Destroy Jin and conquer Song, and carry the Northern Expedition through to the end

Chapter 872 Governing Shu Requires Deep Thinking Since Ancient Times

"Shocking, absolutely shocking!"

There was a tall stack of documents on the table in front of Lu You, but he only flipped through two of them before he started to beat his chest and stamp his feet in frustration in the main hall of the government office.

“Look, look! This is a family of good people, this is the pillar of the nation.” Lu You picked up a document and began to read it carefully: “On the sixth day of the tenth month, according to the confession of Hu Ba, the adopted son of Wang Hui, twelve skeletons were unearthed under the peony garden pavilion in the garden. According to the coroner’s examination, the oldest corpse had been dead for fifteen years, and the youngest corpse had not even decomposed completely!”

According to Hu Ba, one of the female corpses was his wife. She was beaten to death last year for stealing a bundle of cotton wadding!

"Counselor Liu! I remember when I first arrived, you introduced me to the sights and sounds of Chengdu, saying that only the peony is truly a national beauty, and the peonies in the Prince's Mansion are even more unparalleled in the world. Did you know back then that these peonies eat human flesh?!"

Having said that, Lu You threw the document in his hand to the ground, and the official from the Pacification Commissioner's Office who had been named turned ashen-faced. He tried to bow, but his legs gave way and he collapsed to the ground: "This humble official... this humble official truly knows nothing about this! This... this sordid matter, even if Magistrate Wang has lost his mind, cannot be known to outsiders! I hope that Prime Minister Lu will understand!"

Lu You hummed in agreement, neither confirming nor denying, then picked up another document: "According to Wang Hui's adopted son, Wang Jiuwu, when he was twelve years old, he accidentally killed the Wang family's hawk while hunting sparrows. As a result, not only did his whole family have to wear mourning clothes for that feathered beast, but he also sold himself into slavery to compensate for the loss... Oh, no... he sold himself into slavery for his adopted son..."

Where is the magistrate of Chengdu?

Another person stepped forward.

Lu You also threw the document in his hand to the ground: "This happened two years ago. You were the magistrate then! I remember you wrote to the court, saying that the people of Chengdu were simple and honest, and that everyone was harmonious and at ease, which was the great harmony described by the sages."

Tell me now, where exactly is it acceptable for a person to wear mourning clothes for an animal?! Which saint allowed you to despise people and value things so much?!

The magistrate of Chengdu dared not speak, but stood there with a pale face.

Lu You picked up the documents on the table again: "These are for land grabbing, concubine snatching, street beatings, and unpaid debts..."

Lu You would pick up a book, read only the title, and then throw it aside, taking a full quarter of an hour to finish reading it.

In the end, the governor seemed to have lost his anger, and simply sighed, "I have always said that a family that accumulates good deeds will surely have abundant blessings. Conversely, won't those who commit many evils also be punished by heaven?"
Even if they escape this calamity, can the Wang clan truly endure for long?

The main hall of the government office fell silent for a moment.

Everyone knew that Lu You hadn't made these up. There were witnesses and physical evidence, but more importantly, they had all heard about these things before.

The powerful and wealthy clans are all like this; they can discipline their direct descendants, but they don't have the energy to discipline their collateral descendants, let alone those who use their power to bully others.

Local officials protect each other; as long as they don't cause any major incidents, they can cover for each other and ultimately make progress together.

The Wang family is deeply rooted and has many branches, which means that even if one out of ten of them is a villain, and that villain only commits one evil deed a year, the accumulated number of cases is still astronomical.

In the past, no one dared to investigate in detail, and even if someone did investigate, the Wang family could mobilize their network of connections to cover it up as much as possible.

However, the main branch of the Wang family has now been wiped out. Without them leading the way, who would dare to risk everything to deal with a mad governor?

Seeing that all the officials present remained silent, Zhao Buyou stood up and said loudly, "I knew that the person who could raise Qin Laogou's wife couldn't be a good person. I've learned something new today."

Colleagues, don't you all think they deserved to die?

Still, no one dared to answer.

Lu You didn't care. He used the investigation to demote several officials involved, then promoted a few others before leaving in a huff.

Another day passed, and as the rumors in the city grew stronger, some of the Wang family's collateral descendants could no longer bear it and instigated a civil uprising among the tenants, while also contacting the surrounding mountain people for backup.

However, this was the opportunity that Zhang Zhen had been waiting for.

Two thousand of the seven thousand soldiers from Lianghuai, who had been through bloody battles, were dispatched swiftly. With lightning speed, they not only easily quelled the civil unrest and captured several people surnamed Wang, but also took the opportunity to break through several mountain strongholds and capture all the villagers.

These mountain people lived in a mixed community of ethnic groups and were usually extremely fierce, but they had never seen the methods of a proper army before. Caught off guard, they were quickly wiped out.

To be honest, if this rebellion had actually succeeded and dragged on for a long time, Lu You might not have been able to escape being beheaded.

However, the useless behavior of the Wang family members gave Lu You an excellent excuse.

This is a rebellion!
Your Wang family is truly a thousand-year-old clan, deeply rooted and disregarding the Song Dynasty court, daring to rebel?!
After these traitors were brought back to Chengdu, the first thing that happened was that the newly appointed Prefect of Chengdu, Li Chong, promptly took his daughter home, forged a divorce agreement with the Prince's Mansion, and quickly defected. Rebellion carries the penalty of exterminating nine generations of one's family. Li Chong calculated that he was indeed within that lineage. If he didn't quickly sever ties and surrender, was he really going to wait for death?

What Wang Hui? I'm not familiar with him.

In my heart, there is only one sun: Lord Lu!
Lu You went from a butcher, executioner, and madman destined for ruin to a complete victory in less than twenty days. It's truly astonishing.

He truly deserves to be called one of the few commanders who understand military affairs; he is steady, accurate, and ruthless in his actions.

However, just as the people of Chengdu were preparing to follow Lu You in sharing the inheritance left by the Wang family, Lu You's new decree immediately caused panic and even fear throughout Chengdu.

The first thing to do was to inventory the Wang family's treasury and immediately transport the grain therein to Hanzhong to serve as provisions for Wu Lin's army.

This was to be expected, as the Guanzhong War had been going on for several years, and Sichuan was already exhausted, with supplies becoming intermittent, forcing Wu Lin to establish military farms in Guanzhong.

With this batch of grain, Wu Lin can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

The second thing is interesting. After finding the land deeds and house deeds of the Wang family, Lu You gave about one-tenth to Wang You and took out another 30% to give to the Wang family's adopted sons and daughters.

As is well known, because the State of Song raised the status of servants, abolished the lowly status, and established laws for protection, the relationship between servants and their masters was theoretically only one of employment.

However, theory is one thing, and practice is another.

The saying goes, "Where there's a policy, there's a countermeasure." Adopting sons and daughters was one such countermeasure devised by local powerful families in the State of Song.

You can forbid me from beating or killing servants, but it's not wrong for me to use the moral high ground of filial piety to deal with my adopted son and daughter.

Of course, this was still in its early stages. By the late Ming Dynasty, there were adopted sons and daughters everywhere, and even the law could not govern them, which eventually led to the Jiangnan slave rebellion.

Back to the present, although the trend of adopting sons and daughters has not yet spread, who doesn't know what this is all about? They're just a bunch of servants, do you, Lord Lu, really take them seriously?
However, Lu You pretended to be confused, saying that legally recognized adopted sons and daughters also have some inheritance rights, so why can't they inherit land after their parents' death?

I used to work at the Dali Temple. Do you people want to debate the law with me?

Don't forget, I not only have the weapon of criticism, but I am also skilled at using weapons to criticize!
The third thing was even more remarkable: Lu You, with a stroke of his pen, designated hundreds of thousands of acres of contiguous paddy fields for military settlement.

Of course, this was done in accordance with the law. Lu You returned those scattered and barren military settlements to the Wang family on a one-to-one basis, which was considered a fair trade.

Subsequently, Lu You gathered the scattered soldiers who had been stationed in the fields and began to divide the land for cultivation. This involved not only assigning them duties and land, but also granting them permanent land ownership!
This made the officials of Chengdu Prefecture completely uneasy.

This... this just becomes the Fubing system (a military system for conscripted soldiers), doesn't it?
Did Lu You want to become the military governor of Sichuan? A military governor of the Tang Dynasty, no less.

At that moment, Lu You announced the fourth thing.

All of Wang's remaining shops and land were nationalized, and the annual harvest would become "anti-corruption funds" for the entire Sichuan province, with everyone from minor officials to high-ranking officials receiving a share!

Admittedly, this policy has drawn opposition from many honest officials, or those with family ties to the government.

This is absolutely outrageous! Isn't this blatant plundering of the people's wealth by officials?

With such an official government in place, how can the people live in peace?

If this continues, can Sichuan still be known as the Land of Abundance?
However, most people in this world are just trying to make ends meet; they are genuinely short of a few coins, and therefore maintain a certain silent and cooperative attitude.

Some opportunists thought this was the beginning of suppressing the powerful and wealthy, and they couldn't wait to start framing those small landlords. But they were dealt with by Lu You with swift and decisive measures and were immediately imprisoned.

Now, even the local gentry families of Chengdu, such as the Fan family, who were already on the verge of a desperate fight, were confused by Lu You's intentions. They could only continue to submit memorials to the court while preparing for contingencies.

November arrived. With the impeachments in the court going nowhere, the land redistribution work around Chengdu Prefecture underway, and the arrest of Qin Hui's wife, Lady Wang, by Lu You himself, Fan Wenchang, the current head of the Fan family, could no longer sit still. Together with Lady Yuwen, he came to the Chengdu Prefecture government to pay his respects to the military governor.

The whole city was immediately focused on it.

(End of this chapter)