Chapter 6: The Merchant
The fence went up faster than I’d projected.
Hao had his six volunteers by midmorning the day after our conversation, which was two days ahead of my most optimistic estimate. Zhao Ping’s son Zhao Jun turned out to be better with an axe than I’d assumed — the man could drop a pine in four strokes and strip the branches in the time it took me to mark the next tree. By the end of the first rotation, the crew had fallen into a rhythm I hadn’t needed to design.
Jun felled and stripped.
The Wei brothers hauled.
Hao dug post holes with a speed that bordered on unnatural, driving the iron-tipped digging bar into packed earth like a hot knife through butter.
I measured the spacing, checked the alignment, and directed where each post went based on the sightlines I’d mapped from the hillside.
Nobody questioned the layout. I’d been worried about that. The fence line didn’t follow the most direct path between the outer houses, it curved slightly inward at the center, creating a narrower gap at the road that would force anyone entering to pass through single file.
A straight line would’ve been faster to build but I’d pitched the curve as following the natural contour of the terrain for drainage, and since nobody else had surveyed the ground, nobody argued.
Twelve days. Forty-six posts. One gate frame that Hao insisted on building himself because he wanted it solid enough to hold against a charging ox.