"Old Dai, what's wrong?" Su Hao walked into the workshop and asked Dai Qi.

Seeing Su Hao come in, the officials were embarrassed to lean on the window to peek again, and they all returned to their seats, and someone hurriedly brought tea to Su Hao and waited for Su Hao to sit down.

Dai Qi leaned over to Su Hao's side and asked in a low voice, "Master Su, did you talk to those two brocade guards just now?" What did they tell you? ”

Su Hao said: "They said that there is a father-in-law Chang talking to Lord Han, and idlers are not allowed to disturb him." This is Chang Gonggong...... Could it be a eunuch? ”

Dai Qi slapped his thigh and said to Xie Sizhi, the official next to him: "Old Xie, you see I'm right, it's really Father-in-law Chang!" ”

"Alas, bitter!" Xie Sizhi sighed, "Our Fengcheng is miserable." ”

The other officials also sighed for a long time, and their miserable appearance seemed to be as if the county government was not a permanent father-in-law, but some black and white impermanence.

Su Hao asked, "What, do you know this father-in-law Chang, what does he do?" ”

"Master Su, you don't know, alas......" Dai Qi said half a sentence, then stopped, just shook his head and sighed.

Su Hao couldn't cry or laugh, and asked, "Dai Qi, what are you playing with, is there anything you can't talk about?" ”

Only then did Dai Qi throw away his pretending to be a ghost and said, "Master Su, have you ever heard of the mine supervisor?" ”

"Mine supervisor?" Su Hao thought for a while and said, "I seem to have heard someone say that it was a eunuch sent by the imperial court to be in charge of mining, right?" ”

"Yes, exactly." Dyche said. "This father-in-law Chang is the mine supervisor sent to our Jiangxi by the imperial court. Ah, no, it should be said that he is the deputy envoy of the mine supervisor, and this envoy is Li Long, the father-in-law of Li. This father-in-law Chang is called Chang Wu, and some people pronounce his name upside down, calling him impermanence. ”

There was really an impermanence in this county yali, and Su Hao couldn't help but be proud of his foresight. However, how can a mine supervisor become impermanent, Su Hao still can't figure it out.

"Master Su. Lord Han, please. ”

Without waiting for Su Hao to ask Dai Qi for further verification, Li Xing, the official of the office, appeared at the door of the workshop and said to Su Hao. Everyone turned their heads to look out, only to see that the two brocade guards in front of the lobby had disappeared at some point, and it was estimated that Chang Wu had finished talking with Han Wen and left.

Su Hao followed Li Xing to the second hall of the county government, in addition to the county Hangul, there were also three people in the county, the main bo, and the classic history, as well as the official master Fang Mengjin. After Li Xing sent Su Hao into the door, he retreated. Su Hao saluted everyone separately. Han Wen pointed to a seat and said to Su Hao, "Change it." Have a seat. ”

"Xie Xianzun." Su Hao agreed and sat down.

"Colleagues, everyone knows what the father-in-law said when he came to say it, and it is not clear what he said. Wu Hui, please introduce me to Gaizhi. Han Wen said.

Fang Mengjin nodded and asked Su Hao: "Change, you just entered the county office, have you ever seen two brocade guards?" ”

"The students saw it." Su Hao said.

"Do you know where they came from?"

"The students don't know."

"They came with Chang Gonggong, the deputy envoy of the Jiangxi Mine Superintendent. Have you ever heard of Chang Gonggong? Fang Mengjin asked.

Su Hao said: "The students have never heard of this person before. However, Shi Cai heard a sentence from the scribe Dai in the workshop, saying that this person's name was Chang Wu, and someone gave him a nickname, called ......"

Su Hao said this, and didn't say any more. He didn't know if it was appropriate to say the nickname of a eunuch in front of all the officials. The county prince Qi said it for him: "His nickname is impermanence." It's the one who specializes in asking for lives. ”

That's what students heard. But why his nickname is impermanence, students don't know. Su Hao replied.

Lord Bo Wang Fengshao said: "The eunuchs sent to Jiangxi by the imperial court have two main and deputy eunuchs. The envoy is Li Xing and Li Gonggong. but a kind-hearted man. The deputy envoy is this father-in-law, who is a smiling tiger. He often went directly to the prefectures and counties to urge the mining to collect taxes, and everywhere he went, there would be misery. ”

"Why is that?" Su Hao exclaimed, the word "miserable" is not just a casual thing, how can you get to the point of living miserable when you open a mine?

Fang Mengjin saw that Su Hao really didn't understand, so he introduced him one by one.

The system of the emperor sending mine supervisors to various places began in the Longqing period. The reason for this was that the treasury was becoming increasingly empty, and the emperor urgently needed to increase his revenues to support his expenses. The earliest duties of the eunuchs sent by the emperor were to supervise the collection of industrial and commercial taxes and mining taxes to prevent local officials from engaging in fraud. Since these eunuchs were tasked with increasing their income, they had to do everything they could to extract more wealth from the magistrates when they could not find fault with the magistrates.

In the financial system of the Ming Dynasty, the land tax and industrial and commercial taxes were relatively fixed, and it was difficult for the eunuchs to make a difference. But the mining tax was an additional income, and as long as more deposits could be found to be mined, then a large tax could be collected to fulfill the tasks assigned by the emperor.

In this way, the supervising eunuchs sent by the emperor gradually transformed into professional mine supervisors. Their task was to force local officials to find and open mines, and then collect mining taxes. At the beginning, the mine supervisors were still reliable, basically collecting taxes according to the mine, and if they couldn't find the mine, they wouldn't collect it. Later, the mine supervisors became more and more arrogant, and they only collected money, regardless of the mining industry. Everywhere they went, they gave the magistrate a target for collecting mining taxes, but they didn't care whether there were mines in the area or whether they could collect taxes or not.

Among the two mine supervisors sent to Jiangxi by the imperial court, Li Long was a more principled person and did not act recklessly. However, Chang Wu, the deputy envoy, was different, and he often went to various prefectures and counties under false pretenses, urging local officials to open mines and pay taxes. If you don't pay the taxes, then he will harass you endlessly, and even take the brocade guards and arrest the local officials on all sorts of trumped-up charges.

Fearing Changwu's intimidation, the local officials had to find ways to raise money to pay their taxes, which could only be distributed to the local merchants and farmers. In order to avoid arousing public resentment, the magistrates often had to divert a portion of the money from the government's own expenses to use as a so-called mining tax, which affected the income of the officials in the government.

Su Hao saw the servants in the workshop just now, all of them were depressed, because they had a premonition that the money in their names was going to be looted away by Chang Wu.

"I see." Su Hao suddenly realized, but he still didn't understand something, so he asked: "Master Fang, there are so many prefectures and counties in Jiangxi, why is this Changwu eyeing our Fengcheng County?" What's the reason for this? ”

Han Wen smiled bitterly: "If you want to talk about this matter, you have to count it on your change, it's all because you are too capable, so you have caused so much trouble for this county." ”

"Uh...... County Zun, what are you talking about? Su Hao was in a cold sweat, what Han Wen said, it wouldn't be his matter of opening a coal kiln, right? As for building telescopes, this matter belongs to the military, and it is estimated that Chang Wu is not very clear.

Han Wen said: "Since April this year, there has been a severe drought in the whole province, and although all prefectures and counties have worked hard to dig wells, they have finally failed to do anything because of a drop in the bucket, and the crops of the farmers have not been harvested at least more than 50%, and there has been a famine in many places, and the people are miserable. Only I, Fengcheng County, because of the effective well surveying, the well drilling went smoothly, the crop harvest was the best, and I escaped the famine. At this time, if this father-in-law wants to come down to collect taxes, won't he choose our Fengcheng County? ”

"This can be regarded as the innocence of the Chu people, right?" Su Hao is now learning and selling, and he uses what others said about him just now to describe the things in front of him.

Jiangxi was hit by a major drought, and the people in many counties even had problems eating, and in this case, of course, Changwu could not exploit it, otherwise it would cause a popular uprising, and he could not afford to bear it. In this case, Fengcheng was able to eat because of Su Hao's meritorious work in digging wells, and there was no catastrophe in the year of the great drought, so the people could eat, so they became fat in Chang Wu's eyes. Han Wen said that this trouble came because of Su Hao, but he was not wrong.

"What did Grandpa Chang ask?" Su Hao asked.

Han Wendao: "Gonggong Chang said that when he was in the capital, he heard that Fengcheng is a place with many treasures and mineral deposits, so he hopes that the county will organize more people to prospect for minerals and pay mining taxes to solve the difficulties of the imperial court." ”

"That's a high-sounding request." Su Hao said, "If it is such a request, the county lord does not have to worry. There are many coal deposits in Fengcheng, and the students work hard, explore a few more coal caches, open some coal kilns, and pay some taxes to the father-in-law. ”

Han Wen said: "I don't know what I have changed, what this father-in-law wants is not the tax from the coal kiln, he wants the county to open a gold mine." ”

"It's really ridiculous, how can this gold mine be opened if you want to? This official has been in Fengcheng for several years, and he has never heard of any gold mines in Fengcheng, isn't this obvious blackmail? The county prince said angrily. When Chang Wu came to talk to Han Wen just now, he was also present, and he knew Chang Wu's request.

Han Wendao: "Actually, Chang Gonggong probably knows this, the so-called opening of a gold mine is just an excuse." His request to the county was to hand over 2,000 taels of gold a year, which was equivalent to 10,000 taels of silver. If he can't pay it, the county will have to borrow it from other places and give him 10,000 taels of silver. ”

"10,000 taels of silver...... Su Hao muttered, this is not a small amount, if it is distributed to the merchants in the county, it is enough to force more than half of the merchants to bankruptcy. Because of the huge profits he made for the telescope, he could have come up with 10,000 taels of silver, but this money couldn't fall on him alone anyway, right?

"It's really not good, and I can only persuade the rich businessmen in the county to donate." The king of the classics learned, "This is really a disaster." ”

Several officials also shook their heads, saying that this might be the only way to go. Han Wen set his eyes on Su Hao, and after a while, he asked slowly: "Change, this county knows that you have the ability to survey and prospect for minerals, in your opinion, can this county find gold mines?" ”