Chapter 261: The Autumn Levy (Part 26)

The Kun bandits didn’t kill officials or start rebellions, nor did they engage in widespread murder and arson. Instead, they constantly offered small favors to win over the common people, the gentry, and the scholars, deliberately creating a facade of peaceful coexistence. This way, they avoided attracting the attention of higher officials and the imperial court. After all, at every level of the bureaucracy, the prevailing attitude was “the less trouble, the better.”

“These Kun bandits are truly despicable!” Wu Mingjin said in frustration.

“My lord, you need not worry. The Kun bandits still act with some restraint. Whatever they want to do, just let them be,” Wang Zhaomin, unable to offer any brilliant ideas, resorted to the “ostrich policy.”

“It seems that’s all we can do!” Wu Mingjin knew he had three choices. First, he could commit suicide immediately to preserve his integrity, depriving the Kun bandits of their pawn—but he was reluctant to die, especially with a family to consider. Second, he could abandon his post and flee, either back to his hometown or to the prefectural or provincial capital to report the emergency—but abandoning one’s post was a serious crime for a magistrate with the duty to defend his territory. The last option was to send for help from the provincial capital—this was even more unreliable. He had sent an urgent message to Qiongshan before, which resulted in nothing more than a few noncommittal letters; not a single soldier had been sent to suppress the bandits. Besides, it had been over a year since the Kun bandits landed. If his superiors were to inquire what he had been doing all this time, what could he possibly say?

After thinking it over and over, he realized there was no real alternative but to accept the current reality.

“What changes have been made in the yamen?” Since he planned to continue playing along, he needed to know what the other side was doing.

“Besides Chen Minggang, Zhang Shi has also been arrested—” Wang Zhaomin detailed the personnel changes the Transmigration Group had made in the yamen. “In my opinion, the Australians will likely want you, my lord, to dismiss all these men from their posts.”

“Then we’ll do as they say!” Wu Mingjin thought. At this point, he had no other choice. The only problem was that with all these experienced hands gone, handling future official business would become an issue.

“You need not worry about that,” Wang Zhaomin said. “Zhou Qi has been appointed as the Household Office scribe—he was Chen Minggang’s senior apprentice and is just as experienced. The scribes for the Personnel, Rites, Works, and War offices have been retained. As for the heads of the Three Classes…” Wang Zhaomin felt their presence hardly mattered anymore.

As for the Punishments Office, the county had few cases to begin with, and other clerks in the office could handle the work. The absence of one Zhang Shi wouldn’t cause the sky to fall.

Thinking this way, the problem didn’t seem so severe.

“Master Xiong said that the customary fees for filling the vacant scribe positions will remain as usual—”

Wu Mingjin’s eyelid twitched. Whenever a scribe position became vacant, it was customary for the replacement to pay a fee to the county magistrate. Like official appointments, the amount varied based on how lucrative the position was. Now that the Kun bandits had arrested two scribes at once, the potential income was considerable! Wu Mingjin suddenly felt a twinge of regret—since they were already arresting people, why not just arrest all six scribes? It wasn’t as if the old ones were particularly loyal anyway.

“…They also arrested the treasury scribe.”

Wu Mingjin was alarmed. “Are the Kun bandits going to loot the county treasury?”

“Not yet, they’ve only taken the man away. He’s still in the yamen,” Wang Zhaomin said in a low voice. “The treasury has been sealed, and they’ve posted guards. There have been no other unusual movements.”

Lin’gao was a poor county, and its treasury held little wealth. But no matter how poor, it still contained a few hundred taels of silver, over a thousand dan of grain, and various bolts of cloth and miscellaneous goods—a considerable fortune. If it were to be looted, given Lin’gao’s financial situation, it would take three to five years to cover the deficit, and Wu Mingjin would be unable to account for it to his successor upon leaving office.

In an empty room in the yamen, the treasurers arrested the previous day were being held for interrogation.

The man in charge of the interrogation was You Guotuan—Zhou Dongtian had already rushed off to the “study class” to personally question Chen Minggang’s gang. You Guotuan’s mission was to pry open the treasurers’ mouths, find out how much wealth these fat rats had accumulated for themselves that could be transferred to the Planning Committee’s coffers, and to understand the key mechanisms of their corruption—they would be taking over more prefectures and counties in the future.

“Don’t underestimate a few treasurers,” Dong Weiwei had told him. “Do you know who were the richest people in Beijing during the Ming and Qing dynasties?”

“The emperor? High officials, powerful nobles, great villains?”

“Haha, they count, I suppose. But the wealth of the treasurers was famous throughout the capital.”

These were the treasurers of the Ministry of Revenue’s silver vault. Their practice of embezzling silver from the ministry to enrich themselves was an open secret in society at the time.

The situation in local yamen treasuries was much the same. Although not as profitable as the Ministry of Revenue’s silver vault, it was more than enough to build a fortune. In a county yamen, besides the Household Office scribe, the most lucrative positions were the scribes for the silver and grain treasuries. The so-called principle of “managing the treasury, eating from the treasury” was in full effect. Compared to their counterparts at the Ministry of Revenue, whose methods were mainly limited to theft like stuffing silver up their rectums, local yamen treasurers had a much higher level of technical skill, with countless ways to cheat the system.

The simplest and “cleanest” method was to use the treasury’s silver for usury. Silver and copper coins could be loaned out, and in a place with an undeveloped commodity economy like Lin’gao, cloth and grain could be used for lending as well.

Next was substituting inferior goods for high-quality ones. The various goods stored in the treasury—grain, cloth, and so on—would naturally suffer from wear and tear over time. What was lost, and how much, was entirely up to the treasurers to report. They could either report it as a loss and write it off, or report that it was old and about to spoil, requesting to sell it off at a low price.

Even with silver and copper coins, which didn’t spoil, the treasurers could still play the substitution game, replacing good coins in the treasury with low-value ones. While ingots of treasury silver couldn’t be easily touched, loose silver collected from taxes that hadn’t yet been remelted could be replaced with lower-purity silver.

These were all open secrets in the yamen of a prefecture or county, but local officials rarely dared to clean house. If they blocked a treasurer’s source of income, they would be faced with a “discrepancy in the accounts” during the handover when they left office, and the official would have to bear the loss. Furthermore, treasurers also paid “respects” to the local officials. An honest official might at most refuse the treasurer’s gifts, but they wouldn’t dare to provoke them. Even if a deficit was exposed, they would have to try to cover it up for the treasurer, letting him find a way to make up for it. They couldn’t push too hard, lest the treasurer, like a cornered dog, expose everything. In that case, the treasurer would at most lose his job, but the official would have to cover the losses and could even face dismissal.

If the official was corrupt, they could collude even further, falsifying accounts or engaging in direct theft. Some county magistrates treated the county treasury as their personal ATM, writing IOUs to withdraw silver whenever they needed it. There was hardly a single treasury in the empire without a deficit.

As for the grain treasury scribes, their opportunities were even greater. Since the warehouse was full of grain, the room for substitution and shuffling was much larger than in the silver treasury. Grain was subject to mold and spoilage, so it was standard practice to dispose of old grain every year, selling it cheaply and replacing it with new grain. This was a permissible practice under the granary regulations. After the magistrate’s approval, good grain would also be recorded at the price of cheap grain, and the difference between the recorded price and the actual price became a handsome “profit.”

As for substituting inferior goods, it was even easier in the grain treasury than in the silver treasury. They could sell the good grain and replace it with an equal amount of inferior grain. As long as the books balanced, there was no risk.

“These are the simplest tricks. We have no idea what other methods they use in reality. You’d better get as much information as you can,” Dong Weiwei said. “It will be useful later.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll pry open all their mouths,” You Guotuan said, confident.

“OK, but I’m a gentleman who stays away from the kitchen. You can have fun with your SM,” Dong Weiwei said with a smile and left.

“Playing SM with these ugly old uncles,” You Guotuan muttered. “What kind of strong nerves does that take? And I’m the one who has to do it—”

Pushing aside his complaints, You Guotuan entered the room where the treasurers were being held. It was a three-room building. The largest central room served as his interrogation chamber, with the side rooms as makeshift cells.

He had the men brought in. He looked at the several people kneeling before him—the silver treasurer, the materials treasurer, and the salt treasurer (Lin’gao had this extra treasury because it produced salt). They were all key figures among the treasury scribes.

To break them quickly, torture was the obvious choice.

Unfortunately, there weren’t many people willing to learn this promising craft. Zhou Dongtian’s apprentices were all at the study class attending to Chen Minggang’s group. Here, he had to take the field himself. Fortunately, some of the retained Zao Ban runners were skilled in torture and could be put to use.

You Guotuan sat down majestically in a large armchair in the center, not even glancing at them, and began to drink his tea. Despite the urgency and complexity of the situation, he was in no hurry.

The men knew the Kun bandit was trying to intimidate them, and they shifted uncomfortably. Kneeling for so long was uncomfortable, and since their capture the previous night, they had been given very little food and water. These men were used to a life of comfort and privilege and couldn’t endure such hardship. In less than ten minutes, one of them could no longer bear it and began to kowtow and beg for mercy.

“Sir, just tell us what you want. We wouldn’t dare disobey.”

You Guotuan put on a leisurely air and said casually, “I hear you are all very wealthy.”

His words struck them like lightning, and their faces froze. One of them quickly kowtowed again. “I am just a humble servant of the county, merely making a living. How could I dare to call myself wealthy?” The others immediately chimed in with similar protests.

You Guotuan frowned. These men were not only greedy but also foolish. It seemed that working in the government for too long had a negative effect on one’s intelligence. They seemed to think that whatever they said was reality, that they could lie with a straight face and no one would dare question them.

“Guards!” You Guotuan shouted. An intern from the Political Security Bureau, newly assigned to the Zao Ban, came running.

“Reporting, sir—”

“Not you. Get the retained men,” You Guotuan added. “And tell them to bring their tools. Besides the rod, hmm, bring the finger press!”