Poor but talented scholar

Chapter 15 Paying Taxes

"Chuan'er, have you gone mad?" Uncle Liu shook his pipe, his cloudy eyes filled with disbelief.

"You just said that the commutation money is a bloodsucking hook. Where are we in the whole village going to find those hundreds of strings of copper coins? If we can't pay, we'll be arrested and thrown into jail!"

Lu Youcai sneered repeatedly and interjected sarcastically:

"I told you we'd gone stupid from all that studying! We're broke, we'd sell everything we own to make ends meet, let alone three hundred coins.

"Chuan'er, you don't mean to get everyone to sell their lives to those rich people in the county, do you?"

Lu Chuan pointed to the densely packed number on the muddy ground, his eyes blazing.

"Sixth Uncle, the official price of thirty cash per dou is fixed, but the price of aged wheat in the city is sixty cash per dou. If we honestly hand over the grain, we're selling gold as dirt."

"But if we keep this grain in our hands, it will be our lifeline when winter comes and it gets coldest. It wouldn't be surprising if a bushel sold for eighty coins!"

He stood up, brushed the mud off his hands, and pointed to the medicine baskets piled up like a small mountain in the backyard of the ancestral hall.

Lu Chuan picked up a half-dried indigo plant and waved it in front of everyone: "The flood submerged the grain on the plains, but it fattened the grass in the mountains."

"The dye houses in the county town have been shut down for half a month. Once the floodwaters recede, they urgently need to dye the stockpiled cloth, and this indigo is their lifeline. Lu Ming, tell everyone, how much have we dug up in the last three days?"

Lu Ming puffed out his chest and shouted, "Brother Chuan, it's over 600 jin in total, all dug up from the fattest and tenderest ones!"

"A pound of indigo costs eight copper coins on the market, but if a dye shop is in urgent need, it can sell it for ten copper coins."

"These six hundred catties are worth six taels of silver. But that's just an extra." Lu Chuan looked at Lu Shoutian, "Uncle, are the fires ready for those big pots I asked you to build?"

Although Lu Shoutian didn't understand what Lu Chuan was going to do, he still nodded: "As you said, we're using pine wood from the mountain that doesn't smoke, and the pot is full of freshly caught loach and eel."

"Dried eel, called 'blood ginseng' in pharmacies, is a good medicine for postpartum women and the weak to replenish their qi."

"Fresh produce spoils easily and doesn't fetch much money, but we dry it, make it into a medicinal ingredient, and send it to Tongrentang in the prefectural city. One pound of dried goods is worth one shi of coarse rice."

"We can not only pay the compensation, but we'll also have some left over to buy another crop of cheap grain in the nearby unaffected villages!"

These words left the villagers stunned.

In this cannibalistic world, the rules are set by the strong, but the loopholes are left for the clever.

"Let's do it!" Sixth Uncle was the first to step forward, roaring with red eyes. "Anyway, we're going to die, so let's listen to Chuan'er. Maybe we can still live a decent life."

"Lu Youcai, didn't you complain about shoveling mud earlier? Starting tomorrow, you'll go with the women to peel medicinal herbs. For every hour you skip, half of your family's food rations will be cut."

For the next two weeks, Lujia Village became a sophisticated processing plant.

During the day, the men patrolled and fished behind that makeshift checkpoint; the women busied themselves in front of the large pot.

Lu Chuan sat in the half-collapsed main room, next to the books wrapped in oilcloth, and used charcoal to make accounts on flat wooden boards.

He calculated the dehydration rate of each pound of herbs and the transportation cost of each load of dried goods.

"Lu Ming, divide the indigo collected these past few days into three piles." Lu Chuan tapped the wooden board.

"Brother Chuan, why do we need to split it into piles? Wouldn't it be easier to just put it in big baskets?" Lu Ming wiped the dirt off his forehead and asked, puzzled.

Lu Chuan pointed to one of the thickest and darkest piles of medicinal herbs and said, "This pile is for Magistrate Wang, the head of the county government. His wife runs a cloth shop in the west of the city and is worried about not having good dyes to start her business. We're giving it to him for free; it's a favor."

He then pointed to the pile in the middle that was still of decent quality: "This pile is for the head constable who comes to the village to collect grain taxes. He takes it back and resells it, and that's his family's 'wine money' for the year."

Finally, he looked at the smallest, most damaged pile, strewn with broken leaves: "This remaining pile is the official medicine we'll take into account, confiscated, and used to offset our 'compensation' quota. Understand?"

Lu Ming was stunned, and the other workers around him also stopped what they were doing.

As the days went by, the lively atmosphere of Lujia Village became almost the only source of life within a ten-mile radius.

Uncle Lu Youcai has been feeling extremely frustrated these past few days.

He originally wanted to cheat and shirk his duties, but his sixth uncle was watching, Lu Shoutian was watching, and even his own son Lu Tian felt ashamed of him, so he had no choice but to follow the women there to peel the bark of the lacquer tree and sort the mugwort.

"Ouch, my hands are covered in calluses."

While muttering to himself, Lu Youcai secretly slipped a few pieces of peeled herbs into his pocket when no one was looking.

He figured that since these things were valuable, he could secretly save some up and exchange them for some wine in town, and no one would know.

However, his little tricks could not escape Lu Chuan's eyes.

As night fell, just as Lu Youcai was about to sneak over the wooden checkpoint at the village entrance, Lu Chuan and Lu Shoutian were already waiting for him there with several torches.

"Uncle, where do you want to go?" Lu Chuan sat on the stone stool.

Lu Youcai was so frightened that he trembled and the medicine bottles in his arms fell to the ground with a clatter.

"I...I just wanted to go out for some fresh air."

"Does getting some fresh air require taking away the medicinal herbs from the village?" Lu Shoutian stepped forward.

Lu Youcai's face turned deathly pale instantly: "You...you're talking nonsense!"

May 15th.

The expected sound of horse bells arrived as scheduled, breaking the tranquility of the village.

Three constables dressed in gray black robes and with iron chains around their waists, surrounded by several scoundrel-like lackeys, stormed through the makeshift checkpoint.

The head constable, nicknamed "Zhang Heng," was notorious in the county for his greed. The thorny horsewhip in his hand cracked loudly in mid-air.

"Lu Dehuang! Is he dead or not?" Zhang Heng, riding on his skinny horse, looked down at his sixth uncle who had rushed over. "Did you receive the document about the 50% tax reduction? Don't push your luck."

"If you're short a single coin, I'll take some men and tear down this dilapidated ancestral hall today, and send a few strong men to fill the sand dunes to the north."

The villagers were so frightened that they all backed away. Lu Shouye clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles cracked.

Sixth Uncle walked forward shakily, about to speak, when Lu Chuan gently tugged at his sleeve.

"Please calm down, Your Honor." Lu Chuan stepped out from behind the crowd, holding a tray covered with a red cloth.

Zhang Heng glanced sideways at the boy, then sneered, "Is there no one else in Lu Family Village? They sent a kid in diapers to fill in?"

"What?!" Zhang Heng's expression changed drastically, and he lashed out with his whip. "You're courting death!"

"But," Lu Chuan quickly lifted the red cloth, revealing the top layer of neatly arranged dried eels and dried medicinal herbs, "we have something more accessible than silver."

"Among these boxes of medicinal herbs, the county magistrate's cloth shop is eagerly awaiting the cooking of this batch of indigo."