(Today is a new volume, The Western Regions Chronicles)

In the second year of orthodoxy, midsummer, Poyang Lake.

A painting boat slowly moves forward on the sparkling lake, and in the shade of the bow of the painting boat stands a young man in a blue shirt, holding a folding fan in his hand and shaking slightly, elegant and handsome, and the jade tree is in the wind.

It's the busiest season on Poyang Lake, with a steady stream of boats of all sizes, and convoys of cargo ships passing by the boats.

After more than 10 years of rapid development, Hukou County, located at the entrance of Poyang Lake into the river, has now become a well-known commercial town in Daming, where goods from the south to the north and east to the west are gathered, and then transported to the north and south of the river by merchants from all over the country.

With the rapid development of commerce and trade, Hukou County is now the most prosperous and wealthy one among more than 1,000 prefectures and counties in Daming, with a prosperous market and people living and working in peace and contentment.

It is worth mentioning that in addition to the developed commerce, the development of agriculture in Hukou County is also second to none in the counties of Daming Prefecture, with an enviable irrigation system and advanced large-scale farm-style collective production, which makes the grain output climb to a new high every year.

Of course, the people of Hukou County will not forget that it was the county prince who left more than ten years ago, and now the famous Zhongwu King of Daming.

Whenever Li Yuntian is mentioned in front of outsiders, the people of Hukou County will always proudly call Li Yuntian affectionately as "our county master", which makes him more close.

Although Li Yuntian left Hukou County, Hukou County was the hometown of his two wives, Chen Ningning and Zheng Wanrou, and as Li Yuntian's status in the imperial court rose, the plans he had previously formulated were faithfully implemented by his successor magistrates.

Because of the easy achievement of excellent political performance in Hukou County, each county magistrate will be promoted by the officials after the expiration of his term, and he can take Li Yuntian to set it up, which makes the post of Hukou County magistrate an excellent position in the officialdom and an excellent resume.

Even those high-minded new science and technology scholars also favored the position of Hukou County magistrate, although the new branch scholars usually disdained to serve as the magistrate of Hukou County, and wanted to stay in the major yamen in the capital.

But the magistrate of Hukou County is different, Li Yuntian, who was born in the two lists, rose from Hukou County, so this makes the post of magistrate of Hukou County virtually become the object of pursuit by the new science and technology scholars, everyone wants to copy the glory of Li Yuntian, and wants to make friends with Li Yuntian.

Moreover, it is very easy to serve in Hukou County, Li Yuntian has left a systematic governance plan, and the local gentry and businessmen are also very cooperative with the county government, as long as they do not change the development plan that has been drawn up, then after the expiration of the three-year term, they will wait to be promoted to the ministry yamen in the capital, after all, the person who can win the post of Hukou County magistrate is definitely not an idle person, and there is the support of different forces behind it.

Obviously, no county governor has the idea of changing the development plan set by Li Yuntian, because such an idea is stupid, and it will not only be regarded as a provocation to Li Yuntian, but more importantly, it will undermine the steady development of Hukou County, and it is bound to be resisted by all forces.

Today's Hukou County is different from more than ten years ago, because Hukou County has now become the freight distribution center of the Ming Dynasty, so it has attracted all kinds of forces to come to get a piece of the pie, and the development plan formulated by Li Yuntian will make their interests suffer, and they will naturally attack it.

Then again, how many seventh-grade officials in Daming now have the courage to touch Li Yuntian's moldy head? Not to mention those seven-rank officials, even the six officials of the five prefectures in the capital, and even the auxiliary ministers of Emperor Xuande's imperial order will not have anything to do to provoke Li Yuntian, and want to move Hukou County, which is close to Li Yuntian.

"Xianggong, I haven't been to Hukou County for more than ten years, and I've changed a lot, right?" With a burst of pleasant laughter, three Yongrong and luxurious women walked out of the cabin with a smile, and one of the women in a white dress asked with a smile when she saw the boy with a folding fan staring at the busy lake.

"It's been more than ten years since I said goodbye, and I couldn't imagine that shipping in Poyang Lake would become so busy." Brother Gongzi turned around when he heard this, and said to the woman in the white dress with a smile.

"Xianggong, if you hadn't cleaned up those water robbers on Poyang Lake back then, there would still be water robbers rampant on this lake, and Hukou County and other counties along Huzhou would not have suffered a lot." Among the three women, the woman in the yellow dress smiled when she heard this, and said coquettishly.

"This can be described as a blessed land for Xianggong, who would have thought that Xianggong was only a magistrate for three years and was summoned by Emperor Taizong to the capital to supervise the imperial history." The last woman in a purple dress said with a smile.

The boy who was shaking the folding fan couldn't help laughing when he heard this, and looked up at the rippling blue lake, with a look of relief on his face.

This son-in-law is none other than Li Yuntian, the famous and loyal king of Daming, the woman in the white dress is Chen Ningning, the woman in the yellow dress is Zheng Wanrou, and the woman in the purple dress is Lei Ting.

Since the violent death of Wang Butcher in Lin'an County, Hangzhou Prefecture last year, Li Yuntian has been going back and forth between Xiaoliuqiu Island and Qiongzhou Island, properly handling the complicated affairs of the two islands, the most important of which is the resettlement of migrants.

According to Li Yuntian's figures, there were as many as 800,000 immigrants on Xiaoliuqiu Island and 300,000 on Qiongzhou Island.

Although this figure seems insignificant now, it was already a miracle in the environment at that time, in addition to the trust of those immigrants in Li Yuntian, it also reflected the hardships of the people's lives, and they had to leave their hometowns to find a way out.

After the truth of the violent death of the butcher Wang in Lin'an County was revealed, Xie Muen found out a series of favoritism, irregularities, and corruption related to the case, and many officials from the four yamen of Lin'an County, Hangzhou Prefecture, and Zhejiang's Political Envoy Department and the Procuratorial Envoy Department were involved.

What is particularly unexpected is that because Xie Muen is Li Yuntian's deputy, those officials involved in the case are all afraid, and everyone knows that Li Yuntian will reduce the guilt of those officials who confess.

Therefore, in order to protect themselves, the officials involved in the case rushed to report their colleagues for violating the law and discipline, which caused a major earthquake in the officialdom of the entire Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, and many officials were implicated.

In order to avoid the situation from deteriorating, after receiving the official document on the case reported by Xie Muen in the name of Li Yuntian, the auxiliary ministers in the capital decided that Yang Pu, the elder of the cabinet cabinet, would rush to Hangzhou Mansion to deal with this major case in the officialdom of Jiangsu and Zhejiang caused by the violent death of Wang Butcher.

Since Li Yuntian was on Xiaoliuqiu Island, Yang Pu arrived in Hangzhou and stopped for a while before going to the port of Ningbo Prefecture and took the three-masted warship of the Ming Army and Navy Division of Ningbo Port to meet Li Yuntian.

Although it was Xie Muen who stayed in Hangzhou City to deal with the case, the person who could really decide the direction of the case was obviously Li Yuntian, so Yang Pu naturally wanted to go to Li Yuntian to discuss.

When Yang Pu arrived at Ningbo Port, the Ningbo Military Port had been completed, and dozens of ships of the Ming Army's Navy Wing Fleet were neatly moored in the port.

Because the ships of the three major fleets of the Ming Army and the Naval Division were all prepared for ocean voyages, the hull was huge, standing in the port like a hill, and Yang Pu was quite shocked by the momentum of the people, and he never imagined that Li Yuntian would really set up the Ming Naval Division.

As far as Yang Pu knew, the shipyards under Jiangwutang were now working day and night to produce ocean-going ships, mainly three-masted warships and transport ships, and when the three major fleets of the Ming Army and the Naval Division were fully manned, they would be a powerful military force strong enough to dominate the sea.

To tell the truth, Yang Pu admired Li Yuntian very much in his heart, a court official like Li Yuntian who was in a high position and held a lot of power would no longer be on the front line when he was on an errand, and some of them had people under them to charge into battle.

But Li Yuntian is different, the dignified King of the Ming Dynasty and Zhongwu actually came thousands of miles to Xiaoliuqiu Island, an overseas "desert island", to be busy with local military and political affairs, which is simply incredible.

However, it is precisely because of this that Li Yuntian has a high prestige in the officialdom, and it is really rare for a Ming official like him to serve the public.

No one knows what Li Yuntian and Yang Pu talked about, but the case of the violent death of Wang Butcher was quickly and unscathed, and more than a dozen people involved in the case, led by Zhang Gu, were sentenced to death, and dozens of people were sentenced to death with canes and exiles.

It is worth mentioning that Bai Dezhang, the magistrate of Lin'an County, was sentenced to be executed for deliberately framing Liu Qing, becoming the highest-ranking official to be executed in the case of the violent death of Wang Butcher.

In addition, dozens of officials involved in the trial of Wang Butcher's violent death were reprimanded, demoted, and dismissed on charges of dereliction of duty.

After all, the case of Butcher Wang's violent death has a huge impact, and if it weren't for those officials' preconceived belief that Liu Qing and the Liu family were guilty, coupled with the fact that there were factors such as corruption and bribery, the case would not have reached the point where it is out of control today.

Obviously, these officials involved in the case have been given lenient sentences, otherwise a group of officials will inevitably be severely punished for bending the law for personal gain and soliciting and accepting bribes.

The auxiliary ministers obviously did not want turmoil in the officialdom of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the richest region of the Ming Dynasty, and they did not want to see a conflict break out between the various forces of the imperial court for the official positions of the yamen at all levels in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

However, although those officials who were reported were able to pass safely this time, their careers have basically been ruined, and many of them have been gradually transferred out of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to serve in remote areas, which can be described as a ruined career.

At the same time, careful people will find that there are two new institutions in the yamen of the counties of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, namely the commercial house and the tax house, although they are at the same level as the county ya, but they are different from the six houses in management.

The tax offices of the prefectures and counties are directly under the jurisdiction of the Daming Taxation Bureau, and the local yamen has no right to interfere with their actions.

The commercial houses in various prefectures and counties are under the dual jurisdiction of the Daming Commercial Bureau and the local yamen, and the local branches of the Daming Commercial Bureau are mainly responsible, but they also have to report their business to the local yamen, so that the chief officials of the local yamen can understand the local business situation.

In fact, since the establishment of the Daming Commercial Bureau and the Daming Tax Bureau under the imperial approval of Emperor Xuande, various local yamen have begun to set up commercial houses and tax houses one after another.

The Daming Commercial Bureau and the Daming Taxation Bureau rely on the branch offices of Jiangwutang in the provincial capitals of the provinces as the branches of the two capitals and 14 provinces, and gradually set up tax houses and commercial houses in each state capital and county in turn to build a corresponding administrative system.

Of course, the best way to set up commercial and tax houses is Jiaozhi and Guangxi, where Li Yuntian served as governor, especially Jiaozhi, which has established a new set of administrative, commercial and agricultural systems under Li Yuntian's planning over the years, and has undergone earth-shaking changes.

The most resistance is the Nanzhili and Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, these areas are prosperous and prosperous, and the Ming Dynasty has been very contemptuous of commerce since the founding of the People's Republic of China, and has basically adopted a laissez-faire posture and has not formulated relevant laws and regulations to regulate and restrict.

Therefore, under the policy of low tax rate, the Ming merchants and gentry engaged in commercial affairs can be said to have made a lot of money, and once the commercial and tax houses are established, then the next step must be to raise taxes, which makes the local interest groups resist, so the establishment of commercial houses and tax houses in Nanzhili and Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions has encountered great resistance.

Li Yuntian took the case of the violent death of the butcher Wang as a breakthrough point, and successfully borrowed the power of the auxiliary ministers to make the interest groups in the imperial court that secretly obstructed the establishment of the commercial and tax houses succumb, and made the commercial and tax houses smoothly stationed in the yamen, which not only redressed an unjust case, but also put an end to the matter of the commercial and tax houses.