Does "governing the people with integrity" mean colluding with local unscrupulous merchants to disregard human life? Does "peaceful and prosperous life" mean not only failing to reduce taxes according to the court's standards when the court is reducing them, but also creating various pretexts to add several new tax items?
Let me see what taxes are collected...
Chuan Wen went off to dig into it with great interest, Zhang De: !!!
"Your Majesty, Your Majesty, I, I..."
Zhang De suddenly felt how intense the sun was outside. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, swallowed hard, and felt his throat was dry.
At this point, Chuanwen also dug up the various taxes he had cleverly created, exclaiming in amazement, "What a genius!" [Let's not even talk about the head tax and the breathing tax, but what the hell is this "poop tax"? Oh, they say that poop pollutes the air, and they need manpower and resources to clean the air, so they're charging the people a poop tax, uh...]
Chuanwen said, "I've learned something new." Zhang De wiped his sweat again, but this time his hand trembled a little, and he stammered, unable to speak.
The emperor looked down at him; it was early autumn with a bright sun, but his eyes were filled with frost.
Um......
Amidst the indignation of Imperial Censor Dong Zhen, Shen Congliang stroked his chin in deep thought, wondering if Zhang De had provided the people with fresh air.
[You might say he didn't freshen the air for everyone, but he had people buy plants and gave each household two pots! And yet, those two pots of plants he gave out were actually just wild grass he dug up from the wild!]
The messenger was speechless. [Why can't the people just dig it themselves? Why do they have to pay fifty coins each to buy it from you? And they have to buy it every month because they need to replace it with fresh wild grass!]
Cough, cough!
Shen Congliang was stunned. He was already doing the math in his head: fifty coins per person, so a family of six would earn three hundred coins a month. Three hundred coins for two pots of weeds? Holy crap, that's a steal!
But that wasn't all. Chuanwen discovered something new: [There's even a dog barking tax! You have to pay a tax if a dog barks twice while passing by! Hahaha! The people of Sanqiu County are afraid to keep dogs anymore, and they're even worried that Old Zhang will impose a cat barking tax. Not only dogs, but they're afraid to keep cats too!]
Zhang De was drenched in sweat, and his legs were trembling. He tried to say, "Your Majesty, Your Majesty, I once received the 'Ten Thousand People's Umbrella' (a symbol of public support). When I left office, the people lined the streets to see me off, and many of them shed tears."
The message reads: "Uh... the 'Umbrella of Ten Thousand People'? Is that the one the umbrella maker slipped into the cursed little book?"
Zhang De froze. A cursed little book?!
No wonder he always felt unlucky; someone was cursing him! How malicious! What a scoundrel!
[And those tears? Old Zhang, you're really overthinking it. Don't you know how badly you've been an official? They were just crying tears of joy! The people lining the streets to see you off were truly there, they were practically dancing a farewell dance for you. After you left, the people of Sanqiu County held a grand feast to celebrate for three days and three nights!]
Zhang De didn't believe it. He remained silent, a chill running down his spine. He slowly raised his eyes and saw the emperor's ambiguous smile. He couldn't take it anymore; his legs began to tremble uncontrollably. "Your Majesty! Please listen to my excuses—bah! Please listen to my explanation!"
"Oh? From what Zhang Qing is saying, you're quite a good local official?"
Without giving Zhang De a chance to argue, the emperor smiled coldly and looked at him with icy eyes.
Zhang De knelt down with a thud, trembling, "Your Majesty, everything I said is true..."
"I will send people to investigate."
The emperor interrupted him directly, his cold smile undiminished. "How could my wise and prosperous era tolerate a black sheep like you!"
The emperor ignored Zhang De and left in a huff.
Watching the emperor's departing figure, Zhang De slumped to the ground in despair. It was all over!
Chuanwen glanced at the emperor's departing figure, then at Zhang De, who sat on the ground with a blank expression, and sighed inwardly, "Tsk tsk tsk! Did I not take a good picture? I told you the emperor's bald head wasn't suited to the phrase 'extraordinary appearance,' and now he thinks I'm being sarcastic!"
Feeling sorry for Zhang De, Chuanwen left with Su Yue and the others, leaving behind a bewildered clerk and several constables, as well as Zhang De, whose face was twitching with anger.
Haha! Haha! Was it because he didn't photograph the horse well? If you hadn't been here constantly undermining him, he wouldn't have been abandoned by the emperor! Waaah! He was so close to being promoted!
Chuanwen wanted to go to Zheng San's house to join in the fun, but after this incident, Su Li was too scared to go and wanted to go home. However, Aoki and his two children still loved this kind of gossip and wanted to go too.
Chuanwen and Qingmu, one big and two small, hit it off immediately and let Su Yue and Su Li go home while they went to watch the excitement.
Su Yue wouldn't dare. Neither Qingmu nor Chuanwen seemed reliable. She wouldn't dare let those two take the two children out for a stroll. Even with Wenxue around, she was still afraid.
Before she could stop them, the two of them led Xiao Hei and Xiao Hong away. Su Yue glanced at her father, then at her older brother, and decided to take them home. One of them had been wandering in the mountains for over a decade, and the other had been searching for over a decade without reaching the capital. Sending them home might mean they would never return!
——
"Let me tell you, the one who died was definitely Zheng San's wife!"
Under the shade of a tree at the entrance of the alley, Chuanwen and a few other elderly people sat there, cracking sunflower seeds. The sunflower seeds were sold by Chuanwen at a roadside roasted nuts stall on the way there.
After a slightly plump middle-aged woman finished speaking, an old man with a gray beard immediately chimed in, "I guessed it too. His wife didn't run off with someone else; he killed her!"
He even grinned as he spoke, making it sound terrifying.
Chuanwen nodded in agreement, and the three of them listened intently. Aoki asked, "Why?"
Another middle-aged woman spat out the sunflower seed shells in her mouth and scoffed, "What else could it be? Zheng San's wife is cheating on him! Look, there are two corpses built into that wall, the other one must be the man his wife is cheating on him with!"
What does it mean to have an affair?
Aoki looked at Chuanwen with a puzzled expression and asked. Wenxue, standing to the side, felt a little awkward. Asking such a question to a young woman who hadn't yet married was, well, not really appropriate.
But when Chao Chuanwen looked at her, she answered Aoki's question very seriously, "It's just that one woman slept with two, uh... or three or four men."
Wenxue's lips twitched. Chuanwen would never let her down. His answer was simple and clear, but wasn't it a bit inappropriate for an unmarried girl like you to answer this kind of question so seriously?
However, Aoki still didn't understand. So why kill someone if you're just stealing? In their tribe, sometimes a woman would live with two men, and nothing bad would happen.
"Do you guys remember? It seems like it was around this time a year ago, Zheng San mixed a bunch of mud and said he wanted to rebuild the kitchen, saying that the kitchen was about to collapse because of the rain. But when I looked at his kitchen, it was perfectly fine. I was puzzled at the time!"
Another thinner middle-aged woman suddenly remembered the incident of Zheng San building a wall a year ago.
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