Relief

Over the past few days, Chu Qiguang had already heard plenty about how the village lizheng were scrambling to collect grain taxes, targeting only the poorest, weakest, and easiest villagers to bully. Ever since the father and elder brother had disappeared while gathering firewood in the mountains, Ergou's household had been reduced to a lone mother and two children—an easy mark in the eyes of certain village vultures. Housekeeper Wang pointed an accusing finger at Chu Qiguang and snarled in fury, "You've really lost your mind! Do you have any idea what they mean by 'magistrates come and go, but the yamen stands forever'? Are you trying to get the entire village killed?" Chu Qiguang knew Housekeeper Wang was not exaggerating, and he knew precisely where the man's confidence lay. As someone who loved indulgence and comfort above all else, having been stranded here for five whole days, how could he not look for ways to improve his circumstances? And before taking action, how could he fail to map out the power structure of his current environment? Based on Ergou's memories and the intelligence Chu Qiguang had gathered, the administrative system of the Great Han Dynasty placed the county yamen in charge of the county seat and its surrounding villages. Wang Family Village and the neighboring countryside all fell under the jurisdiction of Qingyang County. Within the Qingyang County yamen, the hierarchy was split from top to bottom into three tiers: officials, functionaries, and corvée runners—a structure remarkably similar to the county yamens of the Ming Dynasty in Chu Qiguang's memories of Earth. The officials were led by the magistrate, flanked by two deputies: the vice magistrate and the registrar. Together, they held supreme administrative authority in the yamen. The functionaries included the jail warden—roughly equivalent to a police chief—and the Six Offices, which corresponded to the imperial court's six ministries of Rites, Personnel, Revenue, Works, War, and Justice, handling their respective county affairs. As for the runners, they were commoners drafted through corvée labor to do menial chores at the yamen. There was the Attendant Squad responsible for receptions and ceremonial processions; the Militia Squad tasked with maintaining public order; and the Fast Squad charged with apprehending criminals and dispatching official documents. The rest were storehouse keepers, guard laborers, grooms, and other odd-job hands serving within the yamen. From the three top-tier officials down to dozens of mid-level clerk functionaries and more than a hundred low-tier runners, this formed the power pyramid of the Qingyang County yamen, ruling over the county's population of more than a hundred thousand. Although the officials wielded substantial power, their terms lasted only a few years before they were rotated elsewhere, and they were forbidden from serving in their native regions. The clerk functionaries, on the other hand, held no imperial establishment posts, had little prospect of promotion, and did not draw their stipends from the state treasury, but they could pass their positions down through the generations. In particular, the records of taxes and corvée obligations were handwritten entirely by the clerks of the Six Offices. With a single flick of a brush, a clerk could record barren scrubland as fertile acreage or register an underage child as an able-bodied adult male, burdening a household with crushing taxes it could never bear and driving entire families to ruin. The functionaries and yamen runners put down roots across generations, forming an intricate web of local interests. Every administrative directive required their on-the-ground execution; without their cooperation, a magistrate's words might not even carry beyond the yamen gates. Once local petty clerks and wealthy households joined hands, they could employ countless tricks to evade taxes and labor levies—such as thousands of mu of fertile fields appearing on the clerks' registers as having no land at all, shifting their dodged obligations onto the destitute, turning government land into private holdings, and transmuting private plots into official land... A rural landed tycoon like the Wang family had long since colluded with the county yamen's clerks and runners, preying upon the common folk hand in glove. As the reality of the county flickered through Chu Qiguang's mind like lightning, a thought involuntarily surfaced: *The Great Han Dynasty's yamen structure is virtually identical to that of the Ming Dynasty, and the way they conspire to squeeze the common people is no different either. Could this world be a parallel reality?* Ignoring Housekeeper Wang's fury, Chu Qiguang responded calmly, "If the village's rich households are dodging taxes and corvée duties, why should we make up the difference? If it needs patching, go patch it out of your own pockets." Auntie Chen looked anxiously at Ergou's mother. "Little Sister, aren't you going to rein in this son of yours? What kind of insolent nonsense is he spouting?" Ergou's mother stepped in front of Ergou, keeping her head low as she said in a timid voice, "What Gouzi says isn't without reason." "Reason, my foot!" Housekeeper Wang snapped coldly. "If my master hadn't shown mercy over the years by buying your land, you would have been hauled off to the county seat, had your property confiscated, and been exiled three thousand li long ago!" With that, Housekeeper Wang began heading out the door, flanked by his two attendants. The lizheng stood up as well, glaring at Ergou's mother. "The county is still waiting for an answer. The deadline set by our superiors is only a month away. If we fail to collect the full grain tax by then, none of us will have an easy time." Seeing the two men making to leave, Ergou's mother panicked again. Auntie Chen chimed in to fan the flames: "If we can't scrape together the grain tax, the entire neighborhood will face collective punishment. When that happens, won't you be reviled and have fingers of blame pointed at your back by the whole village?" Yet the more Chu Qiguang spoke, the more energized he became. The lingering discomfort in his body vanished without a trace, and he pressed on, "Let the county come and investigate. Let them see who really has something to hide." The lizheng glared, pointing right at Chu Qiguang's face. "Go ahead and make a scene! Best if you drag the entire village down with you so we all go to ruin together!" ... Inside the modest earthen cottage, watching the group depart, Ergou's mother grew fraught with worry. "Gouzi, if this really blows up and reaches the county, what on earth are we going to do?" Chu Qiguang patted his mother's shoulder. "Rest easy, Mother. This won't ever reach the county. The Wang family conceals the most farmland and laborers, and evades the most taxes. They have neither a xiucai nor a juren in their lineage; they've only gotten away with it by throwing their weight around the village and maintaining ties with the county clerks. "Even if we don't pay, they'll make up the grain tax themselves. They wouldn't dare bring this before the new magistrate. That would cost them far more silver to bribe the man—way more than the few mu of land and handful of taels they could squeeze out of our family. Petty skinflints like the Wangs would never stomach that cost." Chu Qiguang shook his head. "They will definitely choose to settle this matter inside the village." Ergou's mother's anxiety did not diminish in the least. "Even so, the Wang family won't let us off the hook." Chu Qiguang offered a confident smile. "Don't worry. I have my ways." Watching the retreating backs of Housekeeper Wang and his party disappear into the distance, Chu Qiguang felt a surge of unadulterated pleasure. The earlier restlessness and suffocating irritation vanished in an instant. His cold sweat stopped, his legs ceased shaking, and every symptom of his looming breakdown evaporated. He felt whole again. *It really is that affliction...* Chu Qiguang thought, caught between satisfaction and exasperation. *Positive attention dependency personality disorder. A mental illness I've never seen anyone else suffer from besides myself.* *Once the craving hits, if I don't give a savage verbal thrashing to someone who rubs me the wrong way, or show off and assert dominance, I literally feel like I'm going to die.* *Damn it!*