At the end of the first month of the fifth year of Yande, part of the investigation team led by Qiao Rui also achieved great results in Qingyan Prefecture.

They swept away more than 100 problematic officials in Qingzhou, all of whom were corrupt and deceitful.

From the village chief at the grassroots level to the county guard to the officials around the state assassin, there are all such officials.

The number of local officials in the Wei Empire was unprecedented, more than three times that of the previous dynasty, so the number of corrupt officials found was also unprecedented.

For such a question, Guo Peng actually feels that he has a certain relationship with himself.

You are responsible.

Under the severe torture of corrupt officials, some officials from Li Shu confided their hearts.

For such an explanation, Guo Peng was silent for a while.

In order to appease the Shi clan and prepare for the subversion of the Shi clan, he took the initiative to restrict the ascent path of officials from Li Shu, so that they could only enter the county government at the highest level.

Occasionally, some people are able to enter the county government due to special circumstances, but they are very rare.

It would be completely impossible to go any further, which would cause fierce opposition from the scholars, and it is true that they who have not received systematic education can indeed take up positions above the prefectural level.

Knowing that their channels for rising are limited and that they are rigidly restricted, on the one hand, they will develop hatred and jealousy towards scholars, and on the other hand, it will also make some people relax their thinking and turn their motivation to move forward into the driving force of corruption.

Anyway, there is no way to rise, and there is no hope of rising in this life, so it is better to take advantage of the official position and power to make a little more money to enjoy.

Many Li Shu officials who entered the county government were hit by the hopelessness of their ascension, and instead chose to seek personal interests for themselves to fill the emptiness in their hearts.

This is the helplessness of Guo and the helplessness of the times.

This situation will definitely change, but it must not be now, and it will not change right now.

So, this kind of thing will continue until the day when the clouds are cleared.

But even when that day comes, there will still be such a thing, but there is no longer a reason.

Despite this, Guo must also do his best to solve these reasons that can be solved, for the sake of the present and the future.

If we don't wipe out the huge group of scholars as an organization, and don't eliminate this group that straddles between the emperor and the common people, the country will not be able to break through its own limitations after all, nor can it break the law of entropy increase.

At a time when the bureaucracy is not open, the fact that entropy has increased dramatically within the empire worries Guo Peng.

On the one hand, for the Northern Expedition, and on the other hand, in order to break this status quo, he had to forcibly exert external forces to interfere with the violent trend of entropy increase and maintain the stability of the empire.

But after all, this is a palliative rather than a cure, if the bureaucratic system is not opened to a greater extent, and the upward channels are not opened to the bottom on a larger scale, the decline of the Guo Wei Empire will inevitably enter a period of acceleration, just like the Eastern Han Empire.

This is not an overnight thing, Guo has been preparing for this for many years and has made countless preparations.

Until then, whoever does what should not be done, whoever it is, will pay the price.

At the same time as the officialdom in Hebei was shaken, the investigation of the rest of the Central Plains Prefecture and the three prefectures in the south of the Yangtze River was also in full swing.

Through the comparison of accounts and the accurate calculations of the accountants, the members of the investigation team found out a large number of offending officials.

The flames of anti-corruption spread throughout the Wei Empire, and no state could escape such a situation.

In the four years of Yande, nearly 500 officials at the prefecture, county, county, village, and township levels had been beheaded, and local officials throughout the Wei Empire were trembling and trembling under this wave of brutal rectification.

It is conceivable that in the five years of Yande, if the emperor's anger has not been poured out, more people will definitely be killed.

But to everyone's surprise, at the end of February of the fifth year of the performance, after summarizing the reports from various places, Guo Peng issued an order to the investigation teams in various places-

This is the end of the anti-corruption campaign after the investigation teams in various localities have punished all the officials who have indeed committed corruption crimes that have been found to be in custody.

The investigation team can stop the operation and bring all the information in their hands back to Luoyang to end the anti-corruption operation.

No one understood the emperor's intentions.

A large-scale anti-corruption campaign was suddenly launched, but it was abruptly ended.

Was it because of something that had to be stopped in the investigation?

Is it about the royal relatives and relatives?

There is really no, every move of the emperor's relatives is under Guo Peng's restraint and monitoring, if the emperor's relatives commit anything, they will not enter the three divisions alive to be tried.

The reputation of the royal family cannot be tarnished.

What is that?

The investigation teams in various places suspected that the investigation teams in other places had found something that made the emperor feel embarrassed, and seriously suspected that something might have happened in Qingzhou.

But Qiao Rui also looked strange, because the problems he found out really had nothing to do with the Mi family, and Mi Zhu himself and the Mi clan people living in Xuzhou's hometown had no problems.

Mi Zhu paid great attention to restraining his family and clansmen, and often mentioned points, so that he personally controlled the family's financial power to ensure that nothing happened to him.

What the hell is going on?

Until the end of March of the fifth year of Yande, when the officials of the local investigation teams had completed all their tasks and returned to the central government, they still did not understand what had happened to make the emperor suddenly end the operation.

Mr. Guo did not explain his actions to the officials, and he only needed one result.

The beginning begins suddenly, and the end ends suddenly, it all depends on his mind.

The Wei Empire's first large-scale local anti-corruption campaign came to an abrupt end, leaving people with infinite reverie.

However, the more than 700 officials at all levels who have been killed and the nearly 4,000 people implicated are definitely the real achievements of this anti-corruption operation.

No one understands the emperor's thoughts, not even Guo Jin, the crown prince.

Guo Jin didn't understand.

"Father, why did you stop? These corrupt bastards should be investigated and found out to the end, and they should be made to pay for their actions! Whoever it is, you should find out! ”

Guo Jin hated these corrupt officials very much, and felt that the investigation was not over, and it was not yet time to stop.

Guo Jin was shocked by the large-scale corruption at the local level, and for the first time he realized that such a problem was hidden in the powerful Wei Empire.

In such a powerful empire, there are still so many corrupt officials and corrupt officials, and no one notices and no one deals with them.

In this way, they are allowed to devour the interests that should belong to the empire or the people of Limin, profit from it, and eat their brains full of fat.

Guo Peng listened to him silently, and when he finished speaking, he nodded.

"You have a point, but it's enough for now."

"Father, is that enough? There must be more people lurking in it, my father only caught more than 700 officials, and there must be fish that slipped through the net! ”

"That's enough."

Guo Peng shook his head.

"Father, there were only 7,000 officials in the former Han Dynasty, of course killing 700 is a lot, but the number of officials in my dynasty is close to 20,000 starting from the village head, and killing 700 is not much at all!"

Guo Jin insisted on his opinion.

Guo Peng sighed.

"Corrupt people must be solved, but Ah Jin, do you remember what your father said to you? Many people do not hate corruption itself, but they hate the corrupt people.

No matter how many you kill, kill 10,000 or 20,000 people in one go, there will still be people who continue to be corrupt, killing corrupt officials is not a matter of one breath, but a long-term and continuous behavior, you can't expect to kill all corrupt officials in one go.

You killed them all, can you find new officials to replace them in time? Can you be sure that the officials who succeed them will not continue to be corrupt? Are you so confident in them? ”

Guo Jin had to admit that what Guo Peng said made sense, but he still felt very angry.

"But did you just let them go?"

"Leave it open for now."

Guo Peng nodded: "This time, Lin Lin finally punished more than 700 officials, which is a lot of money, enough to make these local officials solid and honest for a while."

And for a while, it was enough for my father's Northern Expedition Xianbei, and he killed too much, and it was difficult to find the right person to supplement for a while, and the county and rural officials were okay to say, and it was not so easy to add it if they wanted to go up. ”

"Did my father kill corrupt officials just for the Northern Expedition?"

Guo Jin seems to have a hard time accepting such a fact.

"Ah Jin, your father is the emperor, you will also be the emperor in the future, the emperor does things, everything can't be done for no reason, you can't have no purpose, you do things, you have a purpose, what you should do, what you shouldn't do, because this purpose, will become very clear."

Guo Peng put down the pen in his hand: "Why don't you want to kill all the corrupt officials and corrupt officials in one go, so that the world will be stable, but this is impossible, you can't kill all the corrupt officials and corrupt officials." ”

"Do you want them to continue to embezzle state money, oppress the people, and damage my father's prestige?"

"Of course not."

Guo Peng shook his head: "Punishing corrupt officials and corrupt officials is long-term, you have to launch actions like a father for a long time, uninterrupted, irregularly, and quantitatively, without giving anyone a chance to react, suddenly unfolding, the central and local governments, and not letting go."

As for when is the opportunity to take action, it depends on the report of the Linzi camp, the Linzi camp is your eyes, your ears, what is happening outside, you can know through it, and then, make your judgment. ”

Guo Jin thought silently for a while and nodded slowly.

"What the father said, the son understood."

"This is the water tank that my father taught you, officialdom, that is, the water tank, only in and out, in the long run, mosquitoes are everywhere, rotten, flowing water can not rot, if you want the water in the tank to keep clean, you need to constantly use up the old water, pour in new water."

Guo Peng picked up the pen again: "What you have to face is a very large country, and a group of tens of thousands of people, how to govern and how to punish cannot be based on your personal likes and dislikes, go back and read "Han Feizi" carefully." ”

Guo Jin nodded.

"My son knows."