Flourishing of the Ming Dynasty Novel - Chapter 184

Chapter 184 After Closure (2)
In the same waterside pavilion, the young man and the middle-aged man sat opposite each other. This time, there were no more actors. Those who were irritated did not like to hear the babbling sound whirling in their ears.

“Third Brother, is there really no way to save Liu Xun this time?” The youth asked with a gloomy expression.

‘”What can we do? The evidence is conclusive. The corpses were all found in his mansion. Can you still infer that you don’t know? I told him that I had done some things, but my hands and feet must be clean. He’s lucky that he completely ignored my words. That’s why we’re here today!” The middle-aged man snorted and was quite dissatisfied.

“Can’t we think of a way to get him to be snatched away? Even the hereditary Uncle Guang Ning has been removed. In the future, won’t those poor people in the court take us to heart more and more?”

“Seizing a duke is already the lightest punishment. Otherwise, if we don’t even take this step back, I’m afraid that those people will take this opportunity to make things worse, and even implicate more people, including you and me!” The middle-aged man said seriously.

“They dare!” A fierce light flashed in the young man’s eyes, and he couldn’t help but shout in a low voice.

“They have already done it, these years, since the Taizong emperor, foreign war is less and less, we rely on the contribution of the family forces have been greatly weakened, do you think they have the courage to take advantage of this opportunity to attack us? “Right now, with the Duke of England standing in the way, they still dare not act recklessly, but … who knows what will happen in the future?”

The young man was so bored by what he said that he picked up the teacup in front of him and drank it. Then he said, “So we can only give way, there is not even the slightest chance of turning around?”

“The concession is only temporary. We will always come up with a way to deal with it.” The middle-aged man smiled and said, “A Liu Xun can’t hurt our bones and muscles, so we should buy a lesson. Unfortunately, the Spring Gathering House could have brought us enough money, but now it’s closed because of this.”

“It’s all that Lu Zhen. A small county magistrate is so bold as to dare to do such things in the capital. I wonder if he has eaten some bear heart leopard’s courage!”

“I don’t know if he eats bear heart leopard gall or not, but he already knows that he has a backer.”

“Reliance? Who?” The young man asked in surprise.

“It’s that old man, Minister Hu Ying of the Ministry of Officials. I’m afraid that he was behind all this. He might have used Lu Zhen, a small county magistrate, to do it. So was Xu Chengzong. He actually turned his elbow away and helped outsiders deal with our own people!”

“Hu …” The young man muttered this name and snorted angrily, “One day, I will let that old man know how powerful I am!”

“Just endure it for now. Soon, his most glorious time will arrive. We must not be enemies at this time. Otherwise, the outcome will be hard to say.” As the middle-aged man spoke, he exhaled, “Let the people below take good care of Liu Xun’s family. This time, he shouldered all the charges without revealing anything about us. We will always return the favor.”

The youth hurriedly nodded, “Leave this to me. I will definitely handle the matter properly.”

The middle-aged man smiled and said, “Next, all we need to do is keep a low profile. Don’t provoke any more trouble. As for Lu Zhen, let him be famous for a while.”

“Then how long do you have to endure?” The young man asked anxiously.

“It won’t be long. Previously, we didn’t move because we didn’t want to clash head-on with those poor people, but this time, since they took the initiative to attack, they can’t blame us anymore. Didn’t Wang Zhen in the palace always want to use troops against Dazi? “We can cooperate with him. As long as the war starts, these poor people can only obediently hand over their power. Our chance will come.”

The middle-aged man’s words lifted the spirits of the young man, “Let’s do it this way! As long as we can do as much credit as we did in the Taizong Dynasty, we will be able to trample them all under our feet!”

The middle-aged man smiled and didn’t say anything else. Although he wasn’t in the army, he still understood some of the reasons. Once the two countries fought, the outcome would be unpredictable. But now, it was impossible for him to say such words to damage the confidence of his own people, so he could only smile and remain silent for the time being.

@ @ @ @

Lu Zhen didn’t know that because of his persistence, the situation between the Chinese and Korean civil wars had risen to a whole new level. He only knew that he had been very busy recently.

After he exiled the grand Guang Ning uncle with a county magistrate, his reputation as the Lu Zhen Tiemian County Magistrate was completely established.

Now, County Magistrate Lu’s fame in the capital and outside had already overshadowed the civil and military affairs of the Manchu Dynasty, becoming the focus of discussion among the entire population. As a result, he was called Duke Bao in this world, and Duke Di was revived. He was a good official who could truly make decisions for the people and was willing to plead for their grievances.

However, the popularity of this saying made the Daxing County Government look like a bustling market. Some of the people who had rushed over from all over the capital wanted to see Lu Qingtian’s appearance, while others came to him with a piece of paper to complain about his injustice.

Lu Zhen naturally couldn’t refuse these people, so he decided to set the rules for the trial in the lobby, allowing ordinary people to enter the yamen to watch. As long as it was a dispute within his Daxing County, he would have a public hearing, which attracted many onlookers.

Actually, at this time, the yamen had to face some simple and clear small matters, and Lu Zhen could easily cut them off in a few words. Even if there were some complicated cases, relying on his current reputation, Lu Qingtian could still forcefully settle them.

Hence, in just half a month, Lu Zhen had swiftly ended more than a hundred large and small cases, which made his image of Qing Tian, who was the ruler of the people, even more upright and upright. Not only the common people praised him endlessly, but even the scholars and scholars in the Imperial College all praised him greatly, almost taking him as a model for the local officials.

Under such a limelight, the security and atmosphere in the capital was instantly stifled. Some of the unlawful things that Lu Zhen had suppressed because of the 30 decrees he had made earlier were now completely gone, and everything seemed to be in such an orderly manner. Although it wasn’t to the point of not closing doors at night, it wasn’t far from it.

Apart from adjudicating cases and controlling the place, Lu Zhen had many other duties. For example, towards the end of the year, some taxes needed to be collected by the county magistrate, including the tax rations that he had failed to pay in the autumn. All of these were his duties.

Because the law and order in Daxing County had improved a lot recently, without the harassment of those gangsters who caused trouble all day long, it was much easier for ordinary merchants to do business. Therefore, when the county government urged them to pay more taxes, they paid much more happily. In just a few days, he had already finished all the tasks that he needed to complete by the end of the year, and he had even exceeded his quota.

As for the storage of grain, he didn’t need to work too hard. Relying on the current reputation of the county magistrate, those peasants took the initiative to bring food to the county government. The people can always use their best intentions to return the favor to the people in power. As long as you can really do things for the people, they will not disappoint the good officials.

Of course, the smoothness of the expedition did not mean that Lu Zhen’s work was light. Just the process of acceptance, registration, and so on was enough to keep him busy.

Looking at the complicated numbers recorded in the ledger, Lu Zhen felt that his head had more than doubled. However, he was only a liberal arts student, so his knowledge of an extremely professional subject like accounting was very limited, and he could not come up with a more effective and rapid solution in this regard.

The only improvement was to change the capital figures to Arabic numbers in his own calculations, which made the final review much faster and bought him some time.

Although it was only a small improvement, it had already shocked the scholars below. One had to know that there were four or five people in charge of counting before they handed it over to County Magistrate Lu. And the county magistrate actually only had one person, and he used even faster time to give his feedback. His magical skill made everyone sigh endlessly.

Lu Zhen only smiled and didn’t explain much about this, much less promote the Arabic numbers he used. It was because he knew that it would take a long time for a person to absorb new things. Now that popularizing the Arabic numerals would only make things more complicated, it would be better for the scribes to calculate all of this at a pace they were familiar with.

As soon as he got busy, time flew by quickly. It seemed that in the blink of an eye, more than two months had passed by in a flash. By the time Lu Zhen finished all the work at hand and handed over all the files to Shun Tian Manor, it was already the evening of December 25th.

It had already snowed heavily several times in Beijing at this time. The snow was white and only a few stalks of wintersweet bloomed proudly in the face of the cold.

When he finally relaxed and saw this scene, Lu Zhen unconsciously chuckled. This was the second New Year he had come to this era. Although he didn’t know if he could change this era of superficial prosperity, but in fact, it was an era of hidden dangers, but he had already done everything he could, and it was worthy of being said.

Although it was almost impossible to record the actions of a small county magistrate like himself in history books, so what? As long as the people nowadays knew that they were willing to work for them, it would be enough.

After some heroic thought, Lu Zhen felt a trace of loneliness again. He still remembered that last year’s New Year was accompanied by two cute lovers, and the hot pot of that day was still in front of him. But now, although the people in this county government respected him a lot, there were fewer people who could really get close to him.

Thinking of this, he began to miss Chu Yunrong, who had left a few months ago. He did not know what had happened to her who was in the south …