Chapter 11 Luck
Chapter 11 Luck
Dong Dahai has been rooted in Qingshui County for three generations. He is a man who spends money on pleasure, so he is naturally well-informed. After receiving advice from Li Gongyu yesterday, he immediately found a connection and selected a scapegoat.
It was the Taohua Temple outside the city.
Since ancient times, the pure land of Buddhism has been a good place for evil people to retire.
Put down the butcher knife and become a Buddha instantly!
In fact, this is still an economic issue. A small temple with no capital and no strong backers naturally likes these villains. After all, they can bring money into the group.
In addition, these people used to mingle with all kinds of people and could have made significant contributions to the development of the temple.
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Taohua An has only been built for twenty years, but it has already become a small city in the county.
Also, because the entertainment industry in Jiangning Prefecture was well developed, the nuns in the nunnery also took on the part-time business of hosting guests, and the business naturally became more prosperous.
Naturally, the reputation spread.
In the past, Magistrate Wu had always turned a blind eye to this matter. But as he was approaching the point of promotion, he decided to clear out a temple prostitution den, which would not only increase his reputation but also earn him money.
Of course, the most important point is that although Taohua An has received a lot of donations in the city, it actually has no solid backing.
Bullying Taohuaan is no different from bullying cotton.
Dong Dahai reported the matter of Taohua An, and Magistrate Wu and Master Qian immediately gave orders.
The crackdown on pornography and evil must be quick to prevent someone from tipping off the authorities.
So County Magistrate Wu sent Li Gongyu with a dozen constables, a group of unemployed servants, and Dong Dahai and other warehouse guards to go straight to Taohua Temple.
Why not send the captain of the police from our county?
Because the captain of police is in charge of public security, he is the protective umbrella for brothels like Taohua An.
In comparison, Li Gongyi was strongly recommended by Mr. Qian, and he was also a yamen runner who was close to the county magistrate and was a squad leader with brothers under him. He was the best candidate.
Dong Dahai was very ruthless this time. He even brought a lot of his brothers and other members of the Kuding family. He gave them silver before they set off, which was equivalent to the army's starting silver to boost morale.
To put it bluntly, Taohua Nunnery is just a group of nuns running a prostitution business. I have never seen such a scene before.
Even though they usually hired some tenant farmers from nearby as thugs, their legs would become weak when they saw the officials. Even the brave ones would not take action, because one penny a month was not worth risking their lives.
The old nun in the nunnery was arrested and her face turned pale.
I don’t know what crime I committed.
He was taken to the yamen in a daze and brought to the court to meet the master.
Anyway, under severe punishment, you have to admit any crime.
Finally, in Master Qian's closing statement, it was revealed that the old nun was a female thief who had caused quite a stir in another place more than ten years ago and was nicknamed the Blue-Eyed Fox.
She has disappeared for more than ten years. It turns out that she was hiding in Taohua An and engaging in prostitution.
The whole story of the theft of the treasury silver was also revealed during the investigation.
Because Taohua An transfers benefits to Zhao Xiong, the head of the Yamen, every year, and has an insider in the Yamen.
Zhao Xiong was also the head of police for several generations. He married the sister of the county inspector and had a strong family background. He was known as Zhao Batian.
County Magistrate Wu saw that Taohua An gave fifty taels of silver to Zhao Xiong every year, but he, the county magistrate and local father, only took thirty taels.
I almost lost my temper on the spot.
It was still Mr. Qian who persuaded the county magistrate to stop and invited Wu to the court to discuss the matter.
"My money." All the people in the court at that time heard were words like "my money".
Later, the county magistrate did not order the arrest of Zhao Xiong, but he still arrested several of Zhao Xiong's trusted henchmen. The charges were all ready-made: colluding with the Blue-Eyed Fox and stealing treasury silver.
The case was proven to be a solid case on the spot.
Although Zhao Xiong was a local bully, he was no more powerful than the county magistrate, so he could only grit his teeth and endure the matter.
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In the Li family courtyard, Xu Qing listened to Li Gongyu's detailed account of the whole case, and then he bowed and said, "Uncle, congratulations on your promotion to Dianshi. From now on, you will be a real official."
It turned out that Li Gongyu had done a good job this time and helped Magistrate Wu and Master Qian make a lot of money. Magistrate Wu decided to give him a position as an official.
Of course, it was also because there happened to be a vacancy in the county. Magistrate Wu was about to be promoted, and if he didn't use his power, it would expire. So he simply gave the quota to Li Gongyu. After all, he was the magistrate, and if he reported it, unless the higher-ups wanted to make an enemy of him, such a thing would generally not be rejected.
Although yamen runners and petty clerks, collectively known as clerks, were all garbage in the eyes of the literati.
In fact, the status of a petty clerk was not comparable to that of a yamen runner.
Although Li Gongqi had a regular staff before, the yamen runners were the bottom of the yamen system and were all lowly.
In fact, in the previous dynasty, there were many people who were promoted from minor officials to high officials. But in this dynasty, the status of minor officials has been sharply reduced.
Now there is a separation of officials and clerks, and it is impossible to become an official if you are a minor clerk.
However, the families of local petty officials can often control the local power base for generations, which can be considered a mixed blessing.
By attacking Taohua Temple, Li Gongyu was siding with the county magistrate and offended the local tyrant Zhao Xiong. If Li Gongyu was not promoted to an official, he would surely be retaliated by Zhao Xiong and his gang once Magistrate Wu left.
If something like this really happened, County Magistrate Wu would have a bad reputation.
He still wants to be an official. If his reputation is ruined, how will he find people to do things for him in the future?
Moreover, Li Gongyu was appointed as Dianshi, in charge of arrests and prisons, which was equivalent to jumping several levels, and nominally he was still Zhao Xiong's superior. This made it convenient for him to help Wu Zhixian monitor Zhao Xiong and prevent him from causing trouble at the critical moment when Wu Zhixian was about to be promoted.
In addition, the Dianshi is considered a small leader among the clerks in the county government, which is basically the ceiling for ordinary people to be clerks. If they move up, they can become officials.
In fact, this ceiling is impossible to break.
Even though Mr. Qian was only a scholar, he could not become a minor official, because if he became a minor official, he would not be able to take the imperial examination and become an official.
Although he was not young anymore, often visited brothels and even had a concubine, he still did not give up on the path to imperial examinations.
In the Southern Zhili area, many officials' staff generally held this kind of idea.
But once you are infected with the bad habits of officialdom, how can you concentrate on reading?
Different from the examination for students of higher learning, the provincial examination is a place where one’s talent is truly tested.
Because there were so many people with connections who could take part in the provincial examination, it was relatively fair.
If the results of the provincial examination were obviously unfair, people would make a scene. If a group of scholars with good backgrounds really started making a scene, even the chief examiner would be overwhelmed.
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Qingshui County happened to be located in the capital of Jiangning Prefecture, and the appointment letter came down within a few days.
When Zhou received the good news, she pawned half of the jewelry in her dowry, bought incense and paper money worth three taels of silver, and went to the Li family's ancestral tomb to burn paper. Thick fog rolled in and lasted for a long time.
This is called smoke coming out of the ancestral grave!
Man-made auspiciousness!
All I can say is that this is the current social trend and it is not an isolated case.
On the other hand, when Xu Qing was appointed by his uncle, the color of the word "red" in the luck column in the bronze mirror suddenly became much darker, and was mixed with a little orange. According to past experience, this should be a sign that the luck is about to be upgraded.
"This luck should be related to one's status and position."
The nephew of a registrar and the nephew of a yamen runner are indeed two different concepts.
Afterwards, the Li family held a banquet, which was quite lively.
Dong Dahai, the scale chief, even brought a group of servants to congratulate.
One of them nominally controlled the county's public security supervision power, and the other was an important figure in the county's financial power. With the addition of Master Qian, Li Gongyu's position was immediately stabilized.
The community school that had expelled Xu Qing added Xu Qing back to the list overnight on the very night that Li Gongyu issued the appointment.
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"Qing'er, getting promoted and making money are truly the joys of life." Li Gongyu patted his nephew on the back.
Having been an honest man for half his life, his life values have been shattered and reshaped in the past few days.
"Uncle, it's getting cold and icy. Don't forget the matter with Captain Zhao." Xu Qing took out a prepared script.
Today, he found that the luck column in his bronze mirror was stained with a trace of black air. He knew that the hidden danger left over from the previous case was finally coming.
Fortunately, he was not unprepared.
Moreover, although Li Gongyu has a title now, he still has to fight for power in the county government on his own.
Power is the fist!
(End of this chapter)