In his previous life, Yin Chengyu had asked the same question.
Yin Chengyu recalled the scene at that time. It should be the most intense time for the struggle for the throne. Emperor Longfeng deliberately indulged himself, and the civil and military officials rushed to take sides. The second and third sons made a last-ditch effort. As the crown prince, he was at the center of the vortex, so he was inevitably assassinated.
In fact, ever since he came back from the imperial mausoleum, returned to the court, and gradually took control of power, he has been subject to assassination attempts from time to time.
However, that time was particularly dangerous. He was accidentally poisoned and blinded. Xue Shu took him to avoid pursuit and they fell off a cliff. The two hid in a narrow cave for half a month before they contacted the searching imperial guards and escaped from danger.
After returning to the palace, he once asked Xue Shu: Why him?
How did Xue Shu respond at that time?
He lowered his head and looked at him for a long time, then pressed his finger against his lips frivolously and said, "No one else is as good-looking as Your Highness."
He felt insulted at the time and never asked such a question again.
The relationship between him and Xue Shu began with an exchange of interests, entangled in desire, and perhaps there were many other things involved, but he was unwilling to delve into it. It was good to maintain the status quo, so that even if they met in battle in the future, he would not be merciful.
After pulling himself out of the past, Yin Chengyu looked at the person in front of him and regained his nonchalant expression.
He looked at Xue Shu, who was still young and had a clear mind, and thought that it was better to be young.
He doesn't say unpleasant words to annoy others, and he even approaches people eagerly to please them.
How good.
In the end, Yin Chengyu accepted the box of gold, silver and jade items sent by Xue Shu.
He asked Zheng Duobao to take a Donggong token and threw it to Xue Shu: "Here is the token for you. Remember who you belong to in the future."
Xue Shu took the token, and a hint of joy appeared on his face, which rarely showed any emotion.
He recognized the token. Zheng Duobao and Zhao Lin often wore such a token around their waists, which meant they were the prince's men.
"Thank you, Your Highness, for your gift." He solemnly put the token into his sleeve.
"Since there is nothing else to do, you can leave now." Yin Chengyu waved his hand and stood up to go to the main hall. When he reached the door, he said, "Since you have to do something for your father, remember to avoid people when you come next time."
Xue Shu watched him leave, then left with a relaxed look.
He remembered Yin Chengyu's words and did not go through the main gate this time. Instead, like a night owl, he quietly left the East Palace through the corner gate and headed towards the West Factory.
Yin Chengyu returned to the main hall and remembered that the box of things had not been put away yet, so he instructed Zheng Duobao, "Set up a separate room in the storehouse and put the box of things in it. Do the same for the future."
Zheng Duobao responded, and after seeing him off to bed, he instructed the eunuch to put the box into the warehouse.
As he watched people register, Zheng Duobao nodded with satisfaction.
I feel that I was wrong before. Xue Shu is actually a good person who knows how to repay kindness.
After the Lantern Festival, the New Year comes.
Before the joyous atmosphere of the Mid-Year Festival in Wangjing City faded, a major incident occurred—the Yu Mansion in Nanxunfang was robbed.
The thief who broke into the mansion made quite a fuss. He not only took away the masterpieces of famous artists collected by Yu Shoufu, but also the collections in the study of the first and second masters. Even the letters and private seals exchanged with relatives and friends in the past few years were all gone.
The Yu family immediately reported the matter to the authorities.
Yu Shoufu was already old. He was shocked to hear the bad news and was so angry at the arrogant thief that he fell ill. He was unable to attend court for several days due to illness.
The second elder of the Yu family, Yu Jing, had always been a hot-tempered man. Seeing his father fall ill from anger and the thief who caused the trouble was nowhere to be found, he went to the Shuntian government office every day to seek justice. He only had a shady and idle job in the Five Military Commandery. Every day, he did nothing but sit in the lobby of the Shuntian government office with a knife on his shoulder, and even called it urging the Shuntian prefect to catch the thief as soon as possible.
The prefect of Shuntian was so worried that his hair turned white that he could only send more officers to search for the thief.
Because the battle was so large, the people in Wangjing City laughed at the incident. Occasionally, some brave people would meet Yu Jing on his way to Shuntian Prefecture and ask him with a smile: "Second Master Yu, did you catch the thief today?"
Yu Jing usually just replied with an unhappy look on his face: "No!"
In such a peaceful and somewhat joyful atmosphere, the salt inspectors, carrying the imperial order, quietly left Wangjing and went to the salt commissioners' offices in various places to inspect the salt taxes.
Fang Zhengke, who was heading to the Changluo Salt Administration, had just left Wangjing when Yin Chengyu received the news.
"Have you arranged all the staff?"
Zhao Lin nodded: "Everything has been arranged. The orphan of the Zhao family has also been convinced by our people."
Yin Chengyu nodded, thinking about the whole plan, whether there were omissions.
A few days ago, he secretly visited the Yu Mansion and told his grandfather and two uncles about the salt-injection project. However, he did not expect to learn from his eldest uncle that Wan Youliang had mentioned to him in a veiled way the huge profits of the salt-injection project two years ago.
At that time, Yu Chen did not care, but reminded him that whether it was reselling salt permits or selling private salt, it was a capital crime, and told him not to be blinded by the benefits. Wan Youliang naturally followed his advice, but just said it was just a private conversation between friends. Later, Yu Chen exchanged letters with him, and he did not hear anything wrong in the court, so he put it out of his mind.
But thinking about it today, I'm afraid Wan Youliang had already been tempted by profit at that time.
According to the information Yin Chengyu found, the Zhao family, whose family was wiped out in Wangjing City, made their fortune by transporting grain in Tianjin. On the surface, the Zhao family transported wine, noodles, glutinous rice and other things, but in fact, they transported private salt. The person who served the Zhao family was the current transport envoy Wan Youliang.
Tianjin is located at the lower reaches of the Nine Rivers, with prosperous water transport and convenient transportation. It also has the Changlu Salt Field, which produces a huge amount of salt. With profit at its top, some people can't resist the temptation and try every means to get salt permits, and then secretly transport the redeemed official salt to the south to sell.
As a result, everyone from the Salt Commissioner in charge of issuing salt permits to the grain transport merchants had to go through various hoops to get their way, and collusion between officials and businessmen was common.
The Zhao family was indeed engaged in the legitimate water transport business at the beginning, and later mixed it with private salt because the daughter of the Zhao family married a wealthy man in Hejian Prefecture as a concubine. The wealthy man made his fortune by private salt, and the Zhao family, moved by the interests, began to transport private salt to the south for their in-laws.
But they didn't know that the reason why the rich man had an endless supply of private salt was because he had a personal relationship with Wan Youliang.
In order to profit from smuggling salt, Wan Youliang forged the official seal of the Ministry of Revenue and issued an excessive amount of salt permits.
Normally, one ounce of silver was required to be paid as tax for each salt permit, but Wan Youliang forged documents and pretended to have withheld nearly 300,000 salt permits for the following year from the Ministry of Revenue. For such withheld salt permits, not only did one have to pay salt tax, but also interest. Salt merchants had to pay three ounces of silver for each permit.
The salt tax paid by salt merchants had to be submitted to the Ministry of Revenue, and Yu Huaian was the Minister of Revenue. When he checked the files of the past years, he found that not only did the tax silver submitted by the Changlu Salt Commissioner's Office not match, but he could not even find the documents for the advance salt quotation approved by the Ministry of Revenue.
Wan Youliang deceived his superiors and subordinates and embezzled the difference.
The Zhao family was just a small part of the problem. The head of the Zhao family was cautious by nature. He knew that selling smuggled salt was a serious crime. After making enough money, he retired and moved his family to Wangjing.
But the Zhao family didn't know that Wan Youliang had secretly established contact with the third prince Yin Chengjing. He was afraid that the Zhao family would reveal their true identity in Wangjing, and he would be restless day and night, so he came to Yin Chengjing for help.
It just so happened that the Taoist Wangchen, who forged the documents and seals for Wan Youliang, had some skills, so Yin Chengjing set up such a trap.
First, he killed the entire Zhao family and spread the rumor about the demon fox; then he built up support for Taoist Wangchen in the capital, and later he created the impression that the demon fox was hurting people in the palace, and smoothly pushed Taoist Wangchen in front of Emperor Longfeng.
Yin Chengjing had long been dissatisfied with the greedy Wan Youliang, and he knew that Fang Zhengke, who was inspecting the salt tax this year, was a man of strong character and difficult to fool. So he simply pushed Wan Youliang out and let him blame Yu Chen. This not only eliminated Wan Youliang as a hidden danger, but also took the opportunity to drag the Yu family into the water with him.
According to the trajectory of the previous life, Yin Chengjing's plan was interconnected, killing three birds with one stone, and it was worthy of the phrase "no plan left to be missed".
It’s a pity that God has eyes and gives Yin Chengyu a chance to start over.
This time, Yin Chengjing's plan might not be able to be implemented smoothly.
Fang Zhengke had already gone to the Changlu Salt Administration, and he ordered his men to find the orphan of the Zhao family who had escaped the disaster, and persuaded him that he had evidence with him, and stopped Fang Zhengke on the way to file a complaint.
This matter was exposed nearly two months in advance, and Taoist Wangchen had already been executed. It is unknown whether Wan Youliang had all the "evidence" prepared.
Yin Chengyu tapped the table with his fingers and instructed, "Send more people to keep an eye on them along the way."
At the end of the first month, the Ministry of Public Security received a memorial sent back urgently by Fang Zhengke Babaili.
The speed was faster than Yin Chengyu expected.
In his memorial, Fang Zhengke denounced the chaos in the salt administration in Changlu, pointing out that the Changlu Salt Commissioner colluded with salt merchants, over-issued salt permits, and embezzled salt taxes. He also mentioned the case of the surviving son of the Zhao family blocking the road. Fang Zhengke mentioned this at the end with a fierce and heartbroken tone, reprimanding the officials of the Changlu Salt Commissioner for their own selfish interests, disrupting the salt administration, and taking human lives lightly. He asked Emperor Longfeng to have someone conduct a thorough investigation.
Emperor Longfeng was furious and immediately ordered someone to invite the sick Yu Huaian back to calculate the salt permits and salt taxes issued by Changlu over the years.
It took the officials of the Ministry of Revenue three full days and nights to finally collect all the taxes and silver.
You wouldn’t know until you check. After checking all the way, it was discovered that in the past ten years, the tax losses of Changluo Salt had reached a huge amount of 5 million taels!
Salt tax has always been the biggest source of revenue for the national treasury. The annual tax revenue for the entire Dayan is only a little over 20 million!
The national treasury was empty, and Emperor Longfeng was nagged by court officials even for building a garden. However, these salt administration officials became extremely wealthy thanks to the salt warehouses. How could Emperor Longfeng tolerate this?
The furious Emperor Longfeng immediately ordered people to go to the Changluo Salt Administration for a thorough investigation.
Not only Changlu, but also the four salt commissioners in Lianghuai, Liangzhe, Shandong, and Hedong must be thoroughly investigated from top to bottom. It is imperative to root out all the corrupt and corrupt officials.
But when it came time to send someone, we ran into trouble again.
The case of the Luyan Commissioner alone was already a rare major case. If the other four salt commissioners were involved, the interests involved would be so huge that it is hard to imagine. Ordinary officials would not even be able to investigate the case, let alone get to the border.
When Emperor Longfeng asked "Who can go?", all the civil and military officials in the court looked at each other with concern, and no one dared to take on this hot potato.
The stalemate lasted for two days, but no candidate was decided.
Fang Zhengke's letter of apology arrived. He said that when he was checking the documents kept by the Changlu Salt Commissioner's Office, a fire broke out in the office. He was injured in putting out the fire, but he was unable to save the documents and files.
The name is to plead guilty, but the reality is to ask for help.
The investigation of the Changluo Salt Commissioner is imminent, but there is no suitable candidate to be found.
Just when Emperor Longfeng was in a state of panic, Yin Chengyu seized the opportunity to go to the court and ask for an imperial decree: "The salt administration is in chaos, which has harmed the foundation of the country. I am willing to go to Changluo and thoroughly investigate the salt tax to relieve your father's worries."
As soon as he opened his mouth, Emperor Longfeng and all the civil and military officials in the court breathed a sigh of relief.
There is no one more suitable than the prince.
Although Emperor Longfeng was unwilling to see the prince become more powerful, there was really no one else available, so he could only nod in agreement.
But after thinking about it, he felt uneasy. The Changlu Salt Administration had lost millions of taels of silver. Even if only part of it was recovered, the amount was not small. If the person investigating the case had tampered with the amount... he was afraid he would not know.
He subconsciously glanced at Yu Huaian. With him in charge of the Ministry of Revenue, wouldn't it be whatever the boss said that counted?
Just as Emperor Longfeng was considering how to arrange a few people to supervise the crown prince, Yin Chengyu took the initiative to offer him the steps and said, "It's a long journey to Changluo. The guards of the Eastern Palace are not enough. Please allow me to lead a team of imperial guards to accompany you."
"Of course I should." The pillow came just as he was dozing off. It was the first time that Emperor Longfeng felt that his eldest son was so knowledgeable and interesting.
He pretended to think for a while, then said, "Xue Shu, the commander of the Four Guard Battalions, is also very good at boxing and kicking. So I ordered him to lead 540 warriors from the Four Guard Battalions to accompany us for protection."
Yin Chengyu immediately smiled and bowed deeply: "Thank you, father, for your consideration."
The father and son smiled at each other, both satisfied.
The author has something to say:
Gou Gou: With the token, I am Gou Gou’s owner.
Your Highness: (.