My father ordered me to kill the emperor, but His Majesty bestowed a princess upon me instead.

Chapter 214 One Name

The old register of those who died from the plague in the three prefectures will be sent to Qingzhou tomorrow.

It sounds like normal business.

Local authorities update their registers every few years.

The old paper is torn.

The mark is blurred.

It's not unusual for new books to be copied in a unified manner.

When we found the 126 living people in Qingfeng, nothing that was normally done was going to be normal.

I had someone search for Xue Zhong.

He had the county seal on his person.

There is a master switch key.

There are two official documents that have not yet been sent.

The first letter was to the Jiangbei Governor's Office reporting a disturbance at the river works site.

It describes how Shen An led his old troops from the southwest to destroy the sluice gate and abduct unregistered river workers.

The second letter was a report on military affairs to the garrison commander of Qingzhou.

The report states that anti-military agents have infiltrated Qingfeng and have instigated a mutiny among more than one hundred river workers.

Both documents were stamped with the county seal.

The date is tomorrow.

The matter is not over yet.

The charges for the second day have already been written.

Xue Zhong saw me flipping through the letter but offered no explanation.

I roughly know that explaining it won't help.

I asked, "Who ordered the Three Offices to change the registers?"

"Governor's Office".

"Where are the documents?"

"County government office".

"Who signed it?"

"Governor of Jiangbei"

"name."

Xue Zhong shut up.

I said, "It's fine if you don't want to tell me."

"The print won't run away."

"We'll test it again in Qingzhou."

He looked up at me.

"You can't go to Qingzhou."

Why?

"Because the soldiers from Qingfeng County will arrest you."

I looked behind him.

The two hundred county soldiers stood in neat rows.

But no one stepped forward.

I recently asked a captain, "What's your name?"

"Zhao Heng".

"Magistrate Xue orders you to arrest me."

Zhao Heng gripped the knife.

"This humble general has heard you."

"Shall we do it?"

He glanced at the stone trough in the embankment.

Then he looked at the river workers whose ropes had been cut.

"This humble general requests to first verify the military order."

Xue Chong angrily retorted, "I am the county magistrate!"

Zhao Heng lowered his head.

"A county magistrate's order is not a military order."

This sentence sounds familiar to me.

The magistrate of Yong'an is not a magistrate.

The magistrate of Qingfeng County is almost no longer a magistrate.

The official seal is still there.

Nobody listened.

Power is something that is usually hidden in paper.

When it really comes down to killing someone you know, it will fall out of the paper.

I handed Xue Zhong over to the Imperial Guards.

Tao Kun and the clerk holding the blue token were separated to guard the prisoners.

He then ordered all the river workers to remain on the high ground.

I'm not going back to the work shed tonight.

Although the old sluice gate was blocked, the water level was still rising.

No one knows if there was a second layer of manipulation upstream.

For safety's sake, living people should stay away from water.

Bai Zhi set up three tables on the high ground.

The first person to be verified.

The second check.

The third name was added.

Ah Liu sighed when he saw the table.

"Are you going to yell again?"

"Is your voice still usable?"

He tried calling out.

The sound was like a broken gong.

"able."

"It just doesn't sound very good."

"I don't discriminate based on whether the person is alive or not."

I placed Du Cheng's revised workbook on the first table.

One hundred and twenty-six people from Qingfeng.

Twenty-three died.

Eight people turned around Qingxia.

One person is missing.

Ninety-four people were present.

A priori 94.

Feng Dashan was the first.

Originally from Qingfeng South Village.

In the autumn of the year before last, he was taken away by the county officials under the pretext of being transferred to another facility due to an epidemic.

The county government's death register recorded that he died of the plague three days later.

His wife and daughters received a bushel of burial rice.

There was only one bushel.

The account book, however, stated two shi (a unit of dry measure).

After joining the river engineering department, Feng Dashan was reassigned to Class 17.

I receive three shi of grain per month according to the accounts.

She actually ate two bowls of porridge every day.

In just two years, he earned more than seventy shi of grain for the county government, grain merchants, and the river management office.

I didn't take a single one home.

Bai Zhi asked, "Are the family members here?"

A cry came from outside the crowd.

A woman led a little girl through the crowd.

They rushed over after hearing about the accident at the river construction site.

When the woman saw Feng Dashan, she stood there, not daring to recognize him.

Feng Dashan didn't move either.

It's been two years since we last met.

He was so thin he was unrecognizable.

He also has a scar on his left cheek from moving stones.

The little girl spoke first.

"father?"

Feng Dashan squatted down.

Before he could even speak, the child had already lunged at him.

This sound was more accurate than any other imprint.

Angelica dahurica was noted after the name:

The wife and daughter claimed the child on the spot.

The old injury matches.

They speak the same dialect.

The old tax register is consistent.

All three certificates are complete.

Temporary reinstatement.

I affixed the imperial seal to open the account.

There is not a single genuine county seal in Qingfeng.

Xue Zhong's seal cannot be used for the time being.

The Censorate then issued the certificate first.

Each receipt states:

After the new magistrate and the new county seal of Qingfeng County are verified, the official household registration will be completed.

However, prior to this, one may not be detained for being unregistered.

Transshipment is prohibited.

Farmland must not be seized.

No more deaths from the epidemic should be reported.

Zhao Heng stood by and watched for a long time.

Suddenly he asked, "Lord Shen."

"What if the county government doesn't recognize this document?"

Do you admit it?

He was stunned.

"This humble general?"

"The Qingfeng garrison also stamped their seal."

"Proof that this person is alive before you today."

Zhao Heng looked at Xue Zhong.

The county magistrate has been detained.

He eventually retrieved the military camp's official seal.

It is stamped in the third place on the voucher.

The county seal was not recognized.

The military seal is the first thing to be recognized.

Just because the accounts in one place are in disarray doesn't mean all the records have to be in disarray as well.

The second person.

The third person.

The seventeenth.

The more you say the name, the more complicated it becomes.

More and more family members are also arriving on the high ground.

Some people rushed over from the village overnight.

Some people were too afraid to come, so they asked their neighbors to bring old clothes or letters from home as witnesses.

Some people have no family members.

Bai Zhi then examined the old injuries sustained during the river construction.

Check the accent of the same village.

Check if they remember which year the flood swept over which bridge.

An imposter can recite a name.

It's very difficult to memorize the life of an entire village.

The sixty-third person was mute.

He changed the name on the register to Zhang Shun.

River Work No. 9, Section B.

He cannot speak.

He had no old belongings on him.

Xue Zhong's men immediately sneered.

"This person cannot prove their innocence."

The mute man was sweating profusely with anxiety.

He kept gesturing.

Nobody understood it.

Ah Liu stared at it for a long time.

Suddenly he said, "He's talking about trees."

Everyone looked at him.

"Can you understand it?"

"can't read."

"How did you know?"

"He always draws trees."

The mute man nodded.

He then pointed to the soles of his feet.

Then it pointed to the distant south.

Angelica dahurica turns over old books.

Zhang Shun's ancestral home is Nanhuai Village.

At the entrance of the village stands an old locust tree that takes three people to encircle.

He injured his throat when he fell from a tree as a child.

The old medical records are still there.

The crowd rushed over to check his right leg.

Sure enough, there was an old, crescent-shaped scar.

An elderly man from Nanhuai Village also recognized him.

"It's a straight."

"Before his mother died, she waited at the village entrance every day."

Zhang Shun knelt on the ground.

She didn't cry out loud.

He simply pressed his forehead against the certificate of reinstatement.

Some people can't even cry out for justice.

Therefore, the accountant should speak up for him.

One hundred and twenty-six names were checked until dawn.

All ninety-four people present were issued temporary reinstatement certificates.

The names of the twenty-three victims were recorded in the list of the dead on the embankment.

It's no longer called loss or damage.

Eight people who transferred to Qingxia have been added to the investigation list.

The last river worker who escaped was named Qi Xiaoman.

A native of Beicun Village, Qingfeng.

They escaped from the live cell last winter.

There is another record from the county government.

It is written that he stole grain, injured people, and fell into the river and died.

Died again.

After reviewing all the accounts, Bai Zhi discovered that the certificate of Qi Xiaoman's remains had no family fingerprints.

There is only one ship's seal.

Chen's Boat Shop at Baishuidu.

I looked at the river not far away.

Last night, an old salt worker from the lime kiln said that someone had changed vehicles at Baishuidu.

This ship may not be transporting corpses.

It also transports living people.

"Check Chen Ji Shipping Company."

Zhao Heng volunteered, "This subordinate will lead the men."

I look at him.

"Can I trust him?"

He paused for a moment.

"Lord Shen can send his imperial guards along."

At least they didn't claim to be absolutely loyal.

There are too many people who are absolutely loyal these days.

It's more believable if someone is willing to be monitored.

Around noon, the county officials who had been searching finally returned the documents for exchanging records from the three prefectures.

It was not written by the governor himself.

It was drafted by the Secretariat of the Governor's Office.

The title reads:

Order to re-enumerate the old records of those who died of the epidemic in the three prefectures north of the Yangtze River.

The order requires Yong'an, Qingfeng, Qingzhou South County, and all counties along the river to send all records of deaths from the epidemic, records of land wiped out, and records of grain distribution for the past three years to Qingzhou Prefecture.

After the old registers have been verified, they will be cancelled.

It's not about destroying.

It means the account has been closed.

Even after destruction, you can still see the ashes.

To cancel an item's registration, simply write "Old book is void" on the new booklet.

From now on, even if the old name still exists, it can no longer be used as proof.

The document was not signed by the official in charge.

There was only one official seal of the Governor of Jiangbei.

Bai Zhi stared at it for a long time.

"The seal is real."

I am now quite calm when I hear those words.

"What about time?"