Charles Howard and his daughter turned their heads in astonishment, both watching him as if he had gone mad. Across from them, Old Butler also turned his head in surprise, but it was clear they didn’t understand Cantonese, all wearing blank expressions. Amid William Young’s Cantonese singing, the two boats sailed forward with the wind. Alongside them, merchant ships, shallow-draft boats, small stripping boats, and even the yellow boats dedicated to transporting goods for the imperial palace were all moving forward with the wind as well...

The next day, William Young could no longer sing.

The wind had stopped!

Yangcun Post Station.

“Steward, have the women prepare to withdraw!”

Charles Howard looked at the almost motionless flag and spoke.

Old Butler nodded, then went into the cabin. William Young looked at Helen Howard with a puzzled expression.

“The trackers don’t wear clothes!”

She said.

After speaking, she crawled into her boudoir.

Charles Howard called out to William Young, and at this moment Old Butler also came out. The three of them went ashore together. Old Butler went straight to find the post station manager, who immediately bowed and scraped, leading him to a trackers’ village. Calling it a village was a stretch—it was really just countless shacks, a small settlement much like a shantytown, and such villages lined both banks of the canal from Yangcun to Tongzhou. This section of the canal had no tides to rely on, and the current was against them. Unless they were lucky enough to catch a tailwind, they had to depend on trackers. There were a hundred thousand trackers along this stretch, theoretically managed by the garrison, but in reality, they were just gathered vagrants from all over.

But these trackers had nothing to do with prosperous times.

“This is real poverty!”

William Young exclaimed sincerely.

Between the shacks cobbled together from rotten wood, dry grass, and any scrap they could find, women in rags held emaciated children, stepping through flowing sewage, looking at them with numb eyes.

And the men were truly naked.

They only tied a rag around their waists to cover the front, but the back was completely exposed. Their profession and income made wearing clothes a luxury. Still, these men were all strong, their bodies muscular—not the kind of muscles built in a gym, but the kind that didn’t stand out yet felt as hard as iron. None of them stood straight; all were slightly hunched, carrying the tracking bows—wooden poles like small shoulder poles—to prevent the tracking ropes from chafing their bodies. Every face bore the ashen look of lives severely overdrawn. They worked the most hopeless job; for them, life was just endless suffering, day after day.

They lived only to survive.

Like a group of walking corpses mechanically repeating each day.

“A few years ago, there was a famine in Shandong, and many starving people came along the canal to seek a living. With more trackers, there’s not enough work to go around, so naturally, it’s even harder for them.”

Charles Howard said.

“What do they do in winter?”

William Young asked.

“They endure it. During the open river season, they try to save up as much as possible. In winter, they survive on thin porridge. If they can’t make it, they starve to death. The court will provide some relief, since if too many trackers die, there won’t be enough people next year. But don’t expect too much—it’s just enough to keep a few more alive, as long as it doesn’t affect next year’s grain transport. In the end, everyone is struggling to survive. We’re the same. Their lives are harder, but at least they’re stable. We eat meat and drink wine, but we have to risk our heads for it.

It’s all just fate!”

Charles Howard patted him on the shoulder as he spoke.

“My fate is mine, not heaven’s!”

William Young suddenly blurted out.

“Huh?”

Charles Howard was baffled.

“Just joking!”

William Young said with a smile.

This was a cruel law of nature.

When there were too many trackers, they couldn’t earn enough money, so when the canal froze in winter, a batch would starve to death, or go seek other ways to survive. Then, with fewer people the next year, those who remained would earn a bit more, attracting new vagrants to join, and the cycle would repeat.

Just like the beasts on the African savannah.

They didn’t need to handle the price negotiations themselves. The post station manager was practically treating Old Butler like an ancestor. Yangcun Post Station was under Wang Kesou’s jurisdiction, and the manager wasn’t even an official with a rank. Although Old Butler was just a steward, anyone entrusted with such an important task by his master had to be a trusted confidant.

He had to be treated like an ancestor.

Even though Wang Kesou certainly wouldn’t remember his flattery over such a trivial matter.

But...

But he was just that servile!

Soon, he came back, bowing and scraping, with more than a dozen trackers in tow. The leader was a middle-aged man who clearly wasn’t happy—obviously, the manager hadn’t given them a fair price. In fact, it was hard to say if they’d get paid at all. The manager was a minor official, and not even the main authority here; there was also a canal registrar and an inspector. But it was still easy for him to deal with these trackers. However, this job wasn’t hard for them. The Wang family’s boat was large, but carried very little cargo; otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to get above Yangcun on the canal. Charles Howard’s was a small shallow-draft boat, very light in weight.

This was nothing like the grain transport boats.

Even the shallow-draft ones were loaded with hundreds of shi of grain, and when they hit shallow water, it was pure brute force from the trackers. The upper reaches of the North Canal were very shallow, often with silted-up sandbanks; otherwise, there wouldn’t be so many shallow-draft stations.

With the tracker issue resolved, William Young and his group quickly returned to the post station.

But just as they reached the post station gate, more than a dozen riders galloped toward them. At the front was an official in a blue robe. As the riders reined in their horses, the manager’s face changed, and he hurried forward to bow in greeting...