Suzhou City.

A team of soldiers posted notices with the seal of the Yingtian governor on notice walls all over the city.

Pedestrians gathered in groups of three or four, and someone read out the contents of the notice aloud.

"From now on, the governor's offices in all counties of Suzhou Prefecture will simultaneously display signs allowing people to file complaints for three days. Citizens who have suffered injustice can come and submit their complaints with written materials. The offices will also set up oral complaint books, allowing citizens to verbally state their complaints..."

"Great! The emperor is the emperor! He knows the difficulties of ordinary people the best!" After hearing the announcement, the people of Suzhou were excited. Ever since Lord Hai took office, they have been looking forward to the day when the court would open for prosecution!

However, because Lord Hai forbade lawyers to enter and leave the yamen, the scholars who made a living from this held a grudge and deliberately did not write petitions for the common people.

Most of the common people were illiterate, and even if they could barely read a few words, they couldn't write a professional petition. Just when everyone was at a loss as to what to do, the governor's office issued a notice, actually accepting oral lawsuits from ordinary people!

Now everyone had no more headaches and they all rushed to the governor's office and lined up to file their complaints.

Sure enough, I saw a sign of "Oral Complaint Office" hanging on the gatehouse of the yamen. Inside the room were a group of clerks who were specifically responsible for writing petitions for the people who were unable to write their own petitions.

However, there were too many people coming to file complaints, and eight clerks were not enough. The government urgently transferred 16 clerks to support them, and they managed to finish writing all the petitions before dark.

When the officer gathered all the complaints and counted them, everyone was shocked.

In just one day, we received more than 2,000 oral and written complaints!

~~

In the governor's signing room, Niu Chenshi smiled bitterly and reported to the Minister of Justice:

"Today, we received all the petitions from the previous year. And tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, I'm afraid it will be over 5,000. Zhongcheng, are we not going to do business anymore?"

"This is the real business..." Hai Rui, wearing the pair of reading glasses that Zhao Hao gave to his mother, was concentrating on flipping through the thick tax and grain account books of Suzhou Prefecture. There were several tall stacks of them on the table.

"Ah?" Niu Chenshi was confused and asked in a low voice: "Didn't the Zhongcheng want to distribute land and grain equally? It has nothing to do with trying a case."

"That's just because you can't see through it." Hai Rui didn't even look up, and said calmly, "If you really want to know, classify the complaint into categories, and you'll know what's going on."

"Oh, okay." Niu Chenshi responded casually, thinking to himself, I'm not that curious, so I should go back to sleep.

"Report the results to this court tomorrow morning." Before he could even reach the door, Hai Rui added another sentence.

"I understand." Niu Chenshi wanted to slap himself. Am I not a bitch who talks too much and is looking for trouble?

~~

The next morning, Niu Chenshi, who had been working all night, walked into the signing room with dark circles under his eyes and cotton on his feet.

But Hai Rui was still sitting upright, wearing the same robe he wore yesterday.

"The Zhongcheng also didn't sleep all night?" Niu Chenshi asked with a yawn.

"I slept for a while." Hai Rui raised his head and asked him, "What's the result?"

"Reporting to the Minister, there are more than 2,200 complaints in total, more than 2,000 of which are all accusing the gentry of seizing land."

Niu Chenshi's rank of fourth grade was not obtained by lottery. At this moment, he had understood Hai Rui's intention - the Minister of Justice wanted to use the trial as a breakthrough point to start the fiscal and taxation reform of the ten prefectures of Yingtian!

What is the essence of fiscal and tax reform? It is to change the embarrassing situation that the court cannot collect taxes.

Why couldn't the court collect taxes? Because the officials and gentry didn't pay taxes, and they also annexed land and hid their farmland. Landowners who should pay taxes also transferred their land to the officials and gentry. As a result, clan power and gentry power were intertwined from the local to the court, forming a huge group of officials and gentry.

This group controlled the local areas, sidelined the government, and made the imperial court's decrees become empty words. Naturally, the imperial court and the government could not collect taxes.

The gentry who seized land in the lawsuits highly overlapped with the officials who did not pay taxes... Even if they were not the officials themselves, they were relatives and servants who took refuge with them.

Hai Rui used the denunciation as a breakthrough point and easily got a handle on these people. As long as his knife was sharp enough, or others believed that his knife was sharp enough, it would be enough to intimidate those local officials who usually carried out annexations without restraint and whose butts were covered with shit, and make them kneel on the ground and sing "conquer" honestly.

Who says Hai Gangfeng is inflexible and too rigid? He is really very flexible and not rigid at all.

It’s just that other people’s flexibility and adaptability are used to “serve their own interests”; while Hai Gangfeng’s flexibility and non-rigidity are only used to “serve national affairs”.

'If you plan for great things without sacrificing your life, you will succeed!' This sentence suddenly popped up in Niu Chenshi's mind. In addition to admiration, he couldn't help but ask: "Why did the Zhongcheng guess that this would be the result?"

"It is said that before the Chenghua period, the scholars and officials had nothing to their name after serving for decades. Even the second-rank officials could only afford a moderately well-off life after retiring."

Hai Rui smiled teasingly, as if answering something irrelevant: "Nowadays, any county magistrate has tens of thousands of acres of fertile land at home. A retired provincial governor can build dozens of acres of gardens and keep countless slaves and concubines. How come the world has changed so much in just seventy or eighty years?"

"The world is going downhill, people are proud of luxury and pleasure. Officials are no longer honest and self-disciplined, they all collude with the gentry to exploit the people." Niu Qianshi said with deep feeling:

"I understand what the Minister of Justice means. Over the years, annexation has been so serious, but every time the common people sue the gentry to seize their property, the county officials will inevitably favor the rich and powerful, so the losers are definitely the poor. As a result, among the people in Jiangnan, there is a saying that 'the government office faces south, and if you have a reason but no money, don't come in.'"

"Not bad!" Hai Rui nodded, and looked at Lao Niu with a new respect, and asked, "What's your name?"

Upon hearing this, Niu Chenshi almost shed tears and felt that staying up all night was worth it.

He had been with Hai Rui for a month, but his new boss had never asked him about his courtesy name or nickname. This made Niu Chenshi feel that he was on Hai Zhongcheng's blacklist, so he didn't bother to ask him about his courtesy name.

After a month of hard work, I finally have a name.

Niu Chenshi said with red eyes: "My name is Ji Lei, my courtesy name is Mowang, and my humble nickname is Cuiyunshan Hermit. You can just call me Mowang, Zhongcheng."

"Mowang, you are right." Hai Rui nodded and changed his address, "In the past, the government favored the gentry, which greatly encouraged the trend of annexation. As a result, the acts of encroachment increased day by day. So it is normal that there are so many cases like this."

"I see. The chancellor is very insightful. I admire you very much." Niu Mowang asked respectfully, "Then what should we do next?"

"What should we do?" Hai Rui was stunned by his question.

"We can't try these 2,200 cases one by one, right?" Niu Chenshi said softly, "This is the case of Suzhou City and yesterday..."

"Of course we'll examine each case one by one." Hai Rui said as a matter of course, "Make arrangements. We'll begin the trial tomorrow!"

"Ah?" Niu Chenshi's jaw dropped to the ground in shock. How could he conduct this interrogation?

ps. Third update. I spent most of the day looking up information today. Damn, the financial and taxation records of the Ming Dynasty are self-contradictory, with many different opinions and all the butts are crooked. Oh... why am I so serious? I don't like it anymore, I'll write it tomorrow.