A family of loyal martyrs, starting with nine wives to continue the family line.

In early November, Xie Daoning came to see Wei Zhao with an unusual request.

"I want to go to Jingzhou."

As Xie Daoning stood before the imperial desk and spoke these words, his fingers unconsciously twisted the edge of his sleeve.

Wei Zhao was approving a memorial concerning the salt tax in Mingzhou when he heard this. His pen paused on the paper, and a small dot of ink bleeds out.

He put down his pen and looked up at her.

Xie Daoning rarely takes the initiative to ask for anything.

She was always the quietest one in the harem, and apart from treating patients, dispensing medicine, and taking pulses, she hardly participated in any other affairs.

Even with such a big event as Shang Wanqing's pregnancy, she only did her duty as a doctor, coming to check her pulse on time every night, saying what needed to be said and then leaving without lingering.

So the fact that she's standing here and speaking today must mean she's thought about it for a long time.

"Why?" Wei Zhao asked.

Xie Daoning's gaze fell on one of the folded books in the pile on the table; it was a gift from Jingzhou.

"After news of Lin Shimao being besieged spread, the medical clinics in Jingzhou were in some chaos."

Her voice wasn't loud, but it was clear and articulate: "I heard that in several villages, doctors are afraid to treat farmers who have been allocated land, for fear of retaliation from powerful families. In one village, a woman had a difficult childbirth, and the village doctor didn't even dare to leave his house."

Wei Zhao leaned back in his chair and did not answer immediately.

He was thinking about something else.

After the implementation of the new land system in Jingzhou, the counterattack from the powerful families was more insidious than he had anticipated.

Instead of open and brutal rebellion, they used this subtle, underhanded method of cutting flesh—didn't your court want to distribute land to the poor?

Okay, I won't stop you. But if someone who has been allocated land gets sick, no one dares to treat them; if their children go to school, no one dares to teach them; and if they can't even buy farm tools, no shop will dare to sell them to them.

This is more disgusting than rebellion.

He has troops to quell rebellions, but for this kind of thing, troops are useless.

"Are you going alone?" he asked.

"Two people from the Embroidered Uniform Guard are enough to accompany you."

Xie Daoning answered quickly, clearly having already thought it through: "I'm going to see a doctor, not to fight a war. Bringing too many people would only attract attention."

Wei Zhao looked at her.

Xie Daoning was wearing a plain blue dress today, her hair held back with only a wooden hairpin, and her face was bare of makeup, making her look like an ordinary folk doctor. But there was something in her eyes that he recognized very well.

It was a kind of "I've made up my mind, whether you agree or not, I'm going" attitude.

Among the nine sisters-in-law, each one expresses her stubbornness in a different way.

Liu Jingshuang drew her sword immediately, Shang Wanqing kept her head down and ignored you, while Tuoba Yue just laughed and joked as she got things done.

Xie Daoning's approach was the gentlest, yet also the most irresistible.

She doesn't argue or make a fuss; she just stands quietly in front of you, looking at you with eyes so clear you can't refuse them.

Wei Zhao sighed inwardly.

"The remnants of powerful families in Jingzhou haven't been completely wiped out yet. If you go there and something happens—"

"I will not associate with people from aristocratic families."

Xie Daoning interrupted him, his tone still calm, but the uncompromising meaning was already very clear: "I only go to the villages to treat people and teach village doctors to recognize a few commonly used medicines."

She paused for a moment, as if considering her words.

"His Majesty distributed land to them, but land can fill their stomachs, not their illnesses. It's not that those village doctors don't want to treat patients, they're just scared. I'll go there and let them know that the imperial court is coming, so they won't be afraid anymore."

These words weren't spoken harshly, but Wei Zhao sensed their weight.

He was silent for a moment, then finally nodded.

"Bring four people. Two from the Embroidered Uniform Guard, plus two bodyguards."

Xie Daoning opened his mouth to say no, but Wei Zhao had already picked up the folding book again, his tone now carrying an air of unquestionable authority.

"This is an imperial decree, not a matter for discussion."

Xie Daoning glanced at him, stopped arguing, curtsied, and turned to leave.

Wei Zhao watched her figure disappear through the door, his cinnabar pen drawing a line on the paper, leaving a crooked cinnabar mark on the folded paper.

He glanced down at it, crumpled the paper, and threw it into the wastebasket.

When did the ninth son's family become so opinionated?

He recalled that when Wei An was still alive, Xie Daoning was like a quiet cat in the Wei family, walking without making a sound and speaking for fear of startling people.

After Wei An died, she locked herself in the medicine hut and hardly spoke to anyone except to study medicine prescriptions.

But in the last two years, she has changed. Not that she has become more assertive, but rather that she has... developed her own ideas.

This is a good thing.

Thinking this, Wei Zhao picked up his pen again to annotate the memorial. After annotating two lines, he stopped and gave an instruction to the palace servant at the door.

"Go tell Hua Jieyu to have the Embroidered Uniform Guard's spies in Jingzhou give her advance notice. Once Lady Xie arrives, she doesn't need open protection, but they should keep a close eye on her secretly."

Xie Daoning set off on the fifth day of the eleventh month. It was just dawn, and the wind was so cold it felt like it was cutting his face.

Shang Wanqing, four months pregnant, came to see her off.

Her belly is starting to show, and she walks much slower than before.

After taking the pregnancy-stabilizing medicine prescribed by Xie Daoning for more than a month, her complexion was much better than when she first returned to Beijing, and her lips were no longer chapped.

The two stood at the palace gate, behind them were two covered carriages already harnessed to horses, and four guards who had changed into civilian clothes.

Be careful on your way home.

Shang Wanqing spoke, her voice hoarse, clearly indicating she had stayed up all night studying blueprints again: "Have the people from the Embroidered Uniform Guard investigate the matter in Jingzhou. Don't personally deal with the aristocratic families."

Xie Daoning nodded in agreement.

She turned to get into the car, but Shang Wanqing called her back from behind.

"Ninth Sister".

Xie Daoning turned around.

Shang Wanqing stood there, her hand unconsciously resting on her slightly protruding belly, as if she was thinking about how to phrase it.

She was never good at talking about these things. A person who had spent her whole life working with steel in the shipyard, what always came out of her mouth were documents and blueprints.

But she still spoke up today.

"You're also a member of the Wei family. Don't shoulder this alone."

Xie Daoning was taken aback.

Looking at Shang Wanqing's face, which was slightly red from the morning breeze, and at the way her calloused hands rested on her stomach, she felt a surge of inexplicable warmth in her heart.

Then she smiled, a very light, shallow, but genuine smile.

"understood."

The carriage rumbled out of the palace gate and quickly disappeared at the end of the long street.

Shang Wanqing stood at the door for a while longer, until Xie Daoning's car was completely out of sight, before turning around and walking back.

He took two steps and then stopped, frowning as he muttered to himself.

"Why does she seem like an old woman?"

When she returned to the courtyard, there was an account book on the table that Su Qingyun had sent, with the title "Budget for the Promotion of the Three Prefectures of Jingzhou and Xintian System" written on the cover.

Shang Wanqing flipped through it; it was all numbers, not her area of ​​expertise, so she had it sent untouched to the Imperial Study.

When the account book was laid out on the emperor's desk, Su Qingyun was standing to the side, holding a finely sharpened charcoal pencil in her hand.

"Subsidies for seeds, farm tools, and draft cattle, plus the operating costs of grain seed stations set up in each county, total for the three prefectures, amount to about this amount annually."

She reached out and tapped the total on the last page of the ledger.

Quite a few. But not outrageous either.

After the southeast sea route was opened, the commercial tax revenue of Quanzhou and Mingzhou increased by nearly 40%, and this amount of money could still be squeezed out.

Su Qingyun stood aside waiting for his approval, her fingers unconsciously fiddling with the charcoal pencil in her sleeve.

She knew Wei Zhao too well; when this man looked at numbers, his mind was never just focused on the numbers themselves.

really.

"allow."

Wei Zhao picked up his brush and wrote a single character on the folded paper, then added a line of smaller characters next to it: "But the funds will be allocated over three years. There will be an assessment every year, and only those who pass will continue."

Su Qingyun raised an eyebrow. The three-year allocation system was to prevent local officials from taking the money and not doing their jobs.

The performance evaluation system is tied to funding, which is like hanging a sword over the head of every prefecture and county.

shrewd.

"Your Majesty, I have noted it down. The standards for the assessment will be determined by the Ministry of Revenue?"

"You decide," Wei Zhao said without looking up. "You're better at accounting than those people in the Ministry of Revenue."

Su Qingyun's lips twitched slightly, she bowed and withdrew.

He paused at the door and glanced back at Wei Zhao, who was engrossed in a pile of folded paper.

He's lost weight again.

Her chin is sharper than last month, and the part of her wrist that peeks out from her sleeve is so thin it's uncomfortable to look at.

She wanted to say something, but in the end she said nothing and gently closed the door.

Mid-November.

Wei Zhao received the urgent report one afternoon.

The spies from the Embroidered Uniform Guard sent it back from Jingzhou, sealed with sealing wax, and still had mud splattered on it from their journey.

He opened it and looked at it.

After Xie Daoning arrived in Jingzhou, she did not go to the prefectural government office or the clinic in the city. Instead, she had a driver take her directly to three villages.

Three of the most remote villages, which were once most tightly controlled by powerful families.

She stayed in the first village for two days and treated more than a dozen families.

An old man's leg had been ulcerated for six months and no one dared to treat it. She squatted on the ground to clean and change the dressing for him, working from afternoon until dark.

In the second village, she gathered the village doctors together and taught them how to identify several common local herbs.

At first, the village doctors were timid and hesitant to speak to her.

Later, I discovered that this woman spoke softly and never put on airs, so I gradually opened up to her.

The third village is the furthest one.

When she arrived, a child had a high fever that had lasted for three days and no one had taken care of him.

Xie Daoning prepared the medicine overnight and stayed by the child's side all night. By dawn, the child's fever had subsided.

The people from the Embroidered Uniform Pavilion wrote a sentence at the end of the letter.

"When Lady Xie left, the whole village saw her off at the village entrance. Several old people knelt by the roadside and kowtowed. Lady Xie got out of the carriage, helped them up, and said, 'The imperial court will send people later, don't be afraid.'"

After reading the urgent report, Wei Zhao ran his fingers along the edge of the letter for a while.

She left a book in the village.

The abridged version of the "New Martial Medicine Classic" that he commissioned the Imperial Medical Academy to compile was originally intended to be distributed to medical clinics in various prefectures and cities.

Xie Daoning took one of the books with him and left it in the village.

He folded the letter and put it into the locked box on the left side of the desk.