Start to be a martial arts hero from the famous people of Hengshan

Chapter 504 You all think I'm a fool, don't you?!
A mind of ice and snow, a world of glass, the night air is so clear.

This is the scenery in the capital in December. When Qian Zhongyi and others pushed four boxes to the Ou Mansion, they found that everyone in the mansion was in high spirits.

After the notification, Liu Qing personally received them in the hall.

Qian Zhongyi, Wang Haoba, Wang Chenger and Ma Xiaolin had met Liu Qing in Jiangxi. When they met again many years later, they felt that Mrs. Ou had grown a lot.

"Madam Ou, these are the letters that Lord Ou entrusted us to bring." Qian Zhongyi took out the thick stack of letters. Huai Wei stepped forward, took the letters and handed them to Liu Qing.

Liu Qing thanked him, opened the top package, and saw that it was divided into several portions.

The first one was written to myself, followed by ones written to Yue Lingshan, Qu Feiyan, Aokiji, and Lao Liu.

Liu Qing took out his own letter and gave the rest to Shi Jingnu beside him, asking her to take it to the backyard.

Qian Zhongyi continued, "There are four more boxes of gifts. Two boxes are some of the finest medicinal herbs that Xiang Danian collected in the northwest. They were specially brought back to honor Liu Renxia. One box is a gift that Lord Ou prepared for the family, and the other box is a little gift from the four of us."

"How can I feel embarrassed about this?" Liu Qing immediately called Hua An and asked him to prepare four generous gifts to thank the four people for helping to deliver the letter.

Wang Chenger quickly refused. How could he have the nerve to ask for a return gift from Lord Ou?

But Liu Qing had grown up after dealing with the ladies of various families in the capital over the years, and could speak touchingly at any time. The four of them were so moved that they felt it was imperative not to accept the gift this time.

Liu Qing took the opportunity to ask about Ou Zanghua's recent situation. After hearing that he had won the battle and was carrying out follow-up work in Yingtian Prefecture, Liu Qing felt slightly relieved.

Wang Haoba asked at this moment: "Madam Ou, I see the house is decorated with lights and colorful decorations, is there any happy event?"

"Yes!" Liu Qing smiled and nodded, saying, "There's a new member in the mansion, so everyone is very happy."

Upon hearing this, Ma Xiaolin immediately said, "I see. Then we have to show our support as well!"

"That's right!" Qian Zhongyi also nodded.

"It's good that you four have this intention. There's no need to express anything extra." Liu Qing shook his head and said gently.

"How can that be possible?" Wang Chenger stood up, bowed and said, "Madam Ou, please wait a moment. I will go and prepare it."

The other three also stood up and prepared together.

Liu Qing couldn't persuade them, so he just let them go. He had to wait for them to leave and then prepare more gifts for their return.

In the backyard, Yue Lingshan received a letter from Ou Zanghua. She excitedly opened it and read it. In addition to advising her to pay more attention to recuperation, the letter also reminded her to remember to change her practice method.

In addition, Ou Zanghua mentioned that he bought the villa at the foot of Lion Rock and gave it to Yue Lingshan as a gift.

He also promised Yue Lingshan that he would bring her back to live with him for a while when he was free.

So there was a land deed enclosed in her letter home.

Yue Lingshan pressed the letter from home against her majestic chest. Although she was already a mother of four children, she was still as shy as a young girl.

She looked at the sleeping little Ou Hua lying beside her, couldn't help but poke his little face, sighed and said: "If I hadn't given birth to you the day before yesterday, I would have gone to the south to accompany your father now."

In Qingyun Garden, Qu Feiyan was originally busy taking care of Ou Qu. After receiving the letter from her own master, she threw Ou Qu to the maid, and sat in the greenhouse with the letter to read it carefully.

Ou Zanghua knew that the girl was not good at taking care of children, so he told her that she didn't need to do it just for the sake of taking care of the child, as long as she felt comfortable. Ou Qu could ask Liu Qing to help take care of the child.

"Hmph, how could I not take care of Xuanlang? I obviously take good care of him!" Qu Feiyan smiled sweetly, and then heard Ou Qu crying. Her face fell and she felt like she had no desire to live again.

Two flowers bloom, one branch each.

After Ou Zanghua had dealt with all the affairs of Yingtian Prefecture, he ordered his military officials far away in Jiangxi to survey the land.

In fact, by the Zhengde period of the Ming Dynasty, the phenomenon of land annexation was very serious, and the frequent uprisings in Jiangxi, Sichuan and other places were closely related to land annexation.

Because people who grow flowers have a characteristic: as long as they can still live, they will live!
Only when you can no longer survive will you take up arms, overturn the table, and create a new world.

The data shows how greedy the landlords have been over the past hundred years.

In the 26th year of Hongwu, there were 8,576,000 hectares of farmland in the country that could pay grain taxes.

However, after more than a hundred years of development, by the 15th year of the Hongzhi reign, the amount of farmland available for paying grain taxes had been reduced to 4,228,000 hectares, and the country's land had been reduced by more than half.

What does it mean that the more you develop, the more you regress?

That’s it!

One of the reasons why Jiajing and Wanli, who came after Zhengde, were still able to hold on was the Liu Liu and Liu Qi uprisings, which wiped out a large number of landlords in the north, leaving the court with enough unowned land to stabilize the situation.

Another reason was that powerful men came from nowhere, including Zhang Juzheng in literature and Qi Jiguang in military, who managed to bring the situation back.

Zhang Juzheng attached great importance to land measurement. During his administration, land measurement was included in the country's important agenda.

Especially after the land survey order was officially promulgated, the imperial court clearly required local officials to implement it meticulously, and severe punishment measures would be taken for any violation of the regulations without any leniency.

In order to show his determination to carry out the survey, Zhang Juzheng took the lead in surveying all the fields in his family to ensure the determination and smooth progress of the survey movement.

Those who violated regulations and performed their duties poorly during the land survey process were severely punished by the court.

This series of measures made it possible to achieve greater results in land measurement.

However, compared to Zhang Juzheng who was measuring the land at the risk of offending the landlords, Ou Zanghua was obviously much more relaxed than him. Because the gentry landlords in Jiangxi had lost their temper. They were dealt with twice in just three months, first by Ou Zanghua and then by Wang Yangming. Even if it was replaced by the brainless Meng Huo, he could not bear this kind of blow.

It seems that the imperial court can easily crush them by sending out two people at random. Who can stand this?
Therefore, they are now completely powerless to stop Ou Zanghua and can only cooperate with Wu Chen in measuring the land and then pay the owed taxes in accordance with the rules.

If you don’t make up for it, you have to choose one from Northwest China, Liaodong and Guizhou.

Jiangsu, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Huguang, which had been paying close attention to the situation in Jiangxi, were all shocked. Then Huguang and Zhejiang were the first to breathe a sigh of relief because Ou Zanghua was now the Minister of Rites, Governor-General and Governor-General of Jiangsu, Fujian and Jiangxi.

The unlucky ones are people from Jiangsu, Fujian and Jiangxi. What does this have to do with them?

In addition to finding hidden land, Ou Zanghua also planned to change the uneven taxation in different places by measuring the fields, so that the fields would have a fixed number and the taxes would have a fixed amount.

After the survey, the amount of land was clearly defined, responsibilities were clearly divided, and the taxes to be borne became clear at a glance.

In this way, the previous chaotic and disorderly situation can be effectively reversed, the trend of further widening of the gap between the rich and the poor can be successfully curbed, and the undesirable phenomenon of the poor becoming poorer and the rich becoming richer can be avoided.

In addition, Ou Zanghua also referred to many measures of his "younger generation" Zhang Juzheng.

For example, before the Wanli period, land was measured using a complex and non-uniform method of measuring large and small acres. This method was not only cumbersome to operate, but also resulted in huge differences in measurement results, making it difficult to form accurate statistics.

After Zhang Juzheng's reform, this situation was fundamentally changed. He introduced a unified measurement standard, that is, 240 steps equal one mu. This measure greatly simplified the measurement and calculation process and improved work efficiency.

On the basis of unified measurement standards, Zhang Juzheng further implemented the policy of "unifying the taxation rules for official and private fields", that is, abolishing the tax differences between official and private fields, and levying the same grain tax on all fields regardless of whether they were fertile or barren.

This policy broke the previous unfair taxation phenomenon caused by powerful and wealthy officials occupying most of the people's land and poor farmers occupying most of the government land.

Before this, government-owned land was heavily taxed, while private land was relatively lightly taxed. This unreasonable method of collection seriously hindered social fairness and justice and must be changed.

After the unified taxation of government and private fields, Zhang Juzheng further divided all the fields into three categories, upper, middle and lower, and levied taxes separately.

This approach not only simplified the collection method, but also more fairly reflected the actual value of different fields. Compared with the previous complicated and cumbersome collection method, this new collection system is simpler and easier to implement, and is a major simplification and optimization of the tax system.

For example, based on the precise measurement of land, a detailed fish scale atlas was compiled again, which was another large-scale survey and statistics after the statistics in the early Ming Dynasty. The fundamental purpose of recompiling this atlas was to accurately grasp the actual amount of land, thereby effectively curbing the behavior of concealing land and evading taxes.

Given the unique attributes of land as real estate, the government is able to accurately survey and count the amount of land with the help of the fish scale atlas, thereby firmly controlling the lifeline of taxation.

For land owners and users, their rights and interests will be protected by law after government statistics and registration.

By thoroughly surveying the land and recompiling the fish-scale atlas, Zhang Juzheng not only strengthened the court's control over land resources, but also ensured a stable source of fiscal revenue for the court.

During the process of Zhang Juzheng's land survey, some officials, in order to ensure an increase in land and grain taxes, or to highlight their achievements, resorted to fraud and used various means such as "shortening the bow and step" and "falsely increasing the acreage" to deceive the court.

This kind of situation rarely happens in Ou Zanghua's place. One of the reasons is that the military officials were promoted from the bottom. They are well aware of the difficulties at the bottom and will not embarrass their fellow countrymen.

The second reason is that most of the soldiers in the Beijing camp who carried out this work came from the north, and this matter had no direct interest to them.

After the word-by-word explanation from the military officials of the Beijing Camp, the ordinary people finally understood that Lord Ou measured the land for their own good, and the policy of combining official and private land was firmly supported by the people.

For a time, Ou Zanghua's reputation in Jiangxi reached an unprecedented high. The house where he once lived in Yaoyuan County was now directly converted into a temple by the people. The main hall enshrined Emperor Wenchang, and the back hall enshrined Ou Zanghua's portrait.

Wang Yangming stood aside, looking at the small courtyard filled with incense. People crowded in row after row to pay their respects and then came out to give their seats to those who came later. He could not help but sigh. Compared with Ou Zanghua, he really had done less!

Suddenly, Wang Yangming realized how to govern the Northwest.

He watched the incense smoke drifting upward like a ladder to heaven, and smiled and stroked his beard.

At this time, Taining Hou Chen Ru came over and said, "Master Wang, Happy New Year!"

"Happy New Year, Marquis Taining." Wang Yangming bowed in return.

"Jiangxi is now peaceful. Not long ago, a few landlords were ignorant of the current situation and tried to instigate the people to besiege the county government office. However, they did not expect the opposite result. They were tied up by the angry people and taken directly to the county government office for trial."

Talking about this, Chen Ru couldn't help but shake his head and sighed, feeling deeply moved: "To be honest, this is the first time in my life that I have seen the people support the court so much."

"Haha, this is the truth that water can carry a boat but can also capsize it." Wang Yangming said with a smile, "In this way, I can go to Huguang with peace of mind."

"Sir Wang, don't you want to go back to the Northwest directly?" Chen Ru asked curiously.

"An old friend of mine is at Yuelu Academy in Changsha Prefecture, and he specially invited me to give a lecture there." Wang Yangming said cheerfully, "My annual leave is not over yet, so I'll take a detour!"

"I see. I wish you a safe journey, Lord Wang!"

As the land survey movement in Jiangxi was further promoted, people in some neighboring areas of Fujian, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Huguang also received the news.

When they visited each other during the Spring Festival, they learned about the purpose and significance of Ou Zanghua's land measurement. The people in Fujian and Jiangsu were immediately surprised and waited at home for Ou Qingtian to come to their place to measure the land.

The people in Zhejiang and Huguang regions were beating their chests, especially those in Xiaoxiang region. After all, Ou Qingtian was one of their own, so why didn't he think of his fellow countrymen when doing such a good thing?

The gentry and landlords in the two places wiped their sweat silently. Fortunately, the court only appointed Ou Zanghua as the governor-general of Jiangsu, Fujian and Jiangxi, instead of the governor-general of the South, otherwise everyone would not be able to have a good New Year.

But they didn't know that when Ou Zanghua's memorial was rushed to the capital, Emperor Zhengde realized that in Wannian County of Jiangxi alone, the amount of hidden land reached 23,500 acres, and no grain tax had ever been paid.

The entire Jiangxi Province has more than 300,000 acres of hidden land, which is simply shocking!
On New Year's Day, the Zhengde Emperor was so angry that he turned red and cursed in the Qianqing Palace: "This is rebellion! Jiangxi alone dared to hide 300,000 acres of land. How much is hidden in the whole world?! I, the emperor, am the biggest fool in the world! Whatever I do, they catch me and scold me, but I, reading the books of sages, do petty thefts!"

Zhang Yong and other eunuchs were so frightened that they fell to their knees. This was something that could not be said!
"Appoint Mr. Ou as the Imperial Commissioner, and Governor of Jiangsu, Fujian, Jiangxi, Huguang, and Zhejiang. Investigate all of them and make sure they are clear for me! In addition, send the Shenji Battalion to Yingtian Prefecture, and withdraw the Xuanfu garrison to Shunyi."

The current Emperor Zhengde is no longer the little emperor who was restrained by his hands two years ago. He holds military power, has the imperial farm to provide him with a steady stream of money, and is assisted by a series of capable ministers who are both civil and military, such as Ou Zanghua, Wang Yangming, Qiu Yue, Peng Ze, and Zuo Lengchan. So he has nothing to fear.

(End of this chapter)