We Were Short on Hands for the Autumn Harvest, So I Tricked the Six Ministries' Officials into Harvesting Rice

1 On the seventh day after the rice turned golden, the last able-bodied man in the village was led away on a rope. I watched from beneath the old locust tree at the village entrance. Thirty-seven men, strung together on a hemp rope held by a county yamen runner. A section of the river embankment had collapsed, and the provincial authorities had issued a strict order: each settlement had to provide laborers according to its registered population, and the work had to be finished within a month. The household register for Qingmiao Settlement listed forty-one able-bodied men. Subtract the four who were sick or disabled, and that left exactly thirty-seven. Old Zhou knelt on the dirt road and clung to the runner's leg. "Sir, please, have mercy. The rice is ripe. Look up and see, it's rice! If we don't harvest it within ten days of the Frost's Descent, the grains will fall to the ground and sprout,