Chapter 180 Cat and Mouse
In order to confirm whether his guess was correct, Jiang Xinyu asked someone to open the coffin of Master He, the county magistrate of Yongshun County.
The lips turned black and the bleeding spots under the eyes also turned black and purple.
There is no need for a special autopsy. Anyone with a little medical knowledge will know that the death was caused by poisoning.
It’s true!
It is not certain how many of the remaining plagues were real, but at least it can be determined that someone deliberately disrupted the order of Yongshun County.
It could be Zhang Zhongyi, but we cannot rule out the possibility that other forces in the county are taking advantage of the situation.
But no matter who did it, the most important thing now is to stabilize the situation as soon as possible.
The reason why plague is scary is not only that it is difficult to cure, but most importantly, it is highly contagious.
The current situation in Yongshun County does not allow for the slow implementation of benevolent policies. Only by cutting the Gordian knot and quickly eliminating all sources of infection can the remaining people be saved.
In the past, people in other places would be overjoyed when they learned that imperial officials were coming to provide disaster relief. However, so many people died in Yongshun County that the place was filled with dejection.
Xiao Yuan asked people to contact the three major forces in the city separately. The yamen runners and the gentry were the first to surrender, and the force composed of ruffians and gangsters became scapegoats.
The soldiers did not care about the posthumous honors for the county magistrate, and simply unveiled the white cloth in public so that the people could see the body.
Let me tell you, the county magistrate did not die of the plague, but was poisoned by the city's ruffians in order to control the food supply and disaster wealth in the city.
A doctor also explained to everyone the difference between the symptoms of death from plague and poisoning. Soon someone in the crowd cried out that their own family members also had black lips after death.
When Xiao Yuan heard that dozens of people died in the city at the same time, he knew that the situation was not that simple.
Zhang Zhongyi's people could indeed spread the plague, but they could not control when the infected people would die.
Since they needed a large number of deaths in a short period of time to make the situation serious, they must have used both plague and poisoning to ensure the effect.
Now, as a result of this explosion, many poisoning cases have indeed been uncovered, and they can also use this to increase the people's desire to survive.
Plague is a natural disaster that cannot be avoided. Seeing people dying around us, it is inevitable that we will become discouraged.
But if it was poisoning, it would be a human disaster. Now the gangsters who poisoned have been caught by the police, so they are safe now.
Now we have food and medicine, and we can survive as long as we obey the rules.
There was no need to report these villains who took advantage of the famine to rob and loot, and Xiao Yuan simply beheaded them all at the city gates to appease the people.
This killing not only had a shocking effect, but also made the uninformed people think that the imperial police had avenged them, which greatly increased their favorability. As a result, there was much less resistance to the implementation of the policy of cremating corpses.
However, the plague here is much more serious than elsewhere, resulting in a huge shortage of manpower.
Some entire families died and their bodies stank in the house. Just collecting the bodies took up a lot of manpower.
Xiao Yuan wanted to transfer some people from Xuzhou, but when he thought about the several villages and counties behind, he realized that there was not much point in transferring people.
He simply sent his confidant to take the token and rush to the Hexi garrison to mobilize troops.
There were two garrisons on the east and west banks of the Yellow River.
Different from other combat reserve forces that need military orders and cannot be moved lightly without war, these two garrison troops can be called the Yellow River Navy or the disaster relief reserve force due to their special geographical location.
If a major disaster such as the Yellow River bursting its banks occurs, they can also be mobilized by the imperial guards to serve as disaster relief personnel.
The matter of mobilizing troops is too sensitive. The flood in Xuzhou this time only destroyed a few small places and was not as serious as the Yellow River bursting its dikes.
Xiao Yuan originally did not intend to use the Hexi garrison, but after looking at the divination chart, he knew that the number of people he had was definitely not enough.
Given the current situation in Yongshun County, he had to leave at least half of his people behind. There were also several villages between Yongshun and Yonghe, so he had to leave some people behind wherever he went.
The Hexi garrison is not too far from here, and three days of fast horse travel will be enough to get there.
Whether in his team, the Hexi garrison, or nearby prefectures, there are probably Zhang Zhongyi's spies.
He couldn't hide the fact that he had deployed troops to Hexi. Of course, he didn't want to hide it.
What we want is for them to know.
Once the Hexi garrison arrives, the opponent's policy of dividing the troops will be useless, so these few days before the garrison arrives are the best time for the opponent to take action.
The mice hiding in the dark were too slow, so he had to give them a push to get them to move as quickly as possible.
A thief can only steal for a thousand days, but he can never guard against thieves for a thousand days. He will have to keep his guard up as long as the knife doesn't fall.
Even tigers take naps sometimes. It doesn't matter to him, but his wife must not make any mistakes now.
When Xiao Yuan told his wife about his idea, Jiang Xinyu agreed and was even curious why Xiao Yuan didn't just kill Zhang Zhongyi.
It's not the first time that the two of them have been at odds with each other. Xiao Yuan may not be good at writing, but he's pretty good at killing people.
Regardless of whether it is death squads or various underworld methods, Dongchang should be more professional than the Prime Minister's Office.
In Jiang Xinyu's view, the struggle between the corrupt officials of Dongchang and the powerful ministers and prime ministers should be that today you impeach me for taking human lives, and tomorrow I impeach you for forming a clique for personal gain.
You got the two of you to bang your head against the pillar and protest to me while I secretly captured a few of your capable students and tortured them into confessing.
Even if there was such a way to directly assassinate the opponent, it should have been the Dongchang who did it. How come it was the other way around?
Did you get the script wrong?
Xiao Yuan just found his wife's question funny.
"It is precisely because the East Factory is good at this kind of method that we cannot do it.
From the Emperor to the vegetable vendors in the capital, everyone knows that Zhang Zhongyi and I are enemies.
He could die of old age, illness, or be sentenced to death by the emperor, but he could not die an unnatural death.
No matter who you are, you can have the power of life and death, but you cannot be without scruples.
This rule applies to everyone. Even the emperor cannot kill anyone he wants.
If I really use underworld methods to deal with Zhang Zhongyi, I'm afraid all the court officials will have to unite to deal with me.
Besides, when the cunning rabbit dies, the running dog is cooked.
If Zhang Zhongyi died, the emperor would not leave my family alone in power.
Even though that old man is hateful, he is the source of funding for the East Factory. Just monitoring the Prime Minister's Office and his accomplices can provide more than a hundred jobs."
Jiang Xinyu suddenly realized, "So you two are Tom and Jerry. The so-called hostility is half real and half just an act for the emperor."
"What is Tom and Jerry?"
“It was a cat and a mouse, and the cat tried to catch the mouse all its life but never succeeded.
Later, the owner got a new cat, which caught the mouse in no time, and then the cat lost its job and was driven away.
But this is not the point. Let me first talk about what happened between you two. You have been fighting for too long and have come to love and hate each other.
Xiao Yuan didn't know why his wife had such a strange idea. He pinched her little face and said helplessly,
"We have different ideals and will never be able to sympathize with each other in this life. He is a hypocrite and I am a villain. We are not on the same track.
Zhang Zhongyi belongs to the civil service group, and I am directly under the emperor. Together with the military officers and nobles, there is now a four-way balance of power in the court.
However, sometimes the quarrels among the officials were indeed performed for the emperor to see, as the old emperor liked to watch people quarrel.
Not only did we quarrel, but the civil officials and military officials quarreled, the nobles and the honorable men quarreled, and several princes quarreled as well.
The court is becoming more and more chaotic now, and everyone is living their lives wearing masks."
Jiang Xinyu was a little puzzled, "If that's the case, why did the old man try so hard to kill you?
Isn't he afraid that the emperor will be jealous of him?"
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