1848 Great Qing Charcoal Burners

Chapter 60 Who is the King of Zijing Mountain?

The rain was falling softly, and the mountains of Zijing Mountain were shrouded in a misty rain, as if covered with a thin veil.

The Wang family fortress in Mengchong, Zijing Mountain, had its copper-nailed red gate tightly shut, but through the cracks, the rich aroma of roast goose oil mixed with daughter's red wine and the cheerful laughter of the Wang brothers could be heard.

Wang Zuoxin, the head of the Wang family and the only scholar in the Zijing Mountain area, was leaning back in a rosewood armchair, gnawing on a roast goose. The golden goose oil dripped onto his Hangzhou silk robe, leaving a ring of oil stains.

Wang Zuoxin felt no heartache at all; on the contrary, he thought the pattern that had seeped out resembled a peony embroidered with gold thread, and the more he looked at it, the more comfortable he felt.

Peonies symbolize wealth and good fortune.

"Brother, listen to the sound of the rain! How pleasant it is!" Wang Dazuo pointed to the raindrops hitting the black tiles and blue bricks outside the window, grinning from ear to ear.

"Heaven and Prince Gan are playing music for us brothers! The Xunjiang River has breached its banks again this year, and the flood is even worse than last year. I heard that tens of thousands of acres of fertile land have been submerged. The price of rice in Guiping City has already risen to five taels of silver per shi!"

"Good thing it's flooded! The more flooded the better! This isn't the sound of rain, it's the sound of money being dumped into our house."

Wang Zuoxin stretched out his hand, and the maidservant attending him quickly wiped the grease off his hands. He also found the sound of the rain pleasant to hear.

"The Xunjiang River breached its banks and flooded tens of thousands of acres of farmland, but it did not flood our Zijingshan terraced fields, much less our Wang family's granary."

Those peasants from the God Society were also sent to the county jail by us. From now on, the Wang family will still be in charge of Zijing Mountain. Double happiness!

Indeed, Heaven and Prince Gan have eyes and have shown their blessings upon our Wang family!

Feng Yunshan, Hong Xiuquan, Lu Liu, and others who smashed the Mengchong Ganwang Temple and incited the charcoal burners to cause trouble are now being served by Liang, the clerk in charge of the prison in Guiping County.

Heaven suddenly sent down a torrential rain, bestowing upon the Wang family an immense fortune; truly, good things come in pairs.

The heavy rain flooded mostly the fertile fields along the banks of the Xunjiang River.

The Wang family's fields are mostly terraced fields in the Zijing Mountain area, which are less affected by rainstorms and floods.

“I knew it! They’re just a bunch of charcoal burners, what can they do?” Wang Zuoxin’s other cousin, Wang Dagui, said smugly.

"Organize people to transport rice to the vicinity of Xunjiang, and put up wooden signs saying one shi of rice for one mu of land! Three dou of rice for one man, one dou of rice for one woman. Those starving paupers are even willing to pawn their ancestral graves!"

Wang Zuoxin pinched the maid's slender waist hard, already calculating the two days on both sides of the Xunjiang River in his mind.

Although the Wang family owns a lot of land, including four or five thousand mu.

However, most of the terraced fields in the Zijing Mountain area are thin and cannot be compared with the fertile and flat farmland on both sides of the Xunjiang River.

Under normal circumstances, even ten taels of silver wouldn't be enough to buy an acre of fertile land on either side of the Xunjiang River.

Now, exchanging one bushel of rice for one acre of fertile land is an incredibly lucrative deal.

“I had someone take care of this matter a while ago. Ten days ago, our Wang family’s grain shops in various parts of Zijing Mountain stopped selling a single grain of rice.”

"We're holding onto our goods, partly to transport them to the Xunjiang River to sell, and partly to wait until the hundred or so charcoal burners in the mountains starve to death before we give them grain," Wang Dazuo said, trying to curry favor with Wang Zuoxin.

“They dared to smash the Ganwang Temple, which is where our Wang family worships. We need to teach those charcoal burners a lesson. They can’t afford to buy rice that costs four or five ounces a shi now.”

Let some people starve to death, so they'll be begging us to buy rice at six or seven ounces a bushel! We'll let all those stinking charcoal burners on Zijing Mountain know who the true king of Zijing Mountain is!

Wang Zuoxin felt that this was not appropriate and shook his head, saying, "Let's set up a porridge stall in front of Ganwang Temple and add more chaff and soil when cooking the porridge. We should at least make those peasants remember our Wang family in some way, since our Wang family is a family that has accumulated good deeds."

As the brothers were chatting and laughing, a clerk from the Wang family's pawnshop in Guiping City rushed into the Wang family's fortified village, wearing a heavy, wet raincoat and panting, saying, "Master! Master! Something terrible has happened! Magistrate Yang has sold the Zijingshan gang leader for a thousand taels of silver!"

The Wang brothers were stunned by the news and stood there dumbfounded.

"What did you say? A thousand taels?" Wang Zuoxin's joy vanished instantly. He couldn't believe the news was true. He stared incredulously at the panting waiter and asked again and again to confirm.

"Have you misheard? This is a thousand taels! Besides our Wang family, who else in Zijing Mountain could come up with a thousand taels of silver all at once?!"

Wang Zuoxin couldn't think of anyone else besides his Wang family who could come up with a thousand taels of silver in cash to buy the position of Zijingshan's head.

"It's absolutely true. It was Clerk Liang from the county's criminal office who personally asked me to tell you, sir. Also, those God Society bandits like Feng Yunshan and Lu Liu have been released," the waiter added after catching his breath.

Liang, the clerk in the county's criminal office, was Wang Zuoxin's brother-in-law and wouldn't joke about such things with him. "Who bought the position of head of the Zijing Mountain gang? It couldn't have been bought by those charcoal-burning peasants, could it?" Wang Zuoxin still held onto a sliver of hope, pinning his hopes that the position of head of the Zijing Mountain gang had been bought by some wealthy family and had nothing to do with those charcoal-burning men from the God Worshippers Society.

"It was bought by Peng Gang, a scholar from your county," the shopkeeper replied after thinking for a moment.

"Peng Gang? A student from your county?" Wang Zuoxin breathed a sigh of relief, thinking it was a false alarm.

"I've never heard of such a person in Zijing Mountain. Where does he live now? Since we are both scholars, I will choose a day to pay him a visit and let him know."

The waiter's answer shattered Wang Zuoxin's last shred of hope: "This man currently lives in Lianhuaping, Pingzaishan, and is very close to Feng Yunshan and Yang Xiuqing. He persuaded Magistrate Yang to pay money to redeem Feng Yunshan."

He must be a member of the God's Society. There are rumors in the county that the remnants of Big Head Sheep's boat-based bandit gang were wiped out by him and Xie, the garrison commander of Shangdongtang.

A series of terrible news followed one after another. Overwhelmed with shock, Wang Zuoxin almost collapsed to the ground, but fortunately, a maidservant nearby caught him in time.

Listening to the rain outside the window again, even though it was the same rain, the sound of the rain made him feel particularly irritated.

Yang Xun, that ungrateful wretch!
As soon as he took office, the Wang family sent a full three hundred taels of silver to the county government!

Did all three hundred taels of silver go to the dogs?

Not only did they not hear a sound, but they also took his position as the head of the group without even informing him beforehand!
Meanwhile, Lianhuaping, southwest of Mengchong, was also experiencing continuous heavy rain.

The second batch of young men who went up the mountain were much luckier than the first batch.

Although the plan has changed, the original plan to expand to five groups has been changed to ten groups. It is impossible to assign a dormitory room to each group, but they can still make do by squeezing into the classroom and canteen. At least they don't have to sleep in the mountains and forests, exposed to the rain and wind.

By establishing connections with the Green Standard Army in Xunzhou, Peng Gang purchased a batch of standard Green Standard Army muskets from Huang Zhenyue's Left Battalion for 21 taels of silver each.

Although each musket came with two pounds of gunpowder and one pound of lead bullets, Peng Gang still felt the price was extremely high, ridiculously high.

"Twenty-one taels of silver for these scraps of metal? Huang Zhenyue certainly knows how to do business."

Luo Dagang, who came to Honglianping at Peng Gang's invitation with the intention of taking advantage of the wealthy, picked up the brown bass that Peng Gang had seized from Zhang Zhao and played with it while complaining that the bird gun Peng Gang bought was too expensive.

"You've been ripped off by Huang Zhenyue. If you have connections, you can buy a similar quality British self-propelled musket for eighteen taels on the black market in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau."

The foreigners' gunpowder is far superior to the Green Camp's; it's less prone to moisture, and the lead bullets fired are more powerful, flying faster, more accurately, and farther! Plus, you can buy a pound for just one tael of silver!

The British East India Company is retiring and discarding its brown hulls, and large quantities of these discarded hulls are being smuggled to Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau via India and Singapore.

In his early years, Luo Dagang had bought brown basses from British merchants in Guangzhou for eighteen taels of silver each, and had been sold countless times.

Although each of the brown muskets was older than Luo Dagang and had been polished to a patina, they were still much better than the new muskets of the Qing army.

"It's because I have no connections! If I didn't need it urgently to deal with Wang Zuoxin, I really wouldn't have considered this price. Huang Zhenyue is a real black-hearted man. A fire poker that's not even worth five taels of silver is being sold to me for twenty-one taels of silver."

Peng Gang knew, of course, that the price of Qing Dynasty matchlock muskets on the black market was higher than that of all standard flintlock muskets in Europe, and their performance was also outdated. The key issue was that it was impossible to obtain large quantities of these matchlock muskets in Guangxi.

The price of 18 taels of brown beef was the price when it was smuggled into Guangdong Customs.

In the UK, the cost of mass-producing brown bass at the Birmingham Arsenal could be reduced to £0.8-£1 per piece, which translates to about four or five taels of silver per piece.

Let alone four or five ounces, even if the price was ten ounces, Peng Gang would be willing to buy one hundred and twenty of them at once, so that each of the ten groups of young men could have a brown bass.

"Tsk tsk, six hundred and ninety-three taels of silver, you're really generous. You've almost squandered all the silver you got from that big sheep."

Luo Dagang counted the muskets Peng Gang had bought from Huang Zhenyue; there were a total of thirty-three. He clicked his tongue in disapproval.

"You can't catch a wolf without risking your cub," Peng Gang said.

The wealth he acquired from Big Head Sheep is quite substantial, enough for him to squander for a while.

The most urgent task is to eliminate the largest household in Zijing Mountain in Mengchong, northeast of the country.

(End of this chapter)