Chapter 55: How Much Do You Want?

"Ren Yuan! You are going too far!"

Wu Yong was dealt a massive blow today. He never dreamed he would suffer such a crushing defeat.

It was one thing that the Yuncheng troops were wiped out, but the Jizhou troops had actually been reduced to this state as well?

However, Ren Yuan ignored him, turning his attention first to the condition of his own Second Battalion.

"Chieftain! We have successfully completed our mission, completely annihilating an entire battalion of Jizhou infantry! Not a single person escaped back to Jizhou, and these are all prisoners of war. The Ruan brothers are currently clearing the field."

Sun An arrived with Chen Da and Yang Chang, quickly securing the area. These dozens of Jizhou soldiers appeared to be in physical distress and offered little resistance.

Somewhat to Ren Yuan's surprise, the bloodstains on Sun An and his men were practically negligible.

"No fierce battle?"

Ren Yuan was somewhat surprised. A full infantry battalion of the Jizhou garrison was no small matter.

Under the military system of the Great Song, a full-strength infantry battalion consisted of five hundred men, also known as a command. The combat effectiveness of the Jizhou infantry was undoubtedly superior to that of Yuncheng.

Sun An's Second Battalion also numbered five hundred men and had just been recently formed. Even with the addition of Ruan Xiaoer and Ruan Xiaowan's three hundred naval troops, their numerical advantage was hardly overwhelming.

In Ren Yuan's view, the Second Battalion might have suffered considerable casualties this time.

Yet, as it turned out, they had apparently had an even easier time than the First Battalion.

"Hehe, Chieftain, you wouldn't know this, but Brother Sun An had our naval brothers disguise themselves as commoners and welcome the Jizhou garrison with food and wine. We slipped a bit of croton bean powder into the food, so... hehe, Chieftain, you understand."

"That's right. Fortunately it was just croton beans. Those Jizhou garrison soldiers were still somewhat vigilant, fearing it might be knockout drops, and even made our naval brothers taste-test it first. If our naval brothers hadn't had iron stomachs, they wouldn't have fallen for it."

Yang Chang also said with a smile.

"Make sure to give extra rewards to those brothers who did the taste-testing later."

Ren Yuan was in high spirits. Sun An truly lived up to his reputation as someone capable of becoming a grand marshal—he had both courage and strategy. Mount Liang was currently in dire need of such men!

"Chieftain, these dozens of men came running while desperately holding their bellies, and the rest were captured alive by Xiao Wu and Xiao Qi, ready to be shipped back to the stronghold to serve as laborers."

"Very good. This time, your Second Battalion has made quite a name for itself!"

To devour an entire regular local garrison battalion with almost zero casualties was an extraordinary feat to speak of.

"Wu Yong, look at this now. I have over six hundred men here, while your manor has only two or three hundred, and your master is still in my hands. Do you think I can break through this manor of yours?"

"So be sensible. When a matter can be resolved with money, you insisted on resorting to force. Are you really cut out for that?"

Ren Yuan tapped Chao Gai's back with his three-pronged double-edged blade:

"Heavenly King, if I were you, I'd replace the person who came up with this brilliant idea."

"Chieftain Ren, stop mocking us. Today I lost, and I admit it. Tell me, how much do you want?"

Seeing that the Jizhou garrison had been completely defeated, Chao Gai gave up any further thoughts of struggle and resignedly chose to buy his life with wealth.

"Easy to talk about. Initially I said thirty thousand strings of cash, but now the price has gone up—doubled, sixty thousand strings."

"Chieftain Ren, you must be joking. Sixty thousand strings? I truly don't have that much liquid cash in the manor."

Chao Gai shook his head. It wasn't that he didn't want to pay, but that he genuinely couldn't scrape it together.

Although the Chao Family Manor was wealthy and possessed vast estates, the amount of cash on hand was limited. Furthermore, he couldn't simply empty out all his liquid cash; otherwise, his business and the daily operational expenses of the manor would no longer be sustainable.

"You're supposed to be a businessman. Ask for an exorbitant price and bargain back and forth—don't you even know how to do that?"

Ren Yuan could see that Chao Gai's spirit was broken and had no desire to torment him further.

"How about this: I want forty thousand strings of cash in coin, and you can make up the rest with cattle, sheep, horses, and grain."

"You want cattle, sheep, horses, and grain?"

Chao Gai was somewhat surprised.

"That's right. I heard you have quite a few horses in your manor—must be over sixty of them. As a dignified Heavenly King, you wouldn't buy inferior mounts, would you?"

Ren Yuan even made a light joke.

Chao Gai remained silent. He indeed possessed over sixty horses, all of them fine steeds from the northern regions that he had managed to collect over many years of painstaking effort.

"Fine northern horses go for a market price of a hundred strings of cash each. I'll take sixty of your horses to cover six thousand strings. Then give me five thousand piculs of grain at the market price of two strings per picul, which covers ten thousand strings. For the remaining four thousand strings, I'll take cattle and sheep. Just make up the count as you see fit."

"Very well."

Chao Gai thought about it. This was terms he could accept.

"Pillar of the Village, this..."

Wu Yong still wanted to put up a struggle, but Chao Gai interrupted him.

"Scholar, say no more. Just do as Chieftain Ren commands."

"…… Alas!"

Wu Yong could also see that Chao Gai had taken too severe a blow and had completely lost his fighting spirit.

What more could he say? The big brother was about to surrender! There was no point in fighting anymore!

Wu Yong could only retreat to the side with Liu Tang, leaving the people of the Chao Family Manor to handle these compensation matters. After all, he was merely an advisor to Chao Gai and could not issue orders to the entire estate.

The steward with the surname Chao from the manor stepped forward to confirm the terms of compensation with his master. Although his heart ached, he still instructed the servants to make haste—after all, the master was still in the enemy's hands.

Moreover, these several hundred outlaws all wielded swords and spears; if they didn't pay, these men might just smash their way in and sack the place.

However, Ren Yuan had no intention of breaking the manor open for the time being.

Because Chao Gai and his cohorts were still useful for now.

After all, the Birthday Convoy could not be intercepted without them. (Dear heroes, keeping Chao Gai alive is to unlock the Birthday Convoy questline, not out of a soft heart, so please stop flooding the comments with complaints.)

Once the Chao Family Manor had gathered most of the required compensation, Ren Yuan did not dawdle and swung his blade to cut the bonds restraining Zhu Tong.

"You may leave. This time, we are even."

"You're truly not going to kill me? You should know that letting a tiger return to the mountains..."

Chao Gai felt as though he was being looked down upon.

"Oh, please. To let a tiger return to the mountains, it actually has to be a tiger. Are you one?"

Although he was thinking that he needed them to trigger the Birthday Convoy plot, he certainly couldn't voice it out loud.

Therefore, Ren Yuan could only express that, yes, Chao Gai, he truly looked down on him.

"So that's how it is. I regarded you as a devastating flood or fierce beast, yet you never even deigned to look at me... Heh, heh, heh, from this day forth, I, the Heavenly King, will become a laughingstock in the martial world."

Chao Gai let out a long sigh, appearing to have aged a decade instantly. Zhu Tong, standing beside him, could not bear to watch his close friend in such a state and hurriedly reached out to support him.

"The martial world isn't just about killing and fighting... Never mind, you wouldn't understand even if I told you. Honestly be your landlord; as long as you don't bully the commoners, Mount Liang won't bother you. Remember that!"

"I've said all that needs to be said, take care of yourself. If I catch you again next time, it won't just be a matter of paying extra money. Do you understand?"

Ren Yuan mounted his horse and signaled his men to escort the spoils of war and prepare to return to the stronghold.

As for these people in Dongxi Village, they could stay as they were for now.

After all, having captured so many Jizhou soldiers today, he needed to interrogate them thoroughly to find out what on earth had been happening in Jizhou.

Could that scoundrel Wang Lun have actually made something of himself in Jizhou?

(P.S.: A brief supplementary note here. Many people say that cattle were extremely important in ancient times and could not be slaughtered. Allow me to share some historical context. First of all, every dynasty had laws prohibiting the slaughter of cattle, which is correct. However, where there are policies from above, there are countermeasures from below. During the Northern Song dynasty, the legal penalty for "unjustifiably slaughtering cattle" was three years of penal labor. Yet, money makes the ghost push the mill. According to records in the *Song Huiyao*, the price of a single cow ranged from seven to ten strings of cash, while the beef from a slaughtered cow yielded at least two to three hundred jin. A single jin of beef could fetch anywhere from one hundred to one hundred and twenty cash, and the hide and other parts could also be sold. Altogether, one could turn a profit of about thirty strings of cash. The profits were so lucrative that many people disregarded the law for the sake of profit. By the reign of Emperor Zhenzong of Song, private cattle slaughter had become rampant, especially in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, where "entire villages subsisted on beef." Emperor Zhenzong wanted to punish these people, but found the number of offenders was simply too large and eventually let the matter drop. Because these cattle-slaughterers raised more cattle in order to earn greater profits, it indirectly stimulated the development of animal husbandry. Consequently, various prefectures and commanderies in the later Northern Song dynasty even established a beef tax, which was levied for over seventy years. Therefore, the depiction of eating beef in *Water Margin* is entirely plausible. As long as one didn't openly parade it and consume it in large cities, beef could indeed be freely eaten in rural areas or remote places. If any friends still don't believe it, feel free to research it; it truly wasn't as absolute as some web novels portray—that cattle could never be killed simply because the law forbade it.)