As Chen Baoxiang was led forward by him, a slight downward glance showed red rashes breaking out on the inside of his wrist near his cuff.
There was dirt under his fingernails, and the straw sandals didn’t fit.
But this man looked a great deal more confident than the last time — chest out, chin up, as though heading off to battle.
Laughter rose in her eyes. She fell into step beside him and asked quietly: “What work has been arranged for us?”
“I’m in charge of tallying the output quantities; you’re in charge of overseeing the salt boiling.” Zhang Zhixu said. “We finish at dusk and meet at the crossroads when the shift ends.”
Chen Baoxiang blinked.
She asked: “How much did Ningsu spend to buy these two positions?”
“Buy?”
“These two jobs are easy and light — no heavy labor required, they come with the title of a minor attending official, and they’re subsidized by the court.” Chen Baoxiang clicked her tongue. “On the black market, a spot like that would fetch at least a hundred thousand coins.”
Zhang Zhixu was taken aback.
A position this unremarkable — not even a proper official post — could actually be sold? And for that high a price?
How was something like that even sold?
His expression darkened and he strode quickly into the saltworks, finding the contact Ningsu had mentioned.
“Zhang Three and Chen Six, is it?” Commissioner Xu looked the two of them over from head to foot, then curled his lip. “Get in there. I’ll say this plainly upfront — if the work isn’t done well, I’ll swap you out, and no refunds on the money.”
So it really had been purchased.
Zhang Zhixu drew a quiet breath, followed the man in to acquaint himself with the surroundings, then took up his assigned position and began to observe.
Chen Baoxiang, for her part, was perfectly at ease: the moment she arrived at the salt-boiling works, she started cracking sunflower seeds.
The supervisor nearby stared in bewilderment: “What is this person doing?”
“Got in through connections, by the look of it. Judging by the manner, the connections run pretty deep — don’t provoke her, let’s just watch.”
Compared to the other supervisors, Chen Baoxiang was plainly ignorant of salt production. When she saw them adding soybean milk to the vats, she let out a cry of genuine wonder and grabbed someone to ask: “How much salt comes out of one vat like that?”
Her colleague’s expression grew complicated. Engage with her and look like a fool; ignore her and, given her air, she seemed to have real backing behind her — not wise to offend. So he gritted his teeth and answered: “About two shi per vat.”
“Goodness, that much.” She spat out a sunflower seed husk and began counting on her fingers. “A dou of salt in Shangjing is two hundred coins, so one vat is four thousand coins, and there are so many vats here… my word, would our monthly wages come out to a hundred or eighty taels or so?”
All her colleagues burst out laughing: “You’ve got quite the imagination. For supervisors like us, two taels a month is the ceiling.”
“How can that be,” she said, genuinely puzzled. “This operation makes so much money — shouldn’t the people below be receiving their fair share of the earnings too?”
“The high salt price is profit for those at the top. What’s that got to do with us?” Her colleague kept shaking his head. “From drawing brine to refining and jarring the salt, adding in the salt tax, the cost is no more than eight coins a dou. Think carefully about where the rest of the price comes from.”
Chen Baoxiang blinked with an innocent expression: “I couldn’t work that out if I tried. My family just sent me here to idle my time away — they didn’t explain any of this.”
Her colleague nodded knowingly and said no more, simply telling her with an air of great profundity to watch and learn more.
Chen Baoxiang very naturally made a tour of both inside and outside the saltworks.
There were no collapses anywhere, no other disasters obstructing operations. The entire salt well and saltworks were producing normally.
Shangjing was not a major salt-producing area — Shuzhou produced far more well salt. Even if Shangjing’s salt wells had a problem, salt transport would promptly supplement from elsewhere.
The problem was not with the salt wells themselves.
Then where was the problem?
At dusk, Chen Baoxiang and Zhang Zhixu finished their shift together.
The original plan had been to come just once during the day off and get a feel for the situation, but in the fading light of the setting sun, Zhang Zhixu lowered his gaze and spoke: “I may come back for a while longer.”
Chen Baoxiang turned to look at him.
He had clearly seen many things he had never encountered before; the fury in his eyes was being suppressed by reason and yet kept spilling over — and beyond the fury there was a measure of bewilderment, as though he needed more evidence still.
“Of course,” she said with a smile. “Come as often as you need. I’ll walk the same road as you.”
·
Zhang Zhixu was meticulous in everything he did — verifying back and forth, writing carefully and precisely. Chen Baoxiang had grasped the whole picture in under half a month; he labored over his account for more than a full month.
But a month later, a remarkably thick memorial appeared on Li Bingsheng’s desk.
“Who dragged a wall brick in here?” she asked, puzzled.
Hua Lingyin almost burst out laughing — she had to run through every sad thing she could think of to keep her composure — then cupped her hands with a proper, solemn expression: “Respectfully submitted by Master Zhang of the Ministry of Justice.”
“I knew it was him. No one else could do something like this. He writes this much every time — beautiful calligraphy doesn’t mean you have to use it like this — my eyes are going blurry.” Li Bingsheng was scolding even as she opened it.
After turning a few pages, she sat up straight, her air of casual indifference gone.
The Ministry of Justice’s Minister Zhang Zhixu lodged a formal charge: of the twenty-eight salt wells in Shangjing, twenty-three had been the sites of deaths. The victims who could be verified numbered over seven hundred; the youngest was only twelve years old, scalded to death by brine; the oldest was sixty-seven, dead of exhaustion.
This was no small matter, but it was still a cumulative series of deaths — send the Ministry of Justice to investigate and be done with it.
But then Zhang Zhixu went straight on to formally charge the current Salt and Iron Transport Commissioner himself, accusing him of deceiving those above and concealing matters below, artificially inflating salt prices, embezzling for personal gain, and buying and selling official positions.
The charges were so grave that Li Bingsheng almost snapped the memorial shut.
Yet reading on, she came to the section where Zhang Zhixu used Shangjing’s largest saltworks as a detailed case study —
The process of producing one batch of salt. The basic labor required. A breakdown of costs.