Chapter 92 Purgatory [The Second Case Begins] Qinghuai Disaster Relief...
In the scorching heat of July, a memorial to the imperial court reported the devastating floods in the Qinghuai region, causing an uproar throughout the capital.
The memorial was drafted by a county magistrate from a town under the jurisdiction of Qinghuai, in which he detailed the impact of the catastrophic flood.
Since the beginning of summer, two consecutive months of heavy rains have caused lakes to overflow and rivers to become blocked. Floods have swept across the lower reaches of the Ganjiang River, with the Qinghuai region, which is at a low altitude, being the most severely affected.
The flood destroyed houses and submerged thousands of acres of fertile land, leaving countless people in Qinghuai County displaced and homeless.
Along with the flood came a complete crop failure in the Qinghuai region. Grain prices soared in a short period of time, triggering a large-scale famine. Today, the Qinghuai region is littered with corpses and dead bodies.
After reading the memorial, the emperor was moved and immediately wrote a comment in vermilion ink.
"The floods of Qinghuai have ravaged the people. The granaries shall be opened immediately and taxes waived. The Third Prince Ye, the Fourth Prince Jing, and the Seventh Prince Xueyu shall be appointed to oversee this matter and ensure that the relief reaches the affected areas as quickly as possible."
The imperial edict was issued, signifying that the second case in the struggle for the throne among the three princes had finally arrived.
The three princes received their orders and each dispatched their subordinates to Qinghuai to provide disaster relief.
Wei Yihua once again assigned Yue Yining to handle this case.
However, compared to the previous Green Ghost case, this Qinghuai disaster relief mission was more arduous, so she sent several more reliable officials along with Yue Yining. Among the group were Shen Liude and Qiu Yuebai.
Even though she was busy with other matters, Wei Yihua still thought about taking some time to go with Yue Yining, but Yue Yining refused: "Your Highness has already sent many close ministers to serve me, that's enough."
"There are still many things in Yanjing that Your Highness needs to handle. I am grateful for Your Highness's concern for me, but the situation in the capital is constantly changing. If neither of us is present, I'm afraid the Third Prince will not be able to handle any emergencies on his own, and it may be easy to lose more than you gain."
Wei Yihua listened to the advice and said, "Alright, then I'll leave the disaster relief work to you."
Yue Yining smiled and said, "Your Highness, please rest assured that I will do my best."
Yue Yining had heard about the severity of the floods in the Qinghuai region from the court, but he was still shocked by what he saw with his own eyes.
As the carriages and horses traveled outside the city, the rice paddies on both banks, which should have been bearing ears of grain, had long since turned into a yellowish turbid water, with bloated animal carcasses and half-buried roof beams floating on the surface. Twenty miles away, the roar of the Ganjiang River, carrying the stench of earth, sounded like a dragon with its horns severed, crashing against a mountain.
After passing through customs, the number of dark-skinned figures huddled along the streets gradually increased. The refugees lay sprawled in the mud, in the corners of walls, their necks crooked, barely breathing, their eyes staring like ghosts at the passing vehicles.
The official road had long since turned into a quagmire, with wheels stuck in the mud and unable to pull themselves out, and a heavy, deathly atmosphere hung over everything in its path.
Qiu Yuebai couldn't bear to watch any longer. She had a maid pull up the carriage curtain, her face full of worry. She turned to look at the other two people in the carriage and said, "The flood is coming on strong, far exceeding what was said in the memorial."
Shen Liude nodded: "The best course of action at present is to do our best to allocate grain from the Taiping Granaries in the Qinghuai area to provide relief to the disaster victims, ensuring their survival from this flood before proceeding with their resettlement and recovery."
Qiu Yuebai sighed: "Fortunately, our mission is disaster relief. We only need to coordinate with government officials, distribute porridge and do good deeds, and appease the displaced people. The real challenge is controlling the floods."
Shen Liude: "Yes. Building new water conservancy facilities for flood control takes time. If we want to achieve results as soon as possible, we can only build dikes or dig canals, but both require a lot of manpower. Nowadays, the disaster victims are having trouble even filling their stomachs, so no one is willing to do river defense work."
Listening to the two's discussion, Yue Yining remained silent, only lowering her eyes.
This time, the person sent by the Seventh Prince for disaster relief was Xie Qingyu. Although the Fourth Prince also sent Ye Miheng, he was only an adjutant. The person in charge of overall coordination was another close advisor of the Fourth Prince, named Sun Qiong.
The task assigned to the Seventh Prince was to stop the flooding and drain the water, while the task assigned to the Fourth Prince was to suppress bandits.
Xie Qingyu and Ye Miheng's groups had set off several days earlier, but their group was delayed by a week in order to wait for the imperial court to allocate relief grain. Now it was August, a full month had passed since Qinghuai City was hit by the flood.
Of these three tasks, Yue Yining did not think that providing disaster relief to the victims was simpler.
She had a different idea from Qiu Yuebai. She understood Xie Qingyu and was even more familiar with the famine victims.
The task of stopping the floodwaters and draining the water was something the Seventh Prince volunteered for, meaning that Xie Qingyu was confident in how to manage the floods in the Qinghuai River.
Meanwhile, the task of suppressing the bandits was handled by people sent by the Fourth Prince. She hadn't forgotten that Wei Jing's maternal grandfather was General Gu, and Wei Jing must have a lot of elite troops under his command. At the very least, she could borrow some from General Gu. Suppressing these bandits and mountain thieves who were causing trouble in Qinghuai should not be a difficult task.
Providing disaster relief and comforting the people seems to be the simplest and easiest task.
These women could even live in the official post station in Qinghuai City, without having to supervise the construction day and night on the river embankment or arduously trek through the mountains and forests. On ordinary days, they only needed to discuss matters with Qinghuai officials in the mansion, and at most, they would go out to the streets to scoop porridge for the disaster victims. Even if they did it personally, they didn't have to persist for too long. When they got tired, they would take over and rest. Afterwards, if the news spread, they would gain a good reputation for being hands-on, kind, and diligent.
By all accounts, everything seems to be worry-free.
But will disaster relief really be as easy and smooth as they think?
As Yue Yining was deep in thought with her head bowed, the carriage suddenly came to a sharp stop. The three female officials sitting inside the carriage swayed slightly, and their conversation was interrupted, causing them to freeze for a moment.
A guard's loud voice rang out: "How dare you! This is the carriage of an official from Yanjing who has come to provide disaster relief!"
Hearing the commotion, Qiu Yuebai was the first to lift the carriage curtain and ask, "What happened? Why did you suddenly stop?"
The driver said awkwardly, "A disaster victim carrying a child suddenly rushed out..."
The carriage curtain was lifted, and all three of them saw the disaster victims who had been stopped by the guards.
She was a young woman, dressed in tattered clothes, holding a child in her arms, her face pale as snow.
She was kneeling on the ground, crying and pleading with them, tears streaming down her face: "Sirs! Sirs! I beg you! Please give us a bite of food, just a mouthful of rice! My child hasn't eaten a single grain of rice for seven days, he's dying, please! Sirs..."
Seeing that the guards were about to drive the mother and child away, Qiu Yuebai felt sorry for them and quickly called out to them, "Wait!"
"We happen to have a few boxes of our own rice in the carriage. I'll go ask the guards to fetch some for her from the back..."
Yue Yining stopped her.
She said, "No. We can't open the boxes and take the food here."
Qiu Yuebai asked, puzzled, "Why can't we...?"
Yue Yining said in a low voice, "Yuebai, look up."
Qiu Yuebai looked up and a chilling scene unfolded before her eyes.
Before they knew it, all the disaster victims on the street were staring at them. In the drizzling rain, their crimson eyes were like will-o'-the-wisps. Those closer to the carriage had already stood up from the mud, staring intently at their carriage like hungry wolves ready to pounce.
Although Qiu Yuebai came from a poor family, she grew up in a wealthy town near Yanjing and had never seen a famine.
She was immediately startled by the gazes of these people and hurriedly lowered the carriage curtain, daring not to show herself again no matter how much the woman outside cried out.
The wheels started rolling again.
Yue Yining lifted the gauze curtain covering the car window again, and the three people inside the car witnessed the woman who had been kneeling in the mud standing up by the roadside, and then expressionlessly throwing away the infant's corpse in her hands.
Qiu Yuebai turned pale with fright and covered her lips tightly. Yue Yining seemed unsurprised, and her expression remained largely unchanged.
She instructed the driver: "Continue to the official post station, and do not stop if you encounter any problems along the way."
Shen Liude comforted Qiu Yuebai beside him, and then realized something. "So the child that woman was holding was already dead. She was deliberately trying to gain our sympathy."
Judging from the expressions and reactions of the disaster victims on the street, this kind of thing has probably happened quite often in recent days.
"If we flaunt our wealth here, we might not be able to leave today."
After Qiu Yuebai calmed down, she looked at Yue Yining with a mixture of admiration and confusion: "Thanks to Lord Yue for pulling me back just now... But how did Lord Yue figure out that the woman was suspicious?"
The woman in the blue and white robes leaned back on the cushions and sneered, "I've only seen this kind of person before."
After a long journey, the carriage finally arrived at its destination. The official residence stood majestically in the misty, torrential rain, its golden roof towering high.
Upon reaching this area, the number of refugees visibly decreased, and soldiers and officers maintained a tight guard along the way.
Yue Yining and his entourage disembarked from the carriage and were welcomed into the official residence by the officials at the gate.
The carriages following behind also stopped one after another. Fu Yao held up an oil-paper umbrella for her and stood aside waiting for the others to get off.
The rain was getting heavier.
Yue Yining looked around and saw the notice posted outside the yamen. Her gaze paused.
Pointing to the portraits of people posted on the notice wall, she asked the junior official who had led her there, "Who are these people?"
It had been raining for days in Qinghuai, and even though there was some shelter and the paper was frequently changed, the portraits pasted on the wooden wall inevitably got wet, and in some places the ink had smudged. But at a glance, most of the faces on the wall could still be clearly distinguished.
Most of the people in those portraits were women. These weren't missing person notices, but rather official arrest warrants from the government.
The junior official turned around and replied timidly, "They are all people who committed crimes in Qinghuai City and fled to escape punishment."
Yue Yining asked, "What kinds of things did you do?"
"That's...that's too many." Seeing that Yue Yining seemed intent on probing, the junior official dared not continue to be perfunctory. He forced himself to perk up and counted them one by one. "Come closer and take a closer look, and you'll see. They're all written down. This one is theft, this one is abandoning one's husband and children, this one is disobeying one's parents' orders..."
Yue Yining's gaze swept over the unfamiliar faces pasted on the wall, and suddenly stopped on the face in the center.
With thick eyebrows and phoenix eyes, his face lacked any femininity, instead displaying a striking and handsome appearance.
Her place of origin and name are listed below.
He Chan, a butcher from the north of Qinghuai City.
“This is a murderer.” The official pointed to the face, a hint of fear appearing on his face. Yue Yining blinked, and the fear disappeared. He looked away and continued, “It happened a long time ago, last March. He fled the city that day, and they still haven’t caught him.”
Yue Yining silently memorized all the faces on the wall, just as everyone on the bus had disembarked. She nodded to him, "Please lead the way."
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