No one dared to delay for a minute or a second.
For such an important position, Zhao Junyao still had some discernment in choosing people!
These people arranged everything overnight. At dawn, they set off with the first batch of people leaving the city.
The task for the Ministry of Revenue was relatively easy. Disbursing silver didn’t actually involve carting it there. It was disbursed locally, using whichever source was closest. After all, the money belonged to the Emperor. When the Emperor ordered it to be spent, who would dare not comply?
On the other hand, the Ministry of Works had it much harder. The Emperor wanted to repair the riverbanks. However, silver alone wasn’t enough; specialized laborers proficient in construction work were also needed. They also needed tools—whole sets of them—and many raw materials that couldn’t be purchased locally and had to be transported over. The hardest part was that this matter had to be kept secret. It couldn’t get out. Otherwise, panic would ensue before the disaster even struck, and people would scare themselves to death. That simply wouldn’t do.
Early the next morning, the Minister of Works, sporting dark circles under his eyes, went back to catch up on sleep. For the following two days, he lived like an owl, sleeping during the day and working at night. He finally managed to send a whole trainload of materials, tools, and several construction experts out of the city overnight. His nocturnal lifestyle finally came to an end. But the dark circles under his eyes persisted for a long time. His body nearly gave out from exhaustion, and many of his hairs had turned white.
Of course, he wasn’t the one who suffered the most. That distinction belonged to Prefect Hou. At this moment, he was on the verge of tears!
He was being forced by several imperial messengers to work alongside a group of women! This was because a couple of days ago, he had been playing the "procreation game" with his twenty-third concubine. Just as he was reaching the climax, he was suddenly interrupted. He was forcibly dragged out by a few men. They even recited an imperial edict from the Emperor and presented the Emperor’s token of authority—a Dragon-patterned Jade Pendant. Only The King could use a dragon pattern in the entire land. As a Magistrate, he understood this. However, the imperial edict commanded him to lead all the women of the city in sewing hemp bags and filling them with sand.
These were poor rural women who would earn ten copper coins for each hemp bag they sewed. Since this wasn’t embroidery, it was quick work. With such generous compensation, they worked tiredly but happily, skillfully threading needles and sewing at a brisk pace. With hundreds of women sewing together, an entire cartload of rough hemp fabric was transformed into bags in less than a day.
Naturally, Prefect Hou wasn’t sewing hemp bags; his job was to fill them with sand. In principle, even though the Emperor had issued a decree ordering him to supervise the work, a Magistrate like him shouldn’t have had to do the manual labor himself. At most, he should have just overseen the progress.
But those damned imperial messengers, for some unknown reason, handed him a shovel and compelled him to work. If he didn’t work, he’d get beaten! They were the Emperor’s men and showed no regard for his dignity, merely stating, "The situation is urgent! There’s no choice but to work!"
Prefect Hou didn’t dare argue, so he had no choice but to do it himself.
Work was work. It was just filling sand into bags, and with his hefty build, it wasn’t as if he couldn’t do it. But the real killer was that they didn’t give him any food.
By noon, everyone else sat down to eat. Soldiers carried baskets of steamed buns back and forth, distributing them generously. Everyone could eat their fill, and there were also pickles and hot water. The women were all very satisfied when they saw this, chatting and laughing as they ate.
"I heard it was the Emperor who called us to work. He’s truly a good Emperor!"
"That’s for sure!"
"Why does this feel so unreal to me? How would the Emperor even know that our dike is about to burst?"
"Indeed! As far as I can remember, that dike has never burst!"
"The Emperor is the True Dragon, The King. If he says the dike is going to break, then it really might!"
"Right! The Emperor knows things we couldn’t possibly know!"
"No matter what, we’re getting copper coins for the work and white flour steamed buns to eat. I’m content!"
A group of women chatted and laughed, finding the white flour steamed buns especially delicious.
Prefect Hou, however, was a different story. He held a steamed bun in one hand and a lump of pickled vegetables in the other, crying and begging.
"Good sirs, I... I can’t eat this!"
"Please, I beg you, let me go home to eat! I’ll come back to work after I’m done!"
He had never eaten such food in his entire life. He was used to feasting on the finest delicacies from the mountains and seas! His stomach growled with hunger, but after taking a bite, it was still hard to swallow. So he continued to cry.
The imperial messengers paid him no mind; they just stood before him. They didn’t even have pickled vegetables themselves—just a mouthful of steamed bun and a mouthful of water each. Soon, the men had eaten their fill.
One of them approached Prefect Hou and said, "It seems Prefect Hou isn’t hungry. Since that’s the case, let’s get back to work. Move!"