From the family treasure tree to build an eternal family

Chapter 37 Decision

After Jiang Hao returned to the county town from Cangwu Mountain, he sent his officials to investigate the household registration documents submitted by each village.

Confessions were also collected from several village heads who were connected with Liu Yaozu.

Those village heads pushed all the blame onto Liu Yaozu, saying that they were coerced by him and dared not disobey.

With both witnesses and evidence present and irrefutable, Jiang Hao led his soldiers to Liu Yaozu's residence.

----

At this time, Liu Yaozu was collecting exemption silver at home, and had no idea that disaster was about to happen.

In recent years, he has been a county lieutenant, his status has risen, his desires have gradually expanded, and his ambitions have grown.

At the beginning, he only dared to accept bribes of a few beautiful maids and dozens of taels of silver. Now, it has become difficult to see him even if you pay hundreds of taels of silver.

At the same time, he fully demonstrated the saying "If one person succeeds, the whole family will prosper", and condoned his brother and nephew to bully men and women and occupy other people's property.

During this conscription, he actually planned to embezzle hundreds of thousands of taels of silver.

If he had been more careful, he would have surely discovered that someone was investigating him.

But he was so arrogant that he was completely unaware of the situation even though he was being investigated clearly.

"Boom~~"

The front door of the house was forced open, and a group of armored and sword-carrying soldiers filed in.

"who?"

Liu Yaozu walked out of the room in confusion, and was immediately surrounded by several soldiers.

In the distance, a person was walking slowly towards them.

"County Governor? What does this mean?"

As a military officer, Liu Yaozu was very respectful towards an "immortal official" like Jiang Hao.

"Search!"

Jiang Hao signaled his soldiers to search, then looked at Liu Yaozu: "Liu County Lieutenant, do you really not know what you have done wrong?"

"I don't know. Someone must have framed me. Please, County Governor, clear my name."

Liu Yaozu was nervous and wondered if the plan had been exposed.
"Still being stubborn, huh? My men checked the household registration documents and even the signed confession. What excuses do you have?!"

Jiang Hao threw the confession, which consisted of dozens of pages of rice paper, at Liu Yaozu's feet.

"I……"

Liu Yaozu was speechless for a moment, then thought of a clever idea: "Sir, County Governor, may I have a word with you?"

He thought of giving Jiang Hao a share of the spoils to escape the blame, but he didn't know that Jiang Hao only wanted his life.

"If you have anything to say, just say it!"

Jiang Hao didn't dare let Liu Yaozu get close to him.

The close-range explosive power of a warrior was immense, and he worried that Liu Yaozu might do something irrational out of desperation. If a Qigong cultivator was careless, they could be injured or even killed by a surprise attack from a warrior.

Seeing that the other party was not giving him a chance, Liu Yaozu became anxious and did not care about the presence of others: "Sir, County Governor, I only beg you to spare my life. I am willing to give you all my wealth and serve you wholeheartedly from now on!"

He doesn't want to die.

He was only forty years old, young and strong, and had just broken through the innate warrior realm a few years ago. How could he die in such a cowardly way?

At this time, the soldiers who went to search returned and presented Jiang Hao with a large number of account books, gold, silver, and banknotes. These were all evidence of Liu Yaozu's guilt.

Jiang Hao's face was grim as he declared, "I hereby sentence Liu Yaozu, as a county lieutenant, to death for obstructing the conscription of soldiers in Yuanli County, secretly altering documents, and embezzling a large amount of exemption money."

With a loud "crack", Liu Yaozu's emotions fluctuated violently, and the green rock under his feet shattered into several pieces.

Jiang Hao took a few steps back, ready to cast the Golden Light Technique to protect himself at any moment: "Liu Yaozu, you're dead if you want to. If you dare to resist, your entire Liu family will be implicated."

"boom!"

Liu Yaozu suddenly knelt down, several more bricks shattering beneath his knees. He clenched his fists, his whole body trembling, and a vein on his forehead throbbing.

"I...I plead guilty! I committed the crime, my brother doesn't know about it, the blame is all mine!"

He uttered these words word by word with difficulty.

No one can accept their own death calmly.

"cut."

Jiang Hao said a word coldly, and the soldiers beside him drew their swords and stepped forward.

Liu Yaozu closed his eyes.

A flash of cold light flashed, and the head rolled off. The innate warrior died.

"Copy the house."

Jiang Hao finished speaking and turned to leave.

Some soldiers came forward to collect Liu Yaozu's body and prepared to send it to Liu Yaozong's home in Baihe Village.

————The county government posted a notice that the conscription would officially begin three days later. No exemption silver would be collected. Every household must strictly follow the regulations and send male members to serve in the military.

The content of the notice quickly spread throughout the county and then to the villages.

"Didn't they say that paying five hundred taels of silver would exempt one from conscription?"

"Why don't you accept it again?"

"Then what should we do if our family has already paid the money?"

"..."

Although every household must strictly follow the regulations, there are inevitable cases of families with power and connections.

There are some families that even Jiang Hao has to give face to.

This situation is inevitable, but after all, only a very small number of people possess such power, so it does not affect the overall situation.

If the exemption silver is not collected, the wealthy families will have no choice.

No matter how they begged or used their connections to give gifts to Jiang Hao, it was useless.

Jiang Hao would ignore anyone who didn't have powerful connections.

----

Baihe Village.

A corpse with its head and body separated was lying across the Liu family mansion.

Liu Yaozong looked at his brother's body, his whole body went limp, and he collapsed to the ground, unable to even cry.

"Uncle, uncle, uncle~~"

Liu Hongtu cried heart-wrenchingly. When he was practicing martial arts in the county town, he lived in his uncle's house. His uncle took good care of him and treated him like his own son.

It’s been so short a time since we last met, how come my uncle died?

Liu Hongwei was also extremely sad. His uncle died, and the world of their Liu family had collapsed!

The cause of his death has been revealed by the person who brought Liu Yaozu's body back.

What could the Liu family do? They could only accept it.

At the same time as the news of Liu Yaozu's death came back, the county government's notice on conscription also reached Baihe Village.

----

Xu family.

Xu Fugui had no idea what was happening outside. He was discussing with Jiazhen when to pay the 500 taels of silver for exemption from military service.

"You said the Du family gave the exemption money directly to County Magistrate Liu?"

"Yes, Sister Qian told me."

"But we don't have much friendship with County Magistrate Liu, so why don't we just hand it over to Mr. Liu?"

Xu Fugui didn't even know where Liu Yaozu lived.

He wondered why the county government didn't issue a notice explaining the official channels for collecting exemption money.

"Is Fugui at home?"

Some villagers came to Xu's house to discuss something with Xu Fugui.

"Brother Tiezhu, please come in."

Xu Fugui welcomed him in and invited him to the main hall for tea.

Tie Zhu shook his head. "I won't go in. It's embarrassing. I just want to ask, do you want to buy some land? I want to sell five mu of land. I'm going to sell one mu for seventy taels of silver."

Hearing the purpose of his visit, Xu Fugui said in embarrassment: "I'm sorry, my family has no extra money."

"Well, think about it again. If you change your mind, come find me at my house. I'm short of money for the exemption fee, so there's nothing I can do."

"..."

Xu Fugui sent Tiezhu away and shook his head helplessly.

In order to pay the exemption silver, many families in the village began to sell their land.

Farmland is the ancestral property that farmers rely on for survival and is generally not sold. Usually, if you want to buy an acre of land for 100 taels of silver, no one will sell it.

Many families have been selling their land recently, and the price has dropped to seventy taels of silver per mu, and it looks like the price will continue to fall.

Many people knew that Xu Fugui had sold his fourteen acres of medicinal herbs for a lot of silver, and thought that his family had extra money.

Many people had come to him, some shameless enough to refuse to sell their land and simply wanted to borrow a few hundred taels of silver.

Xu Fugui declined politely. He had money, but the situation was unstable and he was worried that something unexpected would happen and he would need money.

He received five hundred taels of silver as exemption from military service, and he also wanted to expand his own house, as well as Xu Xiaoniu's marriage...all in all, he would consider buying land after he settled down.

(End of this chapter)