Chương 31: ：Free Province, No Shipping Required

Rebellion was never easy. On paper, they might already command a hundred thousand troops, but the Yong Emperor had at least six hundred thousand trained regulars and more than a few capable generals. If they raised the rebel flag now, they would basically be asking to get dogpiled from every direction. With three years left before the deadline, Gu Zhiwei decided to spend the next year or two building up the north before raising the rebel flag.

And with so many more mouths to feed all at once, she could hardly expect Uncle Chen to support them all by himself. Farming the land while drilling the troops was no longer optional. As for the land, Gu Zhiwei checked the maps and found that state estates took up an obscene eighty percent of Liangzhou. Commoners had to work those fields for free, then farm their own scraps and pay taxes on them too. Clearly, this humanitarian masterpiece had to go. Gu Zhiwei dropped the plan into the group chat.

Naturally, nobody objected. Instead, everyone started adding their own "brilliant ideas." Oliver: Ge Chu already claimed the Western Regions tribes were colluding with the Beirong, right? Then let's fight under the Western Regions' banner. The Yong Emperor is too much of a coward to fight the Beirong alone. Throw the Western Regions into the mix too, and I doubt he'll dare send troops at all. Wang Pu: Exactly.

Ge Chu only went so hard on the "bandits" because he knew He Zheng was still loyal to the court and wouldn't truly fight back. That bastard only bullies people he knows won't bite. Matt: My scouts reported back yesterday. Apparently, once Ge Chu heard the Northern Garrison Army's main camp had fallen, he fled to Shuozhou. The magistrates in the neighboring counties ran too. It's time to move. Chen Li: Zhiwei, send the gold and silver the Khan's consort gave you to my wine shop in Shuozhou.

I'll spread it around, put it to work, and make more money with it. The uniforms and winter clothes you asked for are already on the road. They should arrive next week. Aglaya: Can I send mine too? Mom gave me way too much gold. I don't have any use for it. Wang Pu: I'm honestly tired of saying how jealous I am. Once they had made their decision, they acted. In less than half a month, all of Liangzhou had fallen into their hands.

The silver and grain taken from government offices and the local gentry who had spent years squeezing the people dry were enough to supply the entire army for more than two years. There was even enough left over to trade with the Beirong for warhorses. Under the new equal-field system, even ordinary soldiers in the Northern Garrison Army received small plots of their own. They would pay only a modest land tax. The rest of the harvest would be theirs.

Officers ranked centurion or above were also allowed to bring their families to live in Huaiyuan. Gu Zhiwei followed this with a detailed promotion system. Now that ordinary soldiers could actually see a path upward, they threw themselves into both drills and military farming. Matt also spoke with the Insignia Guards he brought. Anyone willing to stay could bring their families here and would be given housing. The new army was badly short of capable officers, and these men had all been trained by Matt himself.

Skilled and battle-tested, they were the obvious choices to replace the deputy generals who had served under Ge Chu. Having followed Matt and Gu Zhiwei all the way here, the guards had seen firsthand what the two of them could do, and they knew what Great Yong had become. Their only concern was their families in the capital. With Matt's new offer, even that was no longer an issue. For the people of Liangzhou, the change was earthshaking.

They accepted their newly allotted fields in a daze, as though afraid they might wake up at any moment. Then they heard that the new ruler had exempted them from taxes for two years, and that afterward they would pay only a third of the former land tax. Countless people bowed deeply toward Huaiyuan, praying to every god and Buddha that their new ruler would live a hundred years. Even so, vast tracts of wasteland in Liangzhou still awaited cultivation. The soil itself was quite fertile.

The problem was that years of Beirong raids had driven too many people from their homes and into other provinces. Taxes and levies elsewhere were brutal too, but at least the odds of being raided by the Beirong were much lower. Gu Zhiwei remembered the vast expanses of fertile land destroyed by floods in Qianshui County, Yunzhou, and the people who had been driven to the brink. So she wrote Shen Yan a letter.

By the time Ge Chu's report reached the capital, his five thousand enemies had multiplied beneath his brush into "fifty thousand iron cavalry." Just as everyone had expected, the news that the Western Regions and the Beirong had joined forces sent the Yong Emperor into a panic. He summoned the civil and military officials in the middle of the night.

"Speak! Are these barbarians going to attack the capital?" The officials looked at one another. Nobody dared answer. At last, the Vice Minister of War, adept at discerning the emperor's wishes, stepped forward.

"According to the latest report from Shuozhou, the Western Regions forces stopped after taking Liangzhou. They've come a long way and may have no intention of staying in Great Yong. We might as well cede Liangzhou to them. Once they've looted their fill, they'll leave on their own. We should not move the main army rashly. Our priority is Yan Qi and his rebels." That was exactly what the Yong Emperor wanted to hear.

The north swallowed vast amounts of money and grain every year, while the Northern Garrison Army suffered defeat after defeat. Deep down, he had never wanted to keep pouring resources into it. The rebels, however, threatened his throne directly. They had to be eliminated. And so, shortly after the Spring Festival in Chongjing's seventeenth year, while winter winds still howled across the northern frontier, an imperial envoy arrived at the Northern Garrison Army's main camp. His lips were nearly blue with cold.

He announced that he wished to meet the "leader of the Western Regions coalition." Gu Zhiwei sent Alexios, the commander of the five thousand Western Regions soldiers, to negotiate. When the envoy entered, he saw only Alexios, dressed in a Western-style robe fastened with silver clasps, seated where Ge Chu had once sat.

Gu Zhiwei sat behind a folding screen and listened as the envoy spent two cups of tea praising the Yong Emperor's benevolence and the friendship between their peoples before finally getting to the point. The heart of it amounted to one sentence: You can stay in Liangzhou. Just don't come any closer to the capital. Following their plan, Alexios made an outrageous demand.

"Liangzhou belongs to us. We want Shuozhou too. The trade routes and customs revenues leading into both provinces will also belong to us. We can agree not to march south, but if you want peace, you'll have to show some sincerity. The Yong Emperor will have to offer us more." If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. It fit every Great Yong stereotype about greedy "barbarians" so perfectly that the envoy suspected nothing. He broke into a sweat as he tried to bargain.

"This matter... may still require consultation with the capital."

"Then off you go. We wouldn't mind giving you an escort." The meaning was clear. If negotiations failed, they would march on the Yong capital. It was a perfect bluff. Alexios had gotten alarmingly good at the threats Gu Zhiwei had taught him.

"Wait." The envoy's fingers brushed the secret edict hidden in his sleeve, the Yong Emperor's final instruction before his departure:"All other matters may be decided as circumstances demand." He gritted his teeth.

"The matter is not beyond negotiation. I am authorized to accept your terms on behalf of the imperial court." The Yong Emperor had sent him here to make the Western Regions problem go away. As long as they stayed north, his job was done. What it cost the court could stay between him and the Emperor. By the end, the terms were almost comically favorable. They could have Liangzhou and Shuozhou. The frontier forts could also be temporarily garrisoned by the "Western Regions Coalition Army."

As long as they did not continue south, the imperial court would send annual gifts of silk, grain, and tea to keep the border at peace. When Wang Pu heard, he nearly burst out laughing.

"Holy shit, that actually worked? If we ask for two more provinces next time, will he throw in free shipping?" Gu Zhiwei stared at the treaty that had been drawn up and signed, genuinely stunned all over again by how shameless the Yong Emperor could be. She had only told Alexios to ask for the moon so the envoy would buy their act. She had not expected him to actually hand them the moon. Well, if the emperor insisted on dismantling his own northern defenses for them, she was hardly going to say no.

The only person unhappy with the news was probably Ge Chu. When the Western Regions cavalry entered Shuozhou carrying the Yong Emperor's own treaty, Ge Chu nearly fainted. He had been waiting for them to finish looting and leave so he could return to the Northern Garrison Army camp and lord it over everyone again. So he ran. Again.

In early April of the seventeenth year of Chongjing, the willow tips outside Huaiyuan had just taken on a faint haze of new green. Gu Zhiwei never received Shen Yan's reply. Instead, a procession grand enough to stop the whole city arrived. Shen Yan had come in person. He no longer wore that official robe washed pale with age, only a plain gray cloth gown, and carried little luggage. More than a dozen officials who had chosen to follow him trailed behind. And behind them came tens of thousands more.

Countless people from Yunzhou brought their families with them. The moment they heard that Miss Gu meant to give them land in the north, they packed up everything they owned, took their ancestors' tablets from the household shrine, and set out. They knew the dangers they might face by crossing provincial borders and moving north. Still, they had chosen without hesitation to trust the woman who had once saved them from the flood and worked miracles before their eyes.

"Done being a magistrate?" Gu Zhiwei asked with a smile.

"I came to work for my lord, didn't I?" Ever since receiving Gu Zhiwei's letter, Shen Yan had been reeling. He had known for years that this chaotic age needed a ruler worth following. Never in his wildest dreams had he expected Gu Zhiwei to step forward. What moved him even more was the reaction of Qianshui County's people. He had expected it to be extraordinarily difficult to persuade families who had lived in Yunzhou for generations to leave.

Yet between the Yong Emperor's absurd rule and everything Gu Zhiwei had done for them, the people had already decided whom they trusted. Before they left, Shen Yan ordered everyone to keep quiet. Along the way, they posed as disaster refugees, and even in Huaiyuan, no one mentioned Gu Zhiwei's name. To outsiders, they were simply refugees seeking a new life under Western Regions rule. That very afternoon, Shen Yan took office as the new governor of Liangzhou.

Gu Zhiwei left the professional work to Shen Yan, giving him full authority over land reform, reclamation, household registration, and legal reform. Once Liangzhou's system was settled, they could expand it to Shuozhou. Before long, the unclaimed wasteland had been divided among the migrants from Yunzhou by household. They also received two years of tax exemption. Under Wang Pu's command, soldiers from the Northern Garrison Army took turns helping them build new homes.

The people of Yunzhou brought better farming techniques and tools with them, digging irrigation channels as they reclaimed the land. Soon, a border market opened, where Beirong merchants traded cattle and horses for tea and cloth. By late summer, waves of green-gold wheat rolled across the fields. With grain to spare, the commoners finally dared bring it to market. One commandant thought their fodder was overpriced. Old habits died hard, and he tried to force them to sell at his price.

The next day, he was stripped of his rank, bound outside the main camp gate, and given thirty strokes. The sellers received twice the amount he had tried to cheat them out of. No one in the army tried anything like it again. For the people of the frontier, the message was just as clear: this new ruler was nothing like the old ones. With Shen Yan's help on the civilian side, Gu Zhiwei devoted most of her time and energy to training the troops.

Drawing on the military knowledge she had learned from Ji Heng's memories, she began using flags and drumbeats to relay commands across the field. The infantry and archers drilled relentlessly in advancing, retreating, and covering one another, while the cavalry practiced charging, wheeling back, and reforming their ranks. Even the veterans of the Northern Garrison had never received much proper training.

Ge Chu had never cared much for drilling his men, and most of his soldiers knew little beyond the basic signals to advance or retreat. If anything, they were probably more practiced at the latter. At first, every new command threw the army into chaos. Gradually, they learned to advance at the drums, shift formation at the flags, and move as one. Gu Zhiwei also assigned different-colored helmet plumes to different units across the formation.

During drills, soldiers trained in groups of three, correcting one another's direction and spacing. If the line broke, they looked for matching plumes and used the men beside them to find their place again. It was much faster than trying to pick out familiar faces in a battlefield full of dust, horses, and moving bodies. Matt joined the training as well.

Together, he and Gu Zhiwei gathered carpenters and blacksmiths to experiment with siege engines, scaling ladders, and heavy siege crossbows, preparing for the day they would have to take fortified cities and mountain passes. Meanwhile, Chen Li's boats and caravans kept the north supplied with seed grain, herbs, and iron tools. As people grew better off, demand for other goods rose too. Soon, his cloth shops, teahouses, and restaurants were opening across Liangzhou.

Aglaya spent most days at the border market, happily haggling with Western Regions merchants. Every now and then, she used 【Top-Tier Persuader】. One moment, a horse trader would be arguing over the price. The next, he'd slap his chest, cut it in half, and somehow walk away convinced he'd gotten a great deal. Aglaya was extremely pleased. The first people to notice the changes in Liangzhou and Shuozhou were their neighbors.

Just across the border, life was improving by the day, and somehow the Beirong had even stopped raiding. Many Liangzhou natives who had fled elsewhere began to return. In the end, even people from Jizhou started sneaking across the border with handcarts in tow. For a while, smuggling people into Liangzhou and Shuozhou nearly became a thriving trade. The neighboring officials were not blind to what was happening. But everyone knew where the Yong Emperor stood.

As long as those Western Regions troops did not march south, he did not care. So the local officials made a little effort to stop people from leaving and otherwise kept their heads down. Shen Yan was working himself half to death. Every time he saw Gu Zhiwei, he asked her for more manpower.

"Another thirty-seven hundred households arrived this week. We don't have enough wells, and we need to establish two more settlements in the east. Fortunately, plenty of able-bodied young people came this time. We can recruit another batch of soldiers." Gu Zhiwei approved it all. If he needed something and she could provide it, he got it. During this time, Shen Yan was not the only one discovering how much a government could get done when the people actually wanted it to succeed.

Even Gu Zhiwei began running into developments that left her not knowing whether to laugh or sigh. Ever since taking the two provinces, Gu Zhiwei and Aglaya had lived in Huaiyuan's aging county office, while Matt and Wang Pu stayed in the barracks. None of them had ever thought of building an imposing governor's residence or general's mansion. Their complete lack of interest in such things had the opposite effect. The people of Liangzhou began worrying that Gu Zhiwei did not intend to stay.

So in the end, they simply decided to build her a new residence themselves. If Aglaya had not risen early one morning and spotted them on her way to the border market, Gu Zhiwei might have slept until the foundations across the road were already finished. At that point, Gu Zhiwei could only give in. She agreed to let them renovate the old county office as proof that she was not planning to leave anytime soon, but insisted on paying everyone by the hour.

The years rolled on, but the quest progress remained stuck at one percent. By the summer of the quest's fourth year, most players were close to giving up and had basically gone into vacation mode. Some traveled from scenic site to scenic site while serializing A Travel Guide to Great Yong on the Forum. Others posted constant updates about food from around the realm.

The latest trending posts featured a fish hot pot place down south called Hedilao, a painfully obvious knockoff of a certain famous hot pot chain back home, and a surprisingly good taco shop in the capital. By the autumn of the eighteenth year of Chongjing, the northern frontier finally had enough troops and money to go to war. The last thing Gu Zhiwei did was ask Chen Li to bring her mother to Liangzhou on her behalf.

Considering the trouble the uprising might bring upon the Yang family, she also left them a letter. It did not go into much detail, but it was enough to give them a chance to prepare. Once everything was ready, Gu Zhiwei chose a clear, crisp autumn day and made her announcement to everyone:"Raise the rebel banner."