"Master Li, you invite the chieftains to eat, drink and visit brothels every day. You are not doing your job properly. If the emperor finds out, I'm afraid he will chop off your head!"
At the Hepu County government office, Zhu Biao angrily complained loudly to Li Jin, who looked drunk:
"It's only been half a month, and you've already spent ten thousand taels of silver."
"If this continues, we may not have enough money!!"
Li Jin disagreed, waved his hand casually and said:
"I have plenty of silver, what are you afraid of?"
When Zhu Biao saw Li Jin acting like a wealthy businessman, he immediately said angrily:
"Your money has been confiscated by the emperor before I bought your life."
"The money you are spending now is all my private money. Where did you get the money?"
Li Jin then opened his sleepy eyes and shook his head, as if he just remembered his situation.
He smiled awkwardly and said:
"Then treat it as if I lent it to you. I will return it to you when I become rich."
Since Li Jin's massacre in Tokyo, Zhu Yuanzhang transferred all the apparent property of Shanghu County and Li Jin into the national treasury, leaving no penny to Li Jin.
Now, whether it is money to buy food or daily expenses, it is basically Zhu Biao's money, and Li Jin has become a pauper.
Zhu Biao saw that Li Jin looked like a dead pig and was not afraid of boiling water, and said speechlessly:
"You are already so poor, when will you become rich?"
"You'd better not go treat those toasts to a feast. These people are all fair-weather friends. What's there to make friends with?"
"They are here just to take advantage of you."
"Who asked you to provide free relief to the victims? Those natives heard that there was free relief food available, so they naturally came here because of the smell."
"In my opinion, these natives are simply feeding unfamiliar wolf cubs and are not worthy of relief at all."
"Wrong, totally wrong!!"
Li Jin's eyes gradually returned to clarity at this moment, and he directly refuted Zhu Biao and said:
"You, although you say you are noble and your relatives are above the rest, your vision and scope are still too small after all."
"You can't always focus on the surface. You have to see through the phenomenon to see the essence. Only in this way can you open up your horizons."
When Zhu Biao heard Li Jin refute him, he was not angry but happy, because this showed that Li Jin's seemingly playful behavior might have a deeper reason.
This made Zhu Biao immediately interested and asked aloud:
"What do you mean by Mr. Li's words?"
Li Jin sat up from the recliner, poured himself a cup of tea, took a sip of tea, and said:
"It just so happens that I have nothing to do today, so I will teach you another trick."
"As the saying goes, there is no free lunch in the world. When a free lunch appears in front of you, you must be careful and vigilant."
"Because he may be coveting not just the money for a lunch, but your kidneys."
"A waist? What is that?"
Zhu Biao looked puzzled.
"That's not important, you just need to have this awareness."
Li Jin waved his hand and continued:
"Since the emperor sent a large army to regain Guangxi, Yunnan and other places last year, due to the complicated local situation, high mountains and dense forests, and the entrenched chieftains, the jurisdiction in these places has been extremely loose."
"Even for this reason, the chieftain management of the Yuan Dynasty was continued, allowing these chieftains to be autonomous, and barely maintaining a superficial rule."
"But these rulers are extremely weak. These chieftains have been entrenched in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and other places for a long time. Their ancestors have even lived here since the Tang Dynasty. Therefore, most of the chieftains in these places are married."
"If there is a chieftain who raises a flag to rebel, Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and other places will definitely respond in large numbers."
"Now the Ming Dynasty's power has not extended to the depths of these places at all, so they have to compromise and use the chieftain system."
"But little did they know that the chieftain system was simply poison. As time passed, these chieftains gained a lot of prestige among the natives. In the end, not only could they not solve the problem of the rebellion in Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan, they would even have to pay a huge price for the chieftain system."
Zhu Biao suddenly felt frightened when he heard Li Jin's analysis.
Then he thought of Li Jin's series of operations and asked in surprise:
"So Mr. Li, what you are doing now is just to deal with these chieftains, and is it intentional?"
