I yelled in frustration, "What's wrong?"
Liu Laoliu, panting, said, "Isn't the Heavenly Dao about to return to peace?"
"Oh, yes, what's wrong?"
Liu Laoliu slapped his thigh: "The darkness before dawn!"
"...Tell me what's going on, I can handle it." I never expected the old charlatan to have anything good to offer me, just like when I get a phone scam, I never expect him to ask for my account number and transfer money into it.
Liu Laoliu stammered, "This...this time..."
I comforted him, "Take your time, there's no rush."
Liu Laoliu said, "This matter is a long story if we start from the beginning!"
I put some noodles into the hot pot and said, "Okay, go ahead."
Liu Laoliu: "...You brat, your bladder's getting bigger! Did you even manage to get gallstones inside your gallbladder?"
Me: "...You old bastard!"
After this lighthearted banter, Liu Laoliu finally calmed down a bit and said seriously, "To make a long story short, this matter has blown up. Simply put, the incident was caused by your clients reworking the work after they went back."
I interrupted him, saying, "Heavy work is heavy work, but isn't there a schedule? If we follow that, nothing will change, right?"
"Yes, that's how it was originally, but didn't I tell you this is the darkness before dawn? Our Heavenly Dao brother above us has gone mad for some reason and started scanning the total population of each dynasty. This is both a good and a bad thing. It's like the year-end accounting. If the accounts match, we're done. If they don't, we're finished!"
I said, "How could it not match?"
“Of course it doesn’t match up!” Liu Laoliu emphasized. “The Han Dynasty and the Northern Song Dynasty alone had tens of thousands more people than before! Other dynasties weren’t much better off.”
Why is that?
Liu Laoliu said, "Don't you understand? When Xiang Yu attacked Liu Bang, he didn't really use dirty tricks. Song Jiang and Fang La fought for half a day and not a single person died. After the Jin army entered the Central Plains, they didn't harm a single blade of grass or tree of the Song Dynasty people. Do you think there wouldn't be more people coming out?"
I frowned and said, "Isn't this a good thing?"
"Heaven doesn't care about your good or bad deeds; it only cares about maintaining the existing order and status quo. Now, tens of thousands more people have arrived in each dynasty, and this guy is about to go berserk."
I said unhappily, "Isn't this the way of Heaven?" I used to have a good impression of Brother Dao. It was very satisfying for us ordinary people to keep Liu Laoliu and his gang of charlatans in check. I didn't expect that he also had a bureaucratic style. My clients, especially high-level talents like Li Shimin and Zhu Yuanzhang, have become more knowledgeable in governing the country after they returned, and they are more mature and shrewd in foreign wars. While the people's living standards have improved, there have also been many unnecessary deaths, and the total population has naturally increased. Is there anything wrong with this?
Liu Laoliu chuckled and said, "You know it's not a thing, right? But there's nothing we can do. We have to listen to Brother Tiandao, otherwise this wheel will surely be destroyed by both gods and men." This wheel probably refers to the section of the human realm axis that He Tiandou knocked over.
I asked anxiously, "What do you plan to do? Have Liu Bang and Jin Wuzhu kill the extra people?" Wouldn't the Liangshan heroes fight Jin Wuzhu to the death? As for the Han Dynasty, those disaster victims can be ignored. But to be fair, Liu Bang was responsible in his duties as emperor, so he certainly wouldn't do that.
Liu Laoliu said, "Fortunately, Lao He and I quickly came up with a solution—of course, mainly me." (He Tiandou's voice from beside the phone: Can't you have any shame?)
"Tell me, what's the plan?"
Liu Laoliu said smugly, "From my observation, Heaven only scans the extra people corresponding to a single dynasty..."
"What's the meaning?"
"In other words, for example, if the Song Dynasty should have had 50 people but now has 51, then the extra person can be sent to the Tang Dynasty and there will be no problem."
"...Then wouldn't the Tang Dynasty have one extra person?"
"People from the Song Dynasty wouldn't be detected in the Tang Dynasty; yes, they wouldn't be counted as people. And if the Tang Dynasty had extra people, they could be sent to the Song Dynasty. Doesn't that solve the problem?"
"You mean it's like the inspections from above: if a unit has 50 authorized staff, you only check if those 50 people are on duty, and you can hire 10,000 temporary workers and they won't care?"
Liu Laoliu grinned and said, "Why don't we hire you as a temporary worker in Heaven? You're much smarter than someone like Lao He who's a permanent employee!"
Chapter 190 Historical Population Census
Through a conversation with Liu Laoliu, I learned about the general situation: the extra people in each dynasty are a problem. Liu Laoliu's suggestion is to send these people to other dynasties. This back-and-forth exchange is equivalent to temporarily transferring the extra staff to other units. Of course, their treatment remains the same—we can't let them starve to death.
It has to be said that this was a terrible idea, but sometimes a bad idea is the only way.
I said, "So what exactly should we do? How about we swap the people from the Han Dynasty and the Song Dynasty?"
Liu Laoliu said, "It's not that simple. Didn't I say that every dynasty has a surplus population? You need to discuss this with a few emperors."
"How much more is there?"
"I've made a list here, how do I send it to you—can your phone receive MMS messages?"
"...Wait a minute!" I yelled at the people inside, "Whose phone can receive MMS messages?"
As it turns out, everyone else except me could accept it...
Jin Shaoyan, holding up some high-end goods he'd somehow acquired, said, "Send them to me."
I told Liu Laoliu, "Send it to Jin Shaoyan's phone."
Liu Laoliu said, "Alright, you have to hurry up and handle this matter. Heaven might unleash its fury at any time. I've opened up the military routes for the adjacent dynasties on the list. You can discuss the deployment with His Majesty yourselves."
At this moment, Jin Shaoyan handed me his phone. I looked at it and sure enough, it was a table listing everything from the Qin Dynasty down to the Han, Northern Wei, Tang, Song, Yuan, and Ming Dynasties. Looking closer, I saw that the Qin Dynasty was marked with 35, the Han Dynasty with 55, and the Tang, Song, and Yuan Dynasties were similar, but none exceeded 100. I chuckled and said, "Seriously? They won't even let 35 extra people go? If that's the case—why not just have Brother Ying drag 35 people out of his death row and kill them?"
Liu Laoliu said disdainfully, "Don't you have any common sense? Does a population census count by 'one'? It's a thousand!"
I took the list and read it again: "35,000 people... Damn, 35,000 people?"
Liu Laoliu said, "By the way, the Qin Dynasty has already grown by 35,000 people compared to the same period last time, and this number will probably continue to grow."
"So that means the Han Dynasty had an extra 55,000 people?"