Hot flashes

In Jiangning, Zhao Mancang's house was raided. It took three days to move all the grain storage and cellar in the backyard.

They confiscated 120,000 taels of silver, 8,000 shi of grain, and 20 cartloads of silk and cloth.

In Suzhou, a handwritten letter from Wu Huai-ren to the Lu family was found in the warehouse of the Lu family business. The letter contained a distribution plan for the disaster relief grain, with even the proportion of the distribution listed.

In Changzhou, the account books of Zheng Family Grain Store were unearthed, which recorded how the Zheng family made a fortune during years of famine by manipulating grain prices over the past three years.

The figures on those account books were shocking—two years ago, when there was a severe drought in Jiangnan, the Zheng family transferred 30,000 shi of grain from other places and sold it to the people at a price of 300 wen per dou, while they bought it for only 40 wen.

With each transaction, they made a net profit of over 70,000 taels of silver. Half of that silver went into the Zheng family's private coffers, while the other half ended up in the pockets of certain officials in the capital, in exchange for more lenient salt permits, cheaper canal transport, and lower taxes.

When the Cui family's money shop was seized in Songjiang, more than a hundred boxes were carried out of the cellar, each filled with silver.

The money was piled up like a small mountain. The manager of the money shop knelt on the ground, crying and saying that the silver did not belong to the Cui family, but was deposited by the common people, and the imperial court could not take it away.

Han Zhang ignored him. He had the boxes sealed and cataloged one by one, then said to the shopkeeper, "Tell me, of all the money the common people deposited, which one did you pay interest on?"

The shopkeeper opened his mouth, but couldn't say a word.

Cui's Money Shop operated in Songjiang for twenty years, never paying a single penny of interest to the people who deposited their money. Instead, it charged all sorts of handling fees, storage fees, and errand fees when people withdrew their money, with numerous and varied charges.

The people dared not speak out against their anger, because in the entire Songjiang Prefecture, only the Cui family owned a money exchange; if you didn't deposit your money with them, there was nowhere else to deposit it.

The seizure operation lasted for a full two weeks.

In just half a month, more than two hundred shops, estates, and residences in the seven prefectures of Jiangnan were seized. More than three hundred managers, shopkeepers, and accountants were detained.

The confiscated silver, grain, cloth, and medicine amounted to no less than a million taels of silver.

Those supplies were transported to the official granaries of various prefectures and added to the disaster relief accounts for the purpose of repairing dikes, purchasing grain, and resettling disaster victims.

Han Zhang had a notice posted in front of each of the sealed-off shops. The notice contained only one sentence: "These unscrupulous merchants collude with corrupt officials, disrupting the government. Their property will be confiscated and used for disaster relief."

Those managers and shopkeepers who usually bullied the common people by relying on the power of their aristocratic families now had their heads down as they were led onto prison carts and passed through the crowd like rats crossing the street, hated by everyone.

Han Zhang did not stay in Suzhou for long. After sealing up the Lu family's trading company and the Cui family's money shop, he rushed to Huzhou without stopping.

Huzhou was the territory of the Zheng family. The Zheng family's businesses in Huzhou were even larger than those of the Lu family in Suzhou. They had more than a dozen grain stores alone, spread throughout the counties of Huzhou.

Nearly a quarter of Zhao Mancang's account books were related to Huzhou, and the amount of silver involved was so large that even Han Zhang gasped in shock.

There are more than thirty account books alone, spanning back to the reign of the retired emperor of the previous dynasty. The people involved range from Wu Huai-ren to several imperial envoys, from prefects and magistrates of various prefectures in Jiangnan to officials of the Six Ministries in the capital, and from the Cui, Lu, and Zheng families to other large and small aristocratic families.

Those account books were like an intricate net, encompassing the entire Jiangnan region's officialdom, business world, and scholarly circles.

Han Zhang packed the account books and letters into boxes overnight, sealed them, and sent them to the capital with fifty imperial guards, led by Colonel Wei himself, by express courier.

Before leaving, he held Wei Xiaowei's hand and said only one sentence: "Be careful on the road. If this thing is lost, we will both be executed."

Commandant Wei nodded, mounted his horse, and led the group of men into the night.

Han Zhang stood at the entrance of the villa, watching the torches recede into the distance, standing there for a long time in the night wind. The wind blew in from Taihu Lake, carrying moisture and coolness, making his robes flutter loudly.

The account books and letters were sent to the capital.

That night, Xiao Jue issued an imperial edict that bypassed the cabinet and the Ministry of Justice, and was sent directly to the Censorate, the Ministry of Justice, and the Court of Judicial Review.

The imperial edict stated that, effective immediately, the three judicial departments would jointly investigate the corruption case in Jiangnan, and all officials involved, regardless of rank or personal relationship, would be suspended from their duties pending investigation. The edict was sealed with the bright red imperial seal, like a drop of congealed blood.

The aristocratic families' counterattack came faster and was more vicious than expected.

Several officials from the Zheng family who served as censors in the court began to frequently submit memorials.

The contents of the memorials varied widely—some impeached Han Zhang for "abusing his power and disturbing and harming the people" in Jiangnan, saying that his methods of sealing up shops were too brutal, causing many innocent merchants to go bankrupt;

Some impeached Zhou Heng for "forming cliques for personal gain and deceiving the emperor," saying that he established schools in Jiangling to cultivate his own power so that he could rival Xiao Jue in the future.

Some impeached Xiao Jue for "trusting scoundrels and alienating loyal officials," saying that entrusting the government to a young man like Zhou Heng would inevitably lead to major trouble sooner or later.

The wording of those memorials became increasingly fierce and explicit, shifting from impeaching individuals to attacking the new policies, and from attacking the new policies to questioning Xiao Jue's rule.

Xiao Jue's hand had already reached deeper.

He issued an imperial decree to Han Zhang.

Han Zhang was appointed as the Right Vice Censor-in-Chief of the Censorate, temporarily in charge of the finances and expenditures of the seven prefectures in Jiangnan. All tax collections, disaster relief funds and grain allocations, and expenditures for water conservancy projects in the prefectures of Jiangnan were to be reviewed and approved by Han Zhang before they could be implemented.

The imperial decree directly seized control of the finances of Jiangnan. Taxes, disaster relief, and water conservancy—each item involved real money, and each was the lifeblood of powerful families.