Chapter Ninety-Four: I’ll Take Care of You

Liu the Sixth sprang out as if a donkey had been struck in the rump. Before Yun Hao could even make sense of what was happening, the old men all bolted after him. Yun Hao gave Nannan, who was just as dumbstruck, a baffled look, then ran out after them.

On a hillside in the distance, thick smoke was billowing up. Black fumes surged skyward as if a forest fire had broken out and was trying to swallow the heavens.

The moment Liu the Sixth saw that roiling black smoke, he froze. Then he dropped to the ground and broke into heartrending wails, as if his own mother had just died. The others looked equally stricken, as though they were attending a funeral. Some of them simply dropped to their knees and kowtowed, muttering prayers under their breath, no one knowing which deity they were imploring.

"Old Liu, what is going on?" Yun Hao asked, puzzled. It was only a forest fire, after all. Wouldn’t putting it out solve the problem?

"Ground fire! It’s ground fire, Master!" Liu the Sixth wailed so hard he nearly ran out of breath, his body jerking with every gasp.

After asking for a long time, Yun Hao finally pieced together the gist of it. Somehow, the earth had caught fire. This sort of thing only happened once every few years. Some said it was the Bodhisattva of the Underworld taking offense; others said the King of Hell was summoning the dead. Still others claimed it was the baleful qi of the netherworld. They had invited eminent monks to perform rites and Daoist masters to suppress the omen, but nothing had ever worked. Some ground fires even burned for a year or two before finally going out.

Not only would grain refuse to grow in the ground, but even land that had once burned would never bear crops again. To the tenant farmers, ground fire meant disaster. Every time it happened, the Daoist priests would demand a boy and a girl as living offerings. This time, no one knew whose children would be the unlucky ones.

Ground fire... Wasn’t that just spontaneous coal-seam combustion? Yun Hao remembered that Jinyang was in Shanxi. This was one of the richest coal-producing regions in all of China, with excellent coal and high calorific value. In later generations, much of the coal used for power generation had been dug out of Shanxi.

It was only a geological phenomenon, yet somehow it had been twisted by people with overactive imaginations. No one knew how many children had been thrown into the flames and burned alive to a crisp.

"Old Liu, it’s only ground fire. What’s the big deal? You’re not thinking of throwing someone’s child in there as a sacrifice, are you? Let me tell you this: if that ever happens, I won’t let you off."

"Master, children are the flesh and blood of their parents! Who could bear to throw one into a fire pit? But there’s nothing to be done. The Bodhisattva of the Underworld is displeased, and any land that has burned will no longer bear crops. That’s the real deathblow. Who knows how many acres this fire will ruin? If the fields bear no grain, what is a whole village of old and young supposed to eat?" Liu the Sixth cried like a baby just out of swaddling. To farmers, land was dearer than life itself. If the soil would no longer grow crops, that was an even greater catastrophe than losing one’s parents.

"Listen carefully, Liu the Sixth. I, Yun Hao, am the master of this estate. Since you are my tenants, you have to obey me. Whatever I tell you to do, you do it.

"And since you obey me, I am responsible for feeding you. All of you hear me now: from this day on, as long as you do the work I assign properly, the Yun family will cover every bite of food for your entire household. Every month, each family will come collect its wages. If you don’t want cash, you can take grain instead. Do you hear me?"

Yun Hao roared the word "I" with full force. There was no need to farm the land; he could turn them straight to industrial work. If the output of future technology could not feed this whole estate, then he figured he might as well go report to King Qin Guang.

There was no cheer as he had expected, only a strange silence. The people who had been crying and howling just moments before now stared at him with eyes wide as saucers.

"We’re finished! Finished!" Liu the Sixth wept even more bitterly. So it was bad enough that a ground fire had appeared, and now the manor lord had gone mad too. How were they supposed to go on living? Shouldn’t they start gathering their things and flee to beg for food?

Yun Hao felt thoroughly depressed. His pride had taken a severe blow. No one believed the words of an eight-year-old child. A mouth with no hair on it could not be trusted to handle real business, and even a manor lord was no exception. They would rather trust the gods and buddhas in the sky to bless them than believe a child who claimed he could feed nearly a hundred mouths in the village.

After a moment’s thought, Yun Hao immediately went back into the house. He searched for a long while before finding paper and a brush, then handed them to the cart driver and told him to take them home to Zhang Miaoke.

"Listen to me: bring my wife here. I’ll give you fifty cash as a reward."

Yun Hao patted the driver on the shoulder. He was no longer the same Yun Hao as before. The scene at the wedding procession had shaken the entire heart of Jinyang City. Now nobody did not know that there was a lean, dark-skinned capable man under Yun Hao’s command. With a few punches and kicks, he had flattened a whole heap of Turkic men. Those tattooed thugs might have dared to lay hands on Nannan, but even if you lent them eight times the courage, they would never dare lay a finger on Yun Hao.

The whole estate was crying to the heavens, and Yun Hao had no heart for eating. Somehow Nannan found a few eggs, and the three of them boiled them in a pot and ate them simply with hot water.

Beneath heavy rewards, brave men are not hard to find. The cart driver whipped the horse along as if it were a car. He had set out in the morning, and before noon he was back with Zhang Miaoke. Hou Junji came riding behind them, and to Yun Hao’s surprise, Chai Shao had also arrived, leading a group of men at full gallop.

Come to think of it, such a huge matter as a ground fire could not simply be ignored. As the acting guardian of Jinyang, Chai Shao naturally had to come and make things clear. There was no need to say it outright: he was there on behalf of Li Yuan to investigate. The only question was whether, when he returned, he would ask the Buddhists or the Daoists to solve the problem. But Yun Hao had already made up his mind: if anyone dared throw children into those flames, he would never let them go.

"What’s all this about? Why did you make me bring so much money?" Zhang Miaoke asked anxiously after getting out of the carriage.

"Did you bring the money?"

"I brought it. It’s in the cart."

Yun Hao was deeply moved. Not every wife could trust her husband without question, not every wife would take a vague, half-formed letter from him and then drag a whole cart of copper cash across the world to see to it. With that kind of trust, he thought, then a little arrogance on his part was nothing. For the Yun household now, they needed exactly such a domineering woman. Otherwise, with his own mother’s temperament, they would be bullied to death.

Too occupied to speak with Chai Shao or Hou Junji, Yun Hao leaped up onto the cart at once. Sure enough, it was piled high with copper coins.

He climbed down again, then scrambled onto the roof of the cart and shouted at the top of his lungs, "All of you listen to me! I said I would feed you, and I mean it. My wife has already brought the money back. If you want, it can all be exchanged for grain tomorrow. The money is right there in the Yun residence now. I, Yun Hao, keep my word. As long as you work hard, I’ll pay you wages every month. If you’d rather have grain than money, that works too. Do you hear me?"

Yun Hao roared at the people gathered around the cart, and on the last word his voice cracked so badly he sounded like a little rooster trying to crow.