Bringing the Railway to Daming

Chapter 346 Severe Punishment, Killing Monkeys and Hurting Chickens

The Ming court ordered the Qingtian Censor to recruit students from other prefectural schools to assist in surveying the land, and had already made arrangements for the deployment.

For example, Ningguo Prefecture recruited students from Taiping Prefecture's school, and Taiping Prefecture recruited students from Chizhou Prefecture's school, and so on, eventually forming a closed loop.

This will prevent students from the two local schools from colluding and concealing information from each other when they check on each other.

Ningguo Prefecture and Taiping Prefecture were adjacent and connected by water. Jian Yi held the imperial edict, and the prefectural school naturally cooperated.

So the next day he returned to Xuancheng with fifty students who were proficient in mathematics.

He first conducted secret investigations with Liang Qiu, the current magistrate of Xuancheng, and Zheng Zhihu, the director of the patrol police bureau.

Afterwards, Liang Qiu summoned the household clerk He Yao and a dozen of his subordinates to the county government office in the name of the county magistrate, and ordered a team of patrol police to place these household clerks under house arrest in a side courtyard.

He Yao suddenly felt that disaster was imminent. Before being sent to the side courtyard, he kept shouting, "County Magistrate, what have we done wrong? Why are you detaining us? County Magistrate Huang? Chief Clerk Cao?"

When Jian Yi heard He Yao called out to the county magistrate and the chief clerk before he was sent in, he couldn't help but look at the two of them thoughtfully, and saw that their expressions changed slightly.

"It seems that these two people may also be related to the forgery of the Xuancheng Fish Scale Book."

Jian Yi guessed this in his heart.

But Huang Xiancheng and Cao Zhubu were officials, even if they were below the seventh rank, so he could not put them under house arrest as he did to He Yao - in fact, He Yao, a clerk, was only one step away from becoming an official.

After placing all the officials in the household department under house arrest, Jian Yi borrowed twenty patrolmen who were familiar with the local conditions from the patrol bureau. He divided them and fifty students into ten groups of seven people each, and sent them to various villages in Xuancheng to re-measure the land.

Although these students were proficient in mathematics, they lacked practical experience in measuring fields, and their progress was a bit slow at the beginning.

But when they became familiar with the method of measuring the land, their speed suddenly increased.

Because the mathematics subjects in the provincial school now involve quite sophisticated geometry problems, it is not difficult for these students to calculate the number of acres (area) as long as they measure the relevant data of the fields accurately.

If it were in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, even if the imperial court sent such an efficient land surveying team that had nothing to do with the local area, it would not be easy to survey the land.

Because the landlords and gentry would inevitably drive the ignorant farmers and tenants to obstruct, or even deliberately create civil unrest.

Then, court officials would criticize the official who presided over the land survey and force him to step down, thus preventing the land survey from proceeding and bringing it to nothing.

But this was the Hongwu Dynasty. No landlord or gentry dared to do so, and no official in the court dared to oppose Zhu's policies. In the past twenty years, all those who dared to try whether Zhu's knife was sharp had their wish fulfilled and gone to hell.

Therefore, at this time, some landlords and gentry in Xuancheng could only watch the actual number of acres of their land being measured.

In this way, the students of the prefecture took only half a month to re-measure the fields in Xuancheng and produced a new Xuancheng fish scale book!

County government.

Jian Yi flipped through the fish scale book that was freshly produced less than a day ago, and his expression became increasingly stern.

After a while, the clerk He Yao was brought into the hall.

Jian Yi slammed the table and shouted, "He Yao, you're so bold! Xuancheng's farmland has clearly increased by 382 hectares compared to ten years ago, yet you falsified the data during the Daqingzhang (Grade Land Survey) and updated the Fish Scale Book, concealing over 300 hectares! Do you acknowledge your guilt?!"

He Yao was standing when he was brought in, but after hearing Jian Yi's words, he couldn't help but kneel down.

It was not until this moment that he finally realized that this era was different from that of ten years ago - the officials sent from above were not only more pragmatic, but also proficient in mathematics and knew a lot about local affairs.

More importantly, their household clerks were no longer the rare few who knew how to measure and calculate land—all the transferred students knew how! Seeing He Yao kneel down, Jian Yi knew his defenses had been breached, and he immediately said, "I'll give you a chance to redeem yourself for meritorious service—if you can truthfully confess your accomplices in the county government and the township, your sentence will be reduced. If you refuse, I will petition the court to punish you more severely!"

Upon hearing this, Huang Xiancheng and Cao Zhubu, who were attending the trial with the county magistrate, couldn't help but change their expressions and became nervous.

Then Cao Zhubu secretly stared at He Yao with sharp eyes.

Unfortunately, He Yao was in a daze at the moment, with his head down, and didn't pay any attention to his eyes.

When he raised his head, he said, "I admit it, I admit it all..."

Three days later, Jian Yi wrote a memorial about the land survey in Xuancheng and had it sent to the capital.

Then we went to the next county in Ningguo Prefecture and continued to clear the fields...

···
Capital.

The Lunar New Year is approaching, and the inner and outer cities, the streets and alleys are all filled with the festive atmosphere and joy.

However, there was no trace of joy on Zhu Yuanzhang's face in the Fengxian Hall of the Forbidden City.

He slammed the memorial he had just finished reading onto the table and snorted, "I didn't expect these local gentry to be so dishonest. They colluded with the clerks, concealing a few hundred acres at the least, and thousands of acres at the most!"

"If they are not severely punished, I am afraid that they will become more and more outrageous in the future, until they will eat away at the foundation of the Ming Dynasty!"

Zhu Biao has also been paying close attention to the land survey recently. He has read many memorials submitted by the Imperial Censorate on land survey and is also very angry.

But he still advised, "Father, these people should be severely punished, but the method of punishment needs to be carefully studied."

Zhu Yuanzhang snorted, "Why delve into this? In my opinion, anyone who conceals more than a hundred acres of land will be exiled overseas to do hard labor. Even if pardoned, they will never be allowed to return to the Ming Dynasty!"

"Those who conceal the ownership of more than 30 mu but less than 100 mu of land will be exiled to Jilin or Luohuang, or sentenced to at least three years in prison!"

"As for corrupt officials, they must be punished even more severely—all their property must be confiscated, and they must be exiled to Luohuangwei for hard labor. No mercy will be shown!"

Zhu Biao smiled bitterly and said, "Father, this Zhili land clearing campaign involves so many wealthy families. If we really do this, I'm afraid it will cause a huge uproar and even unrest."

"Besides, Zhili had already relocated a lot of people before. If they exiled a large number of them now, there wouldn't be enough people to farm in the various prefectures."

Zhu Yuanzhang slammed the table again and said, "If unrest breaks out, send the army to suppress it! If there aren't enough people farming, relocate them from other places! In short, all the corrupt officials and tycoons uncovered during this land reclamation in Zhili must be severely punished!"

"In this way, when the land tax system is promoted to other provinces in the future, local officials and gentry will not dare to falsify land tax in land surveys!"

After hearing what Zhu Yuanzhang said, Zhu Biao knew that he could no longer persuade him.

Moreover, he also understood Zhu Yuanzhang's idea - even if there was unrest in Zhili, it would be easy to suppress; and other provinces would not risk concealing the land or investigating many people if they knew about Zhili, so there would naturally be no possibility of unrest.

To put it simply, it is killing the chicken to scare the monkey, no, it is killing the monkey to scare the chicken.

　Second update.

　　Something delayed the update today, and I’m not in good shape, so I can only write less.

　　Good night~
　　
　
(End of this chapter)