The two moons were round and still shone there. At Xiong Bonan's house, Zhang Xing shared a table with Xu Shiying and ate a bowl of noodles. Xu Shiying's elder sister, Xu Chi, also wrapped up two sweet flour cakes for him, one large and one small. The smaller one even had a layer of red paper stuck to it.
Zhang Xing thanked her, carried the two cakes back to his lodgings, and stopped trying to divine the world's rise and fall from the stars. He simply set the cakes on his desk, poured a pot of water steeped with dried sour plums, and began to write.
There was too much to do after autumn. Some jobs he could hand to others, some he could only do himself, and some nobody, from top to bottom, could escape.
Taking the period after autumn as his frame of reference:
First came the autumn tax. This was the material foundation for all political and military activity in the coming year, and the first complete, large-scale autumn harvest for the political entity comprising the Exorcising the Dragon Gang's ten commanderies and one prefecture. On top of that, they had encountered a drought, with sharply differing conditions from place to place.
Chief Zhang thought for a while, then could only write down two phrases: autumn tax fairness and diligence and frugality... After all, everything that could be done had been done. All he could do was keep strengthening supervision and lead by example.
Next came the routine post-autumn forced foundation establishment and literacy lessons for youths of the appropriate age. This time, the pressure on every locality would be much lighter, since only boys and girls who had just reached the required age would participate. Moreover, there was an inexplicable but unmistakably real phenomenon: this