198: Chapter 198 The Importance of Employment

On the back of the three rules were eight prohibitions.

Every line ended with the word "Death." The eight characters for "Death" were carved deeper, heavier, and more glaringly than the rules themselves.

First, those who kill commoners shall die.

Second, those who steal from commoners shall die.

Third, those who violate commoners shall die.

Fourth, those who harm the innocent shall die.

Fifth, those who accidentally damage the property of commoners and fail to compensate them shall die.

Sixth, those who spread rumors to incite the masses shall die.

Seventh, those who expel commoners shall die. Eighth, those who deceive commoners shall die.

There were no exceptions to these eight prohibitions, no stays of execution, and no room for negotiation.

Regardless of who they were or what their background was, violating even one meant death.

Qin Ce didn't write "punished according to the law" because the law was currently in his hands.

Nor did he need to write "in serious cases," because in his eyes, every violation was a serious case.

Every stroke was like a blade, cutting into the hearts of everyone who saw the inscription.

Beside the stone tablet stood a hundred wooden frames.

Sun Lie and his men had built the frames, and the Ice-Armored Blazing Rhino had used ice energy to freeze the stakes into the ground, making them so stable they couldn't be pushed over.

Iron chains hung from the crossbars, their ends looped around people's necks.

A hundred wooden frames, a hundred people—all of them were the most rampant, cruelest, and deadliest Beast Tamers in Zhenhuang Pass over the past week.

There were people from the Zhao Family, the Zhou Family, the Lin Family, people from small and medium-sized factions, and solitary rogue cultivators.

Every identity and background was represented.

At this moment, they shared only one common identity—dead men.

A full hundred lives were hung in the central square overnight.

Their faces were pointed down, their bodies suspended in mid-air, swaying gently in the morning breeze.

Blood dripped from their feet, pooling into dark red stains on the bluestone pavement.

Some were still dripping, some had already dried, and some had been blown into fine powder by the wind, scattering into the air.

A faint smell of rust permeated the square, mixing with the moisture of the morning dew and drifting around.

Early the next morning, crowds reappeared on the streets of Zhenhuang Pass.

Aside from a small number of commoners, most were those still fighting for territory in the city.

They woke up and crawled out of their temporary hideouts, rubbing their eyes, ready to continue yesterday's unfinished fights, unplundered shops, and unkilled people.

Then they discovered that their bosses were missing.

A manager from the Zhao Family had been leading his men to search the city for the Zhou Family's spies yesterday; this morning, his subordinates searched for him for two full hours, but he was nowhere to be found, dead or alive.

A transport captain from the Zhou Family had been planning which street to rob more storefronts from last night; this morning, his deputy found only a pool of blood on his bed, and the man was gone.

Several administrative personnel planted by the Lin Family in Zhenhuang Pass had been organizing "takeover" documents in their office yesterday; this morning, the chairs were still warm, but the people were no longer in this world.

The liaison officer stationed in Zhenhuang Pass by the City Lord's Manor didn't go to inspect the city walls as usual this morning; his attendants pushed open the door only to find an empty room and an unfinished cup of tea on the table.

They went to look for them.

They searched the entire city, every street, every house, and every corner.

Then someone told them—don't bother looking, go check the central square.

In the central square, the stone tablet still stood.

The three rules and eight prohibitions were blindingly white in the morning light.

Beside the stone tablet were the hundred wooden frames.

But the people hanging from the frames were the ruthless characters who had caused the most trouble in Zhenhuang Pass over the past week.

The crowd exploded. It wasn't an uproar, but a commotion following a deathly silence.

Some were backing away, some were pushing forward, some were trembling, some were clenching their fists, and some were secretly wiping away sweat.

No one dared to speak, but everyone's eyes said the same thing: Damn, this Qin Ce has gone mad!

The leader of a small team stood in the crowd, looking at the corpses on the wooden frames, his lip curling slightly.

His name was Liu Wu, and he had about twenty men under him. He occupied half a street in the north of the city and specialized in smuggling.

He didn't know most of the people on the frames, and he didn't care.

What he cared about was his business.

"Zhenhuang Pass is so big, and every caravan has to pay ten percent? His appetite is truly enormous. I'm not paying. I don't believe he can catch every single caravan. I have secret paths in the north. My caravans won't pay a cent in tax; where is he going to catch them?"

The person next to him pulled his sleeve and whispered, "Fifth Brother, stop talking." Liu Wu snorted. His voice wasn't loud, but the disdain was bone-deep.

He had fought his way up from the bottom and had seen too many people who tried to "set rules."

Rule-makers came and went, but his business had never stopped.

Rules were for those who followed them; Liu Wu never followed rules.

But what he didn't know was that not far behind him, the person in charge of the Zhou Family was watching him.

This person's name was Zhou Rong. He was the highest-ranking official of the Zhou Family in Zhenhuang Pass and one of the core figures of the Zhou Family's trade route System in the north.

Hearing Liu Wu's words, Zhou Rong didn't smile or argue. He just gave him a faint glance and said, "Before, when all trade routes except for the Wang Family's were cut off, did you think that was a joke?"

Liu Wu's mouth twitched.

He wanted to retort, but the words died in his throat.

During that period, all trade routes had indeed been cut off, and his business in the north of the city had stopped for seven days.

For seven days, his men didn't get a single cent and were on the verge of disbanding.

He didn't know why the trade routes were cut; he only knew they were.

Moreover, Liu Wu knew that among those missing caravans, several were the Zhou Family's most elite transport forces, led by veteran Silver Peak experts. If even they had fallen, what was he, Liu Wu?

Liu Wu spoke no more.

And Zhou Rong's words weren't just for Liu Wu; they were for everyone present.

Those who were still calculating how to evade taxes and bypass the rules on the stone tablet—those who thought they could pull something off under Qin Ce's nose—changed their expressions upon hearing this.

The previous cutting off of the trade routes was Qin Ce's doing—this was no longer a secret.

They could ignore twenty or so people, but they could not ignore those seventeen missing caravans.

It was the fact that within a month, the entire northern trade route System had been completely paralyzed by one person and a single small team.

The deterrence was self-evident.

No one asked "on what grounds" anymore, and no one asked "what business is it of yours."

The corpses on the wooden frames and the words on the stone tablet were like a pair of hands, tightly clutching everyone's throats.

On the other side of the crowd, those commoners who had been driven back from all directions and were scared out of their wits were slow to believe what they saw after reading the three major rules.

"Ten percent tax? Did I hear that right?" An old man selling cloth rubbed his eyes and read the inscription three times. "I've lived for fifty years, and the tax has never been lower than thirty percent. When the Wang Family was here, they took thirty percent, and when the Zhao Family passed through, they took another ten percent. Now it's suddenly ten percent? And only one type of tax? And all miscellaneous levies are exempted?"

A restaurant owner nearby also leaned in, her finger tracing the inscription.

"Look here, 'All local residents of Zhenhuang Pass are guaranteed a basic job per person, with a minimum monthly salary of five thousand'—not per household, but per person? My family of three—my old man, myself, and the child—can all have jobs?" Her voice grew smaller and smaller, not out of fear of being heard, but because she couldn't believe it herself.

The world as they knew it had never had such rules.

When the Great Families collected taxes, if they could take thirty percent, they would never settle for twenty-nine point nine.

When the government handled affairs, you couldn't even get through the door without stuffing them with money.

As for jobs, those were things that required connections, channels, and ancestral merit.

How could every single commoner have a job? And a guaranteed five thousand at that?

Some didn't believe it, some shook their heads, some sighed, and some turned to leave.

But those who didn't believe didn't go far.

They walked to the entrance of the alleys, stopped, and looked back at the stone tablet in the square, at those characters shining in the morning light, something churning in their hearts.

They stood there, looking at the corpses still dripping blood on the wooden frames, at the words carved into the stone, and at those managers who usually acted so arrogantly before them now hanging like dead pigs. Something in their hearts began to loosen.

Someone whispered, "How about... we go to City Hall and try?" The people around looked at each other, but no one moved.

The square was quiet for a few seconds, like the silence before a storm.

Then a voice rose from the back of the crowd, not loud but very clear. "It doesn't hurt to try. It's not like they'll kill us for it, right?"

These words were like a pebble thrown into a calm pool.

That's right, it doesn't hurt to try.

What's the worst that could happen? Being kicked out?

Could it be any worse than it is now?

The crowd moved.

It wasn't a swarm, but a hesitant movement, looking back every three steps, like walking on thin ice.

An old man leaning on a cane took a few steps toward City Hall, stopped to look behind him, then continued.

A young woman carrying a child followed, her pace faster than the old man's.

Then came a middle-aged man, a vegetable-selling auntie, a shoemaker, and a tailor.

More and more joined, like a dry riverbed suddenly filled with melting snow, surging toward City Hall.

Inside City Hall, Qin Ce had been sitting for a long time.

He sat on a hardwood chair, with a thick stack of documents spread out on the table before him—Zhenhuang Pass's household registers, tax records, industry lists, and personnel rosters.

He had been reading all night. Across from him sat a middle-aged man in his forties, surnamed Li, with the single name Li Yuan.

Li Yuan was the highest-ranking person left in Zhenhuang Pass's administrative System after the Wang Family withdrew. His title was "Director of the Zhenhuang Pass Agricultural Bureau," in charge of the city's farmland, water conservancy, and grain storage.

Qin Ce didn't waste time with pleasantries.

"When the Wang Family withdrew, they took almost all the high-level officials, but they left you, the one in charge of agriculture. Last night, I purged the high-level officials of Zhenhuang Pass again, yet I only left you. Do you know why?"

Li Yuan kept his head down, his fingers lightly rubbing his knees.

His face wore a perfectly measured expression of cowardice and panic. His eyelids drooped, and his lips trembled slightly, like a minor official suddenly hauled before a powerful figure, at a complete loss. "Lord... Lord Qin, I... I'm just a man who manages fields. I really don't understand those matters of power and profit..."

"Stop pretending." Qin Ce's voice suddenly turned cold. He grabbed Li Yuan by the collar and hauled him up from his chair. Li Yuan's body swayed in the air, knocking over the chair behind him. His face was less than a fist's distance from Qin Ce's.

"If you were really a useless Adou, do you think you could have held the top position in agriculture whether the Wang Family was here or after they left? Is your background really that simple?"

Li Yuan was silent for a few seconds.

He stopped struggling, and the expression on his face changed—it was no longer that deliberate cowardice, but a calm that came with being exposed, carrying a certain sense of relief. He stopped pretending.

"So, Lord Qin, what do you want to do?"

Qin Ce let go of him, placed him back in the chair, and sat back down himself. His tone became peaceful again.

"That's more like it. Sincerity is the foundation of all our dialogues. I don't care who the power behind you is. Just as I didn't care before that Zhenhuang Pass was completely controlled by the Wang Family. What I care about is what you care about too—the commoners of Zhenhuang Pass, and their livelihood."

Li Yuan was stunned.

He looked at Qin Ce, trying to find a flaw in those words on his face.

But Qin Ce's expression was very calm, as calm as if he were talking about something he had been doing for a long time and would continue to do.

It wasn't a show, it wasn't an attempt to win people's hearts, and it wasn't that high-and-mighty "loving the people like one's own children."

It was the kind of calm that only someone truly doing the work would have—no need for oaths, no need for explanations. Doing it was enough.

Li Yuan took a deep breath, preparing to say something serious.

Qin Ce raised his hand to stop him. "Don't talk, just do. I'll say it again: I don't care what the power behind you is. I only want you to do one thing—ensure the three major promises and eight prohibitions on the square's stone tablet are implemented to the letter. You protect the people's livelihood for me; stabilize it for at least these three months. After three months, if you still want to do it, we'll talk. If you want to return to the power behind you, I'll send you off with a fortune."

Li Yuan lowered his head and remained silent for a long time.

"Those three promises are simply unrealistic. For one thing, there aren't enough jobs in the city to accommodate everyone. There are nearly three hundred and eighty thousand registered residents in Zhenhuang Pass. Three hundred and eighty thousand people, three hundred and eighty thousand jobs. Even if you revived all the industries the Wang Family left behind, you couldn't support that many people."

Qin Ce looked into his eyes. "If there aren't any, can't you create them?"

Li Yuan was startled. "What do you mean?"

"I will allocate all the taxes collected from the caravans and the commoners to you. I won't take a single cent of it. Then you go and put it into creating jobs. Don't the Wang Family's many industries need auditing? Maintenance? Management? Don't the streets and alleys of the city need cleaning? Doesn't the city wall need repair? Even if all that is finished, then go build roads for me. And even if the roads are all built, then order them to move things—move them to the east on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; move them to the west on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays; and rest on Sundays. Do I really have to teach you this?"

Li Yuan suddenly stood up. His eyes were wide, and he wanted to say something, but the words were stuck in his throat.

...