, six hundred li straight to the Office of Transmission in the capital!”
He raised three thick fingers and waved them heavily before Yang Bonian’s eyes.
“Clan Head Yang, do you believe me? Once that memorial reaches the imperial desk, the authorities and the Ministry of Revenue will reopen the investigation into this land’s ownership.
“First charge: occupying state land for a hundred and seventy years! The court will confiscate every last asset belonging to the Yang family to make up the land rent owed for all those years!
“Second charge: colluding with clerks and altering the original land registers! Under the laws of Great Qian, the principal offenders will be exiled three thousand li away, with no pardon even in times of amnesty! Every direct descendant of the Yang clan will be shackled and sent to Lingnan!”
Xu Youde’s finger finally came down hard upon the old register.
“When that day comes, imperial troops will march in to reclaim the land. Your Yang family will not even retain those pitiful permanent tenancy rights!”
Xu Youde stared into Yang Bonian’s utterly vacant eyes.
“Everything built on that land is an illegal structure.”
“When the court comes to reclaim the land, the ancestral hall will have to be demolished.”
“The ancestral graves will be dug up and leveled.”
“They will not leave you so much as a ragged mat to cover your shame.”
Boom!
The final thread holding Yang Bonian’s mind together snapped completely.
His body jerked. His mouth hung open as he sucked in great gasps of air.
The rosewood cane he had been gripping with all his strength slipped from his hand with a clatter and rolled away.
Collapsed in the grand chair, the head of this great Jiangnan clan no longer possessed even a trace of the upright bearing of the scholar-official who had cursed Xu Youde to his face just the day before.
Seeing that he had pushed matters to the breaking point, Xu Youde calmly took back the old register.
He carefully rolled it up and slipped it into his sleeve.
Then Xu Youde brushed the dust from the hem of his cotton robe and resumed his measured official tone.
He casually cupped his hands toward Yang Bonian, who lay slumped like a heap of mud.
“Master Yang.”
There was neither anger nor pleasure in Xu Youde’s voice.
“The imperial court is not some living King of Hell intent on driving people to their deaths. The compensation, set at twice the market price, is already waiting in the vaults of the Jiangnan Grand Exchange.
“That astronomical sum will be more than enough for the Yang clan to give your ancestors a grand send-off and find a truly private piece of auspicious land outside the city.
“You can rebuild the ancestral hall and establish a new family graveyard. Let your forebears rest in peace, while preserving the lives of every member of the Yang family, young and old.”
He turned and walked toward the hall entrance.
Before stepping over the threshold, Xu Youde paused and turned his head slightly.
“I’m in no hurry. This concerns the survival or destruction of the entire Yang clan, so you should think it over carefully.”
“I will return in three days to hear your answer. I hope Master Yang will not disappoint me.”
“Remember! Think it over carefully. Think it over carefully!”
