It was three-quarters past midnight.
The Yang clan ancestral hall was heated by braziers.
Dozens of thick white candles stood in their holders, their flames lurching this way and that in the draft stirred up when the doors had just been shut.
Behind the offering table, the ancestral tablets of six generations were arranged in tiered rows. In the dim, ghastly candlelight, they flickered in and out of sight, grim and forbidding.
The usual calming scent of incense, now mingled with the breath of more than thirty people, made the air so stifling that everyone’s chest felt tight.
Yang Bonian, the man who held the reins of the Yang clan, was slumped in the grand huanghuali armchair at the very center.
He had occupied that chair for twenty years.
In the past, whenever he leaned back against it, his spine would remain ramrod straight and his chin slightly raised, radiating the dignity and authority of a great Jiangnan clan.
But tonight, his entire body seemed to have melted into the chair. He had none of his usual majesty.
On either side below the dais, the heads of the various Yang family branches knelt in a dense, shadowy mass. Yet no one in the hall dared move.
“Is the door bolted?” Yang Bonian finally spoke, his voice dry and hoarse.
“Reporting to you, Master, not even a fly could get out.”
The steward lowered his head and retreated into the shadows.
“Tonight, I dragged everyone out of their warm beds.” Yang Bonian opened his eyes and spoke bleakly. “There is a disaster concerning the survival of our entire Yang clan that I must inform every branch about.”
Yang Gang, head of the third branch, looked up from the front row.
“Today, Xu Youde, the Minister of Revenue, entered our Yang family estate alone.” Yang Bonian ground his back teeth together. “He brought neither soldiers nor runners from the Yingtian Prefecture.
“But he did bring a register.”
Several branch heads below exchanged glances, unable to understand how a single register could have reduced the old clan head to such a state.
“This register records everything in black and white.
“The ancestral hall of our Yang clan, along with the burial grounds behind it where six generations of our ancestors lie buried… altogether, one hundred and twenty mu of prime, high and dry land.”
“On the land register, four words are written in plain black ink.”
“State fields. Wasteland allotment.”
At those words, someone below finally grasped the implications.
Yang Gang had originally been kneeling on one knee on his cushion. Now his face visibly changed from waxen yellow to a deep purplish red.
“What kind of damned nonsense is that?”
Yang Gang swung his arm and slapped the floor beside him so hard that several elderly members of the collateral branches flinched.
He shoved his backside upward and sprang off the cushion.
Furious, Yang Gang paced back and forth, then cupped his fists toward Master Yang and shouted, “This is outrageous! Utterly outrageous!”
“What does that Xu fellow think he is? Does he really believe our Jiangnan clan is meat on a chopping block? The Yang clan has taken root and flourished on this land for a hundred and seventy years! This is the foundation our ancestors built, carrying it one basket of earth and one bucket of water at a time!”
He drew a deep breath, exhaling heavily.
“And now that dog of an official digs some rotten old account book out of a rat hole, waves it around, and thinks he can swallow our two thousand three hundred mu of estates? He even dares to dig up our ancestral graves and accuse us of altering the land registers? He can dream on!”
Yang Gang turned and clasped his hands toward Yang Bonian, his eyes bloodshot.
“Old Master! We absolutely cannot yield! This is extortion! He must be trying to use this opportunity to squeeze our hard-earned silver and plug the Ministry of Revenue’s hole!”
“Take one step back and you fall into a bottomless abyss! If we hand over the land, the Chen and Fang families will laugh themselves to death tomorrow! How will we ever maintain our standing in Jiangning Prefecture?”
He waved his fist and swept his gaze around the room, his voice booming like a bell.
“Take him to court! We’ll go to the Yingtian Prefecture yamen and beat the complaint drum! If the Yingtian Prefecture won’t handle it, we’ll take it to the Office of Transmission! We’ll go to the capital and beat the imperial grievance drum! We’ll appeal directly to His Majesty!
“We’ll spend silver to summon every scholar in Jiangnan and have them write a petition signed by the people, sending it straight to the imperial court! I refuse to believe that the laws of Great Qian cannot deal with one brutal official forcibly seizing private farmland!”
His words were oil on a raging fire, igniting the powder kegs of several direct-line branches.
They made their living from the ancestral sacrificial fields and enjoyed the richest, most comfortable lives of all.
To take away that fat piece of meat was to take their lives.
“Third Brother is right! We’ll fight him!”
“Does being a minister mean he can cover the sky with one hand? We’ll contact every prominent family in Jiangnan and make this a major affair!”
“We will never sell our ancestors’ estate!”
Seven or eight heads of the direct-line branches shouted one after another.
Just as the crowd’s anger had reached a fever pitch, with every sign that they would storm the Yingtian Prefecture yamen and fight to the death the very next day, several thin, frail figures kneeling in the corner began trembling like dead leaves in an autumn wind.
They were elderly men from the collateral branches, men who owned barely a few mu of land between them.
Yang Zhong, head of the sixth collateral branch, listened to Yang Gang repeatedly shouting about appealing to the imperial court. His face turned deathly pale, and he hurriedly crawled off his cushion.
“No! You mustn’t, Third Master!”
Yang Zhong raised his head. His wrinkled face was covered in mucus and tears, and his voice was choked with sobs.
“Appeal? What could we possibly use to appeal? That is the Minister of Revenue! He has ironclad evidence from the Xuande era in his hands!
“What if… I only mean what if! What if the court refuses to heed the petition and insists on confiscating the land? If this case is truly sent before the Three Judicial Offices…”
He dropped onto the floor, his teeth chattering.
“Altering the official land registers is a capital crime punishable by the confiscation and execution of the entire family! Gentlemen, you eat until your mouths are slick with grease while the several hundred of us in the collateral branches drink thin gruel every day.
“Now you want to oppose the imperial court. Do you expect the several hundred families in the collateral branches to tie our heads to our belts and accompany you to Lingnan to die of miasma?”
Yang Zhong’s words fell upon the anger that had only just been kindled, dousing it at once.
Yang Gang flew into a rage. He strode over in two steps and cursed, “You old bastard! Stop boosting the enemy’s morale and destroying our own! If you’re afraid of death, get the hell out of the ancestral hall!”
Several younger members of the collateral branches, their eyes red, rushed forward and clung tightly to Yang Gang’s legs, sobbing and shouting.
“Why should we be sent to our deaths?”
“Let go! Have you lost your minds?”
The ancestral hall instantly dissolved into chaos.
The direct branches cursed the collateral branches for their cowardice and lack of courage, while the collateral branches wailed that the direct branches were trying to drag the entire clan into the grave with them.
Shouts, curses, and the sounds of people grappling with one another tangled together.
Just as the situation was about to spiral completely out of control—
“That’s enough.”
Yang Jingzhi, senior head of the seventh branch, had been kneeling in the foremost row on the right. He had not uttered a word from beginning to end, but now he slowly rose to his feet.
In his youth, he had passed the xiucai examination. He had also served for ten years as a legal clerk in the Jiangning County yamen and knew the laws of Great Qian like the back of his hand.
Yang Jingzhi turned toward the ancestral tablets on the offering altar and bowed deeply.
When he straightened, his eyes swept across the entire hall, cold and sinister.
“Third Brother, did you just say you want to bring a lawsuit?”
Yang Jingzhi gave a cold laugh, the corner of his mouth curling in mockery.
He paced to the center of the hall.
“What will you use to bring it? That mouth of yours, which knows only how to spray spittle? Or our family genealogy, passed down by word of mouth, without even half a land deed to support it?”
Yang Jingzhi advanced step by step.
“Listen carefully! The old register Xu Youde produced today was not some storybook forged by hired hands in a rat hole! It is an official archival register bearing the immovable seal of Jiangning County! It is the law recognized by the imperial court!”
Yang Jingzhi’s voice rang like a sentence being pronounced in a court of law.
“The Great Qian Code! Those who seize state fields shall have all their property confiscated to make up the rents owed over the years! Those who collude with clerks to alter official archives shall be exiled three thousand li, with no pardon even when an amnesty is granted!”
He thrust a finger straight at Yang Gang’s face.
“Do we need His Majesty to issue an edict? No, we don’t! Xu Youde doesn’t even need to write an impeachment memorial! All he has to do is place that ledger on the desk at the Office of Transmission, and the Ministry of Justice will come down to arrest people and audit the accounts!”
“If you go and report us, and you win, our entire family fortune will be stripped bare, and we won’t even be left with an intact corpse! If you lose, our entire clan will be implicated and sent to Lingnan in cangues! By then, the rot will spread from the root to the branches. Every old master who handled those falsified accounts back then will be dug out of his grave and flogged!”
The barrage of words struck them head-on, leaving everyone speechless.
The heads of the senior branches who had been shouting along just moments ago now shrank their necks and exchanged uneasy glances.
Yang Jingzhi no longer bothered looking at this group of fools. He turned to Yang Bonian, who was slumped in his chair.
“Master Yang! Your nephew dares to ask you one question.” Yang Jingzhi’s eyes burned brightly.
“If that Xu Youde really has the irrefutable evidence capable of uprooting the entire Yang clan, why didn’t he bring soldiers from Yingtian Prefecture to arrest everyone and confiscate our property this afternoon? Why did he take out that ledger and let you look at it, only to tuck it back into his sleeve exactly as it was afterward?”
Yang Bonian’s heart lurched.
That was right! Why hadn’t he brought soldiers? Why hadn’t he arrested them on the spot?
Yang Jingzhi let out a cold laugh.
“He’s afraid!”
“He’s an imperial commissioner. He wants the land, not the heads of several hundred people! If Jiangnan truly erupts into a popular revolt, and he botches the matter, he won’t be able to answer to His Majesty!”
“That’s why he doesn’t dare push things too far! He has to come and ‘negotiate’ with us! He wants the Yang clan to be cowed, then obediently offer up this land with both hands!”
Yang Jingzhi pointed at the ancestral tablets.
“Rather than wait for him to lose his head one day and hand over the master ledger, risking his official hat, and leave us with nowhere to bury our bones, we might as well go with the current and take the initiative to negotiate terms with him!”
“Seventh brother! You’ve gone mad!” Yang Gang struggled, trying to stand once more. “You’re selling our ancestors for glory! The Chen and Fang families swore a blood oath with us!”
“Idiot!” Yang Jingzhi spat directly at Yang Gang’s feet. “This is called preserving the clan! In name, we return the land rights to the imperial court and cooperate with them in recreating the land registers. But we can demand money!”
“Didn’t that Xu Youde say twice the market price? We’ll demand three times the market price! And we’ll make him designate an even larger and better tract of irrigated farmland outside Jinling as compensation!”
The more Yang Jingzhi spoke, the more excited he became, calculation glittering in his eyes.
“The ancestral tablets won’t be touched. We’ll dismantle the ancestral hall intact and move the timber. As for the ancestral graves, we’ll choose an auspicious day ourselves and relocate them in grand fashion.
“Officially, we’ll be complying with the court’s grand policy. In reality, we’ll be taking home cold, hard silver.
“With that money, we’ll build a Yang family village outside the city twice the size of this one! That is the only true way out!”
Yang Jingzhi stared coldly at Yang Gang, showing no mercy.
“And you’re still thinking about your blood oath? Hah! I’m afraid that when disaster comes, everyone will flee for himself! When the soldiers arrive to confiscate our property, will Chen Shichang put on a cangue and go into exile in your place?”
“Third brother, if you insist on resisting, can you really withstand them? That fellow Xu may not hand over the ledger today, but he can hand it over tomorrow! When that day comes, there will be no negotiations, much less three times the market price.”
“A blade will be at every one of our throats. And the six generations of ancestors behind this altar…”
Yang Gang’s knees gave way, and he collapsed to the floor with a thud.
Just as the atmosphere in the ancestral hall reached its most oppressive point, a young clansman barely in his twenties by the doorway suddenly raised his head.
His face was full of confusion.
“Master Yang… something’s not right…”
“I’ve been thinking carefully about what you said. Before that Xu Youde left, aside from saying that he wouldn’t drive us into a corner and telling you to think it over, what was the very first thing he said when he entered?”
Yang Bonian stared blankly. His head buzzed as he desperately searched through the mire of his memory.
His shriveled lips trembled twice.
“He said… the imperial court had a monumental construction project… and had taken a liking to our estate…”
A monumental construction project.
Those six words echoed once through the silent ancestral hall.
Yang Jingzhi stood in the center of the hall, his composed expression suddenly freezing when he heard them.
On the other side, kneeling in the second row on the left, was Yang Jinshui, senior head of the sixth branch. He usually managed the clan’s waterway businesses in and around the city.
At this moment, he looked as though he had been struck by a bolt of lightning.
“The timber… the land… it all fits…”
As though he had suddenly seen the light, Yang Jinshui quickly voiced his thoughts.
“These past few days! At the main wharf on the river in the northern part of the city, people have been buying materials like mad! All of it is premium old fir transported from Sichuan and Guizhou, some of the logs thick enough for three men to encircle!”
“Those northern merchants come straight to the wharf carrying chests of silver. A hundred taels a log isn’t enough? Then they offer three hundred! They don’t inspect the timber, they don’t calculate wastage, and they don’t bargain over the price. As long as it’s a giant log suitable for a main roof beam, they take it all!”
“And the southern part of the city! All those unwanted plots of land… they’ve been buying them up these past few days!”
“Gentlemen! Think about it!”
Yang Jinshui’s voice grew shrill.
“They’re buying giant timber and surrounding flat land. And they’re specifically choosing the high, dry, flood-free plains south of our city, level ground bordering the canal network! They’re taking tens of thousands of mu at a time, joining it into enormous, perfectly square tracts!”
He raised his head and stared at the guttering candles on the altar, his face filled with horror.
“What kind of monumental construction project would be worth having the imperial court conceal it so carefully?”
Every loose thread.
Giant timber, barren land, an imperial commissioner, silver offered at exorbitant prices, the forcible seizure of ancestral lands, the central axis.
A sinister draft swept through the windows of the ancestral hall.
Pff…
In an instant, more than half of the dozens of tall white candles on the altar went out.
The ancestral hall plunged into darkness.
Clang!
The cane slipped from Yang Bonian’s hands. At last, he understood.
Yang Bonian’s cracked lips trembled as he finally uttered the word:
“The… relocation of the capital…”
