Chapter 7045 Human Diversity

Chapter 7045 Human Diversity

"Let those women from the local area realize that the place they once lived in was a cesspool, and that they can now live independently without having to continue swimming freely in that cesspool. Even if these women do not marry Han soldiers but survive independently, it will still be a victory for us." Zhong Yao thus viciously presented his plan, perfect yet wicked.

"Assuming we have sufficient control, we should also establish organizations to protect vulnerable groups, ensuring that these people can live independently and choose the right path after learning my carefully crafted system. Then, with the moral high ground in our hands, we can severely punish the locals who dare to abduct brides, creating a large-scale artificial pool of single Brahmanical men," Zhong Yao coldly offered his final suggestion.

Chen Xi paused for a moment, thinking that if the aristocratic families on the Ganges River didn't follow Zhong Yao's methods, it would be a miracle. With this approach, how could those aristocratic families who aspired to be superior to others survive?
"Have you already set up large workshops like textile factories on the Ganges River, specifically recruiting female workers?" Chen Xi didn't want to get bogged down in silly questions about whether other aristocratic families could still survive, so he instead inquired about the scope and depth of what Zhong Yao was doing.

"Yes, I specifically imitated the targeted workshops you set up in Chang'an, Luoyang, Jiangling, and other places." Zhong Yao nodded, speaking with much more caution.

These days, doing this is very dangerous. Of course, this danger is not just a matter of etiquette and morality, but also largely stems from the social dangers of a large-scale gathering of female workers.

Because this was the third century, engaging in female labor on this scale could easily lead to large-scale social problems if collusion occurred between superiors and subordinates, or if there was coercion in management.

Therefore, even if Chen Xi were to set up such a place, it could only be placed in the area with the strongest bureaucratic control. After all, the bottom line of bureaucrats is sometimes truly unpredictable. If bureaucrats were to use such a gathering place for female workers as a brothel, even Chen Xi would face extremely severe attacks.

Incidentally, this is also why there are no such large-scale female workers in Jiaozhou, but there are in Jiangling. Although both sides could have deep control over such enterprises in terms of the prestige and management depth of the local governor, Shi Xie was concerned about his posthumous reputation and would not touch such a project with social risks. Moreover, he was in Panyu, backed by Southeast Asia, and had plenty of projects. Even without this, there were enough jobs, so why risk expanding employment by developing light textiles?

On the contrary, Liao Li has a pure debt-paying mentality. So as long as it benefits the locals and allows them to earn more money and live better, Liao Li is fully willing to take on some of the risks himself. That's why Liao Li also has a large-scale textile business in Jiangling.

To date, Jing brocade, also known as Jiangling brocade, which originated in the Spring and Autumn Period and only became popular around the Tang Dynasty, is now quite famous. Liao Li adapted to local conditions and had local women create Jing brocade that incorporates Chu-style patterns such as swastika railings, wheat rhombus patterns, and curved meander patterns, and is decorated with auspicious elements such as peaches and deer. It sells very well.

Furthermore, considering foreign trade, special designs were created for export, featuring patterns such as lotus flowers, palm leaves, honeysuckle, laurel wreaths, and olive branches, which were very popular with the Romans.

In order to crush the neighboring Shu brocade group, which had no organization, and seize the high-end market, Liao Lizhen even resorted to deception and fraud to create a four-person team of tribute-grade female weavers for Jing brocade.

Well, it's not that the Shujin Group lacked organization; rather, the head of the Shujin Group, the Wu family, had too many family matters lately. Since making money through Shujin wasn't particularly important to the Wu family, they had no intention of pursuing it. As a result, Liao Li seized the opportunity and ruthlessly took over the market.

Of course, it was thanks to those four top-tier female workers that they truly proved their limits in the high-end market. After all, while those who make money in the market are the mid-range and low-end mass-market sellers, to gain a foothold, you still need to be at the very top level. This is why, even in the 21st century, many well-known daily necessities have a top-tier brand that can be described as luxury.

Take cars as an example. Many cars are pure luxury items that don't sell many a year, are ridiculously expensive, and don't even make a profit, sometimes even requiring customers to lose money. This is all for the sake of the top brand. After all, even in later generations, reputation is a very important asset that can be truly monetized.

Liao Li relied on these four tribute-level weavers, who appeared out of nowhere, to surpass Shu brocade at the top level, and only then was his own Jing brocade able to be listed on the international trade platform.

However, don't be fooled by the fact that there are only four people. Just think about the Yuan family. The Yuan family of Runan and the Yuan family of Chenjun shared the tribute-level weavers, but when they were praising Rome, there were only two of them...

Chen Xi was very curious about how Liao Li managed to create this, since reaching the top level in anything isn't about hard work, it's pure talent.

Damn, a women's gauze dress that is 160cm long, with an arm span of nearly two meters, a cuff width of 27cm, and a waist width of 48cm, can be made seamless by a tribute-level female worker, and weigh no more than 50 grams in total. And that 50 grams includes the thickened collar and lapels. Otherwise, the total weight of the dress itself would not exceed 20 grams.

Even with the many tools available today, achieving this weight would be extremely difficult, let alone in ancient times.

Therefore, the textile industry is quite an outrageous industry, with a terrifyingly high potential. Moreover, unlike other light industries, the textile industry is naturally suited to female workers. Even in jobs like silk reeling, women have an advantage over men.

Conversely, if we want to absorb female workers on a large scale and provide jobs for women, not to mention purely caregiving jobs, the textile industry is the most suitable.

And it's also the best way to make women realize that this is money earned through their own abilities, and not money earned through some unseen means.

Considering that the cotton spinning industry of the Han Dynasty has been repeatedly verified by Chen Xi's organization, and that India is a natural cotton-producing region, once it is developed, it can easily become the world's number one.

So after a little thought, Chen Xi knew that Zhong Yao must have some cotton spinning business on the Ganges River, employing female workers and paying them money. Even if large-scale cotton spinning didn't make money, as long as he could pay the female workers and turn the economic situation around, it would be a victory. Chen Xi also thought that Zhong Yao would do it.

"How effective is it?" Chen Xi asked with some curiosity, this thing is a soft knife.

“It wasn’t very good. Even if those female workers earned money, their money would be stolen and they would be beaten. Later, I set up a security department, and the situation improved a little,” Zhong Yao said with a gloomy expression.

"Are the security department staff locals, or...?" Chen Xi pressed directly.

“The locals have all been executed.” Zhong Yao sighed, saying nothing more, but he believed Chen Xi already understood what had happened.

“Repeatedly punished and repeatedly prohibited, the only solution is to kill him!” Zhong Yao’s eyes revealed obvious malice. “This incident also makes me understand why you are so cautious when handling things. It’s clearly a good thing, but you are so cautious when promoting it.”

Chen Xi grunted and said nothing. The Central Plains was considered better, since the management in this area was relatively good. In the Ganges, the locals had a custom of raping and killing high-caste people and wise people, and then they might be able to inherit knowledge.

This is outrageous.

"But it was fortunate that I was on the Ganges at the time. If this problem had occurred in the Central Plains, the situation would have been much more serious," Zhong Yao said with a sigh.

If this had happened in the Central Plains, it would have been a serious matter. Zhong Yao, the organizer, would have been dismissed from his post, subjected to public condemnation, and it would have been normal for righteous people to come to his door with knives.

"What about the girls' school?" Chen Xi asked curiously.

“Same.” A cold glint appeared in Zhong Yao’s eyes. He was a very flexible person when it came to morality, but no matter how flexible he was, he couldn’t accept this kind of thing.

"How did you handle it?" Chen Xi asked with a hint of regret. Doing this kind of thing on the Ganges River is not easy. It's only thanks to Zhong Yao's law enforcement authority that things went so well. Otherwise, the problem would have been much bigger.

“Killing them is not enough to deter them,” Zhong Yao said truthfully.

"Huh?" Chen Xi was stunned, then instantly remembered Zhong Yao's crazy side.

"By the way, I also wanted to bring up something at the Grand Court Assembly this time, to have officials with salaries of two thousand shi (a unit of grain measurement) participate in the court discussion." When Chen Xi asked him this, Zhong Yao remembered what he had been considering and quickly told Chen Xi. Upon hearing this, Chen Xi felt a pang of unease. Was this the second greatest pleasure of meeting Zhong Yao?

"Abolish the death penalty?" Chen Xi asked after a moment of silence.

"Chen Hou understands me!" Zhong Yao almost slapped his thigh on the spot. When he used to say this to people, they looked at him like he was crazy. Even his close friends thought he was insane. He never expected to gain recognition from Chen Xi.

"Then you make the suggestion, I'll give you time," Chen Xi replied in a muffled voice.

What Zhong Yao left behind in history, besides his abilities, calligraphy models, and love for Cai Yong's calligraphy models, was his deep love for abolishing death in his later years!
However, unlike the later generations' ideas on abolishing the death penalty, Zhong Yao's reasoning was that it is not easy for a person to live to such an old age, and no matter what the reason for killing someone, the Gongyang Commentary on Spring and Autumn Annals has the righteousness of revenge. While the Gongyang Commentary on Spring and Autumn Annals is good in the big picture, it is not good in personal revenge, so it is better to completely eradicate the soil for personal revenge.

In other words, we're abolishing the death penalty!

No matter what crime this person has committed, we will not execute him. If a crime warrants execution, we should castrate him, cut off his limbs, blind him, cut off his tongue, deafen him, and then return him to his family so that they can continue to support him.

This solves the problem of endless cycles of revenge in the Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals.

As for crimes that don't warrant the death penalty, they'll chop off hands or feet, or impose more forced labor. In any case, instead of the death penalty, they'll be subjected to a full range of corporal punishment.

In short, Zhong Yao's approach was that execution was no crime; death was far easier than life. He argued that keeping the criminal alive would show others the pain of serious crimes, deter others from committing crimes, and ensure that those who dared to commit crimes under such terror were prepared to exchange their lives for theirs, meaning they must have had enough injustice to justify their actions. This also greatly reduced the difficulty of investigating cases.

This can be described as killing two birds with one stone, which is wonderful, and it also eliminates the biggest social problem in the Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals!

In short, Zhong Yao was no ordinary man when he went mad. He truly took the lead in proposing the abolition of the death penalty and even led the petition. What's even more outrageous is that this guy proposed it from the time of Emperor Wu of Wei to the time of Emperor Wen of Wei, but each time he was stopped by a group of people. So when Emperor Ming of Wei came to power, Zhong Yao, as one of the Three Dukes, continued to submit a petition, which shocked Wang Lang and others who repeatedly tried to stop him, saying that even being cut in half at the waist and having the body discarded was better than this. Grand Tutor, please be a human being.

Then Zhong Yao died with regret.

So now that Zhong Yao has said this to Chen Xi at this moment, killing him before was not enough to deter him. What does Chen Xi mean? Of course, it means that Zhong Yao should be crippled and killed!
The problem is that Chen Xi breaks out in a cold sweat just thinking about Zhong Yaoliu's abolition of the death penalty. But as I said before, even if Chen Xi doesn't want to do it this way at all, he still has to make Zhong Yaoliu go through the process. After all, Chen Xi doesn't believe that anyone else can get through this kind of thing. Is this what you call abolition of the death penalty?

This is just too high-level, so high-level it's chilling!

"Then I'll bring all the materials I've compiled, all the arguments I've made, and the allies I've found, and we'll discuss them properly at the Grand Council," Zhong Yao said excitedly. It was clear that this guy really had the idea of ​​abolishing death and firmly believed that his theory of abolishing death was very correct.

Chen Xi silently agreed. As for Zhong Yao's allies, Chen Xi had already listed a list in his mind, but he firmly believed that those allies who were now cheering for Zhong Yao were just like him when it came to abolishing Zhong Yao's death sentence. They were all traitors. Abolishing the death sentence was a load of rubbish. Others abolished the death sentence because of their own interests or because they were pure saints. You abolished the death sentence? You're a living devil!
"How far have you gotten to the girls' school over there in the Ganges?" Chen Xi deleted all the thoughts about Zhong Yao's death from his mind and silently replaced them with something else. He figured Zhong Yao could handle the trouble with the powerful families over there. Chen Xi decided to focus on how far Zhong Yao had gotten with the girls' school before worrying about anything else.

"The first batch of girls will be able to get married soon. I feel that the plan I came up with is actually quite good." Zhong Yao casually explained, feeling that the plan was already a sure thing.

Chen Xi was silent for a while. So the first batch of girls can all get married now? You started messing around as soon as you went there, huh? If that's the case, the Sima family has been holding back until now to accuse you. It seems they never messed with you before, and you must have leaked some dirt on them this year.

"Do you have any leverage over this matter this year?" Chen Xi asked very seriously.

Zhong Yao isn't doing this for the first time; even though it's been expanding day by day, the aristocratic families who migrated from the Ganges aren't all blind; they have foresight. The fact that they're only complaining now means that Zhong Yao must have made some mistake this year, otherwise, things wouldn't have come to this.

“It involves a certain case.” Zhong Yao was silent for a while.

"What case?" Chen Xi raised an eyebrow and asked Zhong Yao.

"Espionage case," Zhong Yao replied expressionlessly.

Upon hearing this, Chen Xi took a deep breath and began to ponder whether it was a setup or a genuine espionage case. However, Chen Xi quickly dismissed the idea of ​​a setup.

"The one from Zilong's army group?" After a moment of sorting out the possibilities, Chen Xi asked Zhong Yao telepathically, "Is it related to theft? Intelligence transmission? Or the disappearance of the investigators sent by Xiaozhi?"

Zhong Yao moved his lips but didn't make a sound, but Chen Xi could already hear Zhong Yao's voice, "The most serious one."

"This is very troublesome." Chen Xi felt a slight headache. If it only involved the theft and sale of military supplies and the transmission of intelligence, then although the problem was quite big, Zhong Yao's level could actually handle it. But it involved the overt and covert personnel that Fa Zheng had sent to the Ganges to investigate the theft and sale of military equipment. That was a big problem, one that Chen Xi himself would have to deal with.

“Those old hunters on the Ganges are just waiting for me to make a mistake and find my weakness. They haven’t stopped me, which means they know that as the business grows bigger, there will definitely be loopholes in management. They just need to wait patiently, and they will definitely wait for me to make a mistake. A serious case will be enough to stop all my previous efforts.” Zhong Yao frankly told Chen Xi everything he had collected.

Although Zhong Yao didn't mention who wrote the whistleblower letter, at this point, everyone who needed to know already knew. Moreover, Zhong Yao could clearly say that the other party was using this as an excuse to make trouble, but it was indeed difficult for him to explain that they had this leverage in their hands.

Of course, the people who wrote this whistleblower letter didn't expect to bring down Zhong Yao. They even toasted each other when they met at the banquet. What these people are doing now is more about stopping Zhong Yao from digging up the roots of Brahmanism. They have another caste system to use.

In other words, what they want to do is to stop Zhong Yao's current education programs targeting local girls, or at least prevent them from expanding further, so that Brahmanism can continue to exist in a state of neither dying nor thriving, until they take over and reform it in their own way.

“In that case, we can only investigate further.” Chen Xi didn’t say anything more, but his previous attitude and his current attitude were enough to reassure Zhong Yao—Chen Xi wanted to do this, but there wasn’t a suitable person. Now that he could accomplish part of it, even if Chen Xi didn’t say anything, he would go with the flow.

It's a big deal, but at most he'll be reprimanded a couple of times. The families squatting by the Ganges won't chase after Zhong Yao to beat him up. They've even spread the word, practically telling Zhong Yao that we're not targeting him personally, that there's a problem with this matter, and that we've dealt with it. Zhong Yao will still be Zhong Yao, still a high-ranking official.

Now that Chen Xi has made his stance clear, Zhong Yao can finally put his options together. After all, this is something he values ​​highly, and someone has seized the opportunity to exploit it. If he were to handle it on his own, it would be difficult to resolve. But now that Chen Xi has spoken up, even without Chen Xi's intervention, Zhong Yao has a way to deal with it.

Zhong Yao's actions are historical fact; his initial motivation was to settle a personal score with Gongyang, but they were indeed extreme, and his suggestion was practically outrageous—perhaps only suitable for modern times.