The Red Mansions

Chapter 625

Chapter 625

Shinkyo

As Emperor Chongping reprimanded and supervised the Xia Xun incident in Shenjing City, the central organization of the Han Dynasty Hall began to take action, mainly to step up harvesting summer grain, and in addition to writing to local provinces, prefectures and counties to police Xia Xun, and the central court officials His eyes were also focused on the rain in the Central Plains and Huainan.

The talk of building water conservancy projects in the northern provinces and laboring the people and wasting money has been scattered. No matter what, the harvest of summer grain should be stepped up. Let’s not talk about the summer flood if there is no summer flood, so we can’t delay the summer tax.

It was also spread in the city of Shenjing that the first heavy rain fell in Henan after summer, and this was a rare scene in the arid north for the past five years.

Chu Palace, at dusk

In the study, the King of Chu sat behind the desk with a slumped face and sighed. On the pear wood chairs on both sides were Princess Chu Zhen Qing, Liao Xian and Feng Ci.

Feng Ci said: "My lord, you don't need to be upset, what happened before is not your lord's fault."

But today the Empress Dowager specially sought King Chu to enter the palace to say that a group of family members from Wei and Zheng came to the palace to intercede, which disturbed the recuperation of the Supreme Emperor. I'm sick, I don't listen to singing and dancing very much, and some young and beautiful women who were serving were gradually sent out.

The King of Chu shook his head and said: "That's not what the two vassal kings and concubines said at the beginning. They said that the two vassal kings were used to pampering them, so they followed them to take care of them on the road. The lonely king believed their words. Believe it."

Zhen Qing's expression was a little unnatural, what did the prince say, could it be aimed at her?

At this moment, Shi Liaoxian, the head of the palace, said: "My lord, there was news from Beijing at noon that there was a heavy rain in Henan after summer."

"Let's do it...huh?" Chu Wang said to himself, suddenly startled, and looked at Liao Xian with a little surprise.

Princess Chu Zhen Qing also stared at Liao Xian, and asked in surprise, "Is it raining in Henan?"

These days, she is familiar with some public opinions in Beijing, and she knows that because of the attention of the royal father in the palace, whether it rains or not, it seems to be an event with political significance.

In fact, Jia Heng has never said that there will be floods this summer, but he just hopes that the court will be on guard, and the words may be more aggressive. As a result, because of Emperor Chongping's overreaction and the fueling of caring people, it is rumored that it will happen somehow. out of shape.

It has been passed down that Jia Ziyu said that this year's heavy rains will turn into floods, and that various places will step up construction of water conservancy projects, and so on.

The purpose is naturally to speed up in the opposite direction, so as to dampen Jia Heng's prestige.

Liao Xian pondered and said: "Your Majesty, Uncle Yongning may be right again this time. From the first year of Chongping to the third year of Chongping, every summer, the Yellow River originally had summer floods to report. At that time, everyone paid attention to it. There have been severe droughts in the Northland for several years, but this is not the case."

Feng Ci frowned, and said in a low voice: "The last time I found a gold mine in Henan, the Holy Scriptures have given me more trust in him."

The King of Chu pondered for a moment and asked, "If there are floods in Henan and Huaiyang, how will this affect Gu?"

It doesn't matter if there is a flood or not, the key is what can he get from it?

"My lord, Uncle Yongning is highly valued in the palace now, maybe we can sell him a favor?" Liao Xian thought for a while and said.

"Sell favors?" the King of Chu murmured, and asked, "How to proceed?The lonely king is now presiding over the supervision of the imperial mausoleum, and he can't get away from it. "

Liao Xiandao: "If there is a flood, the prince will organize literati and gentry in Beijing to collect donations for the people of Henan. This move will definitely win the Sacred Heart."

King Chu's eyes lit up, and his heart moved.

Feng Ci frowned, and said: "This matter still needs to be considered. The prince has already given the reputation of generosity in front of the clan, but he has been complained by the palace. This is the time to hide his strength and bide his time. Limelight, even if such a thing is to be done, it cannot be done in the name of the prince."

When the King of Chu heard the words, his eyes darkened, and he said, "That's the truth."

Liao Xian pondered for a moment, then said: "My lord is famous outside now, it's not good if he is too calm."

Sometimes, it's not that no one has good suggestions, but that the superiors have too many suggestions and don't know which one to listen to.

The king of Chu paused, and said in a low voice: "Now it seems that the job of supervising the imperial tomb is a good job for the king of Qi. He is the king of the county now, and he has merits to be paid, but it is worthwhile for the lonely king." No, otherwise, if there is a flood in Henan, the lonely king can also go to Henan and Huaiyang to inspect the river embankments on behalf of the palace, to show the clan's love for the people."

Everyone was startled when they heard this, but they were no strangers to King Chu's worries about gain and loss.

King Chu's temperament has always been to look forward and backward, and when he encounters adversity, he will worry about gains and losses.

As the King of Chu spoke, he did not listen to the response. He stared at Princess Chu Zhen Qing who was sitting across from him, and asked expectantly, "Does the Princess have any ideas?"

There was a look of thought on Zhen Qingqing's beautiful face, her phoenix eyes flashed, and she said softly: "My lord can't say that, it's good to supervise the repair of the imperial mausoleum so that King Qi won't be more beautiful than before, even if it's a name , the future has really come... with a pure nature and a filial piety to the ancestors, it is enough to overcome all opinions."

Supervising the imperial mausoleum is the biggest legal basis for enthronement, and it is much better than thinking about doing a few meritorious deeds.

"My concubine's words are justified." King Chu thought for a while, but his heart settled down, and he said deeply.

"My lord, wait until there is a follow-up to the flood in Henan before we can talk about other things. It is too early to say whether it is raining like this, and whether there will be floods." Zhen Qing relieved with a soft voice. Concerned about King Chu's anxiety, he said with relief: "As for the previous clan festival, although the emperor father and the queen mother were a little displeased, they also knew that it was not the prince's fault. Side concubine, talk to them and persuade them to live in peace."

The beauty relieved King Chu's anxiety with a cold and jade-like voice, which also aroused Feng Ci and Liao Xian's thinking.

"My concubine's words are very true. It is still uncertain where the Henan people will go in the next month. Maybe there will be no floods, but everyone is happy." Feng Ci continued.

Liao Xian also said: "My lord, if you encounter important events, calm down first, and your lord can be calm first and don't be impatient."

At this moment, the King of Chu was looking at Zhen Qing, with complicated eyes.

"Also last time, my lord, my concubine checked who she was wearing, and it was the boss who was scheming against my lord, trying to make my father suspicious of my lord." Zhen Qing said softly with her jade-like face frosty.

The King of Chu has opened the mansion for so many years, and he also has a secret intelligence force under him. In the mansion of King Qi, there is King Chu's eyeliner.

"This...is really him?" King Chu's complexion changed, his eyes were a little cold, and he said, "Fortunately, Father didn't believe him."

"Back when the prince was sent to Luoyang, the palace had the intention of investigating the prince. It seems that the prince has already cleared the suspicion. Now I don't know if I have found Prince Qi." Zhen Qing said in a low voice.

The king of Chu was silent for a moment, and said with emotion: "It's true that people don't hurt the tiger's will, and the tiger hurts the heart. The lonely king thinks that he respects his elder brother, and doesn't want to use such a vicious method!"

Zhen Qing's eyes were dim, and she said in a low voice: "My lord, what the king of Qi Jun has done has already lost the hearts of the palace. Apart from guarding against his sneaky arrows, the lord really wants to deal with King Wei. He is the empress Yuanzi. The prince's confidant has a headache."

King Qi still has a head, and King Wei has a heir, so her family's prince has only one way to go.

The King of Chu sighed and said, "The King of Wei is not easy to deal with."

"It's not easy to deal with now, it won't be too late to wait another three or two years." Zhen Qing said softly.

King Chu nodded and asked, "Have you visited Jia's mansion recently?"

Zhen Qing said: "After my mother left Beijing, I haven't been there much in the past two days. I will go and have a look in two days."

She doesn't go frequently when she has nothing to do, and it's easy to get lost. Fortunately, her younger sister has a good relationship with the Qin family, and Xinxin also recognizes the Qin family as her godmother, because of the relationship between the two families.

"Well, we can't stop walking." The king of Chu warned, and suddenly said with emotion: "This Jia Ziyu is not stopping in Henan. He is mining and repairing rivers. When he returns to Beijing, I am afraid that the father will Still need to rely on it.”

Such a great talent, after he is crowned a great treasure, he must be reused.

……

……

Henan, Guide Mansion, Yucheng County

After the downpour, it has been cloudy for two days, and today it is raining again.

At this moment, Jia Heng, accompanied by a large number of officials including officials from the Henan Fan and Standard Divisions, Tan Shiliang, the prefect of Guide Prefecture, Lu Li'an, the magistrate of Yucheng County, and Xu Kai, a scholar of the Imperial Academy, went to inspect the river embankment.

"Rumble..."

Above the sky, thunder was rumbling, dark clouds were rolling, and the rain was falling intermittently. For a while, the sky and the earth were vast and dark.

The willow trees beside the embankment sway with the wind from time to time, their branches and leaves are rolled up, and large raindrops are swayed from time to time.

Everyone wore bamboo hats and coir raincoats on their heads, looking at the busy river workers in front of and behind the embankment. At this moment, Jia Heng looked around, looking through the rain curtain, and saw soldiers and civilians carrying stones and glutinous rice sand on the entire embankment in the rain. Shi Paddle, busy.

Under the command of the craftsman of the river yamen, piling, drilling, and adding stones, everything was done in an orderly manner.

Looking at the course of the Yellow River, Jia Heng frowned when he saw the big splashes in the originally shallow river, and his eyes showed a hint of thought.

In recent years, there have been severe droughts in the north, and the river has dried up. The shallowest part of the Yellow River even just reaches the bend of the leg. This undoubtedly bought time for Henan to repair the embankment. According to the calculation, not all embankments need to be rebuilt.

The [-]-mile section of the embankment from Yucheng to Dangshan County is relatively dilapidated, and the other is the embankment from Xiao County to Xuzhou. After Xuzhou, it is the area under the responsibility of Nanhe Governor's Yamen.

Jia Heng looked at the groups of soldiers wearing Han military uniforms in the distance, Qi Jianhui, the governor of the Jingying Fenwu Battalion, Pang Shili, a member of the Yangwei Battalion, and other generals of the Beijing Battalion are leading the guards and commanding the Jingying Army Pawns, assisting the peasants to carry the earth, wood and stone, the yelling of "one two one" came from a distance.

The 5 troops of the Beijing camp went to Henan to quell the chaos, plus the captured bandits and Ding Fu, and the people hired with rice grain, at this moment, about [-] people gathered on the river embankment along the road.

In addition, the cavalry of the Beijing camp suppressed back and forth, so as to avoid chaos when the river was built.

However, the bandits in the past did not cause trouble under the whipping and hard labor, but they were all strangled by the Jingying cavalry.

At the same time, Henan Standard Division has formulated a commutation plan. According to the severity of the crimes of different criminals, the penalty will be redeemed through corvee.

At the same time, for the former coercion Ding Fu, the crime was relatively minor, and those who did not bear their lives were redeemed with corvee service, and they were released back to the village after the river fortification was completed.

Jia Heng patrolled along the embankment, followed by a large group of officials, most of them were wearing coir raincoats and bamboo hats. Jia Heng waved his hand to block it.

"Your Excellency." At this moment, Guan He Tongzhi, the gatekeeper of the current Governor's Yamen of Hedong, heard the news, and led the middle and lower level officials of the Hedao Yamen, walked quickly from the embankment, approached, and shouted at Jia Heng. shouted.

"Guan Tongzhi, how long is it expected to take to repair the embankment from Yucheng to Xiaoxian County?" Jia Heng asked loudly, looking at the gatekeeper with a muddy face.

The gatekeeper said loudly: "My lord, it will still take 20 days to work in two shifts during the day and night. The embankment has not been repaired for many years. This place is relatively gentler. The water is moving downward. Once it is blocked, the risk of breaching is greater. We should concentrate our manpower. Heightened and reinforced."

Jia Heng frowned and asked, "If we add half the manpower, can it be reinforced within half a month?"

The gatekeeper thought for a while and said, "We need another 3 people, and if we make more overall arrangements, the construction period will be greatly shortened."

Jia Heng pondered for a moment, then turned to look at the prefect of Guide Mansion beside him, and said, "Prefect Tan, how much labor can Guide Mansion conscript? Will it delay the busy farming?"

Henan suffered severe disasters in March and April, and production in many places was reduced, so there was not much busy farming, so there was basically not much harvest. Even the imperial court did not mention the summer tax in Henan this year, but Jia Heng still transferred it from Taicang to the gods. Beijing, to pay off the summer tax.

Except for Runing Prefecture and Kaifeng Prefecture, some prefectures and counties will be exempted from this year's summer tax. This year, the taxes of Henan Prefecture, Guide Prefecture, Nanyang Prefecture, Weihui Prefecture, Zhangde Prefecture, and Huaiqing Prefecture will be reduced by half as appropriate. Some of them are left in the treasury for emergency use.

In fact, if combined with the civil unrest in Runing and the destruction of Kaifeng Mansion, it seems that a sentence should also be said, "Children who can cry have milk."

Tan Shiliang was a middle-aged official in his early 40s with fair skin and a short beard under his chin. After thinking for a while, he said loudly: "Guide Mansion can still spare another six or seven thousand men to build the platform. The labor is heavy, and if one is not good, there will be disabilities, because the land in Henan has exempted the pinellia tax, and the people are busy with farming, and have doubts."

Ordinary people's families obviously don't want to affect the labor force or even become disabled because of the river project.

Jia Heng pondered for a moment, and said: "The government should actively mobilize civilians to build embankments on the river. If one person goes up the embankment, the family can get rice and grain subsidies. The people along the river in Guide Mansion will not be disturbed by the river. In righteousness, if there is a flood, the people will be displaced, and the land will be hit by the flood, and the autumn grain will be delayed.”

In the past, the people were all voluntary and doubted the credibility of the government. Therefore, there were not many people who came here at first. Later, the government really distributed food to the people. All must be fed.

In addition, Kaifeng Mansion is a provincial capital, which is highly valued from top to bottom. Later, everyone rushed to be the first. The embankment of Kaifeng Mansion was quickly repaired and strengthened in this environment of valiantly striving to be the first.

In fact, at the government level, there are actually some people who don't understand that the white rice is distributed to the poor...

The Henan Governor’s Yamen’s explanation is that they use work as a substitute for relief, and the people are raised with rice and grain to build water conservancy projects.

However, with the arrival of the busy farming season, the time when the crops are not harvested and the rations at home are unsustainable has gradually passed. No matter how the production is reduced during the busy summer farming season, it is finally my own field, and the farm work is not so heavy, so the river labor has become a retreat. Second option.

Under the premise of rushing time, manpower is often insufficient.

Jia Heng didn't say how to mobilize, but the prefect of Guide Prefecture didn't ask either, so what else?

That is, the clan and village sages distribute corvee downwards in units of Baojia. The difference is that you are not allowed to work for nothing, but you are given a certain amount of rice and grain as a subsidy.

Feng Lian looked at the young man opposite, and listening to the young man's words, his heart moved slightly, a little weird.

It was originally thought that the crackdown on the gentry in Henan, the practice of cruel officials, the strict rectification of the officials, made it hard to manage, and the relief of the common people, this is a strange appearance in the officialdom.

Now it seems that he just has a conscience, but he is indeed not a different kind.

If you think about it, if you are really stunned, you will not use Ningguo Yuanzhi to obtain the current position of power.

What no one can ignore is that Jia Heng must have two brushes to become an important minister in the court at a young age.

Everything you do must be relied upon.

Xu Kai, a scholar of the Imperial Academy, looked at this scene with a thoughtful expression.

As everyone said, they entered a wooden shed that had been built and began to arrange related river affairs.

"After the Hedong River passes through Xiao County, it should be inspected by Nanhe Governor's Yamen. Xu Hanlin should immediately write a letter to Nanhe Governor's Yamen, urging him to go to Xuzhou to discuss the river flood meeting." Jia Heng sat down and ordered.

In terms of river defense, the east of the river belongs to the auxiliary river, while the river platform of the south river belongs to the main river, and the two sides must coordinate river flood affairs.

Xu Kai cupped his hands and said: "The next official takes orders."

After speaking, he took the pen and paper delivered by the scribe in the shed, and began to write to the Nanhe governor's yamen.

Jia Heng looked at Qi Jianhui, the governor of the Fenwu Camp, Pang Shili and the others, and asked, "How many people are there in the Beijing Camp on the embankment?"

Qi Jianhui clasped his fists and said, "My lord, there are [-] foot soldiers and [-] cavalry troops in the Beijing camp, and the newly-built Henan capital of Henan Province has [-] guards here."

Jia Heng asked: "How is the morale of the general?"

"Most of the infantry have not fought, and they have no objection to the construction of the river. It's just that they have been away from Beijing for more than a month, and they are very homesick." Qi Jianhui said.

Jia Heng thought for a while and said: "Later, I will call more than a thousand soldiers, and I will give a lecture."

The morale of the soldiers also needs to be paid special attention during this period. He has to repair the embankment even in the rain. After a long time, he is prone to resentment. During this period, he will also live on the embankment.

Sharing the same desires and joys and sorrows is always the best way to resolve the grievances at the bottom.

(End of this chapter)