Jingnan Strategy

Chapter 492 Dressed Beast
"Nine hundred tons of rails were shipped out of the warehouse three days ago. The money is three thousand guan. Can it be used up so quickly?"

In July, as time entered autumn, while the autumn tiger was showing off its power, there was also a dispute at the entrance of the Nandian County Yamen Warehouse.

Zhu Zhanhe, who was already skilled, sat at the door of the warehouse, holding a list of allocating money and food in his hand and questioning the two officials in front of him.

Facing his words, the staff in the workshop were not happy and said: "You sit here every day, what can you know?"

"Do you know how many tons of rails are used for one mile of railway, how much labor it costs, and how much food the workers eat?"

The clerk complained impatiently. Zhu Zhanhe slapped the order on the table and said in a bad tone:

"The imperial court's railway tracks are four feet five inches three (145cm) wide. Ninety tons of rails are used per mile, and the daily wage is forty cents. Each worker has two kilograms of rice, four taels of meat, and half a kilogram of vegetables per day. Food expenses are not allowed. More than ten articles."

"It will take at least half a month to lay the 900-ton rail track, not counting the time to build the bridge."

"Three thousand guan of money can be spent in three days by raising at least 20,000 workers. But even if 20,000 workers are raised, it is impossible to lay a ten-mile railway in three days."

“If this railway speed could be laid just by the number of people, then the Southwest Railway would not be shelved!”

"Guo He, what do you mean, are you saying we are corrupt?!"

The officials wanted to deceive Zhu Zhanhe, but they didn't want Zhu Zhanhe to know all the details inside and even dare to raise questions openly, leading the matter to corruption.

The two officials clenched their fists. If Zhu Zhanhe hadn't been so tall, they might have taken action long ago.

"In short, this matter is unreasonable. I will tell Gao Dianli about it later. As for whether Gao Dianli agrees, that is his business."

Zhu Zhanhe looked directly at the two of them. They were angry at him. One of them came closer and said:

"Guo He, don't think that just because you are a distant relative of the Wuding Marquis Mansion, you can show off your power here. Let me tell you, no one here has a lower background than you!"

"Background?" Zhu Zhanhe smiled. He really didn't take the background of these people seriously.

It has been more than two months since he came to Longchuan Mansion, and he has figured out many things.

Among them, he also knew everything about how nobles and civil servants from various families kept sending their own children to the yamen of counties along the railway line.

Railway construction is undoubtedly the most expensive project in the Ming Dynasty, and expenditure means profit, which naturally attracts this group of insects.

The Longchuan Railway project, which is less than 300 miles long, involves many high-ranking officials in Beijing. It is hard for Zhu Zhanhe to imagine how many illicit things are hidden behind the railways in the north.

"what happened?"

Suddenly, a voice came into their ears, and the three of them subconsciously looked towards the door, and soon saw a man in his thirties wearing the uniform of a ninth-grade official walking in.

Seeing this man, the two officials quickly came forward and bowed: "Official Wang, this Guo He doesn't approve notes!"

"Not approving the note?" When the man heard this, his face suddenly darkened.

He stepped forward and looked at Zhu Zhanhe condescendingly: "Guo He, I know you have a background, but no matter how big your background is, it cannot affect the railway construction schedule."

"If the railway construction period is affected, let alone you, even the people behind you must weigh it!"

"Now that I have approved the note, forget what happened just now, and I will not report it to the county magistrate."

"It's okay to approve..." Zhu Zhanhe turned the document in his hand to three days ago and turned it around to indicate to Secretary Wang to check it.

"Please tell me, Secretary Wang, how the previous project consumed 900 tons of iron in three days."

"In addition, the scale of labor recruitment in Longchuan has not increased. How could the three thousand guan be spent in such a short period of time?"

"Stop rambling!" Secretary Wang interrupted Guo He:
"Approval of the note first, and if there are any problems, report them to the high official in your household later."

"You are just a small warehouse official. How can the government run without your nodding?"

"I..." Zhu Zhanhe's temper got the better of him, and he was about to argue with Secretary Wang, but then the sound of footsteps came, and soon a familiar voice sounded.

"Since there is a problem, let's put it aside for the time being..."

Everyone turned around and saw Gao Guan hurriedly walking into the warehouse, walking to Zhu Zhanhe's side, and picking up the booklet on the table.

He briefly browsed through it and then said directly to Secretary Wang: "Prince Wang, this material is indeed consumed too quickly. Guo He and I will go to the construction site to have a look. If there are no problems, we will naturally approve the note."

"Hmph!" Secretary Wang walked away after hearing this, not wanting to exchange a word with Gao Guanduo at all.

Soon, he left with two people from his workshop, and after they left, Gao Guan also placed the book on the table.

"I've been sitting in this warehouse for more than two months, and these people are just corrupt!"

Zhu Zhanhe said directly in front of Gao Guan that Secretary Wang and others were corrupt. Gao Guan could only lament that this person is really fearless, so he shook his head and said:

"You say they are corrupt, do you have any real evidence?"

"If you check it for me, I will find it of course!" Zhu Zhanhe was full of confidence. Gao Guan could only look at Zhu Zhanhe's confident look and shook his head secretly and sighed in his heart.

"Since you said that, starting tomorrow, you will be responsible for following the transportation of money and food, and supervising and supervising the use of money and food."

"If you can find out something, I will personally go to the government office to express my merit for you. If you can't find out..."

When Gao Guan said this, he couldn't help but look Zhu Zhanhe up and down, then shook his head and left.

His words and deeds deeply stimulated Zhu Zhanhe and he couldn't help but clenched his fists.

That night, Gao Guan announced that Zhu Zhanhe would participate in the normal rotation of warehouse officials starting tomorrow.

The next morning, Gao Guan called Zhu Zhanhe and asked him to go to the construction site with him to complete the inspection of the workshop that he had promised yesterday.

The two rode horses for more than ten miles out of the city, and soon saw the busy construction site ahead.

The railway has been under construction for more than seven months. The 100-mile valley railway from Longchuan to Nandian has been repaired. The remaining 200-mile railway to Manmo is expected to take another year and a half to be repaired.

The construction site was bustling with people, as hundreds of people were digging and building roadbeds, spreading gravel, and laying sleepers and rails.

"There are obviously not enough workers for 20,000 people!"

On horseback, Zhu Zhanhe thought he had found evidence of corruption in the workshop, but Gao Guan led him forward without saying a word.

The entire railway project not only requires road construction, but also the transportation of construction materials. The rails are trivial, and the most important thing is gravel.

The gravel for laying railways cannot be found casually. It is either sifted from the soil on the slopes or smashed into gravel with a hammer.

It is difficult to calculate the cost of gravel, so when they followed the team to the gravel workshop, the experienced manager came forward and said:

"I don't know that when a high-ranking official comes to visit, it would be disrespectful to greet him from afar, and it would be disrespectful and disrespectful."

"Wang An, the price of your gravel is a bit too high, isn't it?"

Gao Guan was not polite, but went straight to the point.

In the bill given by the workshop, the price of gravel was as high as sixty cents per ton, but the price of gravel was not worth it at all.

"Haha, Gao Dianli, you don't know that this gravel work is a labor-intensive job. The wages of our workers here are forty cash per day. Including transportation for the Yamen, sixty cash is actually the cost price."

Wang An laughed and laughed, just like Maitreya Buddha, but his words revealed calculations both inside and outside.

"In other places, a ton of gravel is only thirty cents, but here it is doubled. Do you think it's convincing?"

Zhu Zhanhe stood up and questioned Wang An, but Wang An directly said with a straight face: "Official official, what do you mean by this?"

"What do I mean?" Zhu Zhanhe laughed angrily: "What I mean is that there is something wrong with your accounts. I just don't know what your relationship is with Secretary Wang of the workshop."

"Gao Dianli, look at the people under your command." Wang An looked at Gao Guan with a gloomy face. Gao Guan also frowned when he heard this:

"We are auditing the accounts now. If you don't cooperate, then I have no choice but to call in the Military and Horse Department!"

"This...Okay, okay, you can check it, you can check it as you like!" Wang An snorted coldly and walked to the side.

Seeing this, Gao Guan also signaled Zhu Zhanhe to check the accounts.

Zhu Zhanhe would not believe that Wang An would pay workers forty cash, so he checked the accounts and asked about the workers' wages.

But when faced with his problems, the workers avoided him, leaving him unable to do anything.

In the account book, the workers' wages are consistent, and the stone prices are also consistent, so there is no problem with the entire account book.

Although Zhu Zhanhe knew that the problem was with wages, no one was willing to testify, which made him feel like he had been punched in cotton and could not use any strength.

After a while, he returned to the place with a gloomy face. Gao Guan did not ask him. Instead, Wang An came over and mocked:

"Some people think that they are officials just because they put on the skin, but they don't think about how many steps, maybe how many lifetimes, they are still away from becoming an official."

With Wang Sili from the workshop as his backer, Wang An would not be afraid of Zhu Zhanhe, a small official.

In his opinion, whoever has some strength will be an official.

If it was Gao Guan who checked the accounts, he would naturally not dare to ridicule. If it were the magistrate of the county government who came to check the accounts, he would naturally be honest, but Zhu Zhanhe was not. He was just a small official. In Wang An's view, he was just wearing clothes. Just ordinary people with skinned skin.

If there was no conflict between the two, he would not offend Zhu Zhanhe, but would greet him with a smile.

But now the conflict between the two is here. If he does nothing, people will only think that he is easy to bully and come to check the accounts every three days.

"Have you found out?"

Gao Guan asked Zhu Zhanhe, but Zhu Zhanhe could only hold back and shake his head.

"Since there is no problem, then we have been offended a lot."

Gao Guan bowed to Wang An and saluted, but he had no other emotions because of this matter.

"Haha, Gao Dianli also works for the yamen, so why should he offend me?"

Wang An put on a smiling face when facing Gao Guan, showing his ability to judge people by their appearance.

"Let's go."

Gao Guan told Zhu Zhanhe and walked out of the gravel workshop with him.

After the two mounted their horses, Gao Guan said: "You think things are easy, but after all, this is not an army, let alone an army on the frontier." "Besides, even in the army, do soldiers dare to tell the truth?"

Gao Guan asked Zhu Zhanhe back and said again without waiting for his answer:

"No matter how you ask these workers, they will never tell you that their wages are only fifteen cents."

"Fifteen cents?" Zhu Zhan stopped his horse and asked with shock on his face: "Since we know that the workers' wages are only fifteen cents, why don't we capture this guy!"

"How to get it? Is there any evidence?" Gao Guan continued to ask, and at the same time said:

"Do you think these workers will be grateful to you if you arrest Wang An?"

"I'm telling you, not only will they not do it, they will blame you for ruining their livelihood."

"In order to make a living, each of them insisted that the salary Wang An gave them was forty cash per day, but in fact it was only fifteen cash."

"Most of the twenty-five cents profit from this false report went into the pocket of Wang Gang, the workshop. Of course, there are people above him, so the money passed through his hands and then continued to be sent upwards."

"The Longchuan Railway requires two thousand tons of gravel for each mile, and three hundred and twenty-six miles equals 652,000 tons."

"They can get 25 guan from the imperial court for every ton. For the entire Longchuan Railway project, they can embezzle at least 160,000 guan."

"Including other means, the money they embezzled is no less than 200,000 yuan..."

"Then what are you waiting for?" Zhu Zhanhe had a gloomy face, feeling that Gao Guan had done nothing.

Facing his questioning, Gao Guan said: "Waiting for evidence, the wages of these fifteen cents were told to me by several workers who were bribed by me. In addition, they also told me the place where the money and grain were traded. "

"But I'm still checking. After all, there are no records of large deposits in banks around the world in the past few years, which means they didn't take the money away."

"As long as we find out where the money is buried, we can take action at that time."

"Can't we just kill him directly?" Zhu Zhanhe was a little violent, but Gao Guan shook his head and said:
"It's useless to move an official. You have to move the people behind him."

"Anyway, you can follow me to investigate this matter, but you can't talk too much or do anything else."

Gao Guan shook his horse's reins, left these words and walked towards the county seat.

Zhu Zhanhe tightened his grip on the horse's reins, and after some ideological struggle, he soon followed his footsteps.

After returning home, he summoned Wang Huan, who had been lurking in the city, and questioned him:

"Do you know about the corruption in Longchuan Railway?"

"I know!" Wang Huan nodded without thinking, and then explained:

"This case is a joint investigation between Xichang and the government. In fact, the people involved have been found, but the evidence at the moment is not enough."

"In addition, other railways were more involved, so after His Majesty found out, he did not order immediate action."

"Why?" Zhu Zhanhe was puzzled, and Wang Huan also explained:
"His Majesty said that for the time being, we must first ensure that there are no problems with the railway construction and it is completed, and that the impact on the people and local areas is minimized, and then we can deal with them."

"Also, I don't know if you have noticed that the number of students graduating from middle schools has been increasing in recent years. His Majesty may want to use this group of people to replace the former students."

Wang Huan has been an official of thousands of households in Xichang for so many years, and he still has a basic sense of politics.

His Royal Highness has frequently committed major crimes against officials all year round, implicating hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people.

It has been peaceful for several years now, which is not in line with His Highness's temper.

The longer you hold it in, the bigger the case will be. I am afraid that not only Wang Huan can guess this, but anyone with some strength in the court should be able to guess this.

This case is destined to cleanse away those people who are brainless and unworthy of their moral integrity.

"I understand, thank you."

After hearing this, Zhu Zhanhe felt slightly relieved.

He originally thought that Wang Huan would leave directly, but Wang Huan bowed and said:

"What you saw and heard today is actually the best that an official can do."

"What do you mean?" Zhu Zhanhe frowned, feeling that there was something in Wang Huan's words.

Faced with his inquiry, Wang Huan did not hesitate, but taught:
"If you were an ordinary official today, I'm afraid you would have to submit when you are in the warehouse."

"If Gao Dianli hadn't appeared in time, Wang Sili could have used his status to overwhelm you."

"He and I are not in the same room, how can he interfere in the household?" Zhu Zhanhe did not believe Wang Huan's statement, and even thought it was a bit alarmist.

"If he couldn't interfere, why didn't the house find anything fishy for so long?"

"In addition, Gao Dianli worked in the government government before and was responsible for money and food matters. Why would such a person be suddenly transferred to the county government?"

Wang Huan had all the information and directly helped Zhu Zhanhe clarify the situation.

"You said yes. Jianghuai knew that there was a problem with the Nandian County Government, so he sent Gao Guan down to investigate the case with Xichang."

"According to what you said, I have exposed his intentions today."

Zhu Zhanhe blushed a little, and Wang Huan nodded after hearing this: "Although it is exposed, Gao Guan dares to expose it, so he must have enough information."

"Although this Wang Gang has some methods, compared with the group of people around Jiang Huai, his methods are too immature."

"If his methods are immature, then I..." Zhu Zhanhe smiled bitterly. He was disgraced today by Wang An, who was under Wang Gang.

If Gao Guan hadn't told him, he might not have known why these workers were unwilling to tell him the true wages.

They do it for life, and as a person who doesn't need to think about life, he naturally won't think of this.

"It seems that I still have a lot to learn, but I don't know how much I can learn in the past few years."

Zhu Zhanhe sighed. Seeing him like this, Wang Huan immediately explained:
"What you experienced today is nothing. If you were an official with no background, you would be bullied the most."

"That Gao Guan was jealous because he worked hard in the county government. Others gave him a little stumbling block, so he was framed and deprived of his position. When he returned home, he was ridiculed by his fellow villagers and neighbors, and everyone shouted at him to be beaten. "

"If it weren't for Jiang Huai, he might still be facing the fields and his back to the sky in his hometown, and he would be a farmer in this life."

"Does he still have such an experience?" Zhu Zhanhe did not expect that Gao Guan, who seemed calm and majestic at the moment, would actually have such an experience.

Thinking about it this way, he felt that people like Gao Guan were very scary.

"I remember he is just a student, right? If he can pass the examination and become a Jinshi, it will be considered a blessing to me in the Ming Dynasty."

Zhu Zhanhe had not yet realized what Wang Huan meant. Seeing this, Wang Huan could only get straight to the point:

"There were many people like Gao Guan in the Ming Dynasty. It's just that horses with thousands of miles of horses are common but Bole is not. It is difficult for ordinary civilians to stand out."

"Hmm..." Zhu Zhanhe nodded in agreement, and then sat and thought about what he had seen and heard today.

Seeing that he was thinking about something, Wang Huan bowed and left the main hall.

As for Zhu Zhanhe's day, he was also written into a letter and sent to the capital under Wang Huan's instruction.

It was already early August when Zhu Gaoxu received this letter. Faced with Zhu Zhanhe's experience, he did not make any comments, but frowned at the phenomenon of corruption in railway projects.

Hu Lun and Liu Mian were standing in the Yangxin Hall of Qianqing Palace. Zhu Gaoxu was sitting in his seat. Through the window, it could be seen that it was already dusk.

Yishiha knelt down and took off Zhu Gaoxu's shoes, and several palace maids also came forward to knead Zhu Gaoxu's tired calves.

It wasn't until he frowned and finished reading the letter that he put it on the table and looked at Liu Mian and Hu Lun.

"Just one Longchuan railway project can embezzle money from the imperial court of 200,000 yuan a year. How much money and food can other embezzlement cost?"

"Your Majesty, the Jin Yiwei have recorded the corruption in projects in various places. I will arrest them now!"

Liu Mian seemed to be expressing his stance, but in fact he was waiting for Zhu Gaoxu's attitude. After all, if Zhu Gaoxu didn't let the Criminal Division issue driving notices, Xichang and Jinyiwei would not be able to arrest anyone at all.

Facing his temptation, Zhu Gaoxu didn't bother to hide it, and said with an ugly face:
"I wanted to wait until they finished the project before dealing with them, but looking at the current scale, I'm afraid it has reached a point where we can't deal with it anymore."

He turned his attention to Yishiha: "You and Xia Yuanji are ready. First, place all the officials needed for the projects in various places. Once the project starts, let them take over the project immediately. All projects cannot be delayed for a moment."

"Servant, take your orders," Yi Shiha responded respectfully, while Zhu Gaoxu turned his attention to Liu Mian and Hu Lun again.

"It takes time to mobilize officials. In these few months, I hope you can find out everyone, even the old brothers from Bohai. I will never tolerate it this time."

"I wait...accept the order!"

Hu Lun and Liu Mian felt the pressure on their shoulders suddenly become heavy. After bowing in agreement, they lowered their heads and walked out of the Yangxin Palace and Qianqing Palace.

After they left, Yishiha also dispersed the palace maids and eunuchs, leaving only himself.

Seeing them all leaving, Yi Shiha came back and bowed:

"Your Majesty, according to the information found by the people below, it seems that there are many brothers in Bohai who collect money, especially their children..."

Yi Shiha hoped that Zhu Gaoxu would show some mercy, but Zhu Gaoxu picked up the tea cup and took a sip of tea, looking at Yi Shiha sharply.

"Are the rewards I gave them not generous enough?"

"No..." Yi Shiha lowered his head with a guilty conscience.

"Is that because I didn't take enough care of their heirs?"

"Slave..."

"I have repeatedly given orders that you can take the money you should take, but you can't take the money you shouldn't take. Since they took it, they should be prepared to be settled early."

Zhu Gaoxu's face looked ugly, but when he thought of Brother Bohai going through life and death for him in the past, he still looked away.

"Before things start, I will give them one last chance. If you miss it, you can't blame me..."

(End of this chapter)