Chapter 143: I thought it was a pension, so I just signed it!

The various Ministers of the Six Ministries in Nanjing hurriedly kowtowed.

"Your ministers pay homage to Your Majesty, the Emperor Taizu, the Emperor Taizong, and pay homage to our imperial ancestors!"

"Rise." Zhu Yuanzhang sat on the primary seat, swept his gaze across them, and said evenly.

"Thank you, Your Majesty the Emperor Taizu!"

The officials of Nanjing stood up one after another, keeping their heads lowered to the side, stealing a glance at the Founding Emperor with hearts pounding violently.

They wouldn't feel this way even when facing the reigning emperor. After all, Zhu Jianshen couldn't just chop off their heads on a whim, but the Founding Emperor would execute you the moment the thought crossed his mind!

Among these seemingly upright civil officials, not a single one was free of corruption. If anyone had received less than ten thousand taels of silver in seasonal bribes such as ice money, carbon money, or fire-loss allowances, it was as if they had never served as an official at all.

Zhu Yuanzhang casually flipped through a few memorials; they were conventional and standard. He flipped through a few more to check the dates—good grief, over eight hundred memorials were reviewed every day, making them even more diligent than he used to be.

Old Zhu raised an eyebrow and asked, "How much tax did the Ministry of Revenue collect from the Southern Zhili region last year?"

Li Mu, the Minister of Revenue, forced himself to maintain his composure, squeezed out a proud smile, and reported, "Reporting to Your Majesty Taizu, according to my statistics, it accounts for half of our Great Ming Dynasty's total tax revenue!"

The Jiangnan region alone contributed tax revenue equivalent to half of the entire Ming Dynasty; surely this was his merit!

Of course, if one were to include commercial taxes, silk duties, salt levies, and the like, the figure would multiply several times over, for after all, the entire business of the Great Ming was monopolized by the gentry of the Jiangnan region.

Zhu Yuanzhang frowned. "Why is the disparity so stark?"

Li Mu's eyes lit up. He cupped his hands and began to pour out his grievances, saying, "Reporting to Your Majesty Taizu, the fiefs and farmland belonging to the vassal princes of various provinces are exempt from taxation. The princes are insatiable, enclosing entire provinces of land, yet none of it has to pay taxes! All of that has become the private property of the princely estates!"

"The reason Jiangnan alone pays half of our dynasty's taxes is not merely because Jiangnan is wealthy; it is all the more because other provinces pay no taxes at all!"

The terrifying reproductive capacity of the Zhu family descendants had already begun to show its early signs by the Chenghua era. Old Zhu's original vision—that his descendants would be well-fed, well-clothed, and enjoy glory for ten thousand generations—had gradually transformed into the entire world having to support the Zhu clan.

Zhu Yuanzhang's face was extremely gloomy. During the Hongwu era, he had fixed the head count of the Zhu family descendants, yet the exemption of this land from agricultural tax had turned out to have such massive drawbacks.

Furthermore, this bunch of later descendants was so insatiably greedy that they actually monopolized the farmland of entire provinces just to sustain themselves!

Old Zhu could not help but curse inwardly: "May those fat pig-headed fools choke to death!"

Li Mu hesitated for a long time, unsure whether his words were appropriate or not, and asked with trepidation, "Your Majesty Taizu? What are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking of a way to get rid of you."

Ah?

Li Mu was dumbfounded.

Zhu Yuanzhang glanced at him, his anger surging. He wished he could immediately travel through every single dynasty and demote these descendants to commoners!

Descendants were important, but the empire of Great Ming was even more important. The Great Ming had only thirteen provinces in total, and yet every single one of them had been enclosed by you little bastards for your estates—how could the Great Ming not perish?!

Old Zhu was exceedingly irritated. "I know about this matter now. Is there anything else you wish to say?"

Snap!

A rifled musket fell out from the arms of Old Zhu Di. He calmly picked it up and casually chambered a round.

He swept his gaze over the gathered officials, looking as though he were saying: *I am an emperor forged on horseback, it is only natural for me to carry firearms with me.*

The eyes of the Ministers of the Six Ministries nearly popped out of their heads.

This strange-looking firearm—wasn't that the weapon used by the notorious bandits?!

Could it be! Could it be?!

Thud!

Li Mu turned pale with fright. He mentally reviewed every single bad thing he had ever done in his life, and ended up nearly frying his brain because he had committed far too many evils.

His thoughts finally stopped at the time he bribed the military generals of various garrisons to suppress the bandit menace...

What on earth was that suppression of bandits?! It was clearly an action directed against this group of Great Ming emperors!

Trembling, Li Mu stammered, "Your Minister is guilty! It was Eunuch Niu who said we needed to suppress the bandit menace, your ministers harbored no thoughts of treason whatsoever!"

Not only did Li Mu drop to his knees, but the crowd of officials behind him also fell to their knees in terror, not daring to draw a deep breath.

Although on the surface it was about bandit suppression, in the minds of the various emperors of the Great Ming, this matter, if blown out of proportion, amounted to treason and rebellion, or even regicide!

"Niu Yu? Niu Yu is already dead."

Zhu Yuanzhang wore a placeless expression. He was burning with a bellyful of fire with nowhere to vent it, and seeing that there were hidden complications, he narrowed his eyes and demanded, "What was the reason for suppressing the banditry? Report the truth to me immediately."

Why didn't the Founding Emperor know about this?

Li Mu froze, profoundly astonished. Could it be that those bastards of the garrison camp took the money and failed to deliver?!

Sending out troops to suppress them only to be frightened away by the Founding Emperor was understandable, but taking money and refusing to deploy troops—that was an issue of credibility! Who would ever do business with a bunch of military ruffians like them again in the future?!

He hesitated and said, "Reporting to Your Majesty Taizu, recently banditry has run rampant in Nanjing. Several garrison camps feared the power of the bandits' firearms and did not dare to face the enemy to suppress the bandits. Eunuch Niu took the initiative to seek out your ministers and extorted fifty thousand taels of silver to persuade the garrison camp commanders to suppress the bandits..."

The other five ministers were collectively dumbfounded.

No.

You reckless fool, do you speak without using your brain?!

In front of the Founding Emperor, you spoke of fifty thousand taels as if it were five meager taels—are you itching for a flaying just to see if your skin is too loose?!

Sure enough!

"Fifty thousand taels?"

"Where on earth did you get fifty thousand taels of silver?!" Zhu Yuanzhang narrowed his eyes and coldly roared.

The Ministers of the Six Ministries in Nanjing held the rank of Junior Second Rank; their annual salary amounted to four hundred taels of silver. Even if they worked for a hundred years, they could never save fifty thousand taels!

"Your minister, your minister possesses considerable family assets..."

Li Mu naturally knew what was being implied. Before the Founding Emperor could press further, he immediately assumed a look of compassionate sorrow and began to speak:

"Your minister, deeply worried for the common people of Jiangnan, could not bear to see the populace oppressed by the bandit scourge. Therefore, I liquidated my family property, and then borrowed from all my fellow officials, managing to scrape together fifty thousand taels to hand over to Eunuch Niu. As a subject, I was forced to take this desperate measure. Your minister is truly guilty!"

Niu Yu was already dead; from then on, whatever he said went, and his colleagues were hardly suicidal enough to expose him. Wouldn't this testimony carve a brilliant and heavy stroke of glory for him in the history books?

Zhu Yuanzhang's expression did not change. He would sooner believe in Islam than trust a single word from a civil official's mouth. Instead, he issued an order: "Summon the garrison camp commanders of Nanjing to see me."

The eunuch Wang Min respectfully said, "They are already waiting outside the palace, Your Slave will summon them in right away."

Li Mu remained calm and composed.

He was not afraid of a confrontation at all. If the military generals received a small amount, it meant Niu Yu had embezzled the money and deserved to die; if the military generals received a large amount, it meant Niu Yu was upright and noble, worthy of being enshrined in the Imperial Ancestral Temple.

In short, it had nothing whatsoever to do with him, Li Mu.

Those who could survive serving as officials at court for so many years were none of them ordinary characters.

The Minister of War Wang Huo, Zhang Shuo, and others cast looks of deep admiration at him. *It truly has to be you! No wonder you managed to land the post of Minister of the Revenue in Nanjing, the most lucrative job of all.*

*You certainly deserved it!*

Li Changful walked in with a dimwitted and clumsy air, then dropped to his knees cleanly and decisively, shouting, "This humble subordinate Li Changful pays homage to Your Majesty Taizu! Pays homage to our imperial ancestors!"

"How much money did you receive?" Zhu Yuanzhang asked.

Cold sweat poured from Li Changful. He had no choice but to play the fool, scratching his head as he said, "Huh? This humble subordinate wouldn't dare, this humble subordinate didn't receive anything, I really didn't take any money!"

"You're talking nonsense!" Li Mu leaped up, pointed straight at his nose, and cursed bitterly, "Was it not you and Niu Yu who swallowed this official's fifty thousand taels of silver?!"

"Oh, that fifty thousand taels? I can't read, and I just saw a 'five' character on the paper. I thought it was a retirement pension, so I signed it. I never expected it was fifty thousand taels of silver, and I've already distributed it all out."

Li Changful blinked and spread his hands with an innocent expression, asking, "Wasn't that the military pay issued to us by the imperial court?"

Old Zhu Di watched them wrangle and suddenly turned around to ask, "Great-grandson, can Niu Yu pull off such grand stunts?"