Da Ming: The system granted me immortality; I clock in every day.

Zhu Qizhen grabbed a bronze paperweight from the table and smashed it hard on the ground, shattering a gold brick into pieces.

Wang Zhen was terrified and scrambled out of the hall, disappearing into the torrential rain.

Zhu Qizhen slumped onto the dragon throne, clutching his hair tightly with both hands.

He was angry, not just because someone had embezzled funds.

It was this embezzlement that touched his most painful and humiliating bottom line!

For the past eight years, under Gu Yannian's clutches, he had to grind grain under the scorching sun in order to save a few dozen taels of transportation fees.

To calculate the cost of a fire, one must go hungry for three days and three nights.

Even as the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, he had to calculate the cost of drinking a bowl of chilled plum juice for a long time!

He was forced into becoming a miser, a stingy accountant emperor to the core!

But now?

He scrimped and saved, painstakingly saving every penny he could find using an abacus.

They actually stole huge amounts of it using such despicable and clumsy methods from these officials!

"My money...that's all my hard-earned money!"

Zhu Qizhen's eyes were red-rimmed, and he let out a wild, beast-like whimper.

Half an hour later.

As the rain subsided slightly, the doors of the Wenhua Hall were opened.

Zhou Lin, the Left Vice Minister of the Ministry of Works, entered the hall with three river works supervisors, both soaking wet.

Zhou Lin was over forty years old, with a long beard and a lean face, looking like a well-read Confucian scholar.

Although he was summoned urgently, he was not too flustered.

He believed he had done a flawless job with the accounts for repairing the Yellow River dikes.

The purchase of those stones, the food rations for the laborers, and even the losses caused by water erosion were all unspoken rules in the accounts of river works throughout history.

The young emperor before them, even though he had studied arithmetic with Chief Minister Gu for several years.

But they were just fledglings raised in the deep palace, how could they understand the complexity and danger of the Yellow River's hydrology?

As long as you use grand theories like celestial phenomena and water conditions, you can definitely fool them.

"Your humble servant, Zhou Lin, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Works, along with his colleagues, pays his respects to Your Majesty!"

Zhou Lin and the others knelt on the ground and performed the grand ceremony of a subject to a ruler.

Zhu Qizhen sat behind his desk, neither ordering the emperor to rise nor speaking.

The hall was deathly silent, with only the sound of rain dripping from the eaves outside the window.

In this chilling silence.

A series of unhurried footsteps came from the direction of the Grand Secretary's office.

Gu Yannian, holding an oil-paper umbrella with green bamboo ribs, walked calmly into the Wenhua Hall.

He handed the umbrella to the eunuch beside him and brushed off the dampness from his clothes.

He walked to the armchair next to him, sat down, picked up his teacup, and looked like he was watching a play with a relaxed air.

Seeing Gu Yannian arrive, Zhou Lin felt even more at ease.

Grand Secretary Gu has never concerned himself with the minutiae of the affairs of the Six Ministries.

With the Grand Secretary present today, the young emperor certainly wouldn't dare to be too presumptuous.

"Zhou Lin".

After a long while, Zhu Qizhen's icy voice finally rang out in the hall.

"Your humble servant is here."

Zhou Lin bowed respectfully.

"I ask you, regarding the repair of the breach in Kaifeng Prefecture, the Ministry of Works reported the purchase of 120,000 stone blocks from Qingzhou."

"The document states that each stone slab, including quarrying, polishing, and waterway transportation costs, is worth a total of three taels and two mace of silver. Is that correct?"

Zhu Qizhen's tone was frighteningly calm.

Zhou Lin felt relieved; as expected, he was asking about the accounts.

He had already prepared his answer, and immediately raised his head, calmly replying:

"Your Majesty, that is indeed the case. Qingzhou stone is extremely hard and is most suitable for building a large dam. However, quarrying it is difficult, and the water level of the canal has been unstable recently, making upstream travel quite expensive."

"Three taels and two mace is the actual price after my humble servant and my colleagues have repeatedly negotiated it down."

"Repeatedly trying to lower the price?"

Zhu Qizhen suddenly let out a cold laugh, which sounded particularly sharp in the empty hall.

He suddenly stood up, took a few steps down the steps, and came to Zhou Lin.

"What a convenient excuse for repeatedly trying to lower the price!"

Zhu Qizhen grabbed the account book and slammed it hard onto Zhou Lin's face.

"Do you take me for a three-year-old child, or do you think my eight years of scheming have been for nothing?!"

Zhou Lin was hit so hard he saw stars, but he still stubbornly tried to explain himself.

"Your Majesty, please calm your anger! Every word I have spoken is true. If even a single word is false, may I be struck by lightning! The waterway is treacherous, and many ships have capsized along the way, resulting in such losses..."

"Bullshit!"

Zhu Qizhen flew into a rage and kicked Zhou Lin in the shoulder.

He kicked the high-ranking official, a third-rank official, so hard he rolled on the ground.

The eunuchs and officials in the hall were all terrified.

No one expected that this emperor, who was always obsequious in front of the Grand Tutor, would actually swear in public and beat up an important minister in the Wenhua Hall!

Only Gu Yannian, sitting in the armchair, had a glint in his eyes as he picked up his teacup and took a sip.

"You're bringing up shipping costs with me? And losses?!"

Zhu Qizhen's eyes were bloodshot as he pointed at Zhou Lin's nose and began to curse.

"Qingzhou is only 700 li from Kaifeng by waterway! According to the regulations for water transport in the Ming Dynasty, a 500-liao cargo ship can carry 400 stone blocks when fully loaded!"

"From Qingzhou downstream down the Grand Canal, then upstream on the Yellow River, employing twenty boatmen, along with the captain's wages and food, the cost of one trip, even if we barely manage, is only forty taels of silver!"

"The shipping cost, when converted to the price of each stone, is a mere one tael of silver!"

Zhu Qizhen spoke faster and faster, the abacus beads etched into his bones pounding wildly in his mind.

"A single raw stone from the Qingzhou quarry costs five qian of silver! Polishing it costs two qian of labor! In total, a single stone slab, dug from the mountains and transported to the dike in Kaifeng Prefecture, only costs a maximum of eight qian of silver!"

"You fucking quoted me three taels and two qian!"

The young emperor's voice echoed throughout the palace.

Like heavy hammer blows, they pounded on Zhou Lin's eardrums, making them ring.

"You embezzled two taels and four mace from a single stone! That's 288,000 taels of silver for 120,000 stone blocks!"

"You bastard, did you sell me stones from Qingzhou as gold bricks?!"

Zhou Lin's face turned ashen, and his whole body trembled like a leaf.

He never imagined that the emperor in the deep palace would know so much about the cargo capacity of the grain transport ships, the wages of the porters, and the original price of the quarries!

This is hardly the emperor.

He's practically a seasoned accountant who's spent half his life working on the docks!

But he was a seasoned official and knew that admitting to the crime would be a capital offense punishable by the extermination of his entire family.

"Your Majesty! I have been wronged!"

Zhou Lin knelt down and crawled to Zhu Qizhen's feet with a thud, weeping bitterly.

"The river's hydrology is complex, and dangers are frequent. In order to appease the river god, many sacrifices are offered along the way."

"Moreover, the stones are heavy, and many sink to the bottom of the river during loading and unloading. This loss from sinking into the river must also be taken into account!"

"Your humble servant has absolutely no intention of embezzling!"

Upon hearing the words "damaged" and "sunk to the bottom of the river," Zhu Qizhen's eyes instantly became utterly empty.

Then, a chilling aura of malevolence erupted from him.

He remembered that summer, in the wasteland of Xiyuan.

He was carrying a fifty-pound sandbag. Gu Yannian had Wang Zhen cut a slit in the sandbag with a knife, and sand flowed out along the way.

Gu Yannian told him that it was a loss.

He cried his heart out under the scorching sun over that little bit of sand that had slipped through his fingers.

He knew that behind those losses lay the blood and sweat of countless laborers, the very lifeblood of his Ming Dynasty!

"Loss... in sacrifice..."

Zhu Qizhen murmured softly.

Suddenly he threw his head back and burst into laughter, laughing so hard that tears streamed down his face.

"When I was carrying sandbags in the Western Garden, 30% of the sand leaked out of each bag, and I was so distressed that I couldn't eat for days. Tell me, did the stones sink to the bottom?"