Walking the Path of a Workaholic in Cliché Novels (QT) Chapter 80

The tip of his nose smelled a mixture of his lover’s fragrance and blood, which awakened a primal nature in his body. The soft and slightly cool touch on his lips disappeared right after, and the cold fragrance also left with it.

An Yinong stretched out his thumb and rubbed his lower lip, squinting with a smile: “Shy?”

Gu Zhengzhong, who was suspended in the air, covered his face with a fan, his eyes were bright red. He did not look as gentle and polite as usual, but instead was filled with evil spirit.

In these two seconds, the arrow had reached the bandit leader. The leader had long been accustomed to the speed of arrows shot by the opposing general. He did not expect that the last arrow would be so fast and powerful. It arrived in front of him in almost the blink of an eye, leaving him unable to avoid it.

“Ah!” He only had time to let out a brief cry, and the next second the arrow pierced his eye, with the arrowhead popping out from behind his skull.

“The bandit leader has accepted the death penalty, why don’t you lay down your weapons and surrender quickly?” An Yinong shouted loudly while riding his horse. The bandits didn’t believe it at first, but when they looked back, they saw that their leader had already fallen to the ground, and they didn’t know how many times he had been trampled by the horses.

The horse thieves suddenly lost their leader and didn’t know what to do for a moment.

“I… we surrender!” One, two, three… As more and more bandits laid down their weapons, the battle came to an end.

“County Magistrate Tian really surprised me.” Taking the head of a horse bandit among thousands of people, such an achievement, if given to his soldiers, would be enough to be promoted to a small official. In the future, he should not look at these literati with old eyes.

“It was thanks to the general’s good command that I was able to kill the bandit leader by chance.”

The two of them complimented each other, and the sedan chair was carried.

“General, I would like to borrow a team of soldiers from you.” When the time was almost up, An Yinong put forward his idea.

“Borrow some troops?”

The general hesitated, he didn’t know what An Yinong wanted to do with the soldiers. Who knew that An Yinong would just take out a piece of paper, the same action as when he shook out the distribution map of the Jin and Bai families wealth. The general’s eyes twitched, and a cold wind blew across his back.

“There are ten households in the county who not only aided and abetted the tyrant, but have also owed taxes to the government for a long time. Today I have to collect them back.” An Yinong smiled very gently: With so much land and so much money, how could they not pay some money?

It just so happened that all these big landlords had committed crimes. If there were murder cases, killing a few of them was not excessive, right? If the person was killed, it was not strange to confiscate the house, right?

Half a month later.

“Work! Work quickly! Aren’t you full?” The supervisor swung his whip on the ground. If the adults had not told him not to whip and hurt the prisoners, he would have whipped them.

“Humph, now you have come to this day.” Looking at these former horse thieves who were clearing the land with sad faces, the supervisor thought of his grandfather who died because of similar thieves, and he felt a great sense of revenge in his heart.

Changing direction, the supervisor came to a young man holding a warm kettle. In this early winter weather when frost was beginning to fall, the young man took off his coat and rolled up his trouser legs to work in the wasteland.

“Sir, are you tired? Would you like some water?” The supervisor was very attentive, not only because the man in front of him was their new county magistrate, but also because these reclaimed wastelands would be sold to the poor people in the county at half price in the future.

The overseer himself was a poor man.

An Yinong glanced at him, took the kettle and took a sip: “You are the one from before…”

“Li Jian, in reply to your Excellency, I used to work in the mines for the Bai family. You brought people here to rescue us all, and even burned our indentures.” When talking about this, there were tears in Li Jian’s eyes.

Many of them were miners who had been abducted by the Jin and Bai families to dig copper mines. In order to keep it secret, the miners lived in the most difficult environment. Not to mention having enough food and warm clothes, it was a good thing if they were not beaten.

The mortality rate among miners was very high. Once they went in, most of them will die within three years. Even if they were lucky enough not to die, they would have to endure a lot of illness.

Li Jian was a man in his twenties but looked like he was in his thirties. He had thought he would die in there, but he did not expect that one day the new county magistrate would descend from the sky with a group of people, rescue them all, give them compensation, and let them go back to buy property, get married and have children.

But Li Jian did not leave, he wanted to follow his savior, so he later signed up to be a supervisor, in addition to supervising these horse thieves and thugs, he also had to help with work.

After drinking the water, An Yinong returned the kettle to the supervisor and picked up a hoe to continue working. He worked so carefully that others felt embarrassed to be lazy. This was the wasteland that belonged to the Bai family before. The soil here was pretty good, with a relatively low degree of desertification. There was also a nearby stream that could be used for irrigation, so An Yinong chose to reclaim and turn it into arable land during the winter when there was no farming work.

The main force behind the reclamation were the thugs and horse thieves from the Jin and Bai families, none of whom had committed any major faults. An Yinong had promised that if they worked hard, they would not only get some wages but also have their sentences reduced. In theory, if they worked like this for three years, they would be free—at least they would be able to do so before he left office.

The prisoners were skeptical about this, but since they would have no food to eat if they didn’t work, they still chose to work. The prisoners raised their hoes high and broke the frozen soil. Some of them picked out the stones and piled them aside. Then a group of slightly older prisoners broke the soil into pieces and mixed it with grass, trees, and fertilizer made from burned cow and sheep dung.

There were makeshift mud-brick houses on the edge of the wasteland, where fifty or sixty captives could lie hut-to-hut, all crowded together. It was a bit smelly, but warm. With so many people guarded by only two teams of soldiers, it was natural that some of them would become restless.

The captives had already tried escaping three times, and were caught and brought back for unknown reasons. The main culprit was executed, and the others were punished with more serious crimes. After three times, the captives gave up and decided to work obediently. At least they had food to eat and a place to sleep.

An Yinong worked for a long time and went back when it was getting dark. The Jin and Bai families were arrested, and the big landlords in the county were killed or punished, but there was still a lot of things waiting for him.

“How many blacksmiths have been hired? All the iron tools found in their homes had been melted down and remade into farm tools. How are the brick and tile kilns we asked people to build going? Have the merchants transported the logs for the foundation and pillars?”

The newly recruited chief clerk answered as he walked, “We have already recruited six blacksmiths, who are now mainly making blades for curved plows, hoes, and small iron parts for spinning wheels. The workers for repairing brick and tile kilns have also been recruited and are currently setting up. They will be done in half a month. The merchants have also taken the deposit and are heading southwest to transport wood.”

An Yinong nodded, quite satisfied with the efficiency of his new subordinate.

The main criminals from the Jin and Bai families have been executed, and their relatives have also been imprisoned and searched one by one. Those with less serious crimes could be released, while those with more serious crimes were directly exiled. If the wealth of these families were combined, even if half of the gold and silver were given to the garrison, the remaining would be enough to buy most of Dingsha County.

Afterwards, An Yinong led his troops to visit the homes of various large landowners, killed three and left five, while also harvesting a large amount of land, livestock, and other supplies. With money, people and land, An Yinong’s plan could finally begin.

The first step was to divide the land. The total amount of land acquired from these landlords was more than 100,000 mu, which they divided into three categories: upper, middle and lower. Thirty thousand mu was reserved for raising cattle and growing grass, and the rest was sold to ordinary people at 70% of the market price (rich peasants and landlords were not allowed to participate in the sale), and the money for the purchase was allowed to be paid off in three years.

As a result, the number of middle peasants in Dingsha County, which originally had less than 10% (they had enough land of their own and were self-sufficient without having to rent land from others), had now risen directly to 30%. The previous 80 percent of poor peasants (who owned little or no land and had to rent land from others) were reduced to 30 percent. Some middle peasants became rich peasants (they needed to hire others, but they also had to work in the fields themselves).

The second step was land reclamation.

The purpose of reclaiming wasteland was to allow poor people who had no land and no money to buy land to own farmland, solve their hunger problem and stabilize their hearts. Therefore, the wasteland that has been reclaimed will be sold to them at half the price of inferior farmland.

The third step was to build government welfare housing (exclusively for the poor in the county).

In An Yinong’s plan, a welfare housing community was a new small village where the people living in dilapidated houses in the slums could have a home that was sheltered from the wind and rain. Of course, this also meant that they have to move out of Dingsha County and transfer their household registration outside the city.

Once he has enough food and clothing, he will be able to spare no effort to develop Dingsha County’s cash crops and animals, as well as build roads to rejuvenate Dingsha County. One must eat one bite at a time and walk one step at a time. It was too far to talk about those things now. What lied before him now was the task of land reclamation.

It was already early winter, and according to local elders, it will only snow in the next few days, so he seized the time every day to open up the wasteland. If thousands of acres of wasteland could not be reclaimed before the snow falls, many poor people would not be able to get arable land next spring.

An Yinong and the chief clerk talked as they walked. They entered the town and walked onto the main road. With the arrival of winter, Dingsha County had become quite lively. One could often see food shops selling mutton soup for three cents a bowl on the street. It was sprinkled with some local spices, and one will sweat all over after drinking. It was so comfortable.

It just so happened that An Yinong was hungry, so he randomly picked a restaurant and ordered a bowl of mutton soup and a pancake. The chief clerk also ordered one, and they sat down on the street.

“Your mutton soup and bread.” The food was served quickly. An Yinong picked up the bread, tore it into pieces bit by bit and threw it into the mutton soup where no pieces of mutton could be seen.

“Hello, shopkeeper. Today’s mutton soup is quite large.” A herdsman walked into the soup shop carrying a string of money. He bought a big bowl of hot mutton soup for three cents, and also spent money to buy a few slices of roasted mutton and a pancake.

“Now that those two families have gone bankrupt, water is free and the price of mutton is also lower.” The shopkeeper laughed.

In fact, the most important thing was that the government compensated every shop that had been fined double taxes for the money it collected this year. Moreover, the sheep were previously purchased and sold by the Jin and Bai families. They bought at a low price and sold at a high price, which made the cost of buying them more expensive. Now, the government has unified the price so both sellers and buyers benefited.

“It’s because our new magistrate is courageous. After all these years, I never thought that the Jin and Bai families, who were more arrogant than the emperor, would be uprooted like this. I went to the execution ground and saw with my own eyes the heads of those people, as well as the horse thieves, falling to the ground.” said one diner.

“Yes, thanks to our county magistrate, my family got back the land that was taken away from us, and we even bought two more acres. My wife said we should raise a few more sheep next year.” When they talked about the changes that have taken place in Dingsha County during this period, they couldn’t stop smiling.

More than 100,000 acres of land were distributed to the people. Almost every household had more land and more confidence in life.

The diners were filled with emotion: “I didn’t expect that our county magistrate, who looks like a scholar, could be so resolute in his work. Great! We finally met a capable person in Dingsha County.”

There were some good county magistrates in the past, but unfortunately, they were no match for the Jin and Bai families and their lives were killed in vain. An Yinong lowered his head and ate dinner in silence. He was now dressed like a herdsman and wore a thick hat, so people walking on the street did not recognize him.

The people of Dingsha County were really easy to satisfy. An Yinong only knocked two families down, gave them a few acres of land, and allowed them to regain the freedom to fetch water and a little more money, and their faces were already full of smiles.

After dinner, he returned to the county government office alone, and went through the back door, which was opened by gatekeeper Wei. Even though the Jin and Bai families had fallen, he still didn’t leave. Such a master was willing to guard the door for him.

His friends came to him and asked: “Why are you doing this?”

Wei Menfang held his knife and said, “This place is nice. I will retire here.”

An Yinong returned to the backyard, took off his hat and took a sip of hot tea when someone knocked on the door and came in with a stack of books in his hands: “Sir, the extra taxes collected from the Jin and Bai families have been paid.”

“Yes.” An Yinong nodded. “I heard from the elders in the county that there will be heavy snow this year, so I sent people to notify every household and ask them to reinforce their houses and collect firewood in time.”

The county magistrate received a new task and left. Ever since An Yinong led the garrison into the city, the old men in the county government had not rested. But this busyness just calmed these people. Everyone was worried that the county magistrate would settle accounts with them, but since they were still employed, did it mean… that bygone days would be forgiven?

The county magistrate went to the front yard with a smile, preparing to pack up and go home, but he didn’t expect to meet two acquaintances as soon as he went out. These two men were not wearing yamen uniforms anymore. They took them off in front of the county magistrate. They recently wanted to put them back on and have already contacted many people.

“Sir…” They came over with apologetic smiles on their faces and gifts in their hands.

“No! I’m not ready to take off my official robe and leave. You two… Alas, I’m just unlucky. There’s nothing I can do.” The old county magistrate didn’t want to get involved in this matter. Even though he was an eighth-rank official, he was nothing in front of the real county magistrate. He himself was in a difficult situation.

After they walked away, the county magistrate looked back and threw his sleeves, “Bad luck.”

The two former yamen runners watched as the county magistrate avoided them as if he were the plague. Thinking about the mess in their home and the mocking looks from others, they felt an overwhelming sense of remorse. Tell me, why didn’t they insist on persisting in the first place? Why did they try to be clever?

One of them shook his head and gritted his teeth: “The Jin family is gone, but his wife’s family is still there. I’ll go find him!”

The other person stood there blankly for a moment, then stretched out his hand and slapped himself. “Old Liu, Old Liu, isn’t it better to wear a yamen runner’s uniform and do yamen runner’s work? You went to flatter the Jin family and not only did you lose your job, but now you can’t even buy land, and your wife wants a divorce. You’re so cheap! Oh!”