Difficult to Mediate on Both Sides

Lu Xiufu actually had an inkling of what the imperial court was up to, but as a man who considered the fate of the realm his own responsibility and took pride in serving the sovereign, he was fully prepared to report to his new post upon receiving the imperial edict. He had little desire to linger in Changzhou for over a month.

Yet, the court had managed to hit Lu Xiufu right where it hurt.

How could he be persuaded? The twenty thousand bushels of grain had already been delivered to him, so using that as leverage was out of the question. Appealing to reason and emotion would not work through reason alone, for no reason on earth could ever supersede state law. Since the state law now demanded that Lu Xiufu take charge of the Directorate for Military Armaments, he would undoubtedly go.

They had to strike from another angle. Lu Xiufu's greatest benefactor was Li Tingzhi; without Li Tingzhi, Lu Xiufu would have long since crashed and burned amidst the court's factional struggles, let alone be bouncing around today acting as a trouble-shooting troubleshooter.

Presently, Li Tingzhi had been demoted to Tanzhou and appointed as the Pacification Commissioner for Xiangyang and Fancheng. The thirty-and-odd thousand routed soldiers he had recently integrated were currently stationed and garrisoned in the area. If Lu Xiufu remained in Runzhou and continued to serve as Assistant Minister of the Court of Agricultural Affairs, there was still a decent chance he could look after Li Tingzhi's family, who had been left displaced in Runzhou.

If Lu Xiufu went all the way to Hangzhou, what would become of that entire household?

Come to think of it, Li Tingzhi was rather a pitiable figure. His ancestral home was in Suizhou, Hubei, and he later moved to Dean, Hubei. If Xiangyang were still standing, that region would merely be a contested border zone between the Mongols and the Song, leaving open the possibility of returning to one's ancestral roots.

Now that Xiangyang had opened its gates and the Yuan army was pressing aggressively southward, the frontline of their forces had reached Yingzhou and Ezhou. Under such circumstances, Li Tingzhi's household of over a hundred souls had zero possibility of returning home.

Left with no other choice, Li Tingzhi had no option but to entrust his family, originally residing in Yangzhou, to Lu Xiufu across the river in Runzhou, hoping that Lu Xiufu would properly care for his dependents.

Settling over a hundred people properly was no easy task. Previously, while Lu Xiufu was still in Hangzhou, he had engaged in scathing ink-warfare with Fan Wenhu and others precisely because of Li Tingzhi's affairs. It was only recently that he had been promoted to Assistant Minister of the Court of Agricultural Affairs and dispatched to Runzhou on official business, giving him the chance to look after Li Tingzhi's family.

To be fair, Li Tingzhi had treated him with kindness as heavy as mountains and seas—how could he not repay it?

This speech left Lu Xiufu in silence. State affairs were certainly important, but Li Tingzhi's kindness could not be forgotten either. That was the mark of a true gentleman. Because he was a gentleman, he served his sovereign with loyalty and treated others with sincerity. Since someone had entrusted their wife and children to Lu Xiufu, Lu Xiufu would inevitably raise Li Tingzhi's sons as if they were his own.

Was he still leaving? Zhang Xun gently pressed down on Lu Xiufu's arm, urging him to think it over carefully.

Even if he wanted to leave, he had to see that Li Tingzhi's entire family was properly settled first. Such an arrangement could not possibly be completed in less than a month. There were over a hundred mouths to feed, the elderly and the young alike, and he even had to secure a source of income and property for them to protect them from hunger and cold.

Lu Xiufu truly had nothing more to say to this. He could decline other matters, but this was genuinely inescapable. The imperial decree itself instructed him to settle the affairs of the Jiankang and Runzhou Agricultural Granaries before assuming his post at the Imperial Directorate for Military Armaments, which was entirely reasonable and justifiable.

Splendid. Having finally pinned Lu Xiufu down, Zhang Xun turned his gaze back to Li Rang. He demanded an explanation: didn't you promise your younger brother here that you would pull a few more men together for me? Why is there still no echo?

Earlier, when Zhang Xun had been discussing troop recruitment with the local gentry of the commandery, Zhang Xun had funded the recruitment of two hundred men, and they had only sent over three hundred-odd in return. It seemed Zhang Xun would probably have to fund a thousand before they could bear to send two thousand. With no other choice, Zhang Xun had pressed Li Rang to cough up some men as well.

When this matter was brought up, Li Rang nodded, indicating that he had already sent a letter to his home in Wuxi, and his family would dispatch a hundred men immediately. Still, he asked not to be pushed too hard, as those sent might inevitably include a few household servants and pageboys.

Servants and pageboys?

A brand-new door suddenly swung open before Zhang Xun.

As mentioned before, the old Zhang clan in Changzhou had risen to prominence since the Yang Wu dynasty, and by now, they had multiplied over four hundred years. The number of household servants and attendants belonging to the family had multiplied countless times over. Earlier, when tenant farmers had died from drinking brine, Zhang Xun hadn't even brought their sons and daughters into the estate to serve as maids and pages.

The truth was simply that there were too many people—so many that they could not possibly find enough tasks for them.

Since that was the case, they might as well pack all of them off to serve under Ma Yong as front-line shield-bearing infantry. After all, apart from the brave and effective veterans, the rest were nothing more than starving refugees and vagrants. Ma Yong had been remarkably honest: these soldiers were meant for generals to steady the battle line.

Their primary job was to shield the brave and effective troops in the rear, and their secondary purpose was to gamble that the Mongol cavalry would not dare to charge a fortified infantry phalanx.

Whether they succeeded or failed had no bearing on the grand strategy. Nobody would grieve if they died; if they survived a few battles, they would become veterans who could be properly trained and used as regular troops.

The only problem was that these household servants and attendants had multiplied across so many generations within the Zhang family, forming a tangled web of relationships. He himself might be cold-faced and hard-hearted, unafraid of their pleas and weeping, but what about Madam Zhang?

If these several hundred men were simply shipped off to Ma Yong, and their mothers and wives ran crying to Madam Zhang to beg for mercy, and Madam Zhang's heart softened and she demanded them back, the whole endeavor would be ruined and come to nothing.

The matter had to be handled on two fronts. On one front, Ma Yong needed to set up his camp and confine all the men strictly within the military enclosure, forbidding them from wandering outside without cause. On the other front, he had to persuade Madam Zhang and implore her not to let her heart soften.

Once this wave of turmoil regarding drafting men into the military camp blew over, they could figure out subsequent countermeasures.

Having hastily hatched a plan in his mind, Zhang Xun went to see Madam Zhang. Although Madam Zhang was advanced in years and tended to be somewhat lenient with the servants, she nonetheless harbored deep loyalty and righteousness, knowing full well that state affairs came first.

The crucial point was that the Zhang family's burden was indeed quite heavy. Although nominally the maidservants and bondsmen of the Song dynasty were in a so-called employment relationship, in reality, once parents became bondsmen, their children would in all probability also become bondsmen, running errands for the master.

This bonded employment relationship was, in most cases, hereditary. After all, once they had sold themselves into servitude, what farmland or housing did they have left to return to for farming and dwelling? Lacking the means of production, they had no choice but to continue being employed.

To truly drive them out of the estate and order them to seek their own livelihoods would be tantamount to sending them to their deaths.

Sending the surplus servants and attendants of the household off to be soldiers right now wasn't as if they were actually going onto the battlefield. Zhang Xun would do his utmost to keep Ma Yong's forces stationed in Changzhou as a garrison unit, which incidentally also served as a minor self-preservation tactic in the twilight of the dynasty.

For a wealthy household like his own, if they were truly slaughtered lock, stock, and barrel by the well-connected original stakeholders of the Yuan dynasty, those people might not even face any criminal charges. On the contrary, for people like them, dying meant dying in vain.

After explaining the current situation to Madam Zhang, she closed her eyes, pondered for a long while, and finally said that the matter should be handled precisely as he had suggested.

Splendid!

The very next day, Zhang Xun gathered the four hundred-odd servants and attendants and drove them all into Ma Yong's military camp. When their wives and mothers went to Madam Zhang to plead for mercy, Madam Zhang suddenly "fell ill"—she fell gravely ill and refused to see anyone. Zhang Xun also issued a stern warning: anyone who dared to disturb the old lady's recuperation would find their entire family bound in hemp sacks at midnight and beaten to death.