A Good Landlord in the Tang Dynasty: Starting from the Village Chief

Chapter 180 Corruption Befell Li Yi

The ten-day holiday passed quickly.

Li Yi wanted to stay in the countryside for a few more days, but the Palace Director Fan Fang sent the Farm Supervisor Yu Wenying to pick him up in person.

"Mr. Hua Zheng's presence has brightened up my humble abode."

Yuwen Ying looked at Li Yi's Wuji Fort and could not help but exclaim, "Your Majesty's favor for the Earl of Qianshui is truly unmatched. He offered him three official positions in half a year. Although the Earl of Qianshui declined all of them, he still gave him three titles and promoted him successively.
He even ordered the construction of this Wuji Castle for the Marquis of Qianshui. How enviable!

The mere word "built by imperial decree" carries unparalleled value. The fort was built for Li Yi by the emperor's order, and the money and manpower were provided by the national treasury.

Yu Wenying came today mainly because of the greenhouse issue.

"Last time, the Censor impeached the Palace Supervisor for building a greenhouse to grow flowers and vegetables and sell them to the nobles. This matter has been concluded.

Your Majesty said that the Palace Garden Supervisor's actions are not considered as competing with the people for profit, nor are they against the will of Heaven."

The emperor's words settled the matter.

Li Yi, the deputy supervisor of the palace gardens, took advantage of the convenience of his department to engage in side business. There was nothing wrong with that. The emperor even criticized Dou Zhiyuan and asked him to supervise some areas that should be supervised.

Then,
Greenhouse sideline business plan restarted,

Fan Fang specially asked Yuwen Ying to ask Li Yi to go back and take charge of this matter, as he was too lazy to take care of the miscellaneous affairs anyway.

Yuwen Ying was very supportive of Li Yi's greenhouse side business. He was eager to get the business started as soon as possible so that everyone could share the profits.

Although he was the descendant of Duke Xu, he was very greedy, not only greedy but also a little stupid.

Fan Fang once reminded Li Yi not to get too close to this guy.

Back when Yang Jian usurped the Zhou Dynasty and established the Sui Dynasty, he slaughtered the Yuwen family of the Northern Zhou Dynasty and eliminated the remaining forces of the Northern Zhou Dynasty. However, two members of the Yuwen family survived.

They are the Yuwen Kai family and the Yuwen Shu family.

Both families came from the Xianbei Poyetou clan, and neither was a member of the Northern Zhou royal family. Yuwen Xin was a supporter of Yang Jian, so both Yuwen Kai and Yuwen Xin were highly appreciated by Yang Jian. Their elder brother Yuwen Shan also inherited their father's title of Duke of Xu, Yuwen Xin was also granted the title of Duke of Qi, and Yuwen Kai was granted the title of Duke of Anping.

Later, Yuwen Xin was executed for treason, Yuwen Shan was implicated and stripped of his title and demoted to a commoner, and Yuwen Kai was also implicated and stripped of his title.
It was not until he was ordered to build the imperial mausoleum and Empress Dugu was buried that his title was restored due to his merits.

However, the title of Duke of Xu was later granted by Yang Guang to his confidant Yuwen Shu, who had contributed to Yang Guang's enthronement.

This is also the reason why Yuwen Huaji, the son of Yuwen Shu, went north after killing the king in Jiangdu, was defeated at Tongshan and fled to Weizhou. Seeing that he was about to perish, he still shouted that life is about to end, so why not become emperor one day? After becoming emperor, he named his country Xu.

These two families,
But now they have all declined.

Yuwen Ying was only an eighth-rank official.

Although Yu Wenzhi founded a country and proclaimed himself emperor, it did not last long.

However, his younger brother Yuwen Shiji was very smart. When his brothers rebelled and killed the king, he always claimed to the outside world that he was not aware of it and had no involvement.

After Yu Wenhuaji proclaimed himself emperor, he appointed Yuwen Shiji as the King of Shu and the Minister of Internal Affairs, but he accepted Feng Deyi's suggestion and took the initiative to request to go to Jibei County to collect grain and recruit soldiers there.

Wei Zheng was ordered to go to Shandong to recruit and pacify the rebels and to form an alliance with Yuwen Shiji. Yuwen Shiji secretly sent a servant to meet Wei Zheng, and also followed Xiao Shisanlang back to Chang'an to meet Li Yuan and presented Li Yuan with a golden cup.

To express the intention to submit.

In fact, Yuwen Shiji's various actions were not really against his brothers, but a preservation strategy for the noble families when facing a crisis.

Yuwen Huaji was doomed to fail, so a part of the Yuwen family had to survive. So at this time, they let Yuwen Shiji openly go against his brothers.
He even broke away from Yuwen Zhiji and ran to Jibei, and secretly communicated with Li Yuan, all in order to preserve the Yuwen family. In fact, Yuwen Zhiji was also secretly communicating with Luoyang.

No matter whether Li Yuan or Wang Shichong will rule the world in the future,

At least one branch of the Yuwen family can be preserved.

The same was true for Yuwen Ying. He was originally the Shaoqing of the Ministry of Agriculture in Luoyang. When Li Mi approached Luoyang and his power was at its peak, he immediately ran to join Li Mi.

But later he found that Li Yuan was more likely to win the world, so he abandoned Li Mi and fled to Guanzhong to join Li Yuan.

He is a fence-sitter, swayed by the wind, but for Yuwen Ying, for the sake of the Yuwen family, he can only waver like this.

He would never be willing to take his family to be buried with the loser.

Although Li Yuan only gave him an eighth-rank official position after returning to Chang'an, he still had to endure it. A real man must be able to bend and rise. Even when facing his boss Li Yi, who was only sixteen years old, he still had to smile at all times.

Li Yi didn't entertain Yuwen Ying much and went back to Chang'an with him directly.

Du Shiniang and the others stayed in Wuji Fort for a few more days.
On the way back to Chang'an with Yuwen Ying, they were escorted by the imperial cavalry and followed by servants. Yuwen Ying envied Li Yi's popularity and favor. Dou Zhiyuan of the Dou family impeached Li Yi and was actually reprimanded by the emperor. Li Yi was a royal relative, the governor of Yizhou, and the son of Duke Deng.

along the way,

Yuwen Ying wanted to build a good relationship with Li Yi, but Li Yi remembered Fan Fang's words and was neither cold nor indifferent to him, just polite.

Back to Chang'an,

The greenhouse is open again.

Moreover, Li Yi discovered that there were more than a dozen greenhouses than originally planned, and the number of vegetables and flowers to be planted also increased.

"This is arranged by this humble official. Since the Saint supports the Deputy Supervisor, we must do a great job this time. This winter is long, and fresh vegetables and flowers are in short supply.
But there are many nobles and officials in Chang'an, and many of them are willing to buy greenhouse vegetables and flowers. As long as we can grow them, we don't have to worry about selling them.
Let’s do it big this time.”

Looking at Yu Wenying's excited expression and listening to his ambitious plan to make money, this guy is really greedy.

Li Yi's original intention of building a greenhouse was to increase the income of the officials and gardeners of the palace, to provide some welfare for everyone, and even to increase the capital of the government office.
But Yuwen Ying wanted to make a fortune from this, and even thought about using the money as public capital after making money, and using it to lend out public money to earn high interest.

He had even figured out how to divide the money he earned: how much the director would take, how much the deputy director would take, and how much he, the director of the farm, would take. There wasn't much left for the government office, and he hadn't planned to give much to the gardeners or the gardeners.

After Li Yi looked at some of the construction orders given by this guy, he found that he was only interested in money.

The material costs and labor costs for greenhouse construction were all falsely reported.

Li Yi just took a quick glance and found that this guy had made many false reports.

Just to build a greenhouse, they quoted at least several times more money. They are really brave.

Seeing that he was staring at the numbers, Yu Wenying explained quietly, "This is a temporary number. I'll make it more neat later. It won't be visible."

Li Yi turned his head and looked at him.
He chuckled twice, "Brother Qianshui, you should know that my uncle is Yuwen Kai. He was in charge of designing and building the two capitals of Chang'an and Luoyang. Building these greenhouses is very simple for me."

Seeing Li Yi's unhappy expression, he quickly added: "Please rest assured, Deputy Supervisor, I understand all the rules. I will definitely not reduce the share of the Director and Deputy Supervisor."

"You and the director take half first,"

Li Yi looked at this guy, who was tall and strong, and looked like a rough warrior, with a big beard on his face, and seemed to be very honest.
Who could be so greedy and cunning?

The Xianbei defeated the Yetou clan,

But apart from the fact that he looks a bit like a barbarian, I really can't tell that this guy is any different from the Han people.
In fact, the Xianbei people have basically merged with the Han people.
The real Xianbei people may be the part of the Xianbei Murong Tuyuhun who were left in the northern frontier or moved to Qinghai, and are now the upper class of the Tuyuhun Kingdom.

Li Yi really wanted to spit on this guy's face.
He was so bold to take it and even wanted to give half to Li Yi and Fan Fang, but Li Yi would not be grateful to him at all.

Does Li Yi need this little money?

Is it necessary to be greedy from here?

He was greedy for this little bit of money and left an indelible stain. He was only sixteen and it would be sooner or later that it would be exposed.

"Lord Hua Zheng, which of your clerks prepared this list? Was he drunk at the time? Is there a decent, accurate figure here? Or did he falsify the bills to embezzle and enrich himself?"
Did you know that the Supervisory Censor Dou Zhiyuan impeached us for building a greenhouse last time? Now we are still so stupid as to do these things.

Isn't that like handing the handle of a knife to someone else and inviting them to stab us?

How could Lord Hua Zheng not see clearly that this bastard subordinate wanted to be killed by him? "

Yuwen Ying did not expect Li Yi to react like this. In his mind, Li Yi was born a Taoist priest and was young. It was said that in order to get close to the Du family, he married Du Shiniang and paid a compensation of one million as a marriage gift and another one million as a betrothal gift.

Such a person must love money very much. How can he not be happy when he gets the chance to be greedy?

Who knew that Li Yi would curse him so harshly? Although he was talking about his subordinate Shu Lingshi, Yuwen Ying was not stupid. He knew that he was speaking indirectly and was actually pointing fingers at him.

Yuwenying was very angry.

But in the end I didn't dare to resist.

"From now on, I will take over the greenhouse affairs. Lord Yuwen, you are the supervisor of the farms. Just take care of your duties and do your part."

Li Yi immediately summoned the two supervisors and the chief clerk of the Palace Garden Supervisor and announced the arrangements to them.

From now on, Yu Wenying will no longer be in charge of the greenhouse side business, and he will manage everything directly.

He even forbade Yuwen Ying to go to the greenhouse in the future.

Li Yi drove Yuwen Ying back to the Agricultural Bureau without giving him any face. This kind of black sheep would be harmed by him sooner or later if he stayed too close to him.

"Lord Yuwen, please hand over the greenhouse matter to me today."

Li Yi asked Yuwen Ying to fill in the gaps himself as soon as possible. After the handover, if there were any discrepancies in the accounts, Li Yi would handle it impartially.

Yuwen Ying was speechless after being confronted by Li Yi. He had originally wanted to make a fortune from this incident, and was even willing to split half of it between Li Yi and Fan Fang.

But who knew that Li Yi would have such an attitude.

He stood there awkwardly, and could only nod his head in sweat.

Li Yi asked him to deal with it first and then come back to hand it over.

He once again stated to the palace officials in the hall that this time he was setting up a greenhouse to do some side business, and it was also for the benefit of everyone.

Therefore, things must be done flawlessly, without giving anyone a chance to criticize or exploit.

Walk upright and stand straight.

"I will spare no effort to fight for what I should fight for you. But if you don't have any bad thoughts, don't think about them or try to get them.
If you reach out, you will be caught, and if you are caught, your hand will be chopped off."

"A gentleman loves wealth, but he must earn it in a proper way. I also know that the salaries of low-ranking officials are meager, and it's not easy for them to live in Chang'an, so I will try every possible way to provide some benefits for everyone, but I will not tolerate any crooked means."

As soon as these words came out,
Everyone has different expressions.
Some people were also very excited. After all, this deputy supervisor was not just talking big, he was actually planning and doing things.
Even when Li Yi announced the share ratio of the future greenhouse profits, although there were differences in the ranks of officials, clerks, gardeners, gardeners, etc., the differences were not too exaggerated. Among the expected income, the lowest-level gardeners and gardeners could also receive a good subsidy.

Li Yi finally announced,

"The weather is getting colder, and the Winter Solstice is coming up in a few days. I'm going to prepare some Winter Solstice gifts for everyone these days. There will be rice, flour, oil, salt, firewood, charcoal, fish, and meat. The amount may not be much, but as long as we work hard, it will definitely get better and better, and there will be more and more."

These words were more realistic than any empty promises. Everyone cheered and applauded the young deputy supervisor.

Some even can't wait for the Winter Solstice welfare gifts to be distributed.

(End of this chapter)