Priceless: A widow with a baby asks the prince to marry again

The entire county government office was surrounded by soldiers, but the gaps left behind allowed the onlookers to see that the usually high-ranking county lord was kneeling in the middle of the court, with other chief clerks, legal advisors, and their families kneeling beside him.

Sitting at the top of the court was a young man dressed as a scholar, looking very gentle and elegant.

"Is that the prince?" Some people stretched their necks to look and asked the people next to them.

"I heard that Prince Duan is extremely talented, so he must be dressed like a scholar!"

"As expected, he has a handsome appearance and an extraordinary bearing! No wonder he was able to wipe out the bandits without bloodshed!"

One of the guards couldn't stand it anymore and whispered, "That's not the prince, that's Mr. Sun!"

The people nearby immediately asked, "Mr. Sun? Who is that? What rank is he?"

"Mr. Sun is..." The soldier was about to answer when he was pulled back by his comrade next to him. They were not allowed to spread military news outside.

The people nearby heard it all, so the fact that the person in the hall was not the prince did not spread, and everyone still called him the prince.

At this time, the soldiers carried out boxes of gold and silver from the back hall, as well as many precious calligraphy and paintings, porcelain, etc.

"Zhao Qian, the county magistrate of Jinyancheng, your annual salary is only 90 shi, which is equivalent to 45 taels of silver. There are more than 5,000 taels of gold and silver here. Where does so much money come from?" Sun Zhizhao frowned and spoke sternly.

The people outside the hall exclaimed: "So much money?!"

County Magistrate Zhao Qian said tremblingly: "Yes... it was earned by my family from running a shop in the city..."

"Oh? We also found the deeds of some shops here, including those selling and collecting medicine, those selling study supplies, those selling cloth, etc. There are seven shops in total. Are there any discrepancies?"

"none…"

"Before you took office as the magistrate of Jinyan City, you were just a poor family. It's no exaggeration to say that you were penniless. And you have been in this city for three years. During this period, you have opened seven shops. These seven shops can earn more than 5,000 taels in three years?!"

Some people complained: "That's not a shop, it's a treasure pot, right?"

Zhao Qian was speechless, and Sun Zhizhao continued, "You should know why I came to you today, right?"

Sun Zhizhao slammed the account book on the table and shouted, "You have supported more than 3,500 bandits and plotted to murder the prince. Do you know your crime?"

"Three...more than three thousand?!" County Magistrate Zhao Qian was so excited that he almost stood up. He shouted in panic, "There are only a hundred or so bandits! How can there be more than three thousand people?"

You have to know that there are only about 60,000 to 70,000 people in his entire jurisdiction!

The people outside the hall were also shocked. No wonder the villages in the west of the city organized militias to suppress bandits several times, sometimes with hundreds of strong men, but they suffered heavy losses every time!

"There are still two thousand bandits tied up outside the city, and more than a thousand heads have been chopped off. Do you want to count them?" Sun Zhizhao smiled coldly. "Also, what you mean is that you admit that you have raised bandits, but only more than a hundred of them, right?"

Zhao Qian suddenly broke out in a cold sweat.

"Let me ask you again, the three hundred fine horses, two thousand sets of cloth armor, more than three thousand various weapons, and countless arrows listed in the account book, were they provided by you to the bandits?"

"How is this possible! I'm not planning a rebellion! Why would I have so many horses and weapons?!" Zhao Qian stood up excitedly and ran forward to look at the account book.

The soldier next to him was agile and kicked Zhao Qian to the ground with a sharp kick.

Sun Zhizhao signaled to the soldiers to take the account book and turn the pages one by one in front of Zhao Qian. Zhao Qian ignored the severe pain in his chest and knelt down to take a look. The more he looked, the paler his face became!

This account book was not completely fabricated. The amount of money allocated to him was not small, but the items in the warehouse were completely wrong! His shop provided ten sets of cotton clothes to the bandits, which turned into one hundred sets of cloth armor! He helped transport twenty hatchets made by the blacksmith shop, which turned into three hundred sets of broadswords!

"It's unfair! This account book is fake! Someone is trying to frame me on purpose!" Zhao Qian finally realized that something was wrong, but he couldn't tell who wanted to harm him.

Sun Zhizhao took a sip of tea and said disdainfully, "Based on the records in this account book, you have been colluding with the bandits for two years. Have you ever thought of going to the mountain stronghold to take a look during this period?"

"I... I sent someone to check on that Li Dazhuang..." The county magistrate turned to look for his yamen runners, but he couldn't find the man after searching for a long time. Suddenly he remembered that the man had claimed to be seriously ill and had not come back more than ten days ago.

Sun Zhizhao smiled and said, "Is this the Li Dazhuang you are looking for?"

Two more soldiers dragged a man in from outside. The man had broken limbs and was covered with scars, and he barely looked like a human.

"We have asked him for you. He accepted money from the bandits and deliberately helped them cover up the truth. He doesn't know who is behind this and wants to harm a small county magistrate like you."

Zhao Qian felt as if he had fallen into an endless quagmire that he should not have touched. Under the dark mud, he was just a small stone that was about to sink to the bottom.

"Finally, let me ask you a question. In the past few years, there have been reports of robberies, women being abducted, and villagers being killed by bandits. Have you ever taken care of these kinds of things? Even if you just count the number of missing women, you should know that there are more than a hundred bandits, right?"

Zhao Qian looked around in confusion, why couldn't he find anything?

Because the bandits would give him a share of the money from every robbery, because he and his son also enjoyed the women they had abducted, because some villagers were known to be wealthy through the business in the shop, and the shop would inform the bandits to kill them...

Zhao Qian was originally an accomplice of the tiger, but he originally thought that he was the tiger. He didn't expect that he was just an accomplice and didn't even know who the tiger was.

"Lock these people up in the county jail and keep them under close watch. Don't let anyone die first."

After sorting out the matter of the county magistrate, Sun Zhizhao left the court. He had no official position and could not judge the case. To appoint an official to judge the case, he had to go through the Ministry of Justice. This matter involved the prince, and Zhao Qian might have to be brought to the capital for a joint trial by the three courts.

At the Jinyan City Inn, Sun Zhizhao came back to report: "Your Majesty, the county magistrate has dealt with everything for the time being."

"Just a scapegoat, and a perfunctory scapegoat at that." Chu Shiyu has already found the person who passed the message to the mountain stronghold a few days ago. Tracing back, he can find out that it was the prime minister's hidden man, which means that the whole thing should be the work of the eighth prince.

But there is no direct evidence in this matter. If you want to accuse a prince, without direct evidence it is equivalent to nothing.

However, it was impossible for Chu Shiyu to swallow this anger.

"Horses and weapons don't appear out of thin air. We need to investigate from top to bottom to find out which forces of the Eighth Prince might have obtained these and then transported them to Jinyan. If we can't find him, we must clip some of his wings."

After Chu Shiyu finished explaining, he suddenly felt bored. What was the point of fighting? But even if he didn't take the initiative to fight, he couldn't escape this vortex.

"By the way, have those women been settled?" Chu Shiyu asked.

Sun Zhizhao turned around and said, "Those with families have been sent back home, and those without families... I don't know how to arrange it."

"Give some money to those women from the bandits' property, but don't give too much, just enough to keep them safe for a short period of time. Too much will make it difficult to keep them safe."

"Yes."

Sun Zhizhao went out to do some work, and Chu Shiyu began to get annoyed again in the room alone. After the bandits were wiped out, he would have no excuse to stay in Jinyan. Even if he could delay his departure, he would have to go once his father summoned him.

With so many things in mind, he just couldn't figure out what to do, so Chu Shiyu changed his clothes and went out to relax.

After walking around for a while, I felt a little tired, so I walked into a tavern. It was a relatively low-priced tavern. The cheapest pot of liquor cost eight cents, and the most expensive was only one or two taels per pot.

There are no private rooms in the tavern, only the first and second floors. There is no spending limit in the lobby on the first floor, so there are all kinds of people, and it is very noisy; going to the second floor costs at least one penny of silver, which is one hundred coins. Few people in the tavern are willing to spend this money, so there are only a few tables on the second floor.

But Chu Shiyu didn't want to endure the polluted air on the first floor, so he went straight to the second floor.

When I went up to the second floor, I saw only two tables of people. One table had four people who looked like small businessmen. They ordered a lot of side dishes and steamed buns. I guess they were treating this place as a restaurant. It would cost almost a hundred coins for four people, so they decided to go upstairs and have some quiet time.

There were two people at another table, a middle-aged man and a young man, sitting by the window. When Chu Shiyu and the two guards came up, they glanced at them quickly and inconspicuously, then turned back to watch the people coming and going outside the window with peace of mind.

Chu Shiyu looked around and saw a table by the window, so he sat down with the two guards.

He didn't like to drink too much, and would never drink outside easily. He ordered a pot of one or two liang of wine from the waiter and put it on the table, and asked him to bring three glasses of water.

After ordering drinks, Chu Shiyu looked towards the window and found that this was indeed a good place. Outside the window was the main road of the city, and almost everyone entering through the east gate had to pass through here.

At this time, there were loud gongs and drums passing by. The people were still celebrating the annihilation of the bandits. Chu Shiyu was lost in thought as he watched the excitement on the street. His original intention was not for the people. If the "bandits" had not provoked him, he would not have paid attention to these trivial matters.

In the past, his eyes and mind were all on the high palace. Even when he won a great victory at the southwest border and the people praised him, he at most classified them as citizens of the Great Xia Dynasty and only considered the impact on his own situation.

The people in the southwestern border areas spontaneously made a golden statue of him, but he was afraid that his achievements would overthrow his master, so he sent troops to force the people to change the statues into statues of folk gods, and the temple of merit into a Taoist temple.

The people would not be angry with him for this, and perhaps he would not care even if they were angry. But even with such caution, there were still people who would not allow him to return with his great achievement.

Yes, when he decided to pursue the victory and attack the city of the Burmese king, he had already made a choice between his own situation and the peace in the southwest of the Great Xia Dynasty from then on, and changing a few golden bodies was no longer a big deal.

"It's a good job to suppress these bandits! I don't know how many good seedlings in the west have been destroyed by those bandits!"

The middle-aged man at the table next to him smiled, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth. His loud voice drew Chu Shiyu's attention to him.

The middle-aged and young men lowered their voices and chatted again, but Chu Shiyu was sitting close to them and could vaguely hear them.

The young man whispered, "Master, can we go to the west to look for good seedlings in the future?"

"We'll have to wait a few more years. These seedlings are the same as the crops in the fields, growing in batches. The good seedlings in the west that are more than ten years old have almost all been wasted, and it's hard to tell the good from the bad among those that are less than ten years old." The middle-aged man with yellow teeth sighed and shook his head.

The young man also sighed: "It would be great if we could find seedlings that are less than ten years old. The younger they are, the lower the price they will be. If we collect them early and take care of them, they will sell for a higher price."

"Seedlings that are more than ten years old are stable. Many seedlings look good at first, but they wither as they grow. All the time, energy and money spent are wasted. The younger the seedlings, the more you need to rely on your eyesight. Only after working in this business for a long time can you develop the eye for selecting seedlings."

"Hehe, I'm just practicing with my master. I want to ask for more guidance from my master so that I can avoid taking detours in the past few years!" The young man smiled like a fawning man and poured wine for the middle-aged man with yellow teeth.

Huang Ya calmly took a sip of the wine, pointed out the window and said, "Pick out a seedling and I'll give you some comments."

The young man immediately looked towards the street with a burning gaze. Chu Shiyu didn't know what the seedlings they were talking about were, so he just glanced out the window casually.

"The blue one next to the pancake stall should be a seedling from 11 or 12 years ago. The seeds are large and translucent, and the color is also crystal clear!" The young man picked out the seedling.

Chu Shiyu looked towards the pancake stand and saw that the only blue figure next to it was a little girl in a blue dress. He immediately realized that the Miaozi they were talking about was actually a girl?!

His eyes grew colder, but he did nothing. In the Great Xia Dynasty, human trafficking was a legitimate profession, and most of the maids and servants of wealthy families were bought from human trafficking shops.

Even if some traffickers take unconventional approaches and actively look for women from the common people, they will pay their owners to sign a contract to sell their women and then seek legal help from the government. After all, those who forcibly abduct and sell women from the common people are punishable by death according to the law, and few traffickers will take this risk.