In truth, Kong Tie wasn't entirely clear on the details either. After talking at length, he ultimately provided only two leads.
The first was Xie Weidian, a Registrar at the Maritime Grain Transport Thousand Household Office (Myriad Commander's Office). He hailed from Qaraqojo—known today as the Turpan region—an area over which the Imperial Court was gradually losing control.
The second was Nasr al-Din, the Superintendent of the Maritime Trade Branch Bureau. His exact identity remained a mystery.
After Kong Tie left, Shao Shuyi thought it over carefully but couldn't make sense of it. One thing, however, was certain: the Superintendent of the Taicang Maritime Trade Branch Bureau held a high and powerful position. It was unlikely he would be seconded to supervise grain distribution.
Conversely, the majority of those buying grain were maritime ship households, with few ordinary commoner households involved. It would be quite normal for the Transport Office to send a Registrar of the Associate Seventh Rank to oversee matters.
The only remaining question was whether the Semu official from that day was indeed Xie Weidian.
Kong Tie had only heard of these two men, but they were hardly the only Semu officials in Taicang.
Even if he identified the right person, there seemed to be no way to approach him. Shao Shuyi sighed inwardly. He couldn't even secure a face-to-face meeting; how could the modern knowledge in his brain possibly be put to use?
As things stood, his only option was to eat first.
It was the same old routine: pulling a few small vegetables from the garden patch, washing some rice, gingerly adding a few grains of salt, and boiling it all into a pot of porridge.By the time he finished eating, the sky was gradually darkening.
Shao Shuyi looked at the straw, mat, and blanket on the bed in the east room and frowned. Although he had been sleeping on straw for over a month, he still couldn't get used to it. He desperately missed the soft mattresses and clean cotton quilts of modern society, to say nothing of the rich diversity of food and entertainment.
There was no going back to any of it.
Just as the last ray of light vanished from the western sky, he stepped into the courtyard. Curling smoke had begun to rise from the small neighboring yard to the east.
Two children played there, laughing without a care.
A grim-faced old woman was sweeping the cattle shed. She swept meticulously, carrying out basket after basket of manure and piling it in the corner of the wall. Afterward, she found a quantity of fine sandy soil and spread it carefully inside the shed before finally driving the cattle back in.
A young daughter-in-law finished drawing water by the well and headed toward the kitchen. When she saw Shao Shuyi looking over, she blushed and quickened her pace.
Tie Niu, a burly man six chi tall, was chopping firewood in the yard. He possessed great strength and a steady hand. The wood split apart under the axe blade, scattering across the ground.
Just as Shao Shuyi was preparing to return to his room, an old man hurriedly walked out.
"Father—" the young man started, but stopped.
"Most of the people have already arrived at the nunnery. If I don't go now, I'll be late." The old man waved his hand and quickly disappeared out of the courtyard gate.
"That old coffin-dodger, rushing off to his death," the old woman came out of the cattle shed, cursing loudly. "He ignores his own household and runs to that nunnery the moment it gets dark. Does the Heavenly Consort really watch over this? Will she bless my son?"
The young man sighed, said no more, and continued chopping wood.
The old woman chattered on endlessly, seemingly cursing her old partner, yet also seemingly cursing her own miserable fate.
Shao Shuyi was equally speechless.
Taicang was originally just a coastal village that prospered due to maritime transport. By now, the vast majority of the population was inextricably linked to the sea. However, this didn't mean there were no other faiths; a person could even hold multiple beliefs simultaneously.
Somewhere in the southeast of the city stood a White Lotus Society establishment named "Yiliao Nunnery," proudly erected with funding from local wealthy families. Every night, believers gathered there—sometimes dozens, sometimes over a hundred—shouting and making a racket that ceased only at dawn.
Shao Shuyi had once entertained the thought of joining the White Lotus Society, but since they didn't provide meals, he abandoned the idea.
Of course, it really wasn't a good place to be.
People of this time might not know about the White Lotus Society, but could a person from the future be unclear? Han Shantong came from a White Lotus family, after all.
As a modern person, he really didn't want to get mixed up in these things, lest he be inadvertently swallowed by the tidal wave of the era. The ideal state was to find a relatively safe place to hunker down and wait for the situation to settle.
[TN: White Lotus Society — A syncretic religious and secret society that later played a major role in the rebellions that toppled the Yuan dynasty, notably through Han Shantong and the Red Turban Rebellion.]
If, in the process, he could improve his social status and economic situation, that would be even better.
Calculating carefully, he seemed to have time, though not an abundance of it. After thinking for a long while, Shao Shuyi finally decided: tomorrow, he would look for a job.
One major reason was to get some banknotes, just in case he needed them to run away in the future.
The other reason was that only two dou and five sheng of rice remained at home. Even if he ate one sheng a day, it would only last twenty-odd days. In the Yuan dynasty, a shi was both a unit of weight (120 jin) and a unit of volume (a little over 100 sheng). It equaled two hu, ten dou, or one hundred sheng. Since densities differed, the weight of one volume-shi of goods varied, making it hard to generalize.
[1 jin ~ 500 g]
Moreover, having only rice and vegetables without protein replenishment was a problem. He was only fifteen, right at the age when his body was growing. Without meat, eggs, or milk, eating only carbohydrates would never be enough, and his physical development would suffer—his lack of strength had been obvious when carrying bags at the wharf a while back.
…
Fourth Month, Ninth Day. Sunny.
Just as the sky began to lighten, Shao Shuyi cooked some porridge. On a sudden whim after eating, he took out the rusty chopper from the woodshed and practiced chopping earnestly in the courtyard.
However, he stopped before long. That bit of vegetable porridge he ate in the morning would likely vanish with one piss; the nutrition just couldn't keep up. Training hard might lead to blood in his urine, which wasn't worth it.
After leaving home, Shao Shuyi traveled east and arrived near the Thirty-Li Dike.
A large crowd of idle commoners had gathered here, all of them essentially looking for work. Shao Shuyi mingled among them, feeling like a down‑and‑out drifter hunting for day labor. If luck was good, you might get ten days or half a month of work; if luck was bad, it might be just a single trip, not even half a day’s worth. Truth be told, longer-term jobs were usually passed along through acquaintances and rarely trickled down to outsiders.
He squatted there for half the day without seeing a ghost of a job; even when one appeared, it was snatched up by others. Just as he was preparing to leave, the sound of crying suddenly erupted in the distance.
Shao Shuyi walked forward a bit and saw a girl hugging her mother's leg, wailing loudly. The mother's face was filled with misery, and she was weeping uncontrollably as well.
Beside them stood an honest, simple-looking man, muttering without pause, "In the winter month of last year, the authorities conscripted ships to wait on the grain transport. They didn’t pay the freight then, but they forced me to repair the boat. I had no choice but to borrow money in advance to buy tung oil, hemp fiber, lime, timber, and other supplies, and to hire craftsmen to fix the vessel. By the end of the third month, I finally saw a bit of freight money, but after paying for the crew’s provisions, it was all gone. Today, the runners came to my door, saying I owe the Household Levy and actually demanding four ingots in banknotes. If I don’t pay, they’ll confiscate my home. I truly have no way out… no way out at all…"
He said a lot, his gaze turning to the onlookers as he spoke, his lips trembling and his voice choking. It was less about telling the crowd and more about telling himself, to alleviate the guilt in the bottom of his heart.
"So much chatter, senseless nonsense!" A middle-aged man wearing silk sneered, took out a stack of banknotes, and threw them into the man's face. "If your daughter weren't pretty, you'd be waiting to taste the bamboo plank and rot in prison. Here are eight ingots. Keep them safe."
With that, he waved his hand.
Several people rushed out from behind him, separated the mother and daughter, and forcibly dragged the young girl away.
The man reflexively reached out to catch the precious notes, then dropped to his knees in a panic, scrambling to gather the ones that had fallen to the ground.
"What a sin. The Xia family girl is only thirteen, and she’s been sold," an onlooker sighed.
"The child is good-looking. Maybe Squire Zhang bought her to be a concubine?"
"So what? She could have married into a decent family."
"Eight ingots aren’t bad. For an ordinary family, could she even fetch five?"
"Xia Er really is pitiful. I don’t know who he offended, but he’s been sent to sea three years in a row. A perfectly good, well-off family is watching itself be ruined."
"He’s a maritime ship household who only signed on a few years ago. With no connections, of course, he gets bullied," someone added.
Listening from the side, Shao Shuyi felt a chill in his heart.
In fact, he had always intentionally or unintentionally ignored one point: this was ancient times, specifically the Yuan dynasty, where governance was extremely loose, and local government had immense latitude. Was it strange to be beaten with planks for owing taxes?
Whether they beat you seven, seventeen, or twenty-seven times was quite normal. The discretionary power of prefecture and county officials was enormous and depended entirely on their mood.
Once the plank came down, flesh would split, and skin would burst. Whether it would get infected was hard to say, but the government certainly wouldn't give you medicine.
He had no relatives in Taicang—not even anyone he could bribe to ask the jailers for food, water, or medicine.
The prison conditions were bound to be atrocious. Darkness, dampness, and cramped quarters were the least of it; infectious disease was the true threat. Once inside, the chances of catching something were frighteningly high.
Shao Shuyi slipped away from the gathering place in silence.
It seemed that even finding a job wouldn’t help much. At best, it would barely keep him fed, leaving him dangling on the edge of starvation. Yet this world held far too many ways to die; he couldn’t even guess which one might come for him first.