Li Xi, the word Ziming, Shanxi Xie Liangren, and Guan Erye are fellow villagers.

Li Xi's family was a middle peasant, with dozens of acres of land with low yields, and due to the strange weather, farming often exceeded his means, so from his father's generation, he not only scavenged from the soil, but also used all his leisure time to go to the surrounding markets or factories and mines to work as casual workers to subsidize the family.

When Li Xi was nine years old, one of his uncles was killed by a stone that was detonated in advance because the lead was too short and he had not yet withdrawn to safety. Since then, Li Xi has secretly vowed to study law hard and be a good lawyer who fights lawsuits for the poor people.

Li Xi's fame was a personal lawsuit that he resolved in the Luoyang Magistrate's Court when he was twenty-two years old:

There is a family surnamed Zhang on the outskirts of Luoyang, a man with three generations. The year before last, an accident in the factory killed his son Zhang Jia, who had not been married for a long time, and Zhang Jia's father also died due to excessive grief. There are only three people in the family: Zhang Jia's mother Liu, Zhang Jia's wife Li and Zhang Jia's widow Zhang Yi.

One day, Li took the young child Zhang Yi to help the old lady Liu cross the river, but the upstream water suddenly rose, and the old lady stumbled and was almost washed away by the water. After the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law helped each other ashore, Zhang Yi had disappeared without a trace.

After Liu regained his senses, he beat his chest and paused. He said: "My family has three generations, and it is a single lineage. Today's death of a grandson is the cutting off of a child. The old woman's life is not enough to pity, and now Zhang's incense is cut off, daughter-in-law, your sin is too great! ”

Li couldn't defend himself, so he could only let Liu scold. Hou Liu's family was so angry that he was killed. After the old lady died, several Zhang clan relatives suddenly came out, Ziyun was a distant relative of this family, blaming the Li family for breaking the door and asking for family property. The dispute between the two parties could not be settled, so a lawsuit was brought to the magistrate's court.

The ins and outs of this lawsuit are very simple, and the causes of the matter are also complicated. It's just a little entangled: Li's rescue of his mother-in-law belongs to filial piety, which has been a traditional Chinese virtue since ancient times - the difference between man and beast. If it weren't for Liu's angry death, Li could almost set up a memorial arch of filial piety. But the three generations of the Zhang family passed on, and the Li family put aside the young child to save an old lady, but the result of this behavior led to the severance of Zhang's incense.

Because of these two moral difficulties, the presiding judge of the case felt that no matter what aspect of the judgment was written, it seemed that there would be room for criticism, so he was unable to start writing.

At this time, Li Xi was working and studying under the Chu Tuiguan of the Luoyang Magistrate's Academy, serving as a confidential text. He saw that Chu Tuiguan was very troubled by this, so he volunteered to catch the pen on his behalf:

Compared with the aunt, the aunt is more important than the widow. This is the foundation of three generations of filial piety in the world, and if you compare your aunt with your ancestors, this is the importance of your ancestors, and the foundation of this world. If Li's husband is still alive, or if he still has a brother, then the abandoned son saves the aunt; However, both generations died, and the first line of orphans was also responsible.

It is not surprising that this is just the opinion of ordinary society. Li Xi turned his pen and said:

Mencius Yun, the right can change the way, and the responsibility of others cannot be without their own time. In the turbulent current, fleeting, at this time An has to think deeply about evil? In an emergency, you can't have both, and the abandoned child saves the elder, which is the right thing and the peace of the people's hearts. Adults and gentlemen live high on the shore, and they have their own insight into the fire. If the aunt dies and the child survives, can't he also blame the person who loves the son and abandons the aunt?

With this judgment, Li Xi put forward a concept that later generations of jurists talked about: expecting possibility. That is, when judging whether a person's behavior is justified (illegal), it is necessary to put yourself in the person's shoes and seek whether a normal person has another better choice in this situation.

And he himself has this case that has triggered thinking about the limits of legitimate defense, and has become famous in the Luoyang Higher Normal School, and his "Theory of Defense" co-authored with his fiancée Deng Fangting has become a must-read book in the Central Plains legal circle - I have to mention that although Li Xi's family is poor, because of his outstanding talent, he was favored by a senior official who was the Henan criminal envoy at the time, and he has been selected. And his fiancée is not only noble and knowledgeable, but also a talented woman who knows the law.

The reason why Cheng Qi found him was because the first time he saw his daughter-in-law—oh, his fiancée—he shouted: "I have made up my mind for your brother!" ”

For no other reason, his fiancée is so handsome! A big beauty who is eight feet tall (according to the weights and measures of the Liao people, it is one point and seven meters), with legs at least one meter long, such a long-legged beauty, she doesn't have to do anything, and she is extremely good-looking when she sits under the windowsill, not to mention that people are born with a bit of Greek style - fair skin, three-dimensional cheeks, and a convex and backward figure, which can be called perfect. It is said that this Miss Deng family and the year of the Lu once played Guanyin at the Guanyin meeting by the Luoshui River, for a time I don't know how many young people with spring hearts have been poured, chasing the Bodhisattva and chanting "Guan Guan Ju Dove, in the river island, fair lady, gentleman is good." ”

Although Cheng Qi failed to witness the live scene of spring, he had seen the beauty after being slightly drunk, and he still remembered that the beautiful Miss Deng family leaned slightly on the soft couch under the gas lamp that day, with a jade wrist supporting her forehead, and two hanging green silk on the half-exposed fragrant shoulders. Cheng Qi remembered that she was still wearing a fox fur when she came that day. After three rounds of drinking, she handed it to the maid and changed into a shawl of tulle, and under her gorgeous silk dress was wrapped in a pink belly pocket embroidered with flower and bird patterns, and the collarbone under her slender neck was delicately concave, and the girl's skin looked so delicate and lovely under the dim gas lamp. Cheng Qi remembered that she was happy, so she kicked off her red embroidered shoes and sat on the floor, with a somewhat lazy posture, quite like a concubine of the Tang Dynasty. Under the red skirt, the white socks are flawless, Cheng Qi couldn't help but look at the jade feet of the beauty twice with the eternal truth of "wine strengthens people's courage", but found that she is also a pair of heavenly feet - the daughter of the Song people's scholars rarely has the bad habit of binding their feet, unless it is a thin horse in Yangzhou that has this weak demeanor.

To this day, when Li Xi is mentioned, Cheng Qi still can't help but recall a scar slightly exposed on the beauty's chest that night; "Big brother, you can cut whoever you say!"

After Cheng Qi received Li Xi, he looked left and right; "Sister-in-law didn't come?"

"Fang Ting is at home with her father." Li Xi is also a broad-hearted master, and he didn't mind Cheng Qi asking his daughter-in-law An first: "What are we going to do next?" ”

Cheng Qi was a little disappointed, and originally wanted to discuss art with the long-legged beauty again - it would be good to learn a foreign language. But for now, let's get down to business; "Of course, I'm asking you to come to the lawsuit."

"Okay, who is the plaintiff and who is the defendant?"

"There are a lot of plaintiffs." Cheng Qi helped him carry all his luggage into a taxi carriage; "About a hundred or two hundred."

Li Xi rubbed his hands a little excitedly; "It's a big case!"

"Of course, the defendant is also amazing." Cheng Qi sat down side by side with him; "The current member of Parliament, a wealthy man with an unknown amount of wealth; There are also Xia Cai County, Shouzhou Mansion and the Yamen of the Lianghuai Bu Political Envoy - the people's prosecutor, isn't this your favorite, brother. ”

Li Xi rubbed his hands: "It is incumbent on you to ask for your life for the people." ”

After coming to the inn where he stayed, Cheng Qi introduced several villager representatives to him, and briefly introduced the facts of the case: these villagers are farmers in Xiacai County, and their ancestors have been digging in the soil for generations, and they are all honest people. Although the Huainan coal mine was sporadically mined a hundred years ago, it has never had a climate. Large-scale industrial production began 30 years ago.

It was at that time that the industrial capital represented by Fei Jianren began to buy land in Xiacai County, and the catty in it was really difficult to describe. These villagers have been inexplicably evicted from the land where their ancestors have lived for 800 years, or they have become displaced people, or they have been forced to live dependent on factories and mines.

"The routine of this is that the government encloses land, expropriates land from the people at a very low price, and then sells it to Fei Jianren to open mines and build factories." Li Xi, who is from Shanxi, is very familiar with this routine: "Most of the land deeds held by the people are fixed land deeds obtained by the imperial court during the Kaiping period when the reform of the formal boundary was implemented. ”

Cheng Qi has been in this world for so long, and he has also remediated a piece of the history of this dynasty. During the Kaiping period, about a hundred years ago, the prime minister of the imperial court at that time was Zhang Juzheng and others. In order to curb land annexation, they put forward the reform proposal of "restructuring the economy", and bought a lot of land from large landlords through state redemption in densely populated areas such as the Lianghuai and Liangjiang rivers, and then distributed it to yeoman farmers at a fair price. At that time, Zhang Juzheng took into account the population movement and the fact that the family size of yeoman farmers was often only three to five, and the allocated land was leased indefinitely. That is, the imperial court leased state-owned land to yeoman farmers, who paid rent by paying agricultural taxes and performing forced labor. In principle, as long as the yeoman farmers did not lose their children and grandchildren, then the imperial court would not take back the land allocated to them.

But—where there is a but, most of the time it is bad. The ownership of the land remained vested in the State, and the yeoman peasants merely changed from tenants of large landowners to tenants of the State. The imperial court was on high ground, and the distribution of land was formulated by the political envoys of various provinces, and the yamen of each prefecture and county were implemented and adjusted according to local conditions. The Transit Envoys collect rent through their own tax department and tax system, and as long as the amount of tax collected is not reduced, they will not meddle in their affairs.

As a result, Fei Jianren colluded with the officials of Lianghuai Road to break the contract and recover the land (only giving the peasants a small amount of compensation for the seedlings), and then Fei Jianren only needed to take a small amount of the profits from the coal mining factories to make the tax department shut up and even secretly encourage it - after all, the purpose of the existence of the tax department is to collect taxes and collect more taxes. The tax revenues of industry and commerce are much greater than the taxes of agriculture - the tax paid in a hundred acres in a hundred years may not be as much as the tax paid by a factory in two or three years.

After Li Xi finished analyzing Fei Jianren's routine, he said to the villagers; This kind of routine was not invented by Fei Jianren, nor was he allowed to do whatever he wanted. In my hometown of Shanxi Road, there was also such a thing, and then ah......"

He pressed the key and gave them a meaningful look before continuing; "Fighting a lawsuit with the government is a scary thing to say, but the government is actually a paper tiger. The government is sometimes less daring than the little girl, as long as we control its temper, then we will find that he is actually just a bigger pear meow. ”