According to preliminary statistics, the total assets of the top ten salt merchants in Wu Yueguo exceeded 40 million.

What is this concept?

The total income of various taxes in the entire Qiang Han Dynasty in a year, summed up together, is only more than 30 million yuan. Therefore, the salt merchant fell and ate without blame, which became the biggest event of the Qiang Han Dynasty this year.

Since the forbidden army of the Qiang Han Dynasty entered the city of Hangzhou, the heavy task of searching for salt merchants has been handed over to Li Haodong.

Now, under the auspices of Li Haodong, a total of eight of the top ten salt merchants have been arrested, and two of them have not yet been brought to the case, and the results can be described as unusually fruitful.

"Continue to arrest, and there can be no relaxation." Li Zhongyi deliberately accentuated his tone, reminding Li Haodong that the salt merchants had great benefits.

"The minister must arrest them all as soon as possible." Li Haodong's heart was slammed, and he hurriedly bowed and saluted, and expressed his determination.

Many of Wu Yueguo's officials fled, and Li Zhongyi seemed to be very indifferent, but Li Zhongyi's attention to salt merchants was not ordinarily high.

When you fight a war, you fight for money and food. The salt merchants of Wu Yueguo should be killed, all of them can be killed, Li Zhongyi's idea is very simple, he must catch them, and then squeeze out their family property.

As for the Wu Yueguo officials who fled in advance, Li Zhongyi really doesn't care. When the land reform team goes to the countryside, those people can run away from the monks, and they can still run out of the temple?

Today's forbidden army of the Qianghan Dynasty, after years of actual combat of raiding homes, has accumulated a lot of experience in raiding homes.

Every time he fights a city, even if Li Zhongyi doesn't give him an order, the people in the Judge Advocate General's Department know what to do.

First of all, the grain, salt, and silk merchants in the city had to be registered. Among them, the big grain merchants, the big salt merchants, and the big silk merchants are the top priorities of the military justice department's review.

In this year, all businessmen who can do a particularly big business must have an official background behind them, without exception!

In a sense, the Judge Advocate General's targeted arrest and crackdown on the big salt merchants, big grain merchants, and big silk merchants is tantamount to a major reshuffle of the business environment and social foundation, and at the same time an important means of redistributing fundamental interests.

For Li Jiajun, the primary interest of cracking down on big businessmen is a useful supplement to military spending. Secondly, it is of great significance for the state-owned Li family firm to take root and gradually expand in the local area.

At the same time, it severely cracked down on the big merchants, which was tantamount to weakening the economic foundation of the local gentry in disguise.

The local gentry not only lost their power, but also lost the capital to control the local economy, and their capital in the bad country will inevitably be greatly reduced.

Of course, Li Zhongyi has never been a brute, and he has adopted a strategy of division and disintegration against the gentry class of Wu Yueguo.

The public examination and the selection of officials of the new dynasty are the most typical disintegration of division, and it is also a major reshuffle in the power circle.

After all, Wu Yueguo has perished, and the newly selected officials can only be officials at the state and county levels.

According to the law of selecting officials, the more grassroots officials are, that is, the officials of herdsmen, the more down-to-earth they are.

On the contrary, the so-called shepherd's officials, who are the most adept at making money and officials, are the most corrupt class in the bureaucratic system.

Therefore, the first thing Li Zhongyi did when he entered Hangzhou City was to use public examinations to evaluate Wu Yueguo's officials.

The so-called two-handed grasp, both hands should be hard!

Li Zhongyi's open selection of state and county officials while severely cracking down on the big businessman class can be described as a two-pronged trick.

Two days later, Li Zhongyi finished reviewing all the test papers for the exam. If there is an examination, there must be a ranking, and in the preliminary selection list drawn up by Li Zhongyi, most of the state and county officials are from poor families.

The core point of the reason why the children of the poor family were selected to be officials is that they have no hard backing, and they must rely on Li Zhongyi's trust.

More importantly, the local dignitaries and wealthy families have a natural advantage in the logic of politics and the distribution of interests.

To put it bluntly, even if Li Zhongyi selected them to preside over the political situation in the thirteen states of Wuyue, they would not be too grateful to Li Zhongyi.

On the contrary, those who are humble scholars and low-level officials who do not have a big backing will certainly not be happy to be replaced once they occupy that position.

In this way, they can only follow Li Zhongyi, no matter how difficult the road ahead is, they must always follow.

The so-called tiger brothers, father and son soldiers!

Li Zhongyi's principle of employing people has always been nepotism, and only those he has a deep understanding will gain enough trust.

On Li Zhongyi's bookcase, there are ten bound thick books, which record the dynamic performance of military and political officials at all levels with whom he is more familiar.

To put it bluntly, this is the official personnel file recorded by Li Zhongyi in private. The archives contain everything from the performance of officials to the records of integrity.

As the saying goes, the way you go, the words you say, as long as you do it, you will definitely leave traces. After recording these traces, Li Zhongyi's employment can be more targeted, which can be described as a great good!

Three days later, the ranking of the exam was officially announced.

According to the rules of the ex-ante system, officials who pass this examination still need to take the examination presided over by Li Zhongyi himself before they can be assigned to officials at all levels according to their respective abilities and levels.

Zhang Bennian, who was originally the official of the Hangzhou government, since Li Zhongyi entered Hangzhou City, Zhang Ben was unemployed and went home to study behind closed doors.

Originally, Zhang Bennian thought that there would be no more future, and when all his thoughts were lost, he even had plans to simply engage in business.

However, the situation changed so quickly that it was completely unexpected by Zhang.

Within two days of Li Zhongyi's entry into Hangzhou, he announced a decree for officials at all levels to take new examinations.

Zhang Bennian didn't want to take this kind of inexplicable exam, but he had been an official for many years, but he was not very proficient in business, and after thinking about it, he finally decided to take this exam.

After all, there is a sentence in the list that is particularly easy to move people's hearts: the land does not distinguish between north and south, people do not distinguish between high and low, and you can take the exam if you are literate!

Objectively speaking, with Zhang's qualifications as an official this year, he would have been promoted to Zhu Zi's important minister a long time ago. However, Zhang Bennian, who did not have a hard backer, could only mix in the ranks of middle- and lower-level officials before, and was never able to get promoted.

Today is the day of the release of the list, and Zhang Bennian told the housekeeper to let him go to the palace gate of Zhang Bang to take a look at the ranking of the exam.

However, Zhang Bennian waited left and right at home, and never saw the housekeeper come back to report the news, he was in a hurry, so he simply changed into casual clothes that he couldn't help but rise, and went out to see the list in person.

In front of the palace gate, there are crowds of people, thousands of heads are crowded, and it is more lively than ever.

Zhang Bennian finally squeezed into the front row, but when he saw his name, he was actually in the first position, he was immediately stunned, he couldn't believe his own eyes, how could this be?