golden scales

Li Mingrui came out of Wenhua Hall, and Zhu Cihong walked him all the way to Donganmen. .

The two walked together, but Zhu Cihong didn't say anything, obviously thinking about his own affairs.Li Mingrui didn't dare to find a topic, he only said that this was the crown prince's expression, letting the entire government and the public know the importance of Dali Temple now.

In fact, Zhu Cihong just walked around to make a favor when it was time to stretch his muscles and bones and rest his eyes, and he didn't have too far-reaching considerations.Anyway, Li Mingrui was also his teacher, and he deserves this respect.

Impressed, Li Mingrui rode all the way back to the official office of Dali Temple, handed the horse to the door at the gate, and walked quickly inside.

Dali Temple is a newly moved government office, about two miles east of Donghuamen.In front of the gate tower is a huge stone drum with two sides, expressing acceptance of Wanmin's appeal.Passing the gate tower is the vermilion gate, which is shaped like a palace, except that a majestic one-horned Xiechi animal is painted on the screen wall, and the blue water below is as smooth as a mirror, which is the original meaning of the word "灋".

After entering the gate, there is a courtyard first, and you can still see new soil under the newly planted wild jujube tree.This is the tradition of Dali Temple, which represents the Criminal Division of Facao. Because the lawsuit was heard under the thorn tree in ancient times, it became the origin of Dali Temple's nickname "Ji Temple".

On both sides of the courtyard are double gallery rooms, which are classrooms for law students in the morning and debating rooms for judges to discuss legislative provisions in the afternoon.

The law students who can enter Dali Temple are all young people who are emerging in the Faculty of Law and Political Science. In other words, they are all supporters of the crown prince and Li Mingrui's "Fa Yaoshun".The reason for choosing them is not only because they can remember their surnames well, but also because they can master and use the codes and laws, and more importantly, they are firmly on the side of the crown prince and the new law.

At the end of the corridor is the main hall, where important visitors - such as the crown prince - will be greeted by the entire Dali Temple and listen to the hadith.On weekdays, if there are temple-level relatives coming, Li Mingrui will also receive them here and hold talks.

This lobby is no different from the main hall of general government offices, but the layout is quite innovative: behind the guest seats, there are four screens.When there are guests, it is covered with green gauze, and when there are no guests, the green gauze is removed, but there are four double-sided blackboards.The blackboard is all made of black porcelain fired in official kilns. It is as black as lacquer, and writing on it with a chalk pen is very clear.

Li Mingrui walked all the way into the lobby, stood in front of the blackboard, scanned the words on it, shook his head immediately, took the chalk and wrote five or seven words, or a sentence or two, under some words.Finally, I found an empty space and wrote two words on it: "The private law of the clan is in conflict with the law of the state" and "Corrupt officials donate stolen money to the public welfare of the clan", and then threw down the chalk and continued walking inside.

The clerk on duty in the lobby saw it, grabbed the gavel, and knocked on the copper chime in front of him.Soon, judges and law students came out to look for the message of Zhengqing of this temple and ponder it.

This is Li Mingrui's prerogative. Generally, judges would only knock the bell if they greeted the clerk specifically and clarified the important surnames, so as not to be blamed regardless of the seriousness.

It was in this way that Li Mingrui did not say a word, but passed on the topic given by the crown prince, brainstorming, and only waited for someone to propose a plan in the next discussion, or directly sent it to his office.

Li Mingrui's office is in the east ear room of the second hall, and the west ear room is Shaoqing's office, which is slightly smaller.The entire second hall is where the two ministers work and receive visitors.In the corridor rooms on both sides of the second hall, there are the staff rooms of the left and right temple principals and prime ministers. They also vary in size according to their grades. There are as many as six or seven people per room, and as few as two or three people.

Li Mingrui had just sat down in front of the desk and took a breath. Before he started working, he heard the clerk report: "Ting Wei, there is Qiu Guan asking for an interview, saying that he has solved Ting Wei's problem."

Li Mingrui's head was in a daze, he had just written it, it's really that simple, could it be that he and the crown prince are just for nothing?As soon as he thought of this, he already had an opinion in his heart, and asked in displeasure: "Which rebellious person is it that made such wild words?"

The scribe didn't hear well, and quickly said, "It's Feng Yuanhui, the Prime Minister of the Temple."

Li Mingrui's mood became worse and worse.

This Feng Yuanhui was only transferred to Dali Temple in August. In Li Mingrui's eyes, he was a disgusting piece of dirt, and he wanted to drive him out.

If there is anything wrong with the crown prince, recruiting these "dirt" is the biggest one.In order to attract enough legal talents, the crown prince opened the door to civil servants and tributes who were proficient in the "Law of the Ming Dynasty" and the "Regulations on Interrogation and Penalties".

It seems to be good governance, but the crown prince is in the ninth place after all, and he doesn't know the people's sentiments below.

Who would read the "Law of the Ming Dynasty" and the "Regulations on Penalties" for ordinary students?This thing can't help the current literature, and it is a miscellaneous book that delays time.Only the kind of broken-shoe gangsters who scoop up lawsuits in the country, sow right and wrong, and turn black and white will read these books in order to make people sue and profit from it.

Li Mingrui is extremely shameless towards this kind of person, and would rather be slower to train scholars with excellent conduct to serve as judges.Although the Faculty of Law and Politics does not have many students, it can still train dozens of people every year, which is enough in time, and there is no need to recruit those litigators with extremely bad reputations.

It can be said that the biggest beneficiary of recruiting these litigants is not the Dali Temple, but the Metropolitan Procuratorate.

From March 18 in Chongzhen, the Metropolitan Procuratorate secretly launched an operation specifically targeting judges, focusing on the inspection of judges at all levels. As of June 19 in Chongzhen, a total of 360 people were arrested and more than [-] taels of stolen money were seized... As a result, the Metropolitan Procuratorate was rewarded by the imperial court, and all meritorious censors were promoted and raised, and gained both fame and fortune.

The entire Dali Temple was humiliated because of it, and Li Mingrui even went to the point where Shangshu resigned.

It's almost like showing off for the Metropolitan Procuratorate!

It was these 360 ​​people who accounted for 80.00% of the recruited students!Among them are moths who are greedy for thousands of taels, and there are also idiots who are dozens of taels. In order to solve the unjust, false and wrong cases left by these bastards, Dali Temple had to allocate manpower to re-trial all the case files. The darkest time.

Is there really no problem with the remaining 20.00%?

Maybe it was because of honesty and due diligence, or maybe it was just because the methods were more sophisticated that the Metropolitan Procuratorate did not find out the problem.

This Feng Yuanhui is the latter.

As a student from a poor family, Feng Yuanhui failed to get in the second list after three exams, so he started a business under the name of a student.

In accordance with the national policy of preferential treatment of scholars in the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Taizu Gao exempted all incumbent officials from corvee; in the 24th year of Jiajing's "Exemption Regulations" stipulated that Beijing officials should be exempted from military service with [-] shi and [-] dong. Decrease to [-] shi and [-] ding for the nine-rank premium exempted from labor; half for foreign officials;

In the 38th year of Wanli's "New Regulations on Preferential Exemption", it was stipulated that the current Jiake Jing officials were exempted from land tax of 350 mu for the first rank, and then decreased gradually, and the eighth rank was exempted from [-] mu of land; foreign officials were halved; [-]. Non-official Jinshi preferential exemption up to [-] mu of land, non-official candidates preferential exemption of [-] mu of land; students and supervisors exempt from land tax of [-] mu.

Feng Yuanhui took advantage of this "New Regulations for You and Mian" to sell his share of [-] mu of Mian Tian.At that time, Feng Yuanhui was not old enough to be cunning enough, so he actually sold [-] acres of tax-free quota, but who in the world still cares about this quota?Where is it not oversubscribed!Often the higher-ups send people to investigate, and everywhere they go, there are only eighty acres... Even if it is eight hundred acres, it is still in the "eighty acres".

Feng Yuanhui was naturally unwilling after being "reasonable", but unfortunately the contract had already been signed, with his own bright red fingerprints and monograms on it, so it could not be faked.The other party has a big family and a big business, so I'm not afraid that he will be so poor.He was quite stimulated by this incident, and worked hard to understand the laws of the Ming Dynasty thoroughly, and even learned the routines and extraordinary routines of the past dynasties. Naturally, there was quite a lot in his chest, and he became the "king of the king"!

Feng Yuanhui's champion is not the first-class literary hero in legendary novels, he also confuses right and wrong, fabricates false evidence, and bribes officials and county magistrates... But he can still be vigilant and dare not spoil his reputation too much, even if he does evil things, You also have to spit out a little profit and wear a mask of hypocrisy, so your reputation in the village is not too bad.

With strong legal literacy and pragmatic political stance, Feng Yuanhui easily joined the young judiciary team of Ming Dynasty, and ranked among the best in the examination. He had to be awarded the Hejian Prefecture Renqiu County Magistrate in only two months.In his tenure, Feng Yuanhui was proficient in all kinds of secret ways, and his work efficiency was extremely high. He took redress of unjust prisons as a breakthrough point, and retried one after another of the cases that had been tampered with in the county before, and returned them to justice. fame.

With this reputation as a ladder for promotion, Feng Yuanhui was successfully promoted to the magistrate of the Hejian Prefecture Magistrate's Academy, and after just ten months, he was promoted to the palm seal magistrate.If the Metropolitan Procuratorate hadn't discovered some clues and launched an investigation on him, he might have been promoted to Dali Temple in Hebei soon.

Of course, now that Feng Yuanhui was waiting outside the door to be summoned, it meant that the original wish of the Metropolitan Procuratorate to catch a big fish had failed.They originally estimated that Feng Yuanhui had embezzled at least tens of thousands of taels of silver, but after a lot of hard work, they couldn't find any evidence, and they couldn't rashly arrest and interrogate the highest official of a government's judicial department, so they had to give up.

Because of this failed investigation, Li Mingrui was vigilant, for fear of another corruption scandal.In Li Mingrui's state of mind at that time, if he could be sure that Feng Yuanhui was corrupt, he might have strangled the litigator directly, and he would never let the people of the Metropolitan Procuratorate show off the limelight again.

As a result, Feng Yuanhui was transferred to Dali Temple as the Temple Chancellor. He seemed to be promoted, but in fact he was pulled in front of him to watch over the case, and he was not allowed to touch the case.He can't even participate in the revision of the new law, and can only reply a few words on the message board at most. Even if it is adopted, it is their credit.

Now Li Mingrui's two questions finally brought Feng Yuanhui an opportunity, a chance to go straight to Tongda Tianlisten! (To be continued.)