"Sir, we are all civilians from the villages surrounding the four counties west of the Great Wall. We want to sue the Shen family... Please help us."
"Please, sir, make the decision for us..."
A group of women, children, the elderly, the weak and the sick all kowtowed and cried.
"West Great Wall?"
"Isn't that a frontier city?"
"I remember the Shen family was exiled to the Western Great Wall..."
The people present immediately became heated discussions.
When Lord Pei heard that these people were going to sue the Shen family, he subconsciously turned around to look at Emperor Wenyuan on the high platform, and felt that the Shen family was completely finished.
"Which Shen family do you want to sue? What are you suing for? Since you are the people of the West Great Wall, why don't you submit the lawsuit to the local government office?..." Lord Pei asked majestically one by one.
The leader was an old man with white hair and a thin figure. He seemed to have experienced the hardships of a long journey. His shoes were worn out and his clothes were full of patches and dirt. He kowtowed to Master Pei and said:
"Sir, we want to sue the Shen family, who were exiled from the capital to the Western Great Wall. We want to sue them for using sweet words to trick us into signing the land sale contract, and for indirectly killing dozens of able-bodied men in our village, leaving us homeless and without a place to seek justice..."
As the old man spoke word by word.
Everyone finally understood.
A few years ago, Emperor Wenyuan ordered the construction of a canal from Huaibei to the southwest. However, to excavate this canal quickly, it would need to pass through a vast area of villages and farmland inhabited by the people in the four counties below. Otherwise, it would need to be dug through a mountain upstream and then bypass the mountains...
The people don’t know the details.
All they knew was that in the end, the Shen family, on behalf of the local yamen runners, went to each village to negotiate a deal. They promised them all sorts of wonderful things, like compensation, new housing arrangements after relocation, and that the men in the family could earn money digging canals. After the deal was completed, the government would recruit those who performed well into its external staff, bringing honor to their families and allowing them to choose better locations when the government relocated houses and fields.
Because he knew that the emperor had ordered the construction of a canal.
Even though the people were reluctant to leave their homeland, they knew that resistance was futile. In addition, when the Shen family represented the government office to negotiate the agreement, they were so eloquent that the people were happily fooled into pressing their fingerprints one by one.
The men were assigned to dig and transport the water.
Women, children, the elderly and the weak were temporarily arranged to live in a barren area.
This excavation took several years.
Until one time when the canal was being diverted, the largest dam collapsed without warning, instantly sweeping away most of the people digging at the bottom of the canal, causing countless casualties...
But the incident was covered up by the government as a dam burst caused by a dragon turning over...
Furthermore, the government later forcibly recruited numerous men to continue digging the canal… The Shen family, having made significant contributions to the canal construction, was eventually pardoned by Emperor Wenyuan and allowed to return to the capital thanks to the efforts of the Eighth Prince's court officials…
So, because the victims didn't receive the comfort they deserved, they finally started to cause trouble...
Only then did they realize they had been cheated.
The contract the Shen family had tricked them into signing was for the unpaid sale of land. The men who were supposed to dig the canal to earn money were also voluntarily recruited for unpaid labor. And the land and housing they were talking about were the barren land they had temporarily settled on...
It's all a lie.
But the Shen family kept this lie going for several years...
By the time the truth was revealed, it was too late.
The government does not recognize it.
Because they signed the contract with their fingerprints, the government did not even accept their request for redress. Instead, they were afraid that they would cause trouble, so they forced all the able-bodied male members of their families to do labor and sent them to build the canal.
"Sir, we once went to the county and asked an old scholar to write a petition, but... the county magistrate beat us out as soon as he heard it. Later, we went to the prefecture of Xichangcheng, but this time, the old scholar who delivered the petition on our behalf was beaten to death..."
The old man burst into tears: "Sir, we old, weak, women and children really can't survive. We heard that if we go to the capital and beat the drum to report, we can get a chance to seek justice. That's why we fled thousands of miles to the capital, just to..."
"It's them."
"Grandpa Yun, it's them. They're the ones who deceived us and made us suffer so much..."
"It was them who caused the deaths of my father and brother..."
Before the old man finished speaking, several half-grown children kneeling among the women suddenly pointed at the Shen family members and shouted loudly.
The Shen family members were as pale as paper, and they pursed their lips as if to argue, but they couldn't even utter a single word...
“Shameless!”
"Relying on some literary knowledge, he actually did such a thing to deceive the people..."
"It's simply an insult to the reputation of scholars..."
"A family of scholars? A family of a hundred years of noble character? Just like this..."
"Bah!"
The people rose up in anger.
If Emperor Wenyuan had not been still on the high platform, many people would have climbed up to drool.
It's really shameless.
Many readers felt their faces burning and something in their hearts shattered...
"quiet!"
Lord Pei banged the gavel and the scene returned to calm.
The veins on Master Pei's forehead were throbbing, and he was furious at what he had just heard. He was half a student of Elder Shen. Elder Shen was such an upright man, but after his death, these descendants of his clan did such a thing...
Emperor Wenyuan's expression also became extremely ugly.
The Shen family's...hundred-year reputation...was completely destroyed at this moment...
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