Chapter 55: The Older, the More Valuable

"I don't ask for much!"

Seeing that Lu Qingyuan had confessed to everything, Li Yu smiled and looked toward the folding screen.

"I just wonder how much the Prefect wants, and whether you people can afford to pay it."

Hearing this, Lu Qingyuan's pupils contracted, and he asked in an almost piercing shriek, "You set me up?"

The unfilial bastard wasn't after money at all; what he wanted was a confession in his own words!

And furthermore, he had directly called the Prefect over to act as a witness?

When Hang Jun walked out from behind the folding screen with a gloomy face, Jiang Yuan beside him collapsed directly onto the ground in sheer terror, his mind filled with only two enormous words:

It's over!

Hang Jun had no time to waste words with them and immediately ordered the clerk to tidy up the written confession.

Then, he had his men seize all the primary corrupt officials involved, placing them under house arrest in the guest rooms at the back of the county yamen.

Xiao Yunzhou had not even served many days as the Assistant Magistrate of the River Administration before he was dragged back by the prefectural yamen's men.

Since the Prefect lacked the authority to cast them into a dungeon directly, they could only be locked up first while awaiting disposition.

However, Lu Qingyuan—a man holding no official bureaucratic rank—could be locked up directly and even subjected to torture.

The dim prison was permeated with a lingering smell of damp mildew. Li Yu deeply disliked the odor here, but in order to play the part of an upright and uncorrupted magistrate, come he must.

"Look familiar?"

In the prison cell where Lu Qingyuan was kept, there were quite a few wronged ghosts who had died because of his corruption. Li Yu even felt that this place was somewhat gloomy and hair-raising.

Yet Lu Qingyuan showed not a shred of fear, which showed that having committed too many vile deeds, even ghosts feared him, rather than the old saying that those who do no wrong fear no nocturnal knocks on the door.

"Good and evil have their recompense; having reached this day, I accept my fate. What else do you want to know?"

There was no way out even if he refused to accept it; once a man reached a certain age, he had to learn to resign himself to fate.

Li Yu looked at Lu Qingyuan, who had aged twenty years in an instant. After staring for a long time, he didn't know what to say. He led his men to search Lu Qingyuan's residence.

They found that single account book hidden inside a jar, only to discover that the wealth he had amassed through corruption did not even amount to as much as the charity he had given away in his early years.

So... do people really change?

"What would you like to eat?" Li Yu crossed his hands in front of his knees, his tone genuinely sincere. "Would you like some wine? Shall I have someone fetch you a roasted chicken?"

He was truly, immensely curious: what on earth had happened to turn a great philanthropist into such a man?

The wine and food were set out, and Lu Qingyuan drank several cups, yet he did not utter a single extra word. Li Yu remained silent as well, quietly pouring him more wine.

After seven or eight pots of wine found their way into his belly, Lu Qingyuan finally began to recall the past.

"A traveler amidst the carriages and horses of Chang'an, bowing in total devotion to the powerful and noble. I had been acquainted with Magistrate Wang for many years. I watched him bask in boundless glory, and watched him remain firm and unyielding.

"Then I watched him bow and scrape before his superiors, watched him exhaust all his years right here, and finally feign madness and foolishness to escape this storm of conflict.

"That was when I knew that in this world, having talent and integrity alone is not enough to realize your ambitions.

"You must also have a discerning patron, noble benefactors, and people willing to look upon you with favor and promote you. The County Magistrate must have a profound appreciation for this truth, shouldn't you?"

Those with some connections among the top three ranks of the palace examination all became imperial bachelors; those without connections who bent their backs low enough could also manage to linger in the capital and establish a presence before the Son of Heaven.

In his eyes, Li Yu was someone without connections, without a patron, and furthermore so stubbornly upright that he had offended people and thus been banished to this Zhangqiu County.

Yet Li Yu smiled and said, "I simply love being this magistrate of the common people..."

Before he could finish his sentence, Lu Qingyuan interrupted him, shouting with rising agitation:

"You love it? Do you think your so-called affection is worth a single copper coin?

"Fine, let's suppose your love is genuine. But what if a high-ranking border official, a Provincial Administration Commissioner, demands of you... what if he demands that you act against your conscience? What will you do then?

"If you disobey, your official hat is hard to keep; if you disobey, the lives of your family members are hard to preserve. They have a hundred ways to deal with you.

"What will you do? Will you obey or not?"

Crushed into that state by your superiors, why bother putting on a show of being an upright and uncorrupted magistrate with meticulous diligence?

Might as well sink into the mire together; at least you get to enjoy a few years of comfort, don't you?

Why should those people be allowed to roam free for a lifetime, while they themselves lived in trembling terror, forced to commit wicked deeds, with their heads constantly on the line?

That being the case, it was better to carry things through to the bitter end—at least when the scandal broke, he wouldn't consider himself the loser.

This was what Lu Qingyuan thought deep down in his heart. Having been oppressed for too long, he wanted to oppress others in turn; he refused to live out a lifetime of stifled grievance and misery.

"If you are truly upright, why don't you submit a memorial to His Majesty accusing Zhang Jing?"

Li Yu maintained his silence: "..."

Zhang Jing was the former Provincial Administration Commissioner. He was now the Minister of Personnel and one of the grand tutors entrusted with the dying emperor's final edicts, and on the surface, he belonged to Grand Secretary Wang's faction.

Under the present circumstances, he wasn't insane to go about severing the left and right arms of his own mentor, though dropping hints that Zhang Jing was no good man was still permissible.

Wait, not a good man?

In truth, what kind of good men could ever reach such positions anyway?

Moreover, the Magistrate of Zhangqiu had been left to him by Grand Secretary Wang; could Grand Secretary Wang truly have been unaware—unaware of what kind of person Zhang Jing was?

People, as long as they were useful, what kind of person they were or what they had done didn't really matter at all.

With Hang Jun's assistance, men arrived from the Provincial Administration Commission, the Provincial Surveillance Commission, and the Directorate of Education.

After confirming their crimes one by one, they began step by step to throw people into prison, confiscate their properties, strip them of their academic honors, and finally hand down sentences.

Xiao Yunzhou, Jiang Yuan, and other officials holding official ranks were all sentenced to criminal punishments involving strangulation—the kind that allowed them to hang themselves while leaving their corpses intact—and all male relatives within three generations of their clans were barred from taking the imperial examinations.

Lu Qingyuan was sentenced to decapitation, likewise with his male relatives within three generations barred from taking the imperial examinations.

"With this matter concluded, your county yamen can finally be considered completely peaceful." Hang Jun gently waved his folding fan and asked with a smile, "What do you plan to do next?"

Governing a county was not merely a matter of arresting a few corrupt officials; the learning involved was far greater than investigating corruption.

"Naturally... recruitment." Li Yu pointed to the empty county yamen and said with utter helplessness, "Without people, this official is merely a bare-bones magistrate."

Old Li and the others, though given lighter sentences for confessing readily so as to escape capital punishment, could certainly no longer be employed; the assistant magistrate, the records officer, the jailer—all of them needed to be recruited afresh.

These people would be his assistants in the future, so they had to be of one heart and mind with him.

Li Yu hoped to select all of these people himself.

Ah, the greatest regret in this entire affair was that he could not move against Zhang Jing.

The whole root of the matter stemmed from that man, yet he remained entirely unscathed.

"Then you had best choose carefully."

Since this was a man favored by his own mentor, Hang Jun naturally supported him without reservation.

"Once you've made your selections, send the name list over, and I will go speak with the people at the Provincial Administration Commission."

Pick those who caught your eye and were easy to work with; only by joining forces could the duties be properly executed.

With Hang Jun's help, Li Yu quickly posted a recruitment notice and prepared a written examination, which could be regarded as a miniature imperial examination.

In short, there were a vast number of scholars who came to take the exam, and a great many literati who applied for the position of accountant.

Ji Zan was one of those applying to be an accountant. In his early twenties, he stood out glaringly among a crowd of middle-aged and elderly men, immediately drawing the sneers and ridicule of the elders.

"This kid has barely changed out of his open-crotch trousers, yet he wants to come and manage the public accounts?"

With that, bursts of loud laughter erupted from the crowd.

There was no helping it; this trade revered age, and the older one was, the more sought-after they were.