Transmigrating to the Chongzhen era, I started by confiscating the Donglin Party.

Chapter 7 The Food War Begins - New

On the tenth day of the tenth month of the fifteenth year of Chongzhen's reign, at the third quarter of the hour of Mao (5:45 AM).

The door panels of the coffin shop in Xicheng have not yet been completely removed.

Old Liu squatted on his peeling doorstep, clutching three copper coins in his hand. The coins were old coins from the Wanli era, their edges worn thin as blades, glistening with sweat, and painfully digging into his palm.

He stared at the clerk at the "Fengyuhao" grain store across the street.

The shop assistant, in his early twenties and wearing a worn-out blue cotton jacket, was tiptoeing as he hung a price tag on the door panel.

The black lacquered wooden sign, with its white lettering, was particularly glaring in the morning light.

"Two ounces and four mace of glutinous rice per shi (a unit of dry measure)".

Old Liu made a hoarse sound in his throat, like a broken bellows leaking air.

Eight-year-old Shuanzi tugged at the corner of his faded clothes, his voice small and soft: "Dad, I'm hungry."

Old Liu didn't turn around. He tightened his grip on the copper coin, his knuckles turning white.

Three copper coins.

That was the money he had saved for his mother's funeral. His mother had been bedridden for three years and passed away three nights ago.

He couldn't even afford a simple coffin, so he wrapped it in a straw mat, borrowed a cart, and had it taken to a mass grave outside the city for burial.

These three copper coins were his last act of dignity; he wanted to wait until the world was better before erecting a wooden monument for his mother.

But now, my son says he's hungry.

He stood up and staggered toward the grain store. His steps were unsteady, as if he were walking on cotton.

The shop assistant recognized him and frowned: "Manager Liu, what's going on here...?"

"Rice," Old Liu said hoarsely, placing three copper coins on the counter. "How much can I buy?"

The shop assistant moved the abacus beads. The sound of the beads clashing was particularly crisp on the empty street in the early morning.

"One ounce and eight mace of rice equals one shi. Your three coins... that's one mace and two fen of silver." The shopkeeper looked up, a hint of pity in his eyes, "It's not even enough to reach the end of the scale."

Old Liu was hunched over and didn't speak.

Every wrinkle on his face was like a knife cut, so deep it could hide dust. His eyes were fixed on the basket of golden wheat behind the counter, his Adam's apple bobbing.

The shop assistant sighed, bent down, and grabbed a handful of old, broken rice from under the counter—not rice grains, but a mixture of husks, bits of rice, and millet. He wrapped it haphazardly in straw paper and pushed it towards him.

"Take this. Make some porridge for the child. This world..."

Old Liu took the light, flimsy packet of broken rice. The paper packet was so light it felt like nothing at all. He squeezed it, his fingertips able to feel the rough, broken husks.

He didn't thank him, but turned around and pulled Shuanzi back.

Shuanzi looked up at him, his eyes shining: "Dad, do we have rice?"

"Hmm," Old Liu said, "We have rice."

He didn't tell his son that the handful of broken rice wasn't enough to cook a bowl of thick porridge, but only enough to make a little rice soup so thin you could see your reflection in it.

It was Chen Shi (7-9 AM) on Qipan Street.

Long queues formed in front of all the grain stores.

The crowd stirred, shoving and cursing. Men clutched their purses, women carried baskets, the elderly leaned on canes, and children cried out from the jostling.

"Don't push! Take your time!"

"Hurry up, you in front! I've been waiting for half an hour!"

"Shopkeeper! How much rice do we have left? Give me a straight answer!"

The grain store clerk, sweating profusely, was collecting money while shouting to the back, "Boss! Boss! There are too many people! We're almost out of rice!"

Inside the shop, the shopkeeper, without even lifting his eyelids, was fiddling with an abacus: "Place the items according to yesterday's numbers, and hang up the sign after you're done."

"Can……"

"But what?!" The shopkeeper finally looked up, his eyes turning sinister. "The owner said that only fifty bushels of grain will be released from the warehouse each day. If more are released, how can the price rise?"

The shop assistant dared not say anything more and lowered his head to continue weighing the rice.

The price list was changed at 3:45 AM.

The weight was changed from "two taels and four mace" to "two taels and six mace".

The crowd erupted in uproar.

"It's gone up again! It's gone up again!"

"Are you trying to kill us all?!"

"Shady merchants! They're all shady merchants!"

Despite the complaints, we still have to queue. Because if we don't queue, we might not even be able to buy these two ounces and six mace of rice tomorrow.

At the beginning of the Si hour, in the waterside pavilion in the back garden of the Duke of Cheng's mansion.

Zhu Chunchen sat on a stone bench by the white marble railing, with four dishes of pastries on the stone table in front of him: lotus flower pastry, jujube paste cake, almond cream, and dried lychee.

He picked up a lotus-shaped pastry and took a slow, deliberate bite. The pastry crumbs fell onto his brocade robe, but he didn't bother to wipe them away, letting the crumbs stick to the patterns on his crimson robe.

Xu Yunzhen and Li Guozhen sat at the lower end of the table, with tea and snacks in front of them, but neither of them touched them.

Outside the pavilion, a dozen plump and vibrant koi fish swam lazily in the clear, cool autumn water. A servant brought over some fish food, but Zhu Chunchen waved it away, grabbed a handful himself, and threw it in.

The fish surged and splashed, vying fiercely for the water.

"Have you heard about what happened in Changping?" Zhu Chunchen asked without turning his head, watching the koi carp scrambling for food.

"I've heard about it." Xu Yunzhen's expression was not good. "That good-for-nothing Ma Ke... three thousand border troops were scared off by a few words from Zhou Yuji. He even lost his own life."

"It wasn't fear," Zhu Chunchen corrected him, scattering more fish food. "It was bribery. Repaying the wages... Heh, our Emperor is certainly generous."

Li Guozhen couldn't help but say, "Lord Duke, grain prices in the capital are in chaos now. Shouldn't we... use the grain we've stockpiled?"

"What should we do?" Zhu Chunchen interrupted him, turning around with icy eyes. "Should we release them? Should we stabilize grain prices? Lord Li, when did you become so kind-hearted?"

Li Guozhen choked.

"The price of grain is only two taels and six mace." Zhu Chunchen wiped his hands, picked up his teacup, and said, "I want it to rise to three taels. To four taels. To the point that the people of the capital would rather smash the drums of Shuntian Prefecture than not beat the Dengwen Drum in the Forbidden City—"

He paused, a cruel smile curving his lips:

"When the time comes, will His Majesty open the granaries or not? If he does, there will be no grain in the granaries. If he doesn't, there will be a popular uprising. Whichever path he chooses, it will be a dead end."

Xu Yunzhen asked in a low voice, "But what if His Majesty really has a backup plan... I heard that there are ships transporting grain from Dengzhou and Laizhou."

"Seagoing ships?" Zhu Chunchen laughed, his shoulders shaking with laughter. "Sixty dilapidated ships, carrying fifty thousand shi of grain, where are they now? Dengzhou? Or have they already fed the fish and shrimp in the Bohai Bay?"

He put down his teacup, his eyes turning sinister:

"Hun Hailong accepted 30,000 taels of silver from Shen Maocai and promised to prevent those grain ships from entering Tianjin Wei by not a single grain of rice."

Li Guozhen and Xu Yunzhen exchanged a glance, both seeing the unease in each other's eyes, but even more so... a kind of reckless excitement.

"And what about the Jiangnan region..." Li Guozhen asked again.

Zhu Chunchen pulled a slip of paper from his sleeve and placed it on the stone table.

The note was ordinary, but the handwriting on it was delicate and a woman's—it was sent by an informant he had placed next to Shen Maocai.

The note contained only one line of text:

Everything is ready; all that's needed is the east wind.

"This is the letter Shen Maocai sent this morning," Zhu Chunchen said. "The grain transport will not be interrupted for three days, but for three months. Sixteen major merchants in Jiangnan have jointly submitted a memorial. If Your Majesty does not stop the new policies, does not change the grain transport policy, and does not release the people—they will cut off not only grain, but also salt, tea, cloth, and silk."

He stood up, walked to the railing, and looked at the koi carp still fighting for food in the pond:

"I want to show His Majesty how many more days his court can last without Jiangnan."

Xu Yunzhen took a deep breath: "So, now..."

"Wait," Zhu Chunchen said. "Wait until the price of grain rises to three taels. Wait for news from the sea. Wait until His Majesty is desperate and comes to us for help."

He sat back down on the stone bench, picked up a piece of jujube paste cake, but didn't eat it. Instead, he carefully examined the exquisite patterns on the cake.

"Oh, right," he suddenly remembered something, "did they handle that grain merchant surnamed Zhao properly?"

"He suddenly fell ill last night and is gone," Xu Yunzhen said in a low voice. "His family has also sent him out of the city."

"Very good." Zhu Chunchen nodded. "Those who know too much don't live long."

The pavilion fell silent.

The only sounds were the faint pecking of koi in the pond and the distant, indistinct noise of the capital's streets.

Amidst the commotion, there were cries, shouts, and despair.

But the message couldn't reach those high-walled, deep courtyards.

It was noon, in the West Warm Pavilion of the Qianqing Palace.

Li Ce stood by the window, looking at the gloomy sky outside.

Wang Chengen stood three steps behind him, holding a stack of reports. The top one was just delivered by Shuntian Prefecture—at the end of the day, some people in the western city smashed the "Fengyu" grain store and stole three shi of rice.

The shop owner reported the incident to the authorities. By the time the constables arrived, the man had already fled, leaving behind only a mess and a few elderly and weak people who were too hungry to walk.

"Your Majesty," Wang Chengen's voice was dry, "Shuntian Prefecture requests instructions... on how to handle this?"

Li Ce didn't turn around: "Have the people who stole the grain been arrested?"

"Four people were arrested, all over sixty years old, and one was a fourteen-year-old boy. They were interrogated; their family had been without food for two days."

"Let it go," Li Ce said.

Wang Chengen was taken aback: "Your Majesty, this... according to the law, looting the people's property is punishable by caning..."

"According to the law?" Li Ce turned around and looked at him. "Which law? Is there a provision in the Great Ming Code that says, 'If starving people snatch food, how many strokes of the cane should they be given?'"

Wang Chengen lowered his head.

Li Ce walked to the desk and opened the stack of reports.

The second document was an urgent report from Fu Shuxun, the Minister of Revenue, which detailed the actual inventory of the two granaries in Beijing and Tongzhou: 460,000 shi on the books, 320,000 shi in actual stock, of which less than 200,000 shi were new grain that could be used immediately.

The third report was a secret intelligence report from the Embroidered Uniform Guard: Seven businesses under the name of the Duke of Cheng's mansion had purchased 43,000 shi of grain within three days. The grain reserves circulating in the capital were less than 100,000 shi.

The fourth message was sent by carrier pigeon from the governor of Dengzhou and Laizhou: the grain fleet by sea has passed Dengzhou and is expected to arrive in Tianjin in four days. However, the sea is becoming rougher, and there may be delays.

Li Ce read through each document one by one and then closed it.

Then he went back to the window and opened it. The cold autumn wind rushed in, making his robes flutter and his hair fly.

At that very moment, a scent entered my nostrils without warning—

It wasn't the ambergris from the Qianqing Palace, nor the smell of grass and trees outside the window, but a burnt, bloody, and nauseating odor.

That was the smell of starving people burning the palace gates on the eve of Beijing's fall, under that crooked tree on Coal Hill.

In his memories of his past life, this scent lingered with him for the last three hours.

Li Ce closed his eyes, his fingers gripping the window frame until his knuckles turned white.

"Your Majesty?" Wang Chengen stepped forward with concern.

A few breaths later, Li Ce opened his eyes. The hallucinatory scent had vanished.

He released his grip, leaving several clear fingerprints on the window frame.

"Let them make a scene," he said, his voice eerily calm. "Let grain prices rise. Let those who hoard grain empty their savings to buy it. Let them think... I've already played all my cards."

Wang Chengen didn't understand: "Your Majesty, but the people..."

"I remember if the people go hungry for a day. I'll endure it if they go hungry for two days." Li Ce turned around, the candlelight illuminating half of his face, creating a play of light and shadow. "On the third day, when the grain ships enter Tianjin—I will let them know who truly feeds them."

He walked back to his desk, picked up his pen, and wrote two imperial edicts.

The first decree was given to Fu Shuxun of the Ministry of Revenue: "Immediately allocate 150,000 taels of silver from the confiscated cash to set up price-controlled grain sales points at the four gates of the capital, selling 500 shi of grain at a fixed price daily, with a limit of two dou per person. All grain reserves of merchants involved in corruption and whose grain was confiscated should be put into the market at a fixed price."

The second order was given to Li Ruolian of the Embroidered Uniform Guard: "Investigate and identify the three to five ringleaders of hoarding and speculation. Three days later, when grain prices reach their peak, confiscate all their stored grain, publicly announce their crimes, and sell it to the people at a fair price."

After finishing writing, he handed it to Wang Chengen: "Send it out immediately."

Wang Chengen accepted the gift with both hands and was about to leave when he was called back.

"besides."

Li Ce pulled out a nautical chart from under the table, on which a sea route from Dengzhou to Tianjin was drawn in vermilion ink.

"Let the Office of Transmission draft an edict to be issued to the whole country: The court has raised sufficient provisions and funds, and the Dengzhou and Laizhou naval forces will escort 50,000 shi of grain ships to the South Seas, which will arrive in the capital soon. If the Grand Canal is blocked, then the sea transport will flourish. Anyone who obstructs the sea transport or robs grain ships will be regarded as a traitor and their entire family will be executed."

Wang Chengen shuddered: "Your Majesty, this...aren't the grain ships supposed to arrive in four days? If we send them out now, what if..."

"There's no 'what if'," Li Ce interrupted him. "What I want is for those who hoard grain, for those people in Jiangnan, and for the sea monsters at sea—to all hear this."

He paused, then spoke slowly and deliberately:

"My provisions are on their way."

"My sword is also sharpened."

Wang Chengen bowed deeply: "This servant...understands."

He left the warm pavilion, his footsteps fading into the empty hall.

Li Ce stood alone before the enormous map of the territory, pointing his finger from Dengzhou to Tianjin, and then from Tianjin to Beijing.

Four days.

Four days left.

In these four days, how many people will starve to death, how many will go bankrupt, how many will despair, and how many... will see a glimmer of light in their despair?

he does not know.

But he knew he had to win this round.

At 3:45 PM, at the coffin shop in the western city.

Old Liu poured the bag of broken rice into the broken earthenware pot, added half a pot of water, and squatted in front of the stove to light the fire.

The firewood was damp, and the smoke was thick, making his eyes water. Shuanzi squatted beside him, staring longingly at the jar.

The fire finally caught fire, the water slowly heated up, and the broken rice tumbled in the pot, emitting a faint, almost imperceptible aroma of rice.

Looking at the pot of "porridge" so thin you could see your reflection in it, Old Liu suddenly raised his fist and smashed it against his own head.

a bit.

Two times.

Shuanzi cried out in fear, "Dad! Dad, don't hit me! I'm not hungry! I'm not hungry!"

Old Liu stopped, his eyes bloodshot.

He hugged his son, his thin, bony hands stroking the child's back, and a wild, animalistic whimper escaped his throat.

"Father is useless... Father is useless..."

Just then, a commotion of footsteps and shouts came from outside the door, growing louder as it approached.

"There's a notice! The government has posted a notice!"

"A grain distribution point has been set up outside Deshengmen! Grain at a fair price! Two dou per person!"

"Really?!"

"It's true! They've already started selling it! They say the grain was bought from the money confiscated from corrupt officials!"

Old Liu was jolted, loosened the bolt, and staggered to the door.

Neighbors poured out, peering towards Deshengmen. Each face held a mixture of doubt, anticipation, and a glimmer of disbelief.

"Manager Liu! Hurry up! If you're too late, they'll be gone!" shouted Old Zhang, the blacksmith next door.

Old Liu looked at the three copper coins in his hand, then at the thin soup in the pot, gritted his teeth, pulled the lever, and ran outside.

"Dad, where are we going?"

"Buy grain!"

The father and son joined the surging crowd on the street and ran towards Deshengmen. Their steps were unsteady, but their eyes shone with light.

At the end of Shen Shi (3-5 PM), all the grain stores on Qipan Street simultaneously put up signs saying "Sold Out".

The door closed, and the waiter disappeared.

The crowd in line froze, then erupted into an even bigger commotion. Some pounded on the door, some cursed, and some collapsed to the ground, looking around blankly.

Panic spread like a plague from the grain market to the entire capital.

In teahouses, taverns, and on the streets, rumors and gossip proliferated wildly.

"Have you heard? The canal transport has been completely cut off! Jiangnan has rebelled!"

"Not only were supplies cut off! The grain ships at sea encountered a storm and all sank!"

"The imperial court has run out of grain! We're all starving to death!"

"How are we supposed to live like this...?"

At the grain market outside Deshengmen, the queue stretched for three miles. Soldiers maintained order, unloading bags of grain from carts, weighing them, collecting money, and handing it to the trembling hands.

The price of grain is 30% lower than the market price.

It's not much, but it's enough for the most desperate people to grasp at the last straw.

The sky gradually darkened.

The autumn wind grew stronger, swirling sand and fallen leaves, lashing against the tightly closed doors and windows.

The capital city was like a wounded beast, whimpering softly in hunger and panic. But tonight, some people finally had a handful of real rice on their stoves.

In the pavilion of the Duke of Chengguo's mansion, Zhu Chunchen looked at the secret report that had just been delivered—"Grain ships are selling grain at Desheng Gate"—and smiled coldly.

"sucker Punch."

He picked up a pen and wrote a note: "Tell our people that the price of grain will rise to three taels and two mace tomorrow."

"Also, give Hun Hailong another ten thousand taels. Tell him that His Majesty's grain ships... should never reach Tianjin."

Outside the window, the night was as dark as ink.

And a bloody prelude to a food war that would determine the lives of countless people was silently drawn open in the cold winds of late autumn.