Without money, what is the point of being a traitor?

Chapter 394 We are here to enforce justice

Pei Yuan did not explain much to Sikong Sui, and asked him directly, "What did you do in the past when the Qianhu Division encountered a situation like this that required urgent expansion?"

Sikong Sui replied, "Usually they are recruited from the children of the Qianhu Suo. Tantai Fangtu is already doing this. But even if they are recruited, they still need a long period of training before they can be put to use."

"The enemies we are facing are quite difficult. Those Taoist priests are scattered in all directions, so most of the time we need to fight alone. Without extraordinary force, it won't work."

Pei Yuan thought about it and it was true.

Unfortunately, although Sikong Sui’s words made sense, they could not shake Pei Yuan’s eagerness for success.

Pei Yuan asked again, "Besides this? Is there any other way?"

After hearing Pei Yuan's question, Sikong Sui couldn't help but glance at Cheng Zhihu.

Cheng Zhihu was puzzled at first, then his face turned red, but he didn't say anything.

Pei Yuan quickly understood that it was nothing more than a request for amnesty.

Since these gangsters have become the imperial court's lackeys, they will probably still want some tokens of their allegiance.

For example, according to what Yue Qingfeng said back then, Cheng Zhihu betrayed many wealthy people in Huaishang in order to join the Jinyiwei.

These people betrayed their own camp and were regarded as scum of the underworld. From now on, they can only follow the Qianhusuo wholeheartedly.

It is precisely because these underworld scums cannot go back that they are more reliable than the legitimate descendants of the Jinyiwei.

Sikong Sui took Cheng Zhihu's face into consideration and did not talk in depth, but instead talked about the past.

"Back then, the Qianhu Office encountered two extremely troublesome situations. One time, Deputy Qianhu Feng Jie surrounded and suppressed the Five Elements Flag of the Ming Cult, and the other time, Deputy Qianhu Chen Chi surrounded and suppressed the White Lotus Buddha Tang Sai'er. Both times, a large number of Jianghu people were recruited to cooperate in the battle."

"Unfortunately, although the results of these two battles were very impressive, the uncontrollable nature of the Jianghu characters was also exposed."

"When we were besieging White Lotus Buddha Mother Tang Sai'er, we made a serious mistake."

"Emperor Taizu arrested tens of thousands of nuns and female Taoist priests from all over the country at that time, hoping to find Tang Sai'er among them. This matter happened to be under the supervision of our Qianhu Division at the time, but as a result, a large number of Jianghu people suddenly became beastly and raped her at will, which caused a very bad impact."

"So..., the court is still very averse to recruiting people."

Pei Yuan understood what Sikong Sui wanted to express.

In other words, it is almost unrealistic to supplement on a large scale through this channel.

Pei Yuan could only sigh, "Think about it again."

Since Pei Yuan wanted to gain a foothold in Yanggu, he naturally could not keep those monks any longer.

So Pei Yuan finally took out the weapon.

He asked someone to check the county annals and learned that the Liansheng Temple was built during the Yongle period. He then cited the Hongwu Sacred Instructions and declared the Liansheng Temple an illegally built temple, and all temple property was confiscated.

Monks with ordination certificates were dispersed to other temples.

Those without certificates of ordination will all be forced to do labor.

The monks in the temple were in an uproar when they heard the news. Some of them who were quick-witted took advantage of the fact that the ferocious Jinyiwei were not paying enough attention and climbed over the wall to leave the temple, looking for support from the local powerful families who sponsored the temple.

It would have been better if I hadn't asked. After I went out, I found out that Yanggu City was under martial law.

Many Jinyiwei armed with knives were still searching along the streets.

The monks had nowhere to go, so they could only pretend to be returning from begging for alms and return to the temple.

Pei Yuan immediately asked people to count the monks and temple property.

The Liansheng Temple is quite old. There are five old monks with ordination certificates and more than a hundred young monks without ordination certificates in the temple.

This time, when the temple property was collected, a total of more than 8,000 taels of silver and some gold and silver objects were obtained.

Another big part is the large tracts of land around the temple that were donated as temple property.

Pei Yuan was a little worried when he saw the deeds to the hundreds of acres of land. Some wealthy families in Yanggu City were within his robbery range. Who should he sell the land to?

Pei Yuan followed his previous arrangements, dispersed the old monks with ordination certificates, and captured the hundred or so young monks to help transport money and goods.

Even so, it took no less than three days just to control the "stolen goods".

Pei Yuan put away the gold, silver and copper coins separately, and found several Zen temples with other valuable objects, filling them up.

Pei Yuan didn't know what to do with the house deeds, land deeds and the like, so he could only keep them for the time being.

In addition, a large amount of grain was also confiscated from the homes of those wealthy and powerful families.

Pei Yuan wanted to take root in Liansheng Temple, so these supplies were indispensable.

So he did not care about the young monks and drove them like cattle and horses, forcing them to drive carts to transport food to the temple every day.

As for those big families who colluded with the bandits in Bazhou, Pei Yuan also followed the instructions in the public security notice and only arrested the leaders, and dispersed the others.

Pei Yuan came to settle the score this time, of course, with the intention of revenge, but his main purpose was to make money, so he didn't do anything extreme.

After another two or three days, Pei Yuan felt that he had done enough, so he sent someone to notify Chen Xinjian to lift the martial law in the city.

Except for a few spies left at the four gates to keep an eye on the movements of all parties, all the other people Pei Yuan brought with him withdrew to Liansheng Temple to rest.

When Yanggu County Magistrate Chen Lang heard that the martial law had ended, he quickly asked his lawyer to go out and check.

When he noticed that pedestrians were appearing on the street one after another, Chen Lang finally felt relieved and asked someone to secretly send the secret letter he had written long ago to Dongping Prefecture.

Not long after, the governor of Dongping Prefecture rushed to Yanggu County.

After knowing the whole story, the prefect of Dongping immediately and sternly demanded to see the leader of the Jinyiwei, Pei Qianhu.

Pei Yuan naturally didn't bother to pay attention to a prefect, so he asked Huo Tao to decline by saying that he was interrogating a criminal who was in cahoots with thieves and needed to isolate the inside and the outside, and ignored the prefect.

The prefect was also hot-tempered, and he immediately reported what happened in Yanggu City to the Yanzhou government, and in harsh words, he characterized the incident as looting.

Within just one or two days, the matter was reported to the Shandong Provincial Surveillance Office and the Shandong Governor's Office, and even the Provincial Administration Office was informed.

When many officials heard what happened in Yanggu, they were furious.

Shandong Governor Wang Chang decided to go to Yanggu to investigate in person, and the Shandong Provincial Surveillance Commissioner also reported the matter to the court separately.

However, the person who arrived in Yanggu before everyone else was someone who was not included in Pei Yuan's plan.

That’s the eunuch guarding Shandong!
When Pei Yuan heard that the eunuch guarding Shandong summoned him to meet him at the county government office, he was stunned.

It took him a long time to remember that although Shandong was not a border town, because of its important location, there were eunuchs guarding it.

In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the three provincial-level organs were the main power institutions. Later, in order to strengthen the management of local areas, the central government added the level of governor.

As the governor system gradually matured, there was a brief period of time when "three halls" coexisted at the local level.

The three halls are the governor, the eunuchs guarding the city and the generals. In theory, the governor has the greatest power. As an important extension of the Censorate system, the governor has the power to inquire about almost all local affairs.

The duties of the garrison eunuchs were rather complicated.

Specifically, they are divided into eunuchs guarding the border and eunuchs guarding key provinces in the interior.

The eunuchs guarding the border had two main responsibilities: one was "supervising the army" and the other was "pacifying the barbarians."

The powers of the eunuchs guarding these border towns are greater than those of the censors in the border towns.

The duties of the Censor-in-Chief were to examine merits and crimes and rewards and punishments, while the garrison eunuchs had the authority to supervise military generals, assist in military operations, and regulate military discipline and border defense.

Generally speaking, the eunuchs stationed at the borders of the Ming Dynasty also played the role of advocates of war. In several major frictions on the borders of the Ming Dynasty, the eunuchs were active.

The main duties of the eunuchs guarding the inland areas were to pacify the army and the people, collect tributes, and report on others.

Although these eunuchs stationed in the interior did not have the power to promote or dismiss officials, nor the responsibility to examine officials, they did have the power to supervise and impeach the civil and military officials in their area, and could also recommend, retain, or even "dismiss" local officials.

They could also inquire into local judicial affairs and regularly record prisoners with the governor.

It can be said that although the scope of authority does not seem to be large, the invisible power is very great.

Due to the differences between these two types of eunuchs, some unwritten rules have been formed.

For example, the eunuchs guarding the inland areas, including the eunuchs guarding Nanjing, were all sent on business trips by the Silijian and were considered to be expatriate personnel of the Silijian.

The eunuchs guarding the border towns were mostly eunuchs from the Imperial Stables, and were dispatched by the Imperial Stables.

This unwritten pattern gradually became a convention after the Chenghua period, and was particularly evident during the Zhengde period.

The Zhengde period was also the last glorious moment for the eunuchs who guarded the city.

When Pei Yuan heard that the eunuch guarding Shandong wanted to summon him for questioning, he immediately became alert.

Several subordinates happened to be nearby, and they all thought that the eunuch on duty had ill intentions.

Pei Yuan thought about it and roughly guessed the eunuch's intention, so he said to everyone, "That eunuch must have heard that we robbed Yanggu County under the pretext of colluding with bandits, so he came here to extort money."

Sikong Sui listened, hesitated, and advised Pei Yuan, "We still have to prepare for the court's questioning. Should we give him some sweet treats to avoid unnecessary trouble?"

Pei Yuan shook his head after hearing this, "I'm afraid my greed is insatiable, and I'm just making wedding clothes for others in vain."

Pei Yuan wanted to delay for a while and send someone to inquire about the origins of the eunuch guarding Shandong. However, the guy seemed to think that Pei Yuan and his group were fat sheep and kept sending people to inquire about them.

Seeing this, Pei Yuan simply ignored it and selected a few Jinyiwei to follow him to Yanggu County Government Office.

While on the road, Pei Yuan paid attention to the situation in Yanggu County.

Although martial law has been lifted now, the market still seems very depressed, perhaps because the Jinyiwei are still there.

Pei Yuan didn't pay much attention to it and went straight to the county government office.

When they arrived at the place, Pei Yuan was on his horse, so Chen Xinjian jumped off and strode to the front of the county government office and shouted, "Pei Yuan, the captain of the evil-suppressing Thousand Households, has come to see the governor of Shandong. Why don't you go and report it quickly?"

The county yamen runners had just witnessed how the Jinyiwei behaved violently a few days ago, so they did not dare to delay and hurried in to report to the county magistrate.

The county magistrate Chen Lang was talking to a middle-aged eunuch with a pale face and no beard. When he heard Captain Pei had arrived, he turned his eyes and looked at the eunuch.

Chen Lang didn't expect that the eunuch on duty would arrive at this critical moment.

As a member of the civil service system, he was naturally not very fond of the eunuch who was in charge of the garrison. He was even more disdainful of the eunuch's thorough knowledge of the assets of those families.

Chen Lang could roughly guess the eunuch's purpose and knew that this greedy vulture was probably here for the large sum of money.

But as the saying goes, evil will be punished by evil.

It was these unscrupulous eunuchs who were more adept at using their tactics against these unscrupulous Jinyiwei.

In this case, Chen Lang would be happy to let the two gangs engage in a dog-eat-dog fight.

Chen Lang bowed to the eunuch in a provocative manner and said, "Eunuch Bi, look at this?"

The eunuch surnamed Bi smiled and said in a feminine voice, "We are here to uphold justice. How can we tolerate the insolence of this little Jinyiwei?"

"You were so harsh before, you really underestimated our family."

Chen Lang looked a little uncomfortable.

The eunuch surnamed Bi slowly instructed, "Let him wait for a while. We still need to discuss the whole matter with County Magistrate Chen."

After hearing this, the bailiff hurried to the yamen to report.

Chen Xinjian frowned and scolded, "Since you want to know the whole story, why don't you ask our captain, but listen to the county magistrate?"

"Besides, our captain has already arrived at the yamen, and the right and wrong of this matter must be determined by the witnesses. Could it be that County Magistrate Chen and the eunuch in charge of the garrison have some secret plot that cannot be seen by others?"

The bailiff had no way of answering this and could only mumble.

Although Chen Xinjian had not been with Pei Yuan for a long time, he had already developed an arrogant attitude. He immediately shouted at the yamen runner, "If you ask again, tell him that our captain also knows the whole story and wants to report it to the garrison commander."

The yamen runner was in a dilemma, but he had no choice but to go and report.

When the bailiff arrived and reported what Chen Xinjian had said, the eunuch surnamed Bi's face immediately turned ugly.

Chen Lang heard this, but remained silent, feeling secretly happy.

After a while, the eunuch named Bi said with a long face, "Don't worry about him, and you don't have to report it."

The bailiff was overjoyed upon hearing this, as if he had been pardoned. He quickly stood in front of the hall, thankful that he would not have to face those vicious men again.

The hall was quiet for a moment.

The eunuch named Bi had a sullen face, and Chen Lang remained silent on purpose, making the atmosphere awkward.

Perhaps because he didn't see the yamen runners report back, the Jinyiwei waiting in front of the yamen suddenly shouted, "Why haven't you responded yet? Could it be that some bad guys have kidnapped the Shandong garrison?"

Chen Lang and the eunuch on guard in the hall were stunned, not knowing what this meant.

Then a burst of chaotic footsteps was heard, and a tall military officer wearing the uniform of a fifth-rank Jinyiwei official strode in with several personal soldiers.

The pale-faced eunuch was furious when he saw this, and he immediately scolded, "How dare you! A mere captain of the Jinyiwei dare to offend me? Even your Jinyiwei commander is very respectful when he sees me. Who do you think you are?"

Unexpectedly, the captain of the Jinyiwei showed no fear on his face and asked him calmly, "Who is your backer in the palace?"

"?" Bi Zhen was caught off guard by this question.

Then the captain of the Jinyiwei looked at him and asked, "Gu Dayong, Qiu Ju, Xiao Jing, Lu Ting? Whose words are more effective?"

(End of this chapter)