Zhen Shoutu ordered Lu Qusheng to hand over the Lu family canal seal within three days, or be hauled off to the miasma marsh. Chief Steward Wei even stamped on Lu's left hand, breaking its tendons. Lu Qusheng retorted: "The canal registry was canceled seventeen years ago, and the seal was put in storage. If the authorities recognize the seal, then they lost it and failed to report it for seventeen years. If they don't recognize it, it's just a piece of wood. I want nothing else. Just bring three clods of soil from the three hundred mu registered as wasteland under the Zhen family's name behind the ancestral shrine. Let's find out in front of everyone whether it's wasteland or farmland." He plunged his right hand into the soil. "Moisture content, 23 percent. Two finger-widths of topsoil, with sand mixed into clay beneath. Saline-alkali soil can't produce this color. The slope faces southeast, with a four-foot-two-inch drop from end to end, enough to irrigate fields by gravity. There's an old cement mark at the northeastern water outlet, eleven inches higher than it should be. Someone altered the outlet. In a good year, each mu yields two shi and two dou; in a bad year, one shi and five dou." Zhen Shoutu agreed to fetch the soil, and Chief Steward Wei's expression changed first. But why was that three-hundred-mu plot, declared wasteland to escape taxes, situated right beside a water outlet that could irrigate fields by gravity?
