No matter how corrupt and incompetent Zhou Fang was, he had already been convicted by the imperial court. If he had killed someone with a knife, he would have violated the imperial law, punished in private, and defied the emperor's authority. In that case, Gu Yun would have become a guilty person.
What's more, the court was undercurrent, and there were countless people involved with Zhou Fang. Whether it was Shen Tian or Cheng Ying, the seal holder of the Imperial Household Department, the two had complex ties in the court and were characters that could not be moved.
"Get down and work!" Heavy rain poured down on people's heads. Gu Yun looked at the embankment, anxious, and kicked Zhou Fang into the river.
Zhou Fang's arms and severed ears were still bleeding, and under the heavy rain, the blood flowed down to the ground. He was pale with pain, but he didn't dare to resist. Gu Yun was too brave, and Zhou Fang could feel that he wanted to kill him.
He didn't want to die, and he couldn't lose his life in Tanzhou. As long as he could hold out and return to Beijing, he could survive.
Even if Gu Yun caught him embezzling government funds, the worst that could happen to him would be dismissal and investigation.
How could Zhou Fang have the guts to embezzle so much official silver on his own? The people behind the scenes would definitely protect him.
Zhou Fang climbed up from the mud on the ground, walked to the pile of sandbags, picked them up with great effort, and walked tremblingly towards the river.
Upon hearing that Gu Yun had rushed into the post station with a sword and arrested Zhou Fang, a doctor of the Ministry of Water Resources, Fan Li, the prefect of Tanzhou who was building the dam, hurried over in a sedan chair.
"Sir, we're here." The sedan chair stopped and a bailiff spoke.
Fan Li pulled aside the curtain, got out of the sedan chair in a hurry, and walked to the river bank with an umbrella held by a yamen runner.
In such heavy rain and dirty weather, he was originally lying comfortably on his concubine's bed, but this young Marquis Gu was so lawless that he even dared to beat him up in the Du Shui Qing Li Si. How could he, the prefect, dare to stay at home and not show his face?
When he got closer, he saw Gu Yun and Mr. Liu both drenched in the rain, and Lord Zhou, who was wearing his official uniform, was struggling to carry sand and stones in the river. Fan Li was startled and frowned as he drove the yamen runner who was holding an umbrella beside him, "Get out, get out, put away your umbrella."
Then he pretended to be in a hurry and ran towards Gu Yun.
"Young Marquis Gu, I am late!" Fan Li said with a guilty look on his face, "It is my humble servant and Lord Zhou who should be overseeing the construction of the dam, but you have troubled me to stay by the riverbank in the heavy rain. I have failed in my duty. It is all because of my poor health. I fell ill a few days ago and could not get out of bed. I just woke up from my illness and realized that it was raining heavily outside..."
Gu Yun glanced at him coldly, interrupting Fan Li's long and pretentious speech, "Prefect Fan's arrival is just in time. We are short of manpower. Go find another hundred strong men."
Just as Fan Li was about to make an embarrassed expression, he saw Gu Yun's hand fall on the long sword at his waist, and he quickly changed the tone of the words, "I will go right away, right away!"
"Tell them that as long as they can build the Xiangyuan dam, each person can receive ten taels of silver as wages!" Gu Yun said loudly.
Fan Li responded with an ingratiating smile, and hurriedly summoned the yamen runners, ordering them to capture all the men who were able to work in the city.
After Fan Li left, Liu Ziqi and Gu Yun said, "The Xiangyuan River was not dredged in time, and there is too much silt on the riverbed, causing the riverbed to rise. If we want to block the water level upstream, we need to raise the riverbank by ten meters, but I'm afraid we won't have enough time."
"Not only that, the iron chains that bind the sandbags and stones have not been melted yet. These sandbags and stones cannot be fixed firmly and will be easily collapsed by the flood." Liu Ziqi looked at the river worriedly, without saying a word. Even if the Xiangyuan Dam can block the upstream river water, the river embankments on both sides are too low, and it is very likely that floods will flow back, causing the farmland and houses near the Xiangyuan River to be flooded.
Gu Yun threw the sword aside and rolled up his sleeves. "I'll go into the water, and you go find a rope. If there's no chain, we'll have to use ropes to build a dam!"
Liu Ziqi clenched his fists, his elegant face full of gloom. If it weren't for the inaction of officials from top to bottom, this situation would not have happened. The iron chains for building the dam should have been prepared by the Tanzhou government long ago, but now there is nothing.
The sandbags for building the embankment were obtained by him and Gu Yun after they came to Xiangyuan and forced the prefect of Tanzhou to find someone to dig sand.
Seeing Gu Yun carrying the sandbags down the river, Liu Ziqi did not stay any longer. He took his men and left quickly to find ropes in the city.
The terrain of Xiangyuan is not low, and the people in the city feel that even if there is a flood, it should affect several cities downstream of Tanzhou, Qingzhou and Danzhou, and will not threaten Xiangyuan.
Therefore, no one was willing to do the hard work of building river embankments, not to mention that the government always hired people to do hard labor but never paid them.
I heard that the dozens of people who were sent to do hard labor this time couldn't even fill their stomachs, so no one was willing to go.
Fan Li and his men knocked on every door in the city for a long time, but only found about ten people, several of whom were elderly men.
This was not a solution. Fan Li was really afraid of having to go back with these dozen people. Young Marquis Gu became furious and slashed at him with his knife.
"Go to the countryside and require every household to send one person to build the dam." Fan Li ordered his runners.
A group of yamen runners rushed to the countryside outside the city to arrest people. Fan Li led the dozen people to the river bank first.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
