However, politics is politics after all, and even if it is sometimes clothed with a layer of warmth, it can never change its cruel nature more often than not, on more occasions.

Just when the Forbidden City was filled with a joyful, joyful and peaceful atmosphere, far away in Zhangyuanbao Fanjia Street in Jiexiu, Shanxi, there was a heavy cloud of misery and misery.

During this period of time, Wang Guoxing, the envoy of Fusi of Jinyi Weibei Town, who had disappeared from Emperor Chongzhen's side for a long time, took a large number of people mobilized by Fusi of Jinyi Weibei Town, under the leadership of Jiang Zhu and Wu Guoan, who was a thousand households in Jinyi Weibei Town, and others, and had been running around Taiyuan, Puzhou, Pingyang and other places in Shanxi.

According to the list provided by the Military Aircraft Department, Wang Guoxing, Wu Guoan, and Jiang Ping's wolf-like Jinyi guards directly crossed over to the official offices in Shanxi and went to arrest all the Shanxi businessmen on the list according to the map.

Zhang Xiao, the governor of Shanxi, who understood the reason, had nothing to say except for the cooperation of the local government.

Because of the inside story of killing Hu Kou and being broken, he already knew it from Jiang Jiao's mouth.

This kind of thing, in the heart of Zhang Xiao, who has been the governor of Shanxi for a long time, can also guess simply by guessing.

He still knows very well what kind of virtue these Shanxi merchants who specialize in foreign trade in various parts of the Nine Borders are.

These people have been running in the Mongolian steppe of northern Cyprus for generations, and they have been able to endure the hardships that ordinary people can't bear, and they can also endure the sins that ordinary people can't bear.

However, if you want to say that these are law-abiding good citizens who have never engaged in smuggling or captivity, Zhang Xiao, a figure who has served in Shanxi for many years and worked all the way to the governor, will not believe it if he is killed.

It's just that he didn't expect that these Jin businessmen, who were in the border area but did not forget Sangzi, and often did some good deeds such as building bridges and paving roads for their hometown, helping the poor, would be so bold as to collude with the East to enter the border area!

What I didn't expect was that the current Emperor Chongzhen attached so much importance to the disposal of these Jin merchants, and Wang Guoxing, the envoy of Jinyi Weibei Town, came to arrest him with a holy decree, and the scope of the impact and the means of disposal made him deeply shocked.

Not only to arrest the wives and concubines of the Jin merchants who were on the list, but also to punish the relatives of their father, mother and wife.

It is necessary not only to arrest those large and small shareholders who actually participate in the dividends, but also to arrest those local eunuchs and family members who have been registered or exposed to hold cadre shares.

Fortunately, Zhang Xiao has always been quite arrogant and disdainful of associating with those merchants who are businessmen and peddlers, and he himself is still honest and self-disciplined, otherwise, this time he must be planted in this matter.

It is precisely because he saw with his own eyes that Emperor Chongzhen's angry decrees and malicious edicts have been turned away for a period of time, so for a period of time, he has turned away all the requests from the descendants of the former dynasty pavilion elder Han Yi, as well as the pavilion elder Zhang Siwei family and Wang Chonggu family of the Wanli Dynasty.

What is the legendary edict?

This is the legendary edict!

Since Emperor Chongzhen did not hand over this matter to the Shanxi Governor Yamen or Shanxi according to the Inspectorate Department, nor did he hand it over to the Criminal Department, that already shows the emperor's attitude.

What attitude?

I just don't trust it!

Emperor Chongzhen insisted on sending Jinyi Weibei Zhenfusi's men and horses to Shanxi to deal with this matter beyond the local government in Shanxi, which shows that Emperor Chongzhen himself is very distrustful of the imperial court, especially the local government officials in Shanxi.

At least in dealing with the matter of the Jin merchants betraying the country, they are very distrustful.

At this critical time, as the governor of Shanxi, Zhang Xiao's situation is very embarrassing, especially under the situation that the emperor is angry and has been angry with the Shanxi official and merchant families, if he makes a mistake, he may be implicated and imprisoned, how can he dare to accept the invitation of those official and merchant families?

Not only could he not accept the request of anyone related to the Jin merchants on this issue, but Zhang Xiao, the governor of Shanxi, also wrote letters to several governors of the state capitals who were more important to him, asking them not to interfere in the actions of Jinyiwei.

Zhang Xiao's practices still played some role.

At least after arriving in Puzhou, he had to write to the emperor every three or five days to discuss the imperial court and local government affairs, and this time he was very wise to keep silent, allowing a large number of Jinyiwei people to "do mischief" in Puzhou.

Puzhou, Shanxi Province is the hometown of Zhang Siwei, the first assistant of the Wanli Dynasty, and Wang Chonggu, the elder of the pavilion, and at the same time, there is a world-famous salt lake in Puzhou, Shanxi.

This salt lake is extremely important to Puzhou's finances.

However, the salt produced in this salt lake was firmly controlled by the Zhang Siwei family, a wealthy local official and businessman, many years ago.

Of course, Zhang Siwei has long since died, and Zhang Siwei's younger brothers, Zhang Sizhi, Zhang Sijiao, and others, have long since disappeared.

However, the children and grandchildren of Zhang Siwei, Zhang Sizhi, and Zhang Sijiao still firmly control the salt of this great salt lake.

Because the salt introduction accumulated in the hands of these salt merchant families through various means was enough for their family to control the salt of Puzhou Salt Lake in their own hands for several generations.

When Lu Shanji was the minister of the Qin Mission, he rectified the Changlu and Lianghuai salt administrations, although he killed many people, but the Puzhou Salt Lake, which is located inland, was not among Lu Shanji's rectification.

As the so-called inappropriate family does not know the price of firewood and rice, after he was the champion of high school, he was in front of Shi Kefa of the noble Hanlin Academy in the Hanlin Academy, so he naturally did not know how difficult the local government affairs were, and often wrote books and said things and set off empty cannons.

But when he arrived in Puzhou and really became a local pro-people official, he soon found that none of the benevolent and good governance he had thought about for the benefit of the people could be pushed forward and continued after he arrived in Puzhou.

Because he has no money.

After he arrived for a while, he gradually figured out the situation.

In Puzhou, where he worked, if the government wanted to do things, it had to discuss with the Zhang family and the Wang family in Puzhou.

Because the two basic financial resources of Puzhou, one is the salt produced in the salt lake, and the other is the land planted by the peasants, which are concentrated in the hands of these two wealthy officials and businessmen.

Similar to the situation in which Puzhou's salt is in the hands of the Zhang family, 70% of Puzhou's land, especially in the basin plain, is in the hands of the Wang family, a wealthy family.

Although Shi Kefa is a member of the Donglin Party and a protégé of Donglin Party boss Zuo Guangdou, Shi Kefa is not a fool.

Not long after I came to Puzhou, I knew what the problem was in Puzhou.

One is that the government is so poor that the Puzhou Salt Lake, which is a money bag, is controlled and will be controlled by the Zhang family for a long time.

The other is land annexation, a large amount of land is in the hands of the descendants of the former cabinet elder Wang Chonggu, who rely on the privileges of their ancestors to pay taxes from grain, or only symbolically pay taxes on grain.

In stark contrast, a large number of peasants were landless and had to become servants, tenants and vagrants in wealthy families.

In his opinion, if the emperor had not allowed these peasants who had lost their land to go to the three sides or outside the Saiwai to open up wasteland and cultivate land, then there would not even be any need for the thieves from northern Shaanxi to come and make trouble, and these local hungry and displaced people would have rebelled on their own.

It's just that Shi Kefa is just a scholar after all, although he knows where the problem is, but except for some problems he found every now and then and reports them to Emperor Chongzhen, he can't think of a proper solution.

Because the problem of Puzhou salt was not formed overnight, and the large number of salt quotations held by the Zhang family were all official salt quotations issued by the imperial court since Wanli, and they were all well-documented official salt quotations, and there was no fraud.

The salt that Wanli, Taichang, and Tianqi dynasties sold in advance in order to collect money was sold in advance, and some of them were sold in advance until decades later.

But no matter how unreasonable it is, it was also printed by your court and allowed to be sold.

In addition, Wang Chonggu's family has a large amount of land and land in Puzhou for generations, among which there are all kinds of land properties of unknown origin, but most of them are also purchased and accumulated by people from generation to generation.

And this problem is even more common among official eunuch families.

Even after Shi Kefa himself was admitted to the Jinshi, there is such a problem in his own family now, at most it is just a different degree, what else can you say?

So although Shi Kefa knew what the problem was, he was helpless.

First, he will not or does not know how to fabricate charges, and solve the problem once and for all by bringing down the Zhang family and the Wang family.

Second, he also disdained to use coercion or inducement or any unseemly means to force the Zhang family and the Wang family to submit to the law, and to provide money and food for himself to rebuild Puzhou and provide relief to the victims.

As a result, Shi Kefa has been in Puzhou for half a year, and has achieved nothing except for an intuitive understanding and personal experience of the difficulties of local government affairs.

Only then did he understand that without a solution to the actual problem, it was useless to take revenge to save the country and the people.

It is precisely because of this that this time, when the Jinyi Guards from the Fusi of Beizhen went straight to Puzhou Fengling Pass and Wangguan Valley without saying hello, arrested the Zhang family and the Wang family, and seized all the manor properties of the Zhang family and the Wang family, Shi Kefa, who had always disliked the Jinyi Guard, remained silent very rarely, and sat back and watched the development of the situation.