Chen Ke slammed his palm against the rickety table in the brigade headquarters. The wood groaned, one leg lifting clear of the earthen floor, and for a moment the whole thing teetered on the edge of collapse.

"A meal," he said. "A single meal, and people died."

The room went quiet. Chen Ke looked from face to face. "Do they distrust us that much? Do they think today is all they have? That there is no tomorrow?"

The comrades stared back at him with the hollow-eyed confusion of men who had seen too much. To them, Chen Ke might as well have had flames dancing across his forehead. When had a fight over relief grain ever not killed someone? They had seen it a hundred times — a few hundred people, a few thousand, tens of thousands, it made no difference. Death followed hunger like a shadow. And honestly, none of them could understand why this particular relief effort had ballooned so far beyond its original scope. The labor-comforting program was meant for the Insurance Corps' 359th Brigade. Why had every reclamation "unit" — those motley collections of peasants, women, children, and the elderly temporarily attached to the Corps — demanded the same improved rations? These were not soldiers. They were refugees in all but name, useless for anything requiring a rifle.

They thought it. None of them said it. They were veterans of the meeting hall. They had learned what carelessness cost.

Chen Ke saw the silence for what it was: neither support nor contrition. His anger began to feel misplaced. In his own time, even lining up in an orderly queue took years of training. Here, in a county where people clawed at each other for a bowl of millet, expecting discipline was like expecting stone to float.

But the mood in the room would not turn on its own. Chen Ke let his face harden. "We have reached an agreement with the landlords. Within two years, their land passes to the county yamen. The yamen will entrust it to us — the Insurance Corps — to manage."

Hua Xiongmao nearly came out of his chair. "It succeeded?"

His excitement hung in the air, bright and unmistakable. Hua Xiongmao came from a landlord family himself; he knew what it cost to extract such concessions. But Chai Qingguo watched him with a different look — not quite jealousy, but something close. Deputy regiment commander or not, he had known nothing of these negotiations. Hua Xiongmao, the regiment commander, had been briefed in advance. Everyone is equal within the Party, the saying went. The distance between words and reality was measured in who got told what, and when.

Several others wore the same expression. They had misunderstood. Civil affairs work of this sensitivity could not be broadcast to military cadres. The seven members of the People's Party Temporary Central Secretariat Committee had carried it alone.

Yuwen Badu, who had read fewer books than most in the room but possessed a far sharper instinct for human faces, broke the silence with a smile. "This was discussed within the Secretariat Committee. We feared leaks — accidental ones, of course. Now that Secretary Chen has accomplished it, we can tell everyone."

The tension drained. Complicated gazes softened into something like relief.

Chen Ke had not thought so far ahead. Yuwen Badu's words reminded him: the People's Party was no longer the handful of dreamers in Shanghai. With the Central Committee formally divided from ordinary members, every word carried weight. Every slip could cost lives.

"The landlords have much land," Chen Ke said. "But the people have equally much. We are not here to rob houses and plunder. Not to take from the rich and give to the poor. We will use all of Fengtai County's land as one pool, under one new system, so that everyone can live well. If you cannot accept this — if this starting point is intolerable to you — speak now. Do not change your mind once the work begins. Once the organization's resolution is formed, you will execute it to the letter."

Each word fell like a nail driven into wood. Chen Ke's finger struck the table in time with his speech, one knock per syllable.

Some comrades understood the sharpness in his voice. Others were simply puzzled. They had always followed Chen Ke's orders without hesitation. Why the warning now?

"Brigade Commander Chen," Chai Qingguo said, "what exactly do you mean?"

It had become his habit over the past six months: in any Party meeting, anything he did not understand, he asked to the bottom. Whether this was a scar left from being voted out of the Beijing Party meeting, or simply the wariness Chen Ke's seemingly simple orders always provoked, Chai Qingguo himself could not say. But he knew one thing: whenever Chen Ke spoke like this, something large was coming.

Chen Ke did not intend to hide it. "We are about to promote cadres on a large scale. Immediately. And conduct large-scale Party school training. I want Comrade Xiong Mingyang to introduce the Manchu Qing officialdom. Comrade Xiong Mingyang — speak."

Xiong Mingyang rose. He came from a bureaucratic family; he knew the machinery from the inside. His opening was deceptively mild. "Has everyone heard of Dream of the Red Chamber?"

Half the room shook their heads. Half nodded.

He began with the Talisman for Protecting Officials — the Hu Guan Fu. The Legal Advisor profession in the Ming and Qing dynasties had been a closed craft, passed father to son, thick with family secrets. The Shaoxing Legal Advisors were famous not because Shaoxing produced better minds, but because they had accumulated the deepest trove of rules and inside stories — pamphlets detailing how to navigate officialdom, which faction owed what to whom, the precise silver amounts required to grease every level of the machine. To master these things was to be "one of us." To fail was to break the unwritten rules and be crushed by them.

For most in the room, this was new. Many had dealt with bureaucrats before. Now, listening, they felt something like a door opening in their memory — the sudden click of comprehension.

When Xiong Mingyang finished, Chen Ke took the floor again. He explained why the Legal Advisor trade had declined over the past two or three decades. China's social system had shifted. The foreign incursions had shattered the old political equilibrium. The Westernization Movement — the Yang Wu Pai — had introduced new production methods, leaving blank spaces the old advisors could not fill. The rules they had spent generations mastering were dissolving. Clients paid for results; advisors who could no longer deliver were discarded. The industry collapsed.

"Brigade Commander Chen means to set rules for us," Xu Dian said, his voice bright with excitement. A law graduate, he loved nothing more than the drafting of rules.

"Not for you," Chen Ke answered, a little sharply. "For the People's Party. And I will be the first to obey them."

Xu Dian was not offended. If anything, his face glowed brighter. "A new system needs new rules. I firmly support it." He saw, in Chen Ke's instruction, the broad road he had always wanted — a chance to practice his ideal at scale.

The others were less enthused. They could not see the legal provisions flying through Xu Dian's mind. Those with sharper political instincts wondered what authority these rules would grant, and what they would take away. The less sensitive simply hoped the provisions would not be too harsh.

Chen Ke looked at the scattered faces and felt a strange mixture of emotions. Finally, he thought. We have reached this step. For more than a year he had kept his true thoughts guarded. Without a base area, political argument was just empty talk — men sitting in a circle, boasting to each other. Now he could speak his philosophy fully. Those willing to revolutionize would stay. Those unwilling would leave in peace. The excitement of it rose in his chest, unbidden and slightly shameful. He knew it meant nothing, yet he could not suppress it.

Calm down, he told himself. Calm down.

Even now, he could not pour out everything. To control the situation, he needed the support of key cadres first — the seven secretaries of the Temporary Central Secretariat Committee, or more bluntly, the army. He had to hold the army in his fist. And that meant convincing a few more people first.

His gaze swept the room: Hua Xiongmao, Chai Qingguo, He Zudao, Xu Dian, Xiong Mingyang, Kuroshima Jinichiro — the senior commanders — and the newer faces, Bai Bao, Dai Enze. Start with the army. Then the Party and political cadres. Finally the civil affairs staff. The order was already set.

Thinking moved fast when it wanted to. But in the silence of that calculation, Chen Ke felt something else stir: unease. "Setting rules" meant zheng su — purging. Some would rise. Others would be left behind. He had never liked movements like su fan, purging counter-revolutionaries. They were uncontrollable. Without a strong executive apparatus, they became catastrophe. The People's Party and Insurance Corps — where even comforting troops could kill people in the reclamation brigades, those refugee camps in all but name — could not afford to hemorrhage cadres.

Do it first, he told himself. But he knew, with cold clarity, what followed. Expand the cadre team, and large-scale rectification — zheng feng — would follow. Then su fan. With the mission of saving the people, he had pulled many onto the cadre track, but human nature did not change so easily. Power would surface the rot. Corruption, embezzlement, lining one's own pockets — he would have to punish these people with the stance of justice, even cut off heads with the stance of justice. A black humor, and not the funny kind.