Fang Xiyue's words enlightened Jin Muze. He had been saying that there was always something off about the case he was investigating, but he just couldn't find it. It turned out that what they said was too watertight.
Some things happened a long time ago, yet they still remembered them perfectly; he himself couldn't possibly remember every single detail.
If it's just a few households, it's fine, but if it's an entire village, they'll have to send more people.
However, there are too many people in a village, and if they resist stubbornly, something bad might happen, so more people need to be sent.
Large-scale mobilization of manpower requires reporting. Jin Muze found Gong Yunxiao that same day, and Gong Yunxiao immediately agreed to send troops and sent a message to the Emperor. Large-scale mobilization still needs to be reported.
Upon receiving the news, the Emperor was furious and immediately wrote back, ordering Gong Yunxiao and Jin Muze to eradicate this human trafficking village.
After the court session, the emperor told the ministers about the matter, which was nothing short of shocking news, leaving the entire court stunned and pale.
It's hard to imagine that the entire village was involved in human trafficking. How many children must such a large-scale human trafficker have abducted in a year?
Some ministers had also lost children, and they tearfully begged the emperor to severely punish the human traffickers.
Gong Yunxiao dispatched a full 10,000 soldiers to accompany Jin Muze to the village to carry out the arrest mission.
When Jin Muze arrived at the village with his soldiers, their previously kind faces instantly turned ferocious; they knew their secret had been exposed.
Each of them trafficked at least twenty people; their crimes were punishable by immediate execution.
They grabbed the weapons they had hidden nearby and charged straight at the soldiers. If they could fight their way out, they could start over; staying here meant certain death.
Even if they were incredibly skilled, they couldn't match the prowess of well-trained soldiers. However, since they fought with a reckless, suicidal style, the situation reached a stalemate for a time.
Of course, some human traffickers still managed to escape. Upon hearing the news, they rushed straight to the back mountain. Escaping through the mountains was the easiest way, as it was difficult to catch people there, and the villagers were unfamiliar with the roads and would easily get lost. However, the villagers knew the back mountain like the back of their heads, making it very easy for them to escape.
After half a day of fighting, villagers who didn't have time to escape were either killed or injured, and all the traffickers' children were also kidnapped.
Some women knelt down and begged for mercy, saying that they had also been trafficked and that they would be beaten if they didn't help with the abduction. Several women had already been beaten to death, and all they wanted was to live.
While I deeply sympathize with their plight, a crime is a crime, and it cannot be forgiven.
The villagers who had fled into the mountains were all beaming with pride as they looked on the verge of leaving. But to their surprise, as soon as they stepped outside, they saw a group of people waiting for them.
How could Jin Muze not have thought of what they could think of? He had already arranged for people to be stationed around the mountain.
The human traffickers immediately turned around and ran back. Since they couldn't get out, they decided to stay on the mountain for a few days. Anyway, there was food in the mountains, so they wouldn't die. They didn't believe that the soldiers would stay here forever.
Later, one of the human traffickers who had been caught earlier confessed and led the soldiers to capture all the human traffickers hiding in the mountains.
It took about five days to finally bring all the human traffickers to justice.
The local residents were naturally alerted to this large-scale arrest, and it quickly became a hot topic of conversation, a subject of discussion among them.
The people had more confidence in the court, saying that the emperor was a wise ruler. In particular, families whose children had been abducted knelt down and thanked the capital.
Of course, Jin Muze and his team's mission was not over yet. They obtained the ledger of human traffickers from the village and went to find the trafficked people one by one.
However, the outcome was not so good. Some people were re-sold, some were beaten to death, and some were left disabled. They helped find those who could be recovered.
However, it's easier to talk about healthy children, but those who become disabled, missing limbs, are rarely recognized by their families.
And then there are the women who have been abducted; their families or husbands' families all think they are no longer pure and are unwilling to let them go home.
These people need the government's help to solve their survival problems, and Su Zheyu is currently worried about this.
In the end, Fang Xiyue had these women learn needlework. They already knew a little bit, so it wouldn't be difficult for them to master it. Once they learned, they could open an embroidery shop and make a living.
Fang Xiyue also had Su Zheyu open a charity to take care of these homeless children. The money was donated by wealthy merchants in the surrounding area. The shops in Black Cloud Village all made donations and set an example, so other shops followed suit.
Afterwards, Fang Xiyue ordered a banner to be hung in front of the store of any merchant who made a donation. This made people more willing to buy things from them, which improved their business considerably. The money they donated was quickly earned back.
Of course, others followed suit, but most businesses were still unwilling to spend money. Why should they raise other people's children? This is understandable, and no one would say anything about it.
Children who want to study can study, and those who don't can learn a trade. A new-style school opened here a few days ago, which teaches everything, including carpentry, blacksmithing, cooking, and so on.
Not only can children from charitable institutions attend the classes, but children from ordinary families who are willing to learn can also attend, with only a small tuition fee.
Originally, those craftsmen were unwilling to teach their crafts, but the prince offered so much that they couldn't earn it even if they did a job, so they all happily became teachers.
Of course, the school also had rules: after graduation, when you open a shop, you can't be too close to each other, and you can't compete for business. Everyone who graduated from the same school is like family, and you should love and care for each other.
The shops they opened also had to have the same name and be numbered one, two, three, four. Everyone signed the agreement to indicate their agreement; of course, those who did not agree could not enroll.
As Gong Yunxiao's fiefdom grew increasingly wealthy, many court officials began to worry that the prince harbored ulterior motives. They reported this to the emperor, hoping that he would transfer Gong Yunxiao back to the capital and hand over Gong Yunxiao's original fiefdom to a minister in the court for management.
The Emperor looked at the kneeling ministers below and smiled meaningfully. If it weren't for Gong Yunxiao sending him money every month to replenish his private treasury, he might have believed the nonsense these ministers were spouting.
The emperor flew into a rage on the spot and ordered the ministers to go home and reflect on their actions, and to return to court only when they had figured things out.
Soon it was time for Fang Xiyue to give birth again, and this time she gave birth to triplets, all three of them boys.
Fang Xiyue looked at the room full of five boys and felt a headache coming on. Five boys need to find wives? It's too difficult!
However, since Sanbao is the only girl in the family, both her two older brothers and three younger brothers treat her very well. This has fostered a somewhat shrewish personality in Sanbao, making her more and more like Fang Xiyue when she was a bandit!
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