Hongwu Daming: Why hasn't my son rebelled?

Chapter 163 How Can I Be a Corrupt Official?

When Liu Bowen first heard that His Royal Highness King Liao was going to summon the students to calculate the accounts of the central and local finances, he also had a surprised expression on his face.

Although Liu Bowen knew that the mathematics textbooks written by His Royal Highness Liao Wang simply reproduced the peak of mathematics in the Tang Dynasty.

But can these students who have only studied for more than a year really complete such a heavy task?

Liu Bowen didn't know the true abilities of these students. After all, Liu Bowen didn't study mathematics systematically like Zheng Shiyuan did in the college.

He is at this age, and he has no special interest in mathematics.

Therefore, when Zheng Shiyuan heard Liu Bowen express such doubts in private, Zheng Shiyuan just smiled, and then said to Liu Bowen:
"Sincerely, I don't dare to say anything else, but when it comes to mathematics, His Royal Highness King Liao said that Ming Dynasty is number one, so no one would dare to call himself number two.

Even I just learned a little from His Royal Highness Liao Wang. "

Seeing that Zheng Shiyuan was so confident, Liu Bowen followed Zheng Shiyuan to the place where the students were calculating the data.

The brocade guards are already very fast, and they have been investigating for a long time. They have already held the ledgers of the chief secretaries in their hands.

At this time, His Royal Highness the King of Liao asked for these ledgers, so he just moved them from the government office to Zhu Qi.

And those students were all in the Guozijian, and they were all summoned very easily. Zhu Qi specially arranged a big room for these Guozijian students who had studied mathematics to conduct financial affairs in this room. calculate.

And their calculation methods are also the latest mathematics knowledge learned in school. Not only that, Zhu Qi also gave each of them a new abacus.

This abacus is not the kind of abacus that was popular from the Song Dynasty to the early Ming Dynasty, but a very modern abacus.

In fact, the real popularity of abacus also began to become popular around the end of Hongwu.

But the modernized abacus had to wait until the middle and late Ming Dynasty, and Zhu Qi was considered to be 100 years ahead of schedule, allowing the real abacus to appear in the world.

I saw that in the whole room, these students were separated into small compartments one by one, and they couldn't see each other, just like the office of Zhu Qi's descendants.

But this kind of advanced working environment still made Liu Bowen feel deeply shocked. Surely this is not the scene of the annual imperial examination?
The students, all with their heads down, flicked the abacus with their fingers quickly. At the same time, they also held a pencil in one hand and wrote mathematical formulas of Arabic numerals on the paper.

One of the great advantages of Arabic numerals is that they are concise and convenient, and they are small in size and fast in writing, so they are really suitable for statistics.

Liu Bowen walked in front of a student, and saw that the student had put aside the account book of a county seat under the Chief Secretary.

Liu Bowen looked at the data written on the side of the student again, and then picked up the account book that was officially brought up on the spot.

The difference between the data and the official central statistics is not particularly big.

Liu Bowen looked at Zheng Shiyuan in surprise, full of confidence in formal principles, nodded and said:

"His Royal Highness King Liao is truly a god-man."

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Zhu Qi still didn't know that Zheng Shiyuan was able to boast about himself in such matters as settling accounts.

He is now busy checking those detained officials in the prison.

Of course, it's not to go to the prison to send warmth to those officials, but mainly to see if there are any people they know.

For example, some well-known civil servants and military generals in history, it is possible to save some at this time.

Don't wait until after you figure out your accounts, these officials were beaten to death in the prison, and they only have half their lives left when they come out.

Not to mention, Zhu Qi went around the prison and really saw a lot of famous characters in history.

Their achievements may not be as outstanding as Xu Da, or as legendary as Liu Bowen, but they also have a very good reputation and official reputation in the local area.

These officials have at least been verified by history, and they are all relatively good, capable officials who can be rescued, of course more of them are saved.

Zhu Qi is now the commander of the Jinyiwei, and the authority of the Jinyiwei is much greater than that of the Ministry of Punishment.

What's more, he is also the candidate appointed by Zhu Yuanzhang to investigate the empty seal case, so it is impossible for the officials in this prison not to listen to Zhu Qi.

Soon, arrangements were made to improve the living conditions for those officials, and except for those officials, the rest of the officials, Zhu Qineng, took care of them a little bit, and took care of them.

Anyway, this kind of situation of being beaten to death in prison is impossible.

Of course, Zhu Yuanzhang knew all these things that Zhu Qi did.

Zhu Yuanzhang hated these officials involved in the air printing case, so he summoned Zhu Qi immediately and asked why the prison environment of these officials should be improved.

And Zhu Qi also knew that Zhu Yuanzhang was angry at this time, if he still helped them speak, the loss would not be worth the gain.

On the contrary, when Zhu Yuanzhang got angry, he directly ordered to throw all those officials back to the death row, which would be bad.

So Zhu Qi explained it in a straight-forward manner.

This is not intended to improve their living environment, but to prepare for subsequent interrogations.

Now I have been re-investigating the errors of the central finance and local finance, as well as the data.

If there is something wrong with these data, then these officials in prison must be the first objects to be interrogated.

However, before these data came out, it was discovered that many officials died in prison because they couldn't bear the torture of Jin Yiwei.

These corrupt officials died in prisons. It is a small matter, but the country's property has been embezzled, and the whereabouts of these properties is still unknown.

Just ransacking the house is not of much use, and they are not stupid. If they want to transfer the money safely, they may give it to someone else for safekeeping, or hide it somewhere.

Zhu Yuanzhang also heard the same reasoning. Although Jin Yiwei is very good at spy work, there is no such thing as monitoring and listening in this era.

So many officials, especially local officials, if they really did something wrong and buried the money, who would know.

If you die directly in the prison due to torture, the money will really not be returned.

Seeing that he had successfully stabilized his father, Zhu Qi also breathed a sigh of relief.

I can be regarded as worthy of His Royal Highness's entrustment.

Zhu Qi didn't know that his actions like this had silently accumulated his reputation among the officials.

Those officials who are locked in prisons, which one does not have a network of relationships in the officialdom.

Many of them are under the same teacher, and they are also classmates and colleagues.

Even family friends, seeing their good friends, classmates, and colleagues being imprisoned, those who have not yet entered, of course, feel panic.

And Zhu Qi was known for being ruthless and selfless. Wasn't his cousin Zhu Huan beheaded by His Royal Highness the King of Liao before?

They originally thought that those colleagues who were imprisoned in the prison must be miserable.

This His Royal Highness Liao Wang is not a gentle His Royal Highness Prince, maybe His Highness Liao Wang is not happy, so he will kill them all.

Unexpectedly, His Royal Highness Liao Wang took the initiative to improve their living environment.

No matter what the final result is, at least His Royal Highness King Liao has been very benevolent and righteous in doing so.

Many officials are actually grateful to His Highness King Liao in their hearts.

On Zhu Qi's side, along with the local financial data, they were calculated one by one.

The real bad consequences of the empty printing case were revealed in front of Zhu Qi.

In addition to Yunnan, there are a total of twelve chief secretaries plus the Gyeonggi area, and thirteen administrative regions.

There are only two administrative districts where the general ledger can be controlled within 10% error, and the error of all other administrative districts is more than 10%.

What does this mean?This shows that there is a lot of corruption in the rest of the administrative regions.

It may not be the officials at the first level of the Chief Secretary who are involved in corruption, but the county magistrates or magistrates below are involved in corruption.

But don't these chief envoys have any responsibility?

That must be responsible!
Everyone thought it would not be too troublesome, and they didn't even bother to calculate the accounts, so they sent blank printed documents, and then went to the account department to reconcile the accounts.

Directly copy the finances calculated by the central government.

Not to mention these officials, if I were a local official and took these blank documents to reconcile accounts, I couldn't help but want to embezzle!

For example, a small county town originally collected a tax of [-] taels of silver.

And the tax calculated on the account books of the central government may only be 8 taels.

I put 8 taels of tax on this blank document, and the remaining 2 taels of silver is not headless silver.

The kind that no one knows about stuffing it in your own pocket.

It is estimated that these corrupt officials never dreamed that Zhu Qi would take their account books and recalculate them. After all, let's not talk about the complexity of these accounts when these officials want to come.

There are so many counties in the country alone, even if there is a problem, it is impossible to find it by chance.

Every corrupt official has such a fluke mentality in his heart. It was like this in the Ming Dynasty, and it is also like this in modern times. Everyone thinks that it is impossible to find themselves.

But Zhu Qi is such a serious person, since he has received the order to investigate the empty seal case, he must investigate thoroughly.

Anyway, those students stayed in the Imperial College and studied things like the Four Books and Five Classics, so they might as well pull them out to practice mathematics.

It just so happens that there are two to three thousand students in the Imperial College who have studied mathematics, and they dragged them out to calculate the tax books of various administrative regions, which can be regarded as a practice in advance.

They will be the main force of the tax bureau in the future.

Zhu Qi originally thought that most of the officials in the Golden Corridor were innocent, good guy, looking at it this way, there may not be as many innocent officials as he thought.

At least after the bill is roughly calculated, the local officials alone will be more than half unlucky.

And the officials of the six central government courts are not unlucky, so it depends on the situation.

To use a simple analogy, for example, if there is a problem with the chief secretary's taxation, then check down to see which state and which county has the problem, and then check whether the local officials have any problems with the above six departments. Officials are connected.

If there is a relationship such as colleagues or relatives, then you have to check it carefully. If there is no connection, it probably has nothing to do with it.

Of course, whether there is any connection or not, we still have to conduct an interrogation before we can draw a conclusion.

After all, criminal investigation methods are very limited these days, and torture can be said to be a very direct method.

So in this prison, every day, Jin Yiwei can be seen arresting local officials from below, putting them in the prison, and then interrogating them carefully. Of course, these officials were stubborn at first.

How could I have tampered with taxes?How could it be corrupt?I'm an upright official!
Even if he received two beatings, he might not be able to keep his mouth open. At this time, he spread the accounts calculated by the students in front of them.

How could they have imagined that the imperial court had such great determination?The local tax was calculated again, and it was calculated so quickly!
Some people may be wondering, why don't these local officials make this fraud more real from the source?For example, change the local taxation!

First of all, these local officials may not have such a great ability and ability, especially the mathematical ability, to change the tax so satisfactorily. You must know that even in modern times, professional accountants are required to do accounting. .

And even if professional accountants do the accounting, it may be full of loopholes.

Not to mention these local officials who have no mathematical ability, even if they find some dog-headed masters from the people, they are just Confucian scholars who have become monks halfway.

How good at math can they be?

If it was in the Tang Dynasty, it might have been a little more powerful, but at this time in the Ming Dynasty, it was true that only the Four Books and Five Classics were read every day, and there were very few Confucian scholars who studied mathematics.

Another reason is that they do not have this authority.

Because in Zhu Yuanzhang's household registration system, there is a very important indicator, that is the yellow book system!

It is a household registration registration made by the state to verify household registration and collect taxes and labor.

The yellow book takes the household as the unit, and details the township, name, age, population, land and house, assets, and delimits the household registration according to the occupation. It is mainly divided into three categories: civilian, military, and craftsman.

This yellow book is required to be filled out every year, accumulatively for ten years, and a large-scale yellow book will be made.

And the basis for the central government's fiscal and taxation is this thing.

This is not something that local magistrates or county government officials can touch.

Instead, there are special officials to count and compile the records. Most of these officials are sent down from the central government.

It is conceivable that Zhu Yuanzhang spent a lot of effort and thought in order to prevent officials from corruption.

It's a pity that this policy basically existed in name only after the middle of the Ming Dynasty. After all, the officials at that time had already colluded with each other and began to suck blood from the country.

But now is Hongwu Year!

This yellow book is very accurate!

(End of this chapter)