The Heavens Begin with Dream of the Red Chamber
Chapter 4: Conspiracy against the Ning and Rong Mansions
Chapter 4: Conspiracy against the Ning and Rong families
The group traveled during the day and slept at night, crossing mountains and ridges, and walked for more than a day before finally returning to the mountain village.
After passing three visible checkpoints and five hidden checkpoints, Zhan Nrshisi and his companions finally reached their home safely.
This mountain stronghold is not big, with a total of three to five hundred minions, including their family members, the elderly and the weak. The ones who can really be used are only about two hundred young and strong. Fortunately, these people were carefully selected by Zhan Ershisi. They all took the initiative to show kindness to their children when they were unable to survive and saved the lives of their entire families. They are trustworthy enough to be used.
In addition, Zhan Ershisi was generous and gave them hope in life, so their loyalty grew.
If you ask them to rebel, they may not dare to do it, but if you ask them to rob the rich and help the poor, they have not made any mistakes so far.
Mr. Zhan is a cunning man with three burrows. He can abandon the current stronghold at any time.
Not only does he have other secret bases nearby, he also has an overt identity in the town. He is a respectable gentry with a family and a business, and he is the kind who colludes with officials and gentry.
This kind of thing seems difficult to say, but it is actually quite simple to do.
It is more difficult to operate in a large place, but it is very easy in a small place.
As long as you buy a large piece of land in the local area, settle down there and get a household registration, you will basically become the local landlord.
Those officials only care about money, no matter if you are a businessman or a bandit.
But if you want to become a gentry, you have to go one step further.
Next, Zhan Ershisi tried his best to make friends with local officials, giving money to those who liked money and women to those who liked women, and also helping them to improve their political achievements.
Every year, they helped in collecting grain. If they failed to complete the task, they would buy grain out of their own pockets to make up for it, to ensure that the magistrate's performance was always excellent.
Once the magistrate has excellent performance in the evaluations for three years, he will be promoted and leave. In order to ensure that his performance in the evaluations does not drop every year, the next county magistrate must be on good terms with Zhan Ershisi. Otherwise, the previous magistrate was able to collect all the grain every year, but you are not able to do so. In that case, you are clearly an incompetent official!
Do you still want a future?
An upright official might not do such a fraudulent thing, but Zhan Ershisi always avoided such officials. He never appeared under their jurisdiction and had no intersection with them at all.
He specifically picked those mediocre officials who were mediocre and incompetent, but were unwilling to spend their whole lives in such small places, and they were the most suitable people to collude with him.
Relying on this skill, he successfully became a close friend of the two successive county magistrates.
It was also with the tacit approval and instigation of these two close friends that the relations among the gentry in the county inexplicably deteriorated, and they continued to fight with each other, and finally had to report to the government and have the officials administer justice.
But the final result is often that the property and land of the families involved in the lawsuit are divided up by the various gentry. Zhan Ershisi is well versed in politics and has always made many friends. He never takes credit for himself and even takes the initiative to give credit to other gentry, helping them to gain fame secretly, which makes the relationship between the gentry in the county more and more strained.
As for the land and property left behind by the gentry, he never monopolized it, but shared it together with all the gentry. Moreover, he only took what he should take and was not greedy at all.
After all, his profits have always been from both the open and hidden ends, so this is not a big deal.
With this sensible approach, Mr. Zhan finally gained a firm foothold in the local area.
Mr. Zhan always did things from beginning to end. Even after he dominated the local area and became the largest local gentry, he never withdrew his support for the current county magistrate and his attitude towards him has always been very close.
While the magistrate was proud of having found a close friend in this remote place, he also felt regretful that the local education was poor and no juren had been born in many years.
Unfortunately, he didn't know that there were some talented people in the local area, but they were all seduced and corrupted by Zhan Ershisi.
There is no other way. If a juren appears in the local area, there will definitely be a large number of people who will submit their contributions. In a blink of an eye, a local gentry will appear, and he will definitely be the biggest in the future.
It was easy for him to kill a gentry, but if he killed a juren, then the matter would be serious and might attract attention from above. By then, the law would be enforced and he did not want to be brought to justice.
Therefore, before those talented men passed the imperial examination, Zhan Ershisi would ask people to make friends with them, lure them into eating, drinking and having fun, and waste a lot of time on enjoyment. When they failed to pass the imperial examination, he would recruit them to work as accountants and make money for his family. This was the best option.
As for winning over others, it is certainly effective before they become juren. But once they become juren, the status will be reversed in an instant. At that time, as an ordinary person, do you still want to ride on the head of the juren and act tyrannically?
If by some chance he goes one step further and becomes a Jinshi, then it would be impossible to say that all his property was prepared for the Jinshi master, and he would become the Jinshi master's lackey.
From now on, the only ones who can pass the imperial examination in this local area are the descendants of the Zhan family, and no one else!
Today, Mr. Zhan has become a local gentry. Supporting the mountain brothers is just a way to find them a job.
After all, there was no industry these days and the employment rate was low. Letting these people wander around in society would be irresponsible to society, so they would occasionally be brought out to enforce justice for them, strictly enforce ideological discipline, and only execute them after a thorough interrogation, and absolutely no indiscriminate killing was allowed.
However, after knowing that this world is the world of Dream of Red Mansions, Zhan Ershisi finally came up with a new idea. It would be a good choice to go to Beijing to plot against the Ning and Rong mansions, and then occupy their place and give his brothers a good life.
As for whether he can gain power in the court and usurp the throne in the future, let's just take it one step at a time!
(End of this chapter)
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