Damn it, I'm in the garbage book I wrote

Chapter 245 Famous scene!
The army then continued its journey for another twelve days without any obstruction. All the towns and cities it passed through had a smooth journey. Not a single governor, county magistrate, general, or chief of police came out. Except for the army stationed outside the city, if they were just passing by, local officials would not even dare to come out to meet them.

fear death……

No one who can become an official is a fool. The imperial examination system over the years has excluded fools to a large extent. Although it cannot be said that there will definitely be no stupid operations or mentally retarded people, the proportion has been greatly reduced.

Of course, things have not been going well in recent years, because the higher-ups have opened the door to selling official positions and titles. In some places relatively far from the capital, such as Lingxi in Lingnan Road, Bashu, etc., the sale of official positions has been crazy in a few years, and the number of fools has increased dramatically, which has also led to these places basically reaching a point where the people are living in dire straits.

Can a local official influence the prosperity of a region? Of course, he can. Because even in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, the power of the state did not extend below the county level. Below the county level, only the clans were in control. The clans were self-governing, and self-governance depended on ethics. Ethics created the state of gentry. At this time, the imperial power could only reach the state level, and the county magistrates were self-governing to a certain extent.

If a man spent 100,000 taels of silver to buy a county magistrate position and served for seven years, what would he do if he didn't make money? To see those unruly people who came out of the poor mountains and bad waters every day, or to see those stinky leg wraps on the crude farmers?
Fuliang County collected hundreds of thousands of taels of tax a year. How many Fuliangs are there in the world? At most, there is only this one. The rest are prefectures and prefecture capitals that can compare with it.

In most counties, even in wealthy areas like Jiangnan Road, the annual tax revenue of a county is only tens of thousands of taels, and some better ones fluctuate around hundreds of thousands. In recent years, due to the industrial development of Fuliang, it may be slightly higher, but it is not too outrageous.

If they want to tamper with these taxes, apart from what they have to pay to the superiors, the rest can only be exploited from the people. Xia Lin has heard that the tax rate in some places has almost reached 50% or even 60%. Merchants will definitely not go to such places, and those who remain are farmers who are reluctant to leave their hometown. In other words, for every 100 kilograms of grain these farmers produce, 50 or even 60 kilograms will be taken as taxes.

Otherwise, where did Xia Lin get the food he stockpiled to fight the locust plague? It couldn't be that he just scattered beans to make soldiers.

High taxes and backward medical conditions have caused the Wei Kingdom to shrink visibly in the past decade, with a large number of people migrating to the central area in search of a better living space.

This is why Gyeonggi-do and Gangnam-do are both rich and densely populated. In other words, they are passively sucking blood, but they have no choice because those people cannot afford to survive.

So this is why Xia Lin had to eat slop in Luoyang for three years. They couldn't move a single step without a travel permit... Because in order to prevent population loss, government offices in various places formulated various preventive measures, including but not limited to the household registration system, travel permit system, hand warrant system, Dingyuan system and other strange systems.

Soon, the army arrived outside the city of Guangz. Xia Lin had already gotten out of the carriage and rode on his horse. A group of soldiers marched to the outside of the city of Guangz in a mighty manner.

Guangzhou, the capital of the Guangdong Military Governorate, was the seat of the Lingnan Circuit. The administrative boundaries of the Guangdong Military Governorate extended to Baoan and Zhongshan in the south, Qingyuan in the north, and Sihui and Huaiji in the west. Together with Quanzhou, they were known as the two heroes of the sea. The world-famous Maritime Silk Road branched out from these two places and flowed all the way to the Persian Gulf.

Qin Guanghuai, the defender of Yangcheng, was one of the first generals to rebel after the rebellion of King Lingnan. After the rebellion was suppressed, he was promoted directly from an ordinary lieutenant general to the garrison of Yangcheng.

The man was not very old, probably around thirty-two or thirty-three years old. He saw Xia Lin's army heading for the rebellion from afar, and he rode his horse to wait at the city wall early in the morning.

Xia Lin rode over and stopped in front of him. He tilted his head and looked at the defending general in front of him. He gently folded the whip in his hand, but said nothing.

"Who is coming!?"

Qin Guanghuai asked from a distance, but Xia Lin replied lazily, "Go south to quell the rebellion."

Oh? After he finished speaking, he suddenly thought of the famous scene of "Eastern Expedition to Fight Chiang". Now think about it... when General Ye entered Nanchang City, he was only in his twenties.

Hey... everyone says that Xia Lin is crazy. Seriously, it's normal for Xia Lin to be crazy. If it were someone else in his twenties who was a general and led elite troops south to quell the rebellion, not to mention being a human, even a dog passing by on the side of the road would have to stand up and salute him before leaving.

What's wrong with clicking like crazy?
"Do you have the tiger talisman order to come to Yangcheng?"

Qin Guanghuai was also a little panicked at this moment. The vicious reputation of the guy in front of him had already spread here, and with the exaggeration of the people around him, Xia Lin had been rumored to be a man-eating yaksha who "kills a few people for fun when he has nothing to do and must eat Fujianese for dinner every meal."

Standing in front of him was actually a test for Qin Guanghuai, but there was nothing he could do... That was how it was in the military camp. If an unknown team was allowed to enter the city and they chopped off his head, he would have no place to seek justice.

"Tiger seal? Transfer order?" Xia Lin took the tiger seal from his waist and ordered someone to find a piece of white paper. He stamped the seal under the tiger seal and the seal of His Majesty twice: "Take the transfer order and fill it out yourself."

The soldiers under his command handed a blank secret order to Qin Guanghuai. He lowered his head and looked at the blank paper for a long time. He took a deep breath and made up his mind. He rode to the side and shouted at the top of his voice: "Open the city gate! Welcome the army to the city to suppress the rebellion!"

Of course Xia Lin didn't hesitate, he just pulled up the reins and started moving, and the troops behind him followed him into Yangcheng with a rumbling sound.

Compared to other places, Guangzhou is indeed the most prosperous city in this area, and it lives up to its reputation as a big city. Moreover, there are a lot of Semites here, as in Quanzhou, with different kinds of people and categories.

They were stared at all the way, but Xia Lin just walked slowly towards the camp in the city. When he arrived at the door of the barracks, he raised his whip and pointed inside: "Clear the barracks and let the army move in." Qin Guanghuai walked in with a suppressed breath, and then the city defense troops in the camp came out one after another and went to the camp outside the city for temporary settlement.

To put it simply, Xia Lin has already taken over Yangcheng and the entire Lingnan Road at this moment.

Just ask any other person to come over and ask whether the dog on the roadside should salute and that's it.

The army returned to the camp, and he naturally didn't have to do the rest of the settlement work. He just turned the reins and went straight to the Lingnan Palace.

Although the plaque of the Lingnan Palace had been taken down, the house search had not yet begun. Xia Lin glanced at Qin Guanghuai and said, "Search the palace today and take out 300,000 taels of military pay."

Qin Guanghuai was stunned: "General, this..."

"You quoted 500,000."

After Xia Lin finished speaking, Qin Guanghuai froze on the spot. Xia Lin frowned and asked, "Isn't what I said clear enough?"

“Enough…enough…enough.”

"Yes." Xia Lin nodded: "I don't care about the rest. I will move into this deserted mansion tomorrow. Do you understand?"

After saying that, he left again, leaving Qin Guanghuai standing at the gate of the palace in a daze. He then slapped himself twice before he came to his senses.

Does that mean he could get two hundred thousand taels of silver out of thin air? He really had never seen so much silver in his life...

He did not dare to delay and quickly rode his horse to catch up with Xia Lin. Xia Lin followed the map and made a long circle in Yangcheng. He counted all the properties of the King of Lingnan and the former Governor of Lingnan, and then quoted the price directly to Qin Guanghuai.

His valuation was extremely accurate because someone from Tang Family Trading Company had long ago handed over these industry statistics and assessments to Xia Lin.

Basically, he will be stuck at the dividing line of 60% to 70%, and the remaining 30% to 40% will be left to local officials headed by Qin Guanghuai.

How much they take is their business, after all, they also have a lot of debts to settle. Xia Lin came here to kill people, but he couldn't kill people randomly, he had to kill according to the situation. Divide the money first, and then there will be countless heads delivered naturally.

Qin Guanghuai felt excited at first, but became more and more afraid as time went on, because after this round of roll calls, the bill on his head had reached nearly 3.7 million taels, and about 70% of it had to be given to Xia Lin.

In other words, he had to pay him 2.6 million taels of silver, and as for the remaining one million taels, Lord Xia asked him to distribute it himself, and this was also a Shura scene.

If it runs well, you will be rich and prosperous; if it runs badly, you will lose your head.

After sending Xia Lin to rest, Qin Guanghuai strolled in his yard from dusk to dark. He didn't know how to divide the money or where the money came from.

At this time, several wealthy merchants from Jiangnan came to visit...

They had a long talk with Qin Guanghuai and never expected that these industries would be swallowed up in such a way. They even took over some antique calligraphy and paintings from the Lingnan Wang family.

Among them, the world's number one shipyard was bought by Tangmen Trading Company at a price of 220,000 taels. This was almost the price offered by Lord Xia, but how cheap was this price actually...

Just to put it this way, the few half-finished ships in their shipyard are worth three hundred thousand taels, plus the land, factory buildings, etc., the total value would have to be at least eight hundred thousand taels.

The rest include shipping terminals, silk embroidery workshops, mulberry fields, etc., all of which have extremely low prices, but Qin Guanghuai doesn't bargain at all. As long as he can meet Lord Xia's requirements, then everything will be fine for him.

What was initially thought to be an extremely difficult problem was completely solved in just one night, leaving Qin Guanghuai completely confused...

(End of this chapter)