Jiajing Chengming

Chapter 129: Confiscating underground banks leads to institutional issues!
If you say slap me on the mouth, then slap me on the mouth.

Fahui didn't expect that the Jinyiwei were still targeting him.

This made him subconsciously hold the ticket in his hand tightly.

at that time.

Jinyiwei Captain Lu Bing was already walking towards him.

"Master Fahui, do you still recognize me?"

Then, Lu Bing asked about Fahui.

After studying with Wang Qiong for nearly half a year, Lu Bing also began to take on some tasks to gain experience.

This contact with Fahui and the capture of Fahui were also tasks assigned to him by the Zhenfu Division.

Because Lu Bing made rapid progress in dealing with people after being trained by Wang Qiong, it was easy for people to lose their vigilance against him.

Fahui also thought that he was probably the son of an ordinary powerful family, so after getting to know him, she never thought that he would be a member of the Embroidered Uniform Guard at such a young age. She would rather sell many of her properties to Lu Bing at a lower price than to other wealthy businessmen who offered a higher price, in order to avoid being targeted by the Embroidered Uniform Guard.

But Fahui didn't expect that Lu Bing was a member of the Embroidered Uniform Guard.

Fahui's legs are now weak.

The Jinyiwei had no choice but to drag him out of the carriage.

Lu Bing snatched the ticket from his hand.

"These bills involve many newly opened underground banks. To prevent him from being targeted, you take him to the Northern Pacification Office first. I will change into plain clothes and go to the palace to meet the emperor!"

After looking at these receipts, Lu Bing thought of what Wang Qiong had told him: even if the imperial court banned the opening of money houses, underground money houses would always exist. He also knew that these underground money houses were where powerful bureaucrats laundered money in the capital.

Therefore, Lu Bing knew that once the outside world knew that the bills from these underground money houses had fallen into the hands of the Jinyiwei, they would definitely find a way to stop it.

By the way, when Monk Fahui was escorted back to the city, he was in a state of grief.

As Lu Bing expected, not long after Monk Fahui was taken back, he was targeted by the assassins hired by the underground money house gang that had been following him along the way.

"The Jinyiwei who were patrolling outside the city just now actually went to arrest Fahui. This monk Fahui is indeed being targeted by the Jinyiwei. We must kill them immediately and get the membership ticket from Fahui."

A leader among these assassins even muttered to himself at this time.

But one of the bigger leaders said, "No need. Fahui got a lot of tickets this time, so he must have a bag to put them in. But these Jinyiwei didn't have any bags, which means they had already sent someone to take the tickets back in advance. Let's tell the master about this first."

Therefore, the assassins from these underground money houses did not directly attack the Jinyiwei.

Lu Bing entered the palace in advance with many tickets.

After Zhu Houcong received many tickets from Lu Bing, he said to Lu Bing, "You have not learned from Wang Qiong in vain. You have done a great job this time."

Lu Bing smiled happily and said, "It's not all Wang Qiong's credit. Your Majesty, don't think too highly of him. Many of the ideas were thought up by us!"

"I know you're smart, but being smart isn't enough. You also have to learn to be low-key, otherwise it's easy for people to discover your weaknesses and use them to mess with you."

"Wang Jing almost suffered a great loss this time because of this."

As Zhu Houcong spoke, he suddenly thought that he and his Jinyiwei might have been targeted by outsiders for a long time, and that outsiders had studied their respective weaknesses and strengths, especially the Jinyiwei above the rank of a thousand households, who might have already figured out their strengths and weaknesses clearly.

Perhaps the younger generation, such as Lu Bing and Wang An, who are about the same age as himself but have not yet been included in the list, have not been noticed.

For Zhu Houcong, it would certainly not be a good thing if any character flaws or other important information of his Jinyiwei core members were known to outsiders.

then.

When Zhu Houcong thought of this, he said, "I have decided that from now on, all of you who have followed me since childhood must change your surnames to Zhu, and all of you must be called Grand Protector, no matter how high or low your official position is!"

"Also, your name must be changed as well. After you retire, you can change it back to your original name and real name. As for the specific name, you can think of it yourself and report it to me when you have decided!"

Zhu Houcong then instructed Qin Wen, "Tell Wang Jing about my decision."

Qin Wen bowed and said yes.

then.

Lu Bing became Zhu San, Wang An became Zhu Wu, Cao Qi became Zhu Qi...

Thus.

The list of military officers of the Jinyiwei available to the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Six Departments suddenly saw the addition of a number of young military officers with the surname Zhu, and their origins were all unknown.

By doing this, Zhu Houcong gave each of his Jinyiwei a nickname, so that the outside world could basically only know their "nicknames", but it was more difficult to understand their true backgrounds.

then.

Zhu Houcong immediately ordered Lu Song to strike while the iron was hot and use these bills to crack down on the underground money houses in the capital.

Lu Song immediately organized the troops of the Northern Pacification Office and began to take action.

Zhu Houcong had been expanding the number of the Jinyiwei, and selected many loyal and brave people from the orphans he took in, the militiamen from Gyeonggi Province, and the escaped border soldiers to join the Jinyiwei.

Therefore, the Jinyiwei has the absolute power to suppress any force in the capital city.

When the Jinyiwei came to raid these underground money houses, the owners of these underground money houses had just received the news and had no time to move, resulting in almost all the managers, employees and assets of these underground money houses falling into the hands of the Jinyiwei.

This made Zhu Houcong very satisfied, because in this way, not only did the many temple properties sold by Fahui fall into his hands, but also the assets of these underground banks, and most importantly, the talents who managed these temple properties and underground banks also fell into his hands.

In order to strengthen the royal family's position in the financial field, Zhu Houcong decisively ordered Lu Song to ensure that the arrested people were not in danger of life and that they could continue to work in the future.

Subsequently.

Zhu Houcong also ordered the cabinet ministers and nine officials to come to the imperial study in Qingning Palace to discuss the disposal of these underground money houses.

A large number of underground money houses were confiscated, which naturally soon caused a stir in the court.

Because this involves the operation of many government offices and the gray assets of officials.

To know.

Traditionally, government offices such as the Ministry of Revenue, the Ministry of War, and the Ministry of Works have been the main backers of underground money houses.

such as……

The Ministry of Revenue has always been responsible for deciding the proportion of tax silver and tax grain that each provincial government should transport and retain from across the country.

This means that the Ministry of Revenue can decide how much gold and silver the provincial governors should transport for the underground money houses when they escort tax grain and tax silver to various places. It can also control how much gold and silver the underground money houses should store and transport at central silver vaults such as Taicang and local vaults.

The Ministry of War was responsible for deciding the proportion of military pay and silver grain from military farms that each provincial government would transport and retain from each border town and garrison. Naturally, it could also control how much gold and silver from underground banks each provincial government would transport and store when escorting and storing military pay and silver grain from military farms.

The Ministry of Works decided on the retention and transportation of bamboo and wood levies and fishery taxes collected from various places by the provincial governments, and thus could also manipulate the provincial governments to determine how much gold and silver from underground banks the local treasuries should transport and store.

Therefore, the existence of underground banks is inseparable from their support.

They also relied on underground banks to transfer their embezzled assets back home and to transport tributes from local areas to Beijing or back home.

Simultaneously.

The bureaucrats in various government offices also used the profits from storing and exchanging gold and silver for wealthy businessmen to make up for the budget shortfalls of the various government offices.

After all, the additional expenses of each government office are huge.

For example, there are additional expenses for entertaining transit officials and additional expenses for recruiting non-staff personnel.

Since these are not included in the fixed budget, it is often necessary to find additional income to make up for the shortfall in spending in this area.

Take a county for example. Logically, the yamen runners of a county should be strong men from the countryside who need to serve in the yamen.

However, many militiamen were unwilling to undertake corvée service and were only willing to pay corvée silver to the government, allowing the government to use the silver to hire others to serve as yamen runners.

however.

The number of yamen runners that could be hired with corvée silver was limited.

After all, the amount of corvée silver received by the government is limited, and may even decrease year by year.

This was related to the growth of the gentry group who were no longer required to perform corvee labor and the large number of people who surrendered themselves as slaves or fled and became refugees.

As a result, there were only a few dozen yamen runners who could actually receive salary from the government.

However, the number of yamen runners in a county often reached thousands or even tens of thousands, which meant that the wages of most people in the county could only be deducted from other places.

As for other places, they are either levied by local governments, or they are profits generated by underground banks, or they are subsidized by officials with their personal income.

Based on the considerations of not wanting to exploit the people too much and not wanting to spend too much money out of their own pockets, most officials naturally seek profits through collusion between officials and businessmen such as underground banks, and thus meet the extra expenses.

In short.

In either case, these are not legal systems openly recognized by the court, and naturally they are not known to the court.

The emperor had no idea how much money and grain flowed between the various government offices, how much was used for official business, and how much was embezzled for personal gain.

"Grand Minister of Agriculture, please advise His Majesty not to investigate the disaster relief funds as you did last time and clean up a large number of people who left the Ministry of Revenue!"

"This underground bank can continue to exist because merchants all over the world really need the help of the government to transport and exchange goods, and also because local government offices also need this income to reduce the additional taxes on local people!"

"That's right. The last time we investigated the disaster relief funds, it was because our Ministry of Revenue was too greedy, so the visible and shady properties were confiscated."

"But if this continues, we will be beheaded and exiled, but the people behind us will not know how to serve as officials in the Ministry of Revenue. By then, the tens of thousands of clerks and servants in the Ministry of Revenue will not be able to continue to support themselves."

thus……

Just before the Minister of Revenue Sun Jiao entered the palace, Qin Jin, the Left Vice Minister of the Ministry of Revenue, and other officials of the Ministry of Revenue specifically begged Sun Jiao to speak for the Ministry of Revenue.

The Minister of War Wang Yangming was also stopped by officials from the Ministry of War.

Li Chengxun, the left assistant minister of the Ministry of War, also said: "Grand Marshal, although your majesty has worked hard to govern the country and wants to eliminate the great evils of the world, currency reform has always been a matter of tethering one hair to move the whole body, and it is not something that can be accomplished overnight. So it is not that the various government offices are unwilling to obey the imperial decree, so they continue to work with local government offices to open the door for the big families to open money houses in secret, but right now all parties still need these money houses to exist, and they cannot be banned!"

"Even if all the current officials of the Ministry of War are arrested, the Ministry of War will still need additional income to cope with the increasing expenses."

"So please plead for the military officials in front of His Majesty and ask for the emperor's forgiveness."

The same thing happened to the Minister of Works Zhao Huang. The officials of the Ministry of Works also came to him and asked him to state the current problems to the emperor and request the emperor not to strictly investigate the problems of each ministry.

However, the Minister of Revenue Sun Jiao, the Minister of War Wang Yangming, and the Minister of Works Zhao Huang agreed and reported the issue to Zhu Houcong in front of the emperor on behalf of their respective offices.

(End of this chapter)