Chapter 56: He Has Come to Save the Empire

Relief aid to save Shaanxi?
Useless!
The grain produced in the affluent southern regions was indeed sufficient to save Shaanxi, but the problem was that it could not be transported there.
Or rather, what little was transported was mostly lost to transit attrition and official corruption.
Dredging the river channels to restore production?
Useless!
Although Shaanxi possessed the Zheng Guo Canal and the Longshou Canal...
All these channels had fallen into long-term disrepair and could no longer perform irrigation functions. Expecting refugees who were on the verge of starvation to dredge them was utterly impossible.
As for counting on court officials to make an effort to clear them? That was nothing more than a fairy tale.
Furthermore, the drought in Shaanxi had persisted for several years, and the common people had suffered under it for far too long.
Yet, in Sun Chanting's view,
these were still not the true reasons for such a massive famine in Shaanxi.
If it were merely a natural disaster,
had the people above and below banded together and endured a bitter existence, they might still have managed to survive.
It would not have deteriorated to the present state where people sold their children, pawned their daughters, and resorted to cannibalism.
However, it was man-made disasters that truly drove everyone to a dead end.
Man-made disasters referred to land annexation and the various miscellaneous taxes levied by prefectural and county yamens everywhere.
When a disaster struck, harvests would inevitably decrease.
A decrease in harvest meant an inability to pay various taxes, and an inability to pay taxes meant selling one's land.
This subsequently progressed to having no land left to till and starving to death.
Not only that,
instead of stopping this unbridled annexation among the gentry, local governments actually seized the opportunity to collude with wealthy households in the cities, hoarding grain to extract exorbitant profits.
These were all things Sun Chanting had witnessed with his own eyes.
As for these deeply entrenched evils,
even if the emperor himself were to arrive in person, he would probably only be able to alleviate them slightly.
There was no help for it.
Natural disasters and man-made calamities—
judging from the grassroots experience Sun Chanting had accumulated over years of travels, neither of them was something human power could reverse.
The emperor was the Son of Heaven, but after all, he was not the Heavenly Father.
It was impossible to turn Shaanxi's severe drought into favorable weather simply by issuing an Edict of Self-Blame.
Man-made disasters were even harder to resolve.
The entire Shaanxi province had developed to its current state precisely because the officials at all levels were inextricably entwined with one another, sharing mutual interests.
The trouble lay entirely in this very fact.
With all sorts of chaotic and tangled crucial links knotted together, let alone clearing up the clues, there wasn't even a place to begin intervention.
What could the emperor possibly do?
Could he execute all of them?!

Although Sun Chanting had grown pessimistic about the situation in Shaanxi after returning home recently, he did not sink into despair because of it.
Sun Chanting knew that
if the emperor were to truly visit Shaanxi in person,
then the corruption in the various prefectural yamens would inevitably restrain itself somewhat, the wealthy households in the cities would symbolically open their granaries to distribute some grain, and the people's morale would rise slightly due to the emperor's appearance.
In this way, at least a few fewer common people would starve to death.
And saving some lives from starvation might prevent large-scale turmoil in Shaanxi.
As long as the Great Ming did not face the desperate predicament of fixing one leak only for another to spring, the situation could still be slowly plotted out step by step.
Everything could still be saved.
The only thing Sun Chanting could not be certain of now was whether the ultimate destination of His Majesty's imperial procession would truly stop in Shaanxi.
If His Majesty really went to Shaanxi, he would immediately seek out His Majesty's side, seeing if he could secure a post by virtue of being a successful imperial scholar, to help His Majesty handle and share some matters within his capability.
If His Majesty did not go to Shaanxi,
then... he would attempt to intercept the imperial procession, and personally articulate the stakes of the current situation in Shaanxi to His Majesty, to see if he could persuade His Majesty to alter his route.
Whether it succeeded or failed, it would still be considered fulfilling his loyalty to the country.

Amidst the lively discussions among the common folk in Hebei and Shanxi,
a few more days flew by.
The imperial procession led by Zhu Youjian finally arrived at the Yellow River ferry crossing on this day.
Countless boats intended for crossing the river had already been inspected countless times by the accompanying personnel.
The imperial procession was about to officially enter Shaanxi from here.
At this moment, on the eve of departure,
the magistrate of Puzhou County (located within Shanxi, separated from Tongguan County in Shaanxi by merely a single Yellow River) along with a throng of officials knelt uniformly before little Hongzi, cautiously probing with trembling words:
"Imperial Commissioner Lord Hong, the boats have all been prepared, except... Shaanxi has suffered consecutive years of drought recently..."
"There are probably a great number of refugees gathered on the opposite bank of the Yellow River... Do your subjects need to dispatch men ahead to disperse them first, so as not to offend the imperial procession?"
To the officials of Puzhou County, the emperor's arrival truly gave them a massive and terrifying shock.
Because beforehand, none of them had received even the slightest bit of intelligence.
When they first heard their subordinates' frantic and panicked reports, they even thought some demented swindlers had cropped up from somewhere, daring to impersonate the imperial procession.
It was not until they caught sight of those imperial messengers carrying dragon banners, with bearings unlike ordinary men,
that they realized the emperor was truly crossing the river at Puzhou to head toward Tongguan, Shaanxi.
There was no time nor daring for the crowd of officials from top to bottom to think any further; they immediately began organizing the river-crossing logistics.
They even dared not
dispatch anyone ahead to notify Tongguan County on the opposite shore or give them a heads-up in advance.
They simply feared losing their heads for delaying the emperor's affairs.
This was an emperor who, less than two months after ascending the throne, could lead several thousand men out of the Forbidden City!
Even if the courage of all eighteen generations of the Puzhou magistrate's ancestors were grafted onto him alone, he would still not dare to play any petty tricks under the eyes of such an emperor.

Fortunately, as a crucial transportation hub with a developed shipping industry, Puzhou County had accumulated some experience over the years in receiving large batches of court officials crossing the river on inspection tours.
Therefore, no major mishaps occurred in this regard.
At this moment, listening to the magistrate's words,
little Hongzi cast a cold, sideways glance at these people: "If you dare to second-guess the imperial will again, consider your heads forfeit."
The emperor was not prepared to linger here for long, so he had no intention of executing anyone for the moment, merely committing their faces to memory.
"This subject knows his crime! This subject knows his crime!" The officials frantically knocked their heads against the ground with loud thuds until blood seeped from their foreheads.
"Cross the river." Little Hongzi ignored these officials, stood up, and walked toward the battle vessels at the head of the procession.
Meanwhile,
on the opposite bank of the Yellow River, in the eastern outskirts of Tongguan City.
A group of refugees, who had not eaten a single full meal in many days, were staring blankly at the boats continuously appearing one after another on the Yellow River.
Although ten out of ten Shaanxi refugees had never seen the emperor with their own eyes,
they had indeed heard tales of the dragon banners that symbolized imperial authority.
And those towering dragon banners erected high upon the river instantly captured everyone's attention.
The emperor! That was an emperor whom people like them had heard about all their lives, yet had never laid eyes upon even once!
How could the emperor suddenly appear on the river?!
At first,
only a small fraction of the refugees stood by the riverbank in a daze, watching.
Then the crowd began to grow larger and larger, with everyone squeezing together by the bank, eagerly gazing at the endless stream of boats on the river.
Before long,
all the refugees in the vicinity had gathered, and their numbers swelled from a few dozen at the start to hundreds, thousands...
No one knew who in the crowd suddenly shouted at that moment, "The emperor has come to save us!"
As if a thunderbolt had suddenly exploded beside their ears, everyone uniformly dropped to their knees following those words.
Yes, the emperor must have come to save them; otherwise, why else would the emperor come to a place overflowing with the dead?
It must be so!
Although everyone was emotionally agitated to the core, not a single person dared to utter even the slightest sound, only quietly kneeling on the ground.
The two words "emperor" were just like that in the eyes of ordinary common folk.
Even if they were on the verge of fainting from hunger, the only thing they could do—or rather, the only thing they dared to do—was simply to kneel here.
This scene
was naturally witnessed by Zhu Youjian, who was about to reach the shore.
Looking at those haggard faces and sunken cheeks of the starving masses, Zhu Youjian felt not a single ripple in his heart.
No pity, no emotion, no sentiment.
Because he was not here to save people.
He was here to save the empire.