Since the onlooker had set out to explain the whole affair to Pan Long, he could hardly stop after one sentence. Everyone was idle anyway, so he told the story in detail.
Upstream from here lay a stretch of the Heaven-Reaching River also known as the Dragon Roar River. It earned that name because the river narrowed in several places, where the current thundered through like a roaring Dragon.
With water that fierce, traveling upstream was naturally difficult. Since ancient times, short of using magic, boats had relied on barge haulers to drag them by sheer force past one rapid and treacherous shoal after another.
The work was dangerous, of course. One slip could wreck a boat and kill everyone aboard. Most boat owners were therefore generous when hiring haulers—saving money could cost them their lives, and no one dared pinch pennies there.
But "generous" was relative. The haulers still earned little.
Their lives were hard. Danger on the job was one thing; if illness left a hauler unable to work for a while, he could starve to death.
So the haulers had formed a guild. Respected elders took the lead, and everyone contributed money to a common fund. If someone fell ill and could not work, the guild would arrange a doctor and give him enough to support his family for a time.
The money had to be repaid, but as long as he got through the hardship, nothing else mattered.
The Barge Haulers' Guild had existed for a long time and wielded considerable influence. It even had some standing in society. When collecting taxes, the Imperial Court used the guild as an intermediary, negotiating a suitable amount rather than driving the hard-pressed haulers so far that both sides ended up like fish and net, dead and torn.
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