After her rebirth, the empress received a tragic and beautiful script.

Chapter 249 Quarrel

After coming out of the cabinet, Lin Yuxiu felt a little uneasy.

In his mind, he repeatedly recalled the silent and awkward scene when Chen Yuansi and Yu Jianghui sat and stood one after another when the door opened, as well as Chen Yuansi's words "Your Majesty will definitely issue an order to quell the rebellion."

He walked to the gate of the Ministry of Justice and suddenly stopped. After a moment, he turned around and walked quickly towards the palace.
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"Your Majesty, the Minister of Justice Lin Yuxiu requests to see you."

Ye Qinghuai heard Li Baoquan's voice outside the door and stopped writing. She looked at the half-written imperial edict in front of her, sighed, and simply put the pen down beside the inkstone, saying, "Let him in."

"I heard that Your Majesty was not feeling well. I was deeply worried, so I came to ask for your well-being." After saying this, Lin Yuxiu knelt on the ground, showing great courtesy.

Ye Qinghuai did not reply to him, but said to Li Baoquan who was waiting behind him: "Go out and close the door."

When they were the only ones left in the room, Ye Qinghuai said, "Get up. You came just in time. I was drafting an imperial edict, but unfortunately I couldn't continue writing halfway through. Come and help me."

Hearing the word "draft edict", Lin Yuxiu immediately remembered the words in Chen Yuansi's scolding of Yu Jianghui, "Your Majesty will definitely issue an edict to quell the rebellion", and couldn't help but have a bad premonition in his heart.

But he still calmly approached the desk and looked at the imperial edict which only had a few lines written on it.

As expected, it was related to the rebellion in Qing County.

But it was not an edict written to the Yingzhou army or to be announced to the world, but an imperial decree written to Lu Yanchen.

On the white paper posted on the bright yellow silk cloth, the emperor clearly asked Lu Yanchen to lead the Western Army to withdraw from the chaos in Qing County and persuade the soldiers and civilians in Qing County to surrender to the court.

The imperial edict was stuck on the word "otherwise".

According to convention, the following words should be followed by "military law punishment".

But Lu Yanchen was stubborn, and Ye Qinghuai was unsure of how he would act. If the order was too absolute, there would be no room for maneuver, so she hesitated before writing.

Lin Yuxiu didn't know the truth about the rebellion in Qing County, but from Chen Yuansi's attitude and the trivial words of the ministers in the court, he could infer that there must be something hidden, so he said: "Your Majesty, Yingzhou has always been a peaceful place, and General Lu is also a reasonable person. I believe that such a thing would not happen for no reason."

Ye Qinghuai nodded and said, "It's true that it wasn't for no reason. The rebellion in Qing County was caused by last year's poor harvest. The people were starving, but the court did not open the warehouses to provide disaster relief. Instead, it allocated grain to the frontline for use. This is the letter that Lu Yanchen sent back from the front line. It's written very clearly."

She took out the secret letter from Lu Yanchen that Tao Yuan brought back from a pile of letters on the table and handed it to Lin Yuxiu. "Only I and the cabinet know about this matter. There is no need to let all the officials in the court worry about the shortage of food and grass. In another three months, the summer tax of rice and wheat from Zhongzhou and Yingzhou will be collected, and the problem of food and grass will be solved." Ye Qinghuai said.

After reading the secret letter, Lin Yuxiu pondered for a moment and asked, "The situation in Qing County is already a disaster. Your Majesty, will you open the warehouse to provide disaster relief?"

Ye Qinghuai stroked his forehead, feeling a little annoyed.

If it were someone else, they would first ask the emperor how he planned to deal with the rebellion and solve the current food and grass problem, but Lin Yuxiu asked how to resettle the people affected by the disaster.

As usual, Lin Yuxiu seemed to be blind to the emperor's difficulties. As soon as he opened his mouth, he directly asked the question that Ye Qinghuai wanted to avoid the most, making her feel uncomfortable all over.

"What can we use for relief? Disaster relief requires money and food. It's not something that can fill people's stomachs with just a few bites of food. The food in Qing County's granary is for Lu Yanchen's Western Army. Without this food, how can he fight against the Western Rong? And how can he station troops to deter the Northern Di?"

Lin Yuxiu pursed his lips slightly, his expression turned cold, and he said, "I, Dajingfu, have 40 million acres of arable land, but I can't even provide relief to tens of thousands of disaster victims?"

"Tens of thousands of disaster victims? In Qing County alone, there are more than 100,000 rebels who refused to leave the city. How many of them are real disaster victims and how many are gentry who are trying to take advantage of the situation? Can you tell them apart? Moreover, according to what Lu Yanchen saw along the way and the grain tax collection in various counties of Yingzhou last year, the situation in Qing County is not an isolated case in Yingzhou. There are probably many counties with starving people on the road. No one can tell how many Qing counties there are in Yingzhou, and how many Qing counties there are in the nine states of Dajing. If we condone the rebellion in Qing County this time, who knows how many places will follow suit. When civil strife breaks out and the Northern Di are watching covetously from the outside, that will be the time when the country will collapse!"

"Your Majesty, they are victims of disasters who cannot survive, not rioters with ulterior motives. Your Majesty, raising the butcher knife against them is no different from the butcher knife that the imperial guards raised against the students outside Chengtian Gate that day."

Ye Qinghuai was irritated by him and said angrily: "Do you think I want to do this? I also want to provide relief to these disaster victims with a stroke of the pen, but how can the war on the front line be supported? The treasury is now limited by money and grain, and we must make some choices and sacrifices."

Lin Yuxiu was not willing to give in. "So your majesty chose to sacrifice the people of Qing County? Your majesty, the court only needs to distribute three dou of grain to each person for a month, and 100,000 disaster victims can only get 30,000 dan of grain a month. At today's market price, 30,000 dan of grain is equivalent to 36,000 taels of silver. Your majesty, do you know that there are more than 500 mansions with more than three courtyards in the upper three districts of the capital. The expenses of food, clothing, and servants in these mansions alone can reach 10,000 taels of silver a year, and the expenses of mansions with five courtyards are even more. Last year, it was rumored in the market that the Chen Mansion of Chen Ge Lao spent more than 10,000 gold on buying clothing materials at Jinhuaxuan alone. Can the court afford to support these wealthy and powerful people who spend money like water, but can't afford to save a few civilians who were affected by the disaster?"

Ye Qinghuai was stunned for a moment. She had never calculated such an account before, and it was the first time she heard such rumors about the Chen Mansion. Lin Yuxiu compared the two and it seemed that the lives of the disaster victims were too cheap.

But, how could she not know that while the rich had luxury of feasting and drinking, there were people freezing to death on the streets?

Ye Qinghuai lowered his eyes and said, "Our dynasty stipulates that officials below the sixth rank and common people can have no more than three courtyards in their houses. The houses you mentioned are all the residences of officials above the fifth rank and wealthy merchants in the capital. Can you take their money? You also said in the palace examination that even the revision of laws and regulations in recent years in our dynasty has been biased towards the powerful. Why is it biased towards the powerful? Because the laws and regulations are also revised by them. Even the laws of Dajing are like this, do you still expect them to pay for it?"

Lin Yuxiu was silent for a moment, and said, "I didn't come out because I am insignificant, but your majesty is the supreme ruler. There is nothing in this world that your majesty cannot do, only things that your majesty does not want to do."

His words were disrespectful, but Ye Qinghuai still suppressed his anger and said to him patiently: "Yu Xiu, although I am the emperor, I cannot do whatever I want. I cannot go against all the officials in the court. They are still needed to handle court affairs and implement policies. I have my own difficulties, Yu Xiu, can't you understand me?"