The moment he received the interrogation results, Wei Yuan dispatched men to round up all the leaders of the merchant caravan and questioned them personally.
The caravan figure who had made contact with the military officers was a deacon, while the chief manager was an unremarkable middle-aged man with late Dao Foundation cultivation and mediocre talent.
The instant he saw Wei Yuan, he began wailing that he had been wronged.
Wei Yuan sat composed and still, perusing the dossier in his hands. Only when the man grew tired of shouting did Wei Yuan speak. "You wish to buy land in Qingming?"
A flicker of shock crossed the manager's eyes, yet his face displayed nothing but confusion. "This humble one is merely doing business between both regions, trading in grain, fabric, armor, and ore—none of which are forbidden! This humble one has never once thought of buying land. Does Qingming even have fields for sale?"
Wei Yuan said calmly, "Since this Military Commissioner is questioning you in person, you ought to know the gravity of your situation. With your petty cultivation, do you truly think you can conceal anything from me? I will give you one final chance. If you do not speak the truth, you will be executed. When this Military Commissioner wants someone beheaded, he owes an explanation to no one. Speak: whose orders are you acting under?"
The manager's expression shifted erratically. Under the oppressive aura of Wei Yuan's dharma idol, his entire body shuddered and his sea of consciousness was frozen, rendering him almost unable to move.
He suddenly kowtowed repeatedly, stammering, "This humble one will talk! I will talk!"
Right then, the door swung open. A jailer entered and presented a written confession. "Milord, that deacon has confessed everything. They were commissioned by Wang Kui, nephew of Zhao's Duke of Xiang, to come to Qingming and look for an opportunity to buy land. He said they have already scouted several plots, with locations as follows."
Wei Yuan swept his gaze over the confession and immediately recognized that those plots were all close to Qingming's core region. They essentially met the criteria for spiritual fields and counted as quasi-spiritual fields. Because clearing the true spiritual fields was far from finished, those plots were currently planted with mortal rice, which yielded six hundred jin per mu.
Spiritual fields and mortal fields operated on completely different price scales. In the human domain, an ordinary mu of mortal field cost a few taels of mortal silver, and even prime arable land of this caliber was worth no more than a single tael of immortal silver. A spiritual field, by contrast, started at one hundred taels of immortal silver. Once these quasi-spiritual fields in Qingming were converted into spiritual fields, even if they barely met the threshold, they would be worth at least eighty to ninety taels of immortal silver. That amounted to nearly a hundredfold difference in price.
Combined, those plots totaled over three thousand mu, but their converted value was hundreds of thousands of taels of immortal silver!
Liu Fei's request for casualty compensation had been five mu per household. It sounded modest; even for top-grade arable land, five mu was significantly lower than the normal compensation for elite border troops. Moreover, for the sake of this compensation, Liu Fei had offered that all surviving soldiers in his battalion could forfeit their military merit rewards, presenting himself as thoroughly righteous.
Had Wei Yuan agreed to his request, the two-hundred-plus dead of a single battalion alone would have claimed over a thousand mu. Adding the similar demands from the other battalions, all three thousand-odd mu of potential spiritual fields would have been partitioned away.
Unfortunately for them, Wei Yuan knew every inch of Qingming like the back of his hand, so this little trick had zero chance of slipping past him.
Growing mortal rice on potential spiritual fields consumed only a fraction of their fertility while allowing their spiritual nature to accumulate. That was why Wei Yuan had left them untouched for now, intending to nurture them for a few years and only bring them into service when there were truly no other spiritual fields left to clear. He had never expected someone to target them.
Evidently, the recent battle had erupted suddenly, and using casualty compensation to secure land had been an opportunistic move.
One had to admit the scheme was quite clever. All the compensation claimed by the arrested officers came to roughly ten thousand mu, a drop in the ocean compared to Qingming's five-million-plus mu of fields. Had this happened anywhere else, or had Cui Yu, Xu Yi, Yu Zhizhuo, or others been in charge of the matter, it might well have been approved.
Once the families of the fallen received the land, the caravan would have quietly bought it from their hands, leaving Wei Yuan in a delicate position. Forcibly reclaiming it would harm Qingming's reputation, offend the nobility of Zhao, and leave him without moral justification.
Wei Yuan had already deduced the causes and consequences before coming. Receiving the deacon's confession merely confirmed what was in his mind. He immediately told the caravan manager, "Colluding with military officers and covertly surveying the geography and fields of my jurisdiction—either offense warrants death. Men, drag him out and behead him. Hang his head above the gates of Yong'an for all to see."
The caravan manager had never imagined the situation would turn out like this in the blink of an eye. His face turned ashen as he kowtowed frantically, shouting at the top of his lungs, "If you execute me, you will chill the hearts of every caravan under heaven! Young Master Wang will not let you off, and the Duke of Xiang will never let you off!"
Ordinarily, this moment called for a sneer and some scathing words, such as, "Do you believe that with a single word, I could do this or that...?"
Yet Wei Yuan felt harsh words were in finite supply. Wasting them on a caravan manager was entirely pointless; even barking them at some Young Master Wang was a bit of a waste. Only the Duke of Xiang deserved such treatment.
And so Wei Yuan merely waved his hand. The cultivators dragged the manager outside, and an instant later, a bloodcurdling scream rang out. The shriek was brief and shrill, letting Wei Yuan know these jailers adhered strictly to the rules.
Had it been the executioners of Western Jin, there would have been far more tricks. Whether a condemned man paid a bribe made a world of difference: without money, they would use a notched blade and hack multiple times without severing the neck clean.
Besides the manager, the deacon who had liaised with the officers was also beheaded. The remaining senior managers of the caravan were all detained and sentenced to hard labor, with no option for their families to ransom them. Half of the caravan's goods were confiscated as restitution; the other half could only be retrieved if the caravan's owner came to Qingming in person to confess his guilt.
Having dealt with the caravan, it was the officers' turn.
Liu Fei was convicted of exceeding his authority, forming cliques for private gain, illicitly surveying geography, inciting mutiny, and plotting rebellion. Even after using his past merits to offset his crimes, he was still sentenced to beheading, though he was spared having his head displayed in public. All the soldiers of the Third Battalion were pardoned, but their accumulated merits were wiped clean.
The captain who had colluded with external enemies was beheaded, and his head was hung for three months. The remaining commanders were stripped of their military ranks and merits, demoted to guilty commoners, and forced to earn merit anew. The soldiers of their respective units were pardoned, with their accumulated merits halved.
After punishing the troublemakers, Wei Yuan promulgated the regulations for casualty compensation.
First, depending on the status and cultivation of the fallen, their orphaned dependents' status would automatically be elevated in accordance with the corresponding military merit. Second, the orphans' monthly grain ration would be raised by one grade. Third, orphans would receive one opportunity to advance to the Dao Foundation stage; if they lacked the talent to break through, it could be exchanged for an equivalent sum of immortal silver. Fourth, a lump-sum compensation in immortal silver would be granted.
At the same time, Wei Yuan revised the previously established hierarchy of guilty commoners, soldiers, civilians, and registered officials. After refining the specifics through the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, he promulgated the system once more.
Advancement in status still relied on accumulated merit. Rising from a guilty commoner to a soldier required only twenty military merits. Under Qingming's current laws, beheading an enemy on the battlefield earned ten merits, meaning that slaying two foes was enough to shed the status of guilty commoner. Aside from fighting on the front lines, however, accumulating merit through other channels was vastly slower.
Advancing from a soldier to a civilian required one hundred merits, while rising from a civilian to a registered official required five hundred merits. Within the bracket of registered officials, one could advance as high as an imperially registered vice general. However, every post from battalion commander upward required Dao Foundation cultivation.
Under the lowest tier of casualty compensation, direct descendants across two generations could each receive a twenty-merit status elevation. In other words, if one person in the household died in battle, the entire family could cast off the status of guilty commoner. The higher a fallen soldier's cultivation and rank, the greater the status elevation granted to his family, up to the rank of civilian.
Chapter 445