In the morning, the rain had stopped. Ye Yongjia packed up his things and said goodbye to Chen Tongpao. He naturally kept that reminder in mind, but he would only avoid Comrade Chen. They are not on the same road, and if they work together in the future, there will be fierce collisions and confrontations.
But there is no need to worry about this yet, they have gone their separate ways.
The two arrived in Chenzhou soon. The local officials first arranged for them to go to the building, gave them official uniforms, and discussed local government affairs. There was nothing major. The only thing was that a few months ago, there was a riot outside the city of Huaining, the capital of Chenzhou. , was defeated by Yuan Lun, the governor of Chenzhou, who led a hundred men in three days. The leader was questioned and executed in the city. When asked about the relationship between Governor Yuan Lun and Magistrate Lu, these people were all silent and could only change their words.
After a while, Ye Yongjia had to pay a visit to the prefect, so he left Kou Zhong in the hall and went directly to the government office.
"Master Prefect." Ye Yongjia walked into the meeting room, looked at Lu Deguang sitting under the grid window at the door, and bowed heavily.
"The new Tongpan?" Lu Deguang stood up holding the handle of the chair and asked Li Yong beside him to pour tea.
Ye Yongjia approached and looked at Lu Deguang's face. He didn't know how to talk pleasantly to the magistrate who had ruined his family, so he had to sit on a chair and wait for Magistrate Lu to speak.
Stiff silence. Magistrate Lu stood in front of him, but he stayed there for half a day without saying a word.
Li Yong glanced behind them, put the tea on the table, and coughed.
"Ah... that..." Lu Deguang was the first to break the deadlock, "Ye Tongpan... how is your family?" After saying that, he swallowed his own saliva and coughed awkwardly.
"Everything is fine at home." Ye Yongjia reached for the tea and looked around.
"That's good..." Lu Deguang said with a smile, but the skin on his face trembled and he smiled very reluctantly.
"Your Excellency, the magistrate, I have given you some official business. After all, I am here for the first time..."
"Yeah," Lu Deguang laughed again, "I forgot about this..."
"This general magistrate is responsible for water transportation, salt affairs, and litigation, and acts as a deputy magistrate. However, this place belongs to Henan, so water transportation is not important. The salt affairs department only acts as a salt supervisor. When the ship to transport salt arrives, he will interrogate and question him. That's all; as for this lawsuit, I have a heavier burden. If in the south, this job is still hard, but in Chenzhou, Ye Tongpan just learned some ways of doing politics, which is quite easy."
"When your subordinates first take up their posts, they must ask the prefect to take more care of them."
"Of course, I have read your paper after all...is there anything else?"
Ye Yongjia put the bowl down gently, "My subordinate is fine." He stood up, "Can you go?"
"Let's go... let's go." Lu Deguang nodded.
Ye Yongjia turned around and left the meeting room, heading towards the lobby.
"It seems that he also has a grudge against you." Li Yong poured tea for Lu Deguang and said.
"Now that we are winning people's hearts, we can use him to deal with Yuan Lun; from now on, we will definitely not be able to keep him." Lu Deguang looked up at Li Yong and said.
As time went by, and Ye Yongjia and he had known each other for a long time, the estrangement that was exposed to the outside naturally disappeared, but it was not wiped out, but deeply hidden in his heart. More than three months passed during this period. Ye Yongjia also went to the governor's office several times and had a different opinion of Yuan Lun. His nickname was Weizong, and he was originally from Liu Zhennian to govern Guangxi. After Lu Deguang was sent to Chenzhou, the imperial court appointed him as the governor. He was probably the spy installed by Liu Zhennian. But in addition, Yuan Weizong also had his own ambitions. It was not enough to hold military power. He also coveted Lu Deguang's political power. Although ambitious, he is still a little too ambitious.
Unknowingly, it was the busy season of farming. Since the reported grain production was very insufficient, Lu Deguang immediately suggested: "In ancient times, officials encouraged farmers when they were all farming. Today, the tradition has been lost. It is a pity. I will write an article to encourage farmers. How about you and I going for a walk in the fields?" All the officials nodded in agreement, and Lu Deguang asked for paper and pen in the lunch room. After writing, he sent several officials from the government office to inform the people, prepared good wine himself, and took Ye Yongjia and others to the countryside to persuade farmers.
All the farmers gathered in the fields and cheered when the magistrate arrived. Lu Deguang smiled, took the essay to encourage farmers, jumped into the field, and loudly announced it to the people. Ye Yongjia heard that the articles he wrote did not use allusions, but were also popular and easy to listen to, and all the farmers understood them very well.
Lu Deguang took off his official robe and walked in the ditch. Whenever he saw a family with a lot of land, he would ask Ye Yongjia to carry a pot of wine to that person. After sending away all the wine, he inspected the condition of the rivers and canals with all the officials. If there was a need to dredge them, he immediately ordered construction to begin. If there was still a need for waterwheels, he ordered the households to allocate money to hire people to build them.
When Ye Yongjia saw the smile on his face, it was completely different from the humble smile when he first saw him. There was always a trace of righteousness. But he is such a speculator who accepts dirty money and adds insult to injury. Perhaps in Ye Yongjia's heart, this was just a slight relapse of his conscience.
Lu Deguang climbed up from the field. Ye Yongjia helped him and handed him his official robe. Just as Lu Deguang was about to put it on, he suddenly saw several people running desperately from the fields, panting, and the farmers looked at each other, not knowing what they were afraid of.
"Sir!" The common man cried a little, fell to his knees on the ground, and crawled forward two steps. "We don't dare to say anything on weekdays, but today we see the Lord come in person, we must demand justice!"
Lu Deguang looked at those people and immediately squatted down in front of them calmly, listening to what he was about to say.
"Wang Boyi from that house used another name to ask for food offerings from us every time he came to collect food. If he couldn't afford it, he would lead a few soldiers from the yamen to trample the ground. Who dared to offend him? The villagers were afraid that the officials would protect each other. , I dare not complain; but you are a good man! I believe that if Magistrate Lu really knows this, he will severely punish that faint official!" His eyes widened, as if they were about to burst, and he immediately kowtowed three or five times, eager to looked at him.
"Bold!" Lu Deguang stood up neatly, startling the man, and the determination in his eyes suddenly turned into doubt and fear.
Ye Yongjia looked at him steadily.
"Go back to the Yamen," Lu Deguang turned around and said, "I want to interrogate Wang Boyi!" He waved his arm and walked away angrily.
This is Ye Yongjia’s first time to see Shengtang. Never seen it as a child. There were people standing outside the yamen. Although they may have seen them more than once, they still looked at the layout of the yamen with novelty: two groups of soldiers holding water and fire sticks were lined up on both sides, standing as if they were iron-clad and not squinting; sitting on the east side was a reporter. The staff member on the record is the prefect. He is wearing a bright red official robe, and there are a group of people sitting around him, including a general judge.
Uncle Wang was escorted up by the soldiers and knelt in the hall. The prefect picked up a piece of paper filled with ink characters and motioned to the yamen servant to pass it over.
"This is what those common people said. Do you admit your confession?" Lu Deguang asked.
"Master Magistrate, this is absolutely unreasonable!" Uncle Wang threw the paper aside and kowtowed.
"You don't mean what you say. I calculated the expenses you reported last month, which was about one tael of silver. But I just asked the household and said that after collecting the grain, you bought a cauldron stove in the house, which cost about twenty taels. Silver. Your monthly salary is only three taels. No matter how much money you save, you can't spend it on this kind of thing, right? This coincides with the day of the grain levy, I'm afraid it's not a coincidence."
Uncle Wang was startled, and Magistrate Lu continued: "I'm afraid that seeing how panicked people are these days, you'll spend it quickly. Isn't that right?"
He was speechless for a moment and didn't know how to argue, so he just kowtowed in a panic.
"Remove him first! Ask for punishment another day." Lu Deguang waved his hand, stood up and shouted:
"Quit!"
