Lin'an Never Night

Chapter 416: A good fighter has no great achievements

At the end of the "Lu Ming Banquet", each Jinshi received a subsidy of about 300 strings of cash.

This money was the travel expenses given by the imperial court to the successful candidates, which could be used to pay for their hometown visits to their families.

Because it takes more than two months to wait for the court's appointment, it is plenty of time to return home in glory.

For the Jinshi scholars who came from wealthy families, this was just a windfall to spend on food and drink.

For poor scholars, this money is very necessary.

The appointment by the Ministry of Personnel will take at least two months.

Because the Ministry of Personnel has to repeatedly weigh the comprehensive situation of each new Jinshi, count the positions that can be held across the country, and consider which officials' positions should be adjusted.

After the Ministry of Personnel finalizes the appointment list based on the qualifications and conditions of the Jinshi candidates, it will be submitted to the prime ministers for review.

After the prime ministers approved it, it was submitted to the government for confirmation and promulgation. The entire process took two months, which was considered very fast.

Therefore, the Jinshi candidates had a two-month vacation.

However, except for those Jinshi who lived closer to Lin'an, those who lived farther away would choose to stay in Lin'an City.

Who doesn't want to know their appointment first?

Zhao Qu had always wanted to persuade the emperor to arrange for Yang Yuan to be the proofreader of the Secretariat.

It’s good to be a proofreader. You can work as a proofreader first, gain experience for a year or two, and then become a secretary.

If the secretary continues to work for a few more years, he will be able to be transferred to a rural area and become a prefect of a small state.

After serving as a prefect for three years and accumulating enough political achievements, you can move to a larger place and work there for another three years.

After moving to three or two places like this, and having been in politics for about fifteen years, he would have accumulated enough political achievements, honed his ability to serve as an official, and established his own network of contacts, and now he could "enter the ministry."

After returning to Beijing and working for a few more years, as long as he behaves properly and does not make any mistakes, and continues to work in different positions for more than ten years, he will have the opportunity to become a vice-minister and enter the reserve team of the prime minister.

Some Jinshi would worry about their place of origin, because officials need to serve in other places, but there is no such concern for officials in Beijing.

According to convention, the first-class Jinshi must stay in the capital.

Therefore, Yang Yuan does not need to consider the issue of his native place, but only needs to see what starting point he can get.

The problem is that the Minister of Personnel Tan Yingwen, the Left Prime Minister Shen Gai, and the Right Prime Minister Wanqi Xie, all three of them were in favor of peace, and they controlled Yang Yuan's official career, which is quite interesting.

The emperor could not directly interfere in the appointment of officials at this level without going through the Ministry of Personnel and the prime minister.

This was different from Zhao Gou's previous appointment of Yang Yuan, because at that time he was arranged to join the secret service agency.

Whether it is the Jisufang or the Imperial City Bureau, they are the emperor's private land.

If the government wants to place officials in the imperial government system, it cannot bypass the Ministry of Personnel and the prime minister.

Otherwise, if you, as the emperor, take the lead in destroying your national system, then this system will soon become meaningless.

Yang Yuan didn't know that His Royal Highness the Goose King was working hard to get him to work in the Secretariat and look through piles of old papers, otherwise he would go crazy.

The Secretariat was in charge of history and culture, as well as the collection of classics, history, and literature, and the revision of the calendar.

Among these tasks, the secretary's main responsibility is to proofread books and maps.

Let's not talk about whether Yang Yuan can find any mistakes in proofreading. Even if he can, if he is asked to work in this position for a few years and then be promoted to secretary, doing similar clerical work, he will really go crazy.

However, His Royal Highness the Goose King was completely unaware of this. With the idea of ​​doing good deeds without leaving a name, he continued to work tirelessly for his good brother.

……

Yang Yuan himself has been relatively relaxed these days.

During this period, he had very close contacts with his like-minded peers who passed the same imperial examination.

Basically, you host today and he hosts tomorrow, and everyone takes turns treating each other.

They quickly became familiar with each other and established a friendship, but due to too many social engagements, Miss Xue from "Niaohua Cottage", who had already made up her mind to "force herself" on Yang Yuan, could not see him at all.

On the fifth day after the "Luming Banquet", the imperial examination sanctuary "Shuiyunjian" once again held a famous "Shaowei Banquet."

The protagonists of this banquet are this year's number one scholar Yang Yuan, number two scholar Xiao Yiran, and sixteen second-class Jinshi.

Zhang Xiaoxiang, the top scorer in the previous exam, was also invited.

As the palace examination official, Zhang Xiaoxiang can actually be considered their teacher.

However, as a palace examination official, he was just like a "guidance instructor" and was a bit like a senior or junior student to these Jinshi candidates, so they just got along like friends.

After this "Burning Tail Banquet" was held, many people learned that the top scholar Yang Yuan had once participated in the "Burning Tail Banquet" of the previous four Jinshi scholars held here.

As a result, he became the top scorer of this session!
Huh?
Everyone seems to have discovered something remarkable!
"Between Water and Clouds" became even more popular.

……

The court has been like a cauldron with a fire burning under it lately, and it's about to boil.

While Yang Yuan was making his remarks in the Golden Palace, Zhang Xiaoxiang was drafting a letter to appeal for Yue Fei's injustice.

After Yang Yuan made his reply in the palace, Zhang Xiaoxiang did not think that his writing at this time would be regarded as parroting others or flattering the emperor.

He is an open-minded gentleman.

To redress the injustice for General Yue was something he had in his heart, so he frankly followed his heart and did it.

Zhang Xiaoxiang wrote a "Ten Thousand Words Letter", lamenting the great harm that General Yue's death had caused to the country, especially the morale of the army and the people, and begged the emperor to redress General Yue's grievances and boost the spirit of the Song Dynasty.

As if it was pre-arranged, the Palace Attendant Censor Du Xinlao also exploded.

Du Xinlao was the 13th generation grandson of Du Fu, known for his outspokenness. He was also a censor, whose job was to criticize others.

Now the new king obviously wants to do something. If not now, when will he criticize?
So, Censor Du wrote a letter to denounce Qin Hui, speak up for Yue Fei, and implore the court to restore order.

This was not the end. The next day, Censor Du wrote another letter, impeaching the Minister of Justice Wang Jixian for abusing his favor to break the law and being overbearing and arrogant.

After all, he was a professional troll, and Censor Du easily listed ten charges against Wang Jixian.

Wang Jixian was the medical officer who had been responsible for refining medicines for Zhao Gou for many years.

He was best at making medicine of that kind. After Zhao Gou took his medicine, the dead snake actually turned into an earthworm and was able to stand still for a while.

Therefore, Zhao Gou always favored him.

Du Xinlao was a censor and had a lot of combat experience. He impeached Wang Jixian in a roundabout way, which was a roundabout way of attacking the late emperor, but no one could find fault with it, and it was not easy to actively bring the blame onto the late emperor.

After reading Du Xinlao's memorial, Zhao Yuan ordered an investigation into Wang Jixian.

Although the Minister of Justice Zhang Fangxun was a peace advocate, he was not like Wanqi Xie, who would defend anything without principles as long as it was beneficial to him.

He also looked down on treacherous officials like Wang Jixian who rose to power by taking advantage of aphrodisiacs.

Wang Jixian had relied on the government's support for many years and had done things without covering up anything, so there was no need to investigate him. Shangshu Zhang collected a lot of evidence in just one day.

When Zhao Yuan saw the evidence of the crime, he immediately ordered punishment.

Wang Jixian is indeed an outstanding doctor.

He once revised the Zhenglei Bencao with medical officers such as Zhang Xiaozhi and Gao Shaogong, and compiled the Shaoxing Revised Jingshi Zhenglei Beiji Bencao, namely the Shaoxing Bencao, which consists of 31 volumes.

Until later generations, Japan still had copied copies of his books, and several best-selling "Chinese prescriptions" were developed based on his ancient prescriptions.

However, Wang Jixian did take advantage of his favor and became arrogant and greedy.

The government ordered Wang Jixian to move to Fuzhou, and all his descendants were suspended from their posts. The confiscated property amounted to tens of millions of coins.

He was just the emperor's personal physician, yet he had so much money. It showed that he was not only corrupt, but also took advantage of the opportunity to make suggestions to the emperor and accepted a large amount of bribes.

Emperor Zhao Yuan did not put such a huge sum of money into the inner treasury, but instead filled it into the court's "reward treasury".

He also issued an edict stipulating that the funds would be used for their intended purpose, and that the money would be used to reward soldiers who had made military achievements.

The students of the Imperial College unanimously elected Cheng Hongtu and Song Qi as representatives. During this period, they also wrote to the court, requesting that Yue Fei be rehabilitated.

The military and civilians in Ezhou, where Yue Fei had been stationed for a long time, jointly wrote a "Letter to the People" to appeal for their former general after hearing about the palace examination.

The basic requirement for the "Book of All Nations" is that it must be signed and sealed by at least ten thousand people.

The "Book from All the People" that the imperial censor who went to Ezhou for inspection brought back to Lin'an required several people to carry it to the Golden Palace because it had as many as 80,000 signatures.

In that era, transportation and communication were inconvenient, and it was very difficult to gather 10,000 people to submit a petition. However, Ezhou actually submitted a "Letter from the People" with more than 80,000 people, which shows the people's will.

This incident immediately caused a sensation in Lin'an City.

During this period, it was not only people who wrote letters to criticize Qin Hui and redress Yue Fei's grievances.

There were also people who wrote letters to defend Qin Hui, fabricating crimes against Yue Fei and arguing that his case should not be overturned.

These people were mostly censors.

Officials on the Taiwan Straits are responsible for exposing corrupt officials and supervising all officials;
The censors were responsible for collecting omissions and making corrections, and admonishing the king.

Today, there are so many censors speaking out for Qin Hui, which shows how deeply Qin Hui has infiltrated the censor system over the years.

It is no wonder that Qin Hui left a few big critics in the Taijian system to criticize him.

Otherwise, the censorate system would be entirely his people, and Zhao Gou would be restless.

Due to these people's frenzied counterattack, the voices for rehabilitating Yue Fei and those opposing the reversal of the verdict seemed to have temporarily reached a delicate balance.

During the Tang Dynasty, the censorate system was under the control of the prime minister and actually became the prime minister's mouthpiece.

In the early Song Dynasty, censors were appointed directly by the emperor and became the emperor's mouthpiece.

It was not until the Yuanfeng Reform that the Taijian system was reassigned to the Zhongshumenxia and once again became the mouthpiece of the prime minister.

Of course, everything has its pros and cons, and it does not mean that it will be beneficial to the country if the prime minister cannot interfere with the censorship system.

When the prime minister is unable to control the Censorate, the Censorate can certainly become an important tool for supervising court officials, but it can also easily become an important obstacle to the court's administration.

No matter what policy your government comes up with, it will not pass my way.

Many important court affairs were often in a state of discussion but no decision, and the efficiency of state governance became appalling.

The ministers of the two governments and the officials of the Censorate became enemies, which completely deviated from the original intention of establishing the Censorate. Later generations commented that the demise of the Northern Song Dynasty was also "contributed" to the Censorate of the Song Dynasty.

From this we can see that the power of the emperor, the power of the prime minister, the power of the censor... any kind of power needs to be constrained.

When it becomes the only dominant power and there is no force to check and balance it, it will eventually become a disaster.

At this moment, even though the new king has ascended the throne, he has not yet established a strong enough team and prestige.

Wan Qixie, who inherited Qin Hui's political legacy, did not even have to go into battle shirtless.
He simply instructed the censors to step forward and withstood the political storm caused by Yang Yuan's palace examination memorial.

However, just when the two sides seemed to be evenly matched in the court,
Leng Yuchan, the imperial official of the Privy Council's Mechanical Office, and Liu Shangqiu, the military commander of the Imperial Archery and Horse Academy, led officers and soldiers to Shanyin quietly.

When they returned to Lin'an by boat on the third day, they brought back an important person.

This person was Chu Yuan, the military commander of Shanyin, whom Yang Yuan had gone to great lengths to "save" when he went to Shanyin to investigate the "Ma Huang Crossbow" case last time.

At this time, this big treasure is finally going to come in handy.

(End of this chapter)