Chapter 70 Heavenly Book

Master Fei Xuan looked at the title blankly, and was at a loss for a moment. He was certainly wise, brave, sharp and intelligent, but even if he racked his brains, he just couldn't understand this inexplicable title for a moment - he could understand "ruling by doing nothing" and the Emperors of Da'an, but what on earth were "liberalism" and "invisible hand"? Is it some strange and incomprehensible evil magic?

The rest is fine. Since there are these four words "Da'an Emperors", it might involve the reputation of Feixuan Zhenjun Wanshou Emperor in future generations. So the True Lord snorted and tried to move his eyes, but found that the title was flickering and a prompt box popped up below:

[The historical deviation value is insufficient and cannot be displayed; subsequent content will gradually appear with the deviation value. 】

Master Fei Xuan: …………

The emperor's nervous, expectant and slightly uneasy mood disappeared in an instant. He stared at the title for a moment, with a familiar anger lingering in his heart:

——How dare you break it here! This is really deceiving God!

What title do you display if there is no content? Why are you flashing if there is no content? Is fishing fun? You have turned our Master Feixuan into a black carp!

Unfortunately, no matter how helpless and furious Master Feixuan was after being hooked, the Heavenly Book still silently displayed the same title and refused to reveal even a little bit. So the supreme and noble emperor had no choice but to grit his teeth and endure it, with the corners of his mouth twitching unconsciously.

His twitching was not a big deal, but Li Zaifang, who was kneeling below, was extremely confused: He was clearly so bright and elegant just now, why was he twitching for no reason now?

Are all those who have achieved immortality so inexplicable and incomprehensible? Li Zaifang was at a loss.

·

True Lord Feixuan was of course very unhappy after being tricked by the Heavenly Book with a fragment. On that day, he pulled up a dragon face and scared the two eunuchs and five palace maids who served him to tears. After trying to check the subsequent contents many times without success, he became furious and almost swore that he would never take the initiative to check the Heavenly Book again. The reason why he said "almost" was, of course, because every time he swore, he was so bored that he could not bear it any longer and had to open the light curtain to check the contents within half an hour, earnestly hoping that the banished immortal could add another paragraph for him, the Son of Heaven. However, the Heavenly Book was still cold and ruthless, and was unwilling to make any concessions to the noble emperor. As a result, the emperor became more and more moody, making it very painful for the people serving in the bedroom.

Two days passed during which I felt as if ants were crawling all over my body. When the light curtain was opened for the 87th time, a new paragraph suddenly jumped out under the flashing title:

[……When studying the financial situation of the Da'an Dynasty, historians usually compare the court's income to a wavy line shaped like the English letter "M". At the beginning of the founding of the Yuan Dynasty by Emperor Gaozu of Da'an, all things were revived. After vigorously reclaiming wasteland and encouraging production, the finances quickly recovered from the decline and desolation at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and showed an upward trend. However, during the reign of Emperor Xiaozong, marked by the abolition of the salt policy and the "Kai Zhong Fa", as government affairs were neglected and the system malfunctioned, the treasury revenue slowly declined. Despite successive reforms by knowledgeable people such as Yang Tinghe and Zhang Cong, it was ultimately difficult to reverse the downward trend of national strength.

So far, everything is in line with political laws. As Huang Zongxi, a famous thinker in Da'an, pointed out, without external intervention, it is always difficult for a system to correct its own ills internally. The failure of the system's operation can almost be regarded as a fundamental disease. Minor reforms can at best slow down the pace of deterioration, but it is almost impossible to restore its former glory. Such a steady decline, until financial collapse, is the fate of most feudal dynasties.

But the reason why it is "almost" and "the vast majority" is because there is an absolute exception, Da'an, in the case. According to current statistics, the trough of Da'an's finances occurred around the reign of Emperor Wuzong. After the famous first industrial innovation, or the Jiayin Reform, the national treasury revenue drew an extremely astonishing growth curve. In just a few years, it got rid of all negative influences and reached an unprecedented peak...】

Master Feixuan:? ! ! !

Zhenjun almost gasped, and instinctively wanted to take a closer look at the follow-up of this fatal article!

But what about below? There is nothing below. Master Feixuan tried his best to pull it down, only to see the familiar and hateful “Insufficient deviation value”!

Okay, okay, you dare to stop here - is this how you want to get rid of me? !

The emperor acted willfully throughout his life. Except for the time when he was disgusted by Yang Ting and that old Deng during the Great Ceremony Debate, he had never suffered such humiliation in his life. I suddenly felt dizzy and was so angry that I almost ascended to heaven. Unfortunately, no matter how hard his defenses were broken, the heavenly book remained unchanged and refused to produce even a single word.

Fortunately, even if the Heavenly Book refuses to display the following content, this little update is enough to arouse the infinite fantasies of Master Fei Xuan and Emperor Wanshou - what is the famous "Jiayin Reform"? This year is indeed the year of Jiayin, but Master Feixuan has never thought of any reforms!

Moreover, judging by the tone of the Heavenly Book, the so-called "Jiayin Reform" seemed to be praised quite highly, with words like "famous", "unprecedented", and "beyond convention", which were really incredible flattery. If we consider the merciless and vicious tone of the Heavenly Book on weekdays, then this contrast was even more drastic, making it difficult for Master Feixuan to understand, and he could not help but feel confused. Of course, he did not suspect that the Heavenly Book was deliberately deceiving, but after checking the court several times, he could not help but feel at a loss:

With all the monsters and demons in the current cabinet, how can they come up with any unprecedented reforms?

The first essential to achieving great things is talent. If you want to create unprecedented achievements, you must win over unprecedented wise ministers - but the problem is, there are so many important ministers in the cabinet now, who can deserve the word wise?

If people like Yan Fenyi and Xu Shaohu can be considered wise ministers, then he, Feixuan Zhenjun Wanshou Emperor, is the number one holy, wise, and benevolent ruler throughout history. Emperor Wen of Han, Emperor Wu of Han, and Emperor Taizong of Tang should all kowtow to him respectfully.

But Master Feixuan still had a little self-awareness after all; looking back on the past, he always felt that his virtue and achievements had not yet reached perfection, and there might be a slight gap compared with Emperor Taizong of Tang; and people like Yan Fenyi and Xu Shaohu were certainly not even a hair of wise ministers. But it is precisely because of this that the True Lord felt extremely confused:

——Can even such a person succeed in reforming the law? !

Even though our Master is now weird and neurotic and has evolved into the ultimate form of Lao Deng, when he was a very human being in his early years, he was also "eager to innovate". He has experienced and seen a lot of reforms and knows the importance of this.

Reforms are not something that can be achieved by simply issuing two decrees. Although Zhang Cong had implemented new policies in a bold and decisive manner with his full support, as the Heavenly Book said, the ills of the system are ultimately difficult to resolve with institutional means. The court fought fiercely, the cabinet worked extremely hard, and the actual result was only an additional three million silver coins in revenue per year... The effort was so great, the results were so slow, and the emperor was increasingly bewitched by the mysterious methods of cultivation. He could no longer tolerate this trouble, so he withdrew his support directly, and the reform was abandoned halfway.

Of course, the True Lord just thinks the results are too slow, not that he doesn’t want to make any money. It took a lot of effort to squeeze out a surplus of three million taels of silver, but the cost-effectiveness was really not high. But if what the heavenly book said was true, and the so-called "Jiayin Reform" could actually break through the previous limit of fiscal revenue, then a rough calculation of the difference between the past and the present would mean that the national treasury would have to add at least 9 million taels of revenue - this number is quite considerable!

Three million taels may not be enough to buy the heart of the True Lord, but nine million taels may not be enough. Of course, this does not mean that Zhenjun will work hard to govern the country and implement some reforms in a down-to-earth manner, but in any case, it seems that we can wait and see.

The Heavenly Book certainly would not deceive mortals, but this little information alone was not enough to make any accurate judgment. Unless - unless we can make another attempt.

Zhenjun rolled his eyes and thought for a moment, then struck the golden chime:

[Send me all the documents from the cabinet these days]

·

In order to solve his doubts, the emperor took great pains and spent two whole days reading through all the documents in the cabinet, trying to find some clues about the reform. But the cabinet's performance was as stable as ever, never raising too much hope. No matter how hard I looked, it was just a bunch of routine trivialities, boring bullets with people spitting and arguing with each other; the amount of information contained was not even as much as Master Feixuan's Qingci.

...Of course, it would be wrong to say that it's all so boring. Ever since he gave the order, Li Zaifang has paid close attention to Hai Gangfeng's news, and naturally noticed the progress of Prince Mu's fundraising for Hai Gangfeng. Up to now, the prince has tried most of the ways to make money, but the amount is still far from enough to open a large-scale workshop - this is not the new era of road leveling facilities in later generations where construction can start immediately after investing a sum of money; just leveling the roads, raising materials and mobilizing transportation capacity will consume a large part of the initial investment. If you calculate carefully, the cost is almost astronomical - at least 50,000 taels to build a similar frame.

Even for top nobles, it was very difficult to come up with 50,000 taels of silver in one go. Therefore, the prince still had to dilly-dally on his fundraising plan. After widely raising funds in the city, he even planned to write letters to friends in other places to try to get some money.

Master Fei Xuan lay on his back on the bed and listened to Li Zaifang's report. He snorted unconsciously:

[What would happen if Duke Mu found out about this small matter? Don't be too shameless! Go down and tell them not to spend money this way. 】

Li Zaifang quickly answered "yes" and lay on the ground motionless.

——You have to find a way to prevent people from making money on their own, right? Could it have come out from the inner storehouse?

The emperor continued to give orders: [After you give the order, pass the message to the nobles and old ministers in the capital, and they will know what to do. 】

Li Zaifang: …………

What does "pass the message" mean? It seems that you are not willing to contribute a single cent other than just talking big, and you want your subordinates to share the cost?

Lao Deng's calculations were so shrewd that Li Zaifang had nothing to say. Of course, the emperor's plan is not without reason. It's not that the nobles in the capital can't afford to give money, they are simply afraid that the emperor will be suspicious, so they dare not give more. Each family gives 700 or 800 taels just as a token of appreciation. As long as the emperor has this word to back it up, it won't be difficult for each family to give three or five times more.

So, even though it was just a casual remark, it is actually the great grace of Lord Feixuan, and the prince should be grateful.

·

It was just a trivial matter of tens of thousands of taels of silver, and the emperor didn't need to say anything at all. The reason why Master Feixuan was willing to say such a sentence was because he saw the prince's loyalty and Hai Gangfeng's delicate identity. After giving this grace, he casually waved his hand, reopened the sky curtain, and tried to find some clues from the manuscript that he had already pondered several times. But unexpectedly, the heavenly book that had been silent for many days flashed again:

[New deviations detected...Historical changes are accelerating, and new content will be released soon]

[……Taking the year Jiayin as the benchmark, only the Taichang Warehouse, which was responsible for central government expenditures, was counted.] In the three years when industrial technological innovation just showed signs of improvement, the court's new revenue was more than two million silver coins, relying solely on the newly added stamp tax, value-added tax and some luxury goods tariffs, while other taxes did not change significantly. This not only quickly reversed the embarrassing trend of years of deficits in the treasury, but also more effectively supported the stability of the government. In the second year after the reform, the court abolished the unethical system of using pepper, cumin, glass and other items to offset wages for the first time, and also paid off the unpaid salaries for civil servants in one go, which had been in arrears for at least twenty years since the reign of Emperor Wuzong.

With such a huge sum of money invested, the effect is naturally immediate. The Prime Minister at that time, Yan Fenyi, once privately lamented that the censors had never been so quiet and the cabinet had never been so stable - the censors' cessation of activities left ample room for error in the new cabinet's administration. In the three years after the arrears of salaries were paid, the censors showed amazing magnanimity and hardly made any harsh criticisms of the cabinet's major policies.

Three years later, even if there were political manipulators who wanted to stir up public opinion, they were powerless to deal with the current situation. Due to the prosperity of maritime trade and the successful expansion of Southeast Asian routes, the national treasury's revenue that year was 31.56 million taels of silver and 30.28 million shi of rice, an increase of more than 20% compared to the peak of fiscal revenue during the reigns of Emperor Gaozu and Emperor Taizong.

How staggering is this number? Let’s put it this way, the imperial court at that time counted the figures twice before finally believing this incredible account. After confirming the income, the ecstatic Da'an government actually broke the convention and increased the salaries of officials again after a hundred years and exempted a large amount of taxes.

The benefits of the reform are so great that they are enough to shut everyone up. In other words, no one dares to touch such a big piece of cake, as it is the livelihood of millions of workers. 】

The emperor's expression suddenly froze. He stared at the sky for a moment, especially staring at those two numbers - as the Minister of Revenue who was truly in charge of everything in the Da'an Dynasty, Master Feixuan would certainly not ignore these two fatal numbers. So after a moment's silence, he suddenly reached out and struck the golden chime violently. The sound vibrated up and down and was extremely harsh.

Li Zaifang was so frightened that he trembled all over. It was with great difficulty that he could discern what the True Lord said:

[Don't waste time looking for the meritorious official. Immediately withdraw 50,000 taels from the inner treasury and send it to him! 】

Li Zaifang: ...Ah?