Like last time, Li Yuntian held a banquet in the restaurant in Yangzhou City to pick up the wind and wash the dust for Pan Xingmin, Zhang Tao and Qin Ke.

The so-called things are people, although the restaurant is the same restaurant, and even the private room is the one from last time, and Li Yuntian is still talking and laughing during the banquet, but the three of Pan Xingmin seem a little absent-minded, and the smile on their faces is quite reluctant: If it weren't for the necessity, they would never have come to wade into the muddy waters of the two Huai Salt Road, and God knows how this matter would end.

After the banquet, Li Yuntian briefed Pan Xingmin and the three of them on the current situation in Yangzhou City at the Lianghuai Salt Yamen: The officials of the Lianghuai Salt Road and the salt merchants of the Salt Merchants Association have all been arrested, and the homes of many criminals who have been involved in the case have been raided, and huge wealth has been found.

After Pan Xingmin, Zhang Tao and Qin Ke learned that Li Yuntian had served the two Huai Salt Roads to a pot, their faces showed helpless wry smiles, Li Yuntian made it clear that he wanted to put the two Huai Salt Roads to death, Chen Wenren was extremely stupid to provoke Li Yuntian, otherwise how could the Two Huai Salt Roads suffer such a catastrophe?

And with the salt merchants of the Salt Merchants Association being put in prison, the entire Jiangnan business community was shaken, and the salt merchants monopolized half of the Jiangnan business community since the founding of the Ming Dynasty.

This has made the pattern of the Jiangnan business community quietly undergo drastic changes, and the Kyushu Chamber of Commerce, which has formed a confrontation with the Salt Merchants Association, has taken advantage of the situation to leap to the position of the hegemon of the Jiangnan business community, and increased its efforts to seize the Jiangnan market.

The reason why the salt merchants are the first chamber of commerce in the Ming Dynasty is not only because they are engaged in salt trafficking, but also involve other businesses such as cloth, porcelain, tea, etc., so the salt merchant association suffered this catastrophe completely disrupted the order of the Jiangnan business community, and the Kyushu Chamber of Commerce, which had been prepared for a long time, filled the vacancy caused by the departure of the salt merchants in the Jiangnan business community with lightning speed, leaving the merchants of the grain merchants and the cloth merchants far behind.

Therefore, the Kyushu Chamber of Commerce was the biggest beneficiary of the Lianghuai Salt Road Incident, because they knew that those salt merchants were in a catastrophe this time, so they went all out to seize the business under the names of those salt merchants, while the merchants of the General Association of Grain Merchants and the General Association of Cloth Merchants did not dare to act rashly because they did not know the shape, and they missed the opportunity for expansion.

On 12 October, Li Yuntian interrogated the case in the Yamen Shengtang of the Lianghuai Salt Road, and served as the chief judge in the capacity of the chief envoy of the Lianghuai Salt Road, Xie Heng and Han Liang served as the jury judge in the capacity of the deputy envoy of the Lianghuai Salt Road, and Pan Xingmin, Zhang Tao, and Qin Ke supervised the trial in the capacity of the officials of the Three Laws and Courts.

Judging from the specifications of the Lianghuai Yandao case alone, it is already a top-level trial in the Ming Dynasty.

In addition to the cases of the emperor's imperial trial, there are two types of cases that can be called the top trial of the Ming Dynasty, the highest is the Jiuqing trial, followed by the trial of the three law divisions.

The Jiuqing meeting refers to the cases that were tried by the six Shangshu, the Imperial History of the Left and Right Metropolitan Procuratorates, the Siqing of Dali Temple, and the Chief Officials of the Yamen of the Nine Ministries and Courts.

The trial of the three legal divisions refers to the cases in which the officials of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, Dali Temple and the Criminal Department participate in the trial, which are divided into two grades:

The highest standard is naturally the case personally tried by the chief officials of the three law divisions such as the left and right imperial history of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, the temple of Dali Temple and the Shangshu of the Criminal Department, followed by the cases tried by the auxiliary officials of the three legal divisions such as the deputy capital of the Imperial History of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, the left and right Shaoqing of Dali Temple and the left and right servants of the Criminal Department.

Although the central organs of the Ming Dynasty were divided into the Yamen of the Beijing Division and the Yamen of the Nanjing Ministry of the Ministry of Education, which were of the same administrative level, the Yamen of the Beijing Division was the central organ of the Ming Dynasty, so the officials of the Jiuqing and Sanfa Divisions were the officials of the Yamen of the Beijing Division.

However, because the rank of the officials of the yamen of the Nanjing ministry is the same as that of the yamen of the Beijing Division, but the authority is not as good as that of the other party, the officials of the yamen of the various ministries and courts in Nanjing can also exercise the rights of "Jiuqing Meeting" and "Three Law Divisions Meeting" at a specific time, and their specifications and effects are the same as those when the officials of the yamen of the ministries and courts in Beijing participate in the trial.

Because it has only been more than ten years since the Ming Dynasty moved the capital, the officials of the Nanjing Ministry and the Yamen have not had the opportunity to replace the Beijing Normal Ministry and the Yamen to carry out the "Jiuqing Trial" and the "Three Law Divisions Trial", and the Beijing Normal Ministry and the Yamen will not give up such an important right.

The reason why the Yamen of the Nanjing Three Law Divisions was "lucky" to be invited by Li Yuntian to Yangzhou to supervise the trial by official documents and carry out the trial of the Three Law Divisions was entirely because Li Yuntian wanted to solve the problem quickly and try the case of embezzlement of ink and illegal salt in the Lianghuai Salt Road before alarming the officialdom of the Beijing Division, and then he only needed to be busy with the aftermath of the matter, instead of confronting the six divisions of the Beijing Division.

Once the case of the two Huai Yandao embezzlement and illegal salt is a foregone conclusion, then the Sixth Department of the Jingshi Division will naturally turn its energy to bargaining with Li Yuntian in order to properly handle the case and avoid too much interference by the cabinet and thus implicate too many officials of the Six Ministries, otherwise they will lose the initiative above the court and be suppressed by the cabinet for the first time in history.

That is to say, Li Yuntian will become a buffer zone between the cabinet and the six ministries at that time, trying his best to mediate the contradictions between the two sides and avoid the six ministries being hit hard, after all, Emperor Xuande wants to see the cabinet and the six ministries become a balance of power in the court, rather than one side overpowering the other, and then forming a situation of monopolizing the government.

As an emperor, Emperor Xuande naturally knows the way to control the subordinates, and absolutely does not want one of the forces in the court to control the government, so he decided to let Li Yuntian thoroughly investigate the Lianghuai Salt Road, which is not only to give the six ministries a dismount, but also to secretly support the weak cabinet to compete with the six ministries, and at the same time establish their own monarchy, which can be described as killing three birds with one stone.

However, it is not easy to do this, not to mention the resistance of the six departments, it is a difficult task to grasp the handle of the two Huai Salt Roads, it is obvious that the people of the two Huai Salt Roads will never be arrested, plus the echo of the six departments of the capital in the court, so it is even more difficult to find out the evidence.

And there are very few people who dare to thoroughly investigate the Lianghuai Salt Road and have the ability to find out about it, and only Li Yuntian can do this in the imperial court, which reassures Emperor Xuande the most.

Li Yuntian knew that this case was difficult to handle, so he took advantage of the opportunity to transport illegal salt in the Lianghuai Salt Road to make Zhang Gui's case bigger, and then gave the Lianghuai Salt Road a huge deterrent, forcing the batch of illegal salt in the Lianghuai Salt Road to not be sent out in time, so that it fell into the current predicament, making that the batch of illegal salt will become the evidence in Li Yuntian's hands to put the two Huai Salt Road to death.

In fact, Li Yuntian didn't want to see a salt shortage in the Ming Dynasty because he had overloaded those illegal salts, so he asked Yangwu Marquis Xue Lu to wait for the batch of illegal salt to arrive at the destination dock before bringing it down, and he wanted to take advantage of the time when those illegal salts were on the road to try the case of the Lianghuai Salt Road, so that those illegal salts could be transported to the local area as soon as possible.

After Li Yuntian and the other presiding judges, jurors, and inmates took their seats in the lobby, Li Manshan, who was standing on the front side of the hall, waved his hand, and the two brocade guards brought up Chen Wenren, the left attendant of Nanjing's household department with a pale face.

After a few days of not seeing, Chen Wenren's sideburns were already crawling with gray hair, and his expression was haggard, and his whole spirit looked a little sluggish, as if he had aged more than ten years all of a sudden.

Seeing this situation, Pan Xingmin, Zhang Tao and Qin Ke couldn't help but sigh in their hearts, they didn't expect that in just ten days, there would be such an amazing reversal in the two Huai Salt Roads, and Chen Wenren, who was originally complacent, became Li Yuntian's prisoner.

Although he was already in prison, Chen Wenren was still full of official authority after being taken into the lobby, standing in front of the hall and looking up at Li Yuntian, his eyes looked at Li Yuntian gloomily, he never thought that Li Yuntian would dare to attack him.

"Lord Chen, this official is the emperor's envoy to patrol the salt of the two Huai Salt Road, and now I ask you, is the salt seized by the Yamen of the Governor of Caoyun private salt or accumulated salt?" Li Yuntian knew that Chen Wenren had been suffering in the prison of the Lianghuai Yandao Yamen in the past few days, and now he must have hated himself to death in his heart, so he asked quietly without any interest in this.

"Of course it's salt accumulation, otherwise why would the Nanjing household department prescribe salt introduction?" Chen Wenren sneered when he heard this, and glared at Li Yuntian with an arrogant expression, "Zhenwu Hou, this official is an official of the Sixth Department, why did you put this official in prison without the emperor's permission?" ”

"Someone, please ask the emperor for a holy decree!" Li Yuntian had long known that Chen Wenren would not be honest, and said in a deep voice to Lei Ting, who was standing aside holding a long cylindrical object wrapped in yellow brocade cloth.

"Under the holy decree, Chen Wenren, the left waiter of the Nanjing household department, received the order!" Lei Ting immediately opened the yellow brocade cloth in her hand, took out a holy decree, and stepped forward and said to Chen Wenren.

"Chicken Si Chen!" Hearing this, a trace of disdain flashed at the corner of Chen Wenren's mouth, he snorted coldly in his mouth, and knelt in front of the hall, how could he not know that Lei Ting was a woman? Hence the deliberate ridicule.

Many people at the scene heard this, Lei Ting's willow eyebrows frowned slightly, and then quietly opened the holy decree and began to read it.

This holy decree was given to him by Emperor Xuande before Li Yuntian left Beijing, and the holy decree clearly stated that if there is a wind of greed for ink in the two Huaiyan Dao, then no matter who is involved, it will be handed over to Li Yuntian for strict investigation.

"Lord Chen, you have heard the emperor's holy decree, this official has been ordered to thoroughly investigate the two Huai salt roads, those private salt quotations are from the Nanjing household department, shouldn't you, as the Nanjing household servant who is in charge of the salt introduction matter, stay in prison for a few days?"

After Lei Ting finished reading the holy decree, Li Yuntian arched his hand upwards diagonally, and then looked at Chen Wenren who was staring at him expressionlessly, how could he be afraid of Chen Wenren?

"Zhenwu Hou, why do you say that those accumulated salt are private salt?" Seeing Li Yuntian's sharp eyes, Chen Wenren suddenly felt a little weak, and then asked with a sneer, denying Li Yuntian's questioning.

"Master Chen, whether it is private salt or not, you don't care, this official already has conclusive evidence." Li Yuntian saw Chen Wenren's denial, and said quietly, "This official just wants to ask you, why is the salt quoted by the Nanjing Household Department more than twice as much as the official salt this time, do you want the local people to eat salt for the past two years?" ”