Chapter 121: The Wave of Relocation

Zhao Hengyi demanded a ransom of two taels of silver for each captive from Zhou Family Village. To the patriarch of the Zhou family, this was an amount he was absolutely unwilling to pay.

Setting aside the ordinary villagers of Zhou Family Village, whom the old patriarch viewed as no better than pigs or dogs, even the two-hundred-tael ransom for his own eldest son, Zhou Xingwang, was a sum he was loath to part with.

To put it bluntly, Yushu Bay and Zhao Hengyi simply lacked the necessary deterrent power; their reputation for ruthlessness was not yet established. Had Zhou Xingwang truly been abducted by bandits who sent a finger or an ear to the Zhou household every few days, the old patriarch would surely have delivered the two hundred taels to their lair without a moment’s hesitation. His current nonchalance stemmed entirely from his conviction that Yushu Bay and Zhao Hengyi would never dare to kill Zhou Xingwang or the other villagers.

The old patriarch even went so far as to have his servants spread word throughout the village that all the able-bodied men of the Zhou family had been detained by Yushu Bay and were being worked to the bone, tortured until they were mere shells of their former selves. As for why these men had been at Yushu Bay in the first place, the old patriarch said nothing, as if Yushu Bay had truly become a den of thieves and all two hundred of the Zhou family’s strong men had been kidnapped.

In Zhou Family Village, the old patriarch reigned like a petty emperor, his word absolute. Aside from a handful of families who owned a few meager acres of their own, every person in the village was a tenant farmer working the Zhou family’s land. With almost everyone bearing the surname Zhou and the old patriarch serving as both the largest landlord and the clan head, his control over the village was truly formidable.

In truth, the situation in Zhou Family Village was the norm for settlements throughout the Great Yan Empire; villages like Yushu Bay, composed entirely of outsiders, were the exception. This absolute control and unchallenged authority led the old patriarch to view the entire village—including every tenant and villager—as his personal property. Consequently, he naturally assumed the role of a master, viewing the other villagers as mindless objects incapable of independent thought. Under such circumstances, every person had a specific price in his eyes, and by any calculation, the captives were not worth two taels of silver. As for his eldest son, while worth two hundred taels, that was still a significant sum for the old patriarch to cough up, even for a petty emperor. After all, the Zhou family were mere provincial landlords; aside from two or three storefronts in the county seat of Dangyang, their wealth relied entirely on the rents collected from their tenants. They were not to be compared with someone like Zhao Hengyi. They might not go hungry, but producing large amounts of hard silver was a painful endeavor.

The wily old patriarch decided to stall, waiting until Yushu Bay was forced to release the captives of its own accord. In his estimation, those two hundred men would generate little value even with daily manual labor, while the cost of the food they consumed would be a heavy burden. To a man of his limited perspective, the only thing of value in this backwater was land—specifically, land that could be farmed. Yushu Bay was a desolate place with little arable soil; otherwise, it would not have been left to a group of migrant refugees a decade ago. He believed that holding those men would not generate wealth, but rather serve as a drain. In his mind, it was not necessarily a bad thing that they were being detained. The Zhou family’s night raid on Yushu Bay had been unjustifiable, but since it had failed, he reasoned that the presence of the captives would become a crushing weight for the victors.

The old patriarch, a man who had spent his life calculating, was certain that the villagers would eventually be returned. He even secretly instructed his servants to send word to the captives in Yushu Bay, telling them not to leave even if they were released. They were to loiter at Yushu Bay, eat their food, drink their wine, and if denied, to cause such a scene that the situation would spiral out of control. He cared little if any of his clansmen starved or were beaten to death during these disturbances. Although they shared the name Zhou, those few villagers were worth no more than a few copper coins. If someone were to die, however, the moral high ground would shift to the Zhou family, allowing them to entangle Yushu Bay in endless litigation and strife. Once embroiled in such chaos, the experienced old patriarch had plenty of ways to dismantle both Yushu Bay and Zhao Hengyi. Driven by this logic, the Zhou family ignored the plight of the detainees, doing nothing but inciting their families to go to Yushu Bay and cause trouble, as if those men had never existed.

Although Zhou Family Village was the largest settlement in the vicinity of Dangyang County, the sudden disappearance of two hundred able-bodied men was a grave matter. It would inevitably affect the farming and lead to a significant drop in the year’s harvest. But what of it? Farming was the tenants’ business, and collecting rent was his. If the harvest was light, they could dig for roots or strip bark to eat; the old patriarch and his descendants would never go hungry.

However, Yushu Bay was different from other places in Dangyang County or even the Great Yan Empire. To the old patriarch, the place felt ominous—thriving and prosperous in a way that made him both envious and vaguely terrified. He could not pinpoint the source of this fear, so he waited for reality to provide an answer.

The answer arrived sooner than expected. Yushu Bay did not seem to mind the extra two hundred mouths to feed, and none of the captives were returned. Instead, most of the family members sent to stir up trouble never came back. At first, the Zhou family assumed they were staying to maintain their protests, but when people began trickling back only to pack up their meager belongings and flee in the dead of night, the Zhou family finally realized something was terribly wrong.

As more and more people abandoned the village, some even leaving their dilapidated homes behind for good, the Zhou family panicked. The old patriarch was gripped by fear. Had they all lost their minds? Without the Zhou family and the land they rented, how would they survive? Did they all intend to starve to death together?