Many village chiefs from the villages surrounding the county city were summoned together by He Nan. In the yamen of the county city, nearly twenty village chiefs were taken to different rooms one after another.
The rooms were mostly the same, with only a low table and a government servant holding a killing stick and glaring at them. Although the youngest of these village chiefs were in their forties, they had never seen such a scene before. They originally wanted to deal with He Nan. The young people were gesticulating, but now all of them were sitting behind the low table with deep thoughts, hesitating to speak.
"Why are you summoned here? It's because someone exposed you for deducting the government's wages from the laborers who demolished the temple without authorization. So I invited you here to investigate whether this matter is true." He Nan said to each village head. He said the same thing, word for word.
The reactions of the village chiefs are interesting and can be said to be different.
Some said they were unjustly accused, some asked who spread the rumors to cause trouble, some said they made a mistake, and some put the blame on others...but they didn't admit it themselves.
Of course, these were all within He Nan's expectations.
So, He Nan asked them the first question: "How much money did you get from above."
The money distributed to the village is all allocated from the county treasury. The warehouse official distributes the money and grain to the hands of the township head, and then the township head distributes it to the village head. Finally, the village head distributes it to the workers in the village; if it is a county town, in There is an additional layer of county officials as a relay between the county officials and the township chiefs.
Regardless of whether everyone is cunning or honest, smart or stupid, it is not difficult to figure out the optimal solution to this problem, which is to truthfully tell how much money you have paid. Because no matter whether they are corrupt or not, as long as the answer can match the workers' testimony, it will reduce most of their own suspicions, thus linking the "township chief - village chief - laborers" It directly became a "township chief-laborer" connection.
But He Nan had no reason to think of what these people could think of. In fact, the purpose of his first question was not originally directed at the village chiefs themselves.
The village chiefs present today include not only the village chiefs from the villages near Aojiazhuang, but also many village chiefs from the county. Of course, different regions have different subordinate officials. He Nan wants to pick out every clue from them. status.
Peeling off cocoons and drawing silk, progressing layer by layer.
This circle took a full hour, and the answer did not surprise He Nan - all the village chief's confessions were consistent with the villagers in the village he had privately investigated.
But the numbers reported by everyone are different, which means that such a thing has already happened above them, and these village chiefs are just following the same example.
"Has it started to fester from the root..." Zhou Xun clutched the report form He Nan submitted, and then summoned the county chief clerk: "Take this report and give me all the township heads and county officials in charge of these villages. Bring it back and make sure no one is missing!"
After explaining the matter, Zhou Xun left angrily. The person he was looking for was the warehouse official in charge of managing the treasury.
Money and grain are all distributed from his hands. It needs to be verified whether the warehouseman himself has interfered with it.
Just when the whole county government office started to stir up, He Nan also asked his second question: "Some of you have reported each other, do you admit that other people's reports against you are true?"
This question is difficult to suggest to everyone, "Who do you think reported you?" It has two purposes. The first is to test whether they can join forces to exchange information, and the second is to allow them to attack each other and restrain each other.
The first person to "resist" fiercely was Ma Guoyuan, the village chief of Xinfeng Village. If it weren't for the government servants blocking the door, this guy would have broken out. After hearing this, his first reaction was to curse: "F*ck, The guy named Liu must be cheating on me! The guy named Liu has always been at odds with me, don’t believe anything he says!"
The small single room they were in was not a serious interrogation room, so the soundproofing was not that good. Ma Guoyuan's loud voice could be heard by others, and things got out of hand from here. —— Village Chief Ma bit Village Chief Liu, Village Chief Liu bit Village Chief Wang, and Village Chief Wang bit Village Chiefs Zhang and Zhao... By the last round of questioning, it was already a mess.
Dog bites dog, hairy mouth, watching this group of people expose each other's background, even digging out each other's wife for stealing a man, and the child who is not his biological child, He Nan couldn't help but burst out laughing - this was not what he wanted to hear.
But until now, He Nan's goal has been achieved - he has completely destroyed the trust between these people in this way.
Next, was the last question He Nan asked them: "Today you have a total of eighteen people, and each three of them belong to a different township head, so let's make a group of three people under the same township head. ——If everyone in your group does not admit that they embezzled public funds, then of course what awaits you is jail; if everyone in your group admits that they have embezzled public funds, because of your confessed behavior, I will punish you Leniency - of course, if one of you admits to corruption but others do not, then the one who admits it will not only let him go, but also give him extra rewards for his meritorious service. As for the one who does not admit it, I will Get a harsher punishment."
Before He Nan finished speaking, the village chief, who was leaning on the low table, began to rack his brains to think about their current situation.
Someone asked softly: "What does a more severe punishment mean?"
He Nan smiled, and happened to be eating a bowl of rice in his hand, and said smoothly: "Do you think it's harsh to stuff these chopsticks into your throat?"
Most of the people had never read any books. The most severe punishment they knew was beheading, and the next worst punishment was beating with a wooden board, so they were not particularly afraid of it.
Because beheading would definitely not be a problem. Even though most people can't handle it, they still know what's going on. But as soon as He Nan said that he put the chopsticks down his throat, the village chief who asked the question lowered his head - he couldn't even imagine how much torture this was.
Of course, He Nan just said casually that for him, torture was a means to extract confessions, not the purpose of killing people.
Regardless of whether he admits it or not, he has to compile a confession. He Nan invited the clerks to record the confessions for these illiterate village chiefs. In this short period of time, Zhou Xun also The interrogation by the warehouse officials is over.
In this trial, a big thing came out - the warehouse clerk was responsible for managing the treasury, so all the gold, silver, money and food were in his hands. No one would check the accounts carefully on weekdays, so he was fooled. But now such a big thing has happened , Zhou Xun personally questioned the crime, and the warehouse official explained everything in detail.
The warehouseman usually gambled a lot of money, and sometimes he would take some money privately from the treasury when he lost, and then pay it back when he won. No one cared about it. However, after going up the mountain for a long time, he finally encountered a tiger and bumped into ghosts on the way to the head office at night. A few days ago, he always lost every bet but failed repeatedly. The hole in the library could not be blocked, and he even intensified his self-preservation and theft. When Zhou Xi ordered relief When he was working as a laborer, he came up with this trick - to make false statements on the books to get over it, and then think of a solution after the incident was over.
But today, so many people were brought to the yamen by He Nan and locked up in a single room. The warehouse manager was very worried. He knew He Nan's methods. It would be okay if they fell into the hands of the always kind and gentle Zhou Xun. But if they fell into the hands of that child, In his hands, he didn't know if he could even survive half of his life, so as soon as Zhou Xi saw him, he confessed everything as if he were pouring beans out of a bamboo tube.
Zhou Xun was indeed relatively benevolent in his dealings, but this time the matter was of great importance, and this was an example of Yamen officials guarding themselves against others. He was dismissed from his post on the spot and put in jail to await his fate. He secretly made up his mind that future officials, especially those in charge, would Money and food must be chosen carefully.
At night, the confessions of these village chiefs were also summarized by He Nan. Most of them confessed under the pressure of not wanting to be "severely punished." After comparing the confessions of each other and the villagers, it was found that only two of the eighteen village chiefs were not corrupt.
"Continue?" The two senior brothers held candles and talked at night.
"Continue." Zhou Li said with great certainty.
In the next few days, officials at all levels from several major counties came here one after another, and without exception, they entered the small single room set up by He Nan.
Of course, these officials who have read the books of sages and have experienced fame and fortune are much more difficult to deal with than the white men.
The problem is still the same, but the village chiefs are ordinary people. They are afraid of the power and punishment of the government and choose to plead guilty; but which of these officials has not been through the storm? Faced with the same problem, they showed amazing rationality and unity, either refusing to admit it or remaining silent.
Even the warehouse officials above them and the village chiefs below them could prove the fact of their corruption from the side, but they still refused to admit it.
This behavior made He Nan more certain that they were all grasshoppers who knew each other and were tied to a rope, but the only difficulty was how to get the first grasshopper to let go.
"Hello everyone!" He Nan rarely got up at midnight and visited the single rooms where these officials were detained one by one early in the morning.
Although the officials were detained for a night, they obviously still had the energy to continue struggling with He Nan - it was not up to them.
Today's congratulations went directly to the third question of these people, but today is a little different from the past.
"I will ask each of you the same question ten times, plead guilty or not guilty, and I will tell you the result of each time, so that you can make the next judgment based on the last result - of course, only the last one Results are what work.”
This is the optimal solution that He Nan came up with - the restriction dilemma.
In order to ensure the maximization of personal interests, most people in trouble will choose to betray others in exchange for their own interests, just like the decisions made by the village chiefs - because regardless of whether the other party chooses to plead guilty or not, the most stable thing is to choose to plead guilty. Choice, because if you choose not to plead guilty but someone else chooses to plead guilty, you will get a worst-case outcome.
When no one is sure how many times this dilemma will be repeated, in order to ensure that everyone survives, they can only choose to trust each other, that is, to deny their own and others' guilt.
But limiting the number of times and telling them the results of each time changed everyone's mentality.
Assuming that the situation of mutual trust is maintained until the tenth time, is there any point in continuing to deny it? If you plead guilty and the other party does not, you can escape.
Since this situation will occur on the tenth time, in order to prevent the other party from betraying you on the tenth time, the optimal solution becomes that you betray the other party first on the ninth time.
By analogy...then theoretically the balance will be broken in the first game.
However, this ideal situation does not necessarily apply to officials - because of the interference of "off-site factors", the village chiefs have nothing to do with each other other than trivial matters. However, these officials chose to remain silent because they were in the same interest group and betrayal would lead to retaliation.
So before He Nan left everyone's room, he "inadvertently" said: "If you plead guilty, then you are a witness. I have always protected witnesses."
This sentence completely threw the scale off balance.
Everyone heard what He Nan said, and everyone thought that they should be witnesses, but everyone was not sure whether He Nan only said this to himself.
He Nan broke the delicate balance in a way that broke the rules.
The people in the cage are all smart people and have made decisions that smart people make; but they are also not smart people, because truly smart people will not be put in a cage.
That's exactly what it means to be smart.
"How's it going?" Zhou Xuan was reading a book while holding it in one hand.
He Nan chuckled softly, put a stack of yellow paper on the desk, and then picked up the breakfast prepared by his senior brother: "It's all here."
