Many memories came to my heart, and the emotions were so strong that they even infected Su Che.

These pictures made Su Che silent for a long time.

Although he knew that Queen Ma and Zhu Yuanzhang were rare emperors and queens in ancient and modern times, the thoughts that were so thick that they couldn't be dissolved, and the pain that couldn't be described in words, still shocked Su Che.

Zhu Yuanzhang is the first emperor of the ages, he has fought all his life, he is jealous and hateful, he hates corrupt officials to the core, and even does not hesitate to kill, even if he is implicated in countless people, he must be punished to the end.

Such a ruthless and somewhat cruel murderer is so soft in his heart, or rather, weak.

Even such a great person has someone to rely on and talk to.

Since ancient times, kings have been lucky, and they are the most ruthless emperors.

Couples like Zhu Yuanzhang and Queen Ma are really very rare.

On the day of Queen Ma's death, the ministers cried more sadly than anyone else, on the one hand, they were very sad that a good queen like Queen Ma died.

On the other hand, it is because of Zhu Yuanzhang's sword of the Son of Heaven, from now on, there will be no more scabbards, as a courtier, how can he not be sad?

In the eyes of these ministers, the death of Queen Ma means that their future is in danger and that they may be more likely to be killed.

And that's exactly what happened.

After the death of Queen Ma, Zhu Yuanzhang's personality became more tyrannical, because of a trivial matter, he often killed eunuchs and ministers, and there were not a few ministers who were killed, because of many cases, they even slaughtered officials on a large scale - this sword of the Son of Heaven no longer has a scabbard, so no one can stop Zhu Yuanzhang's killing!

After Hu Weiyong's case, there are also the empty seal case, Guo Huan's case, and the Lan Yu case.

Calculate the time, and the next thing should be an empty seal?

The so-called empty seal is to pre-stamp the seal on the document, and fill in the specific content when needed.

According to the regulations of the Ming Dynasty, every year, all political departments, prefectures, and counties must submit money and grain, financial revenues and expenditures, and tax accounts to the household department.

The figures of the household department and the various administrative departments, prefectures and counties must be completely consistent and accurate before the project can be completed.

If there is a discrepancy, the entire account book will be rejected, re-filled and re-stamped with the local government's seal.

Because of the payment of taxes, it is inevitable that there will be losses in the transportation process, and it is a high probability event that the account books and the physical objects do not match.

Therefore, the officials who go to the household department for examination are prepared with blank books with a seal in advance for use.

This was originally a habitual practice that had existed in the Yuan Dynasty, and it had never been explicitly banned.

But.

Just because it's not banned doesn't mean there aren't problems, on the contrary, it's a big problem.

A blank book with a sealed letter over can give a lot of room for manoeuvre.

To put it bluntly, this is a bad habit left over from the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, and the use of empty seals will open the door to corruption.

This matter may seem to many people to be just a trick of petty officials, and many people even think that it is a compromise method limited by transportation and communication conditions.

But the problem is that the accounts are as much as they are, and if there is any discrepancy, then the reason for the discrepancy should be explained, rather than changing it to "match".

More importantly, the household department clearly knew that various localities were doing such false accounts, but they gave long-term acquiescence.

Isn't this a collaboration between the central and local bureaucrats to trap the imperial court?

The financial year settlement can be falsified in this way, so what accounts cannot be falsified in this way?

After the "empty seal" incident, Zhu Yuanzhang's reaction was "angry", thinking that this was a deceptive act, and the courtiers trembled with fear and did not dare to admonish him.

That's when it happened.

There was a eunuch who sent a message, and the Jinyi guard commanded Mao Xiang to ask to see him.

Su Che didn't raise his head and said, "Let him in." ”

At this point in time, Zhu Yuanzhang dismantled and reorganized his own escort army and turned it into a special force directly under his jurisdiction, that is, Jinyiwei.

And Mao Xiang is the leader of this brocade guard.

The duty of the Jinyi guard is to drive the guards and patrol and arrest.

Jin Yiwei and those ministers are born on opposite sides, which can be described as incompatible.

Mao Xiang as the commander of the Jinyi Guard, just took office to picket many illegal acts, paving the stepping stone on the road to promotion, it is a matter of course, at this moment he knelt underneath, and said seriously: "Your Majesty, this is an account that the minister has just confiscated from the household department, please Your Majesty Longmu Imperial Review." ”

The eunuch immediately handed over Mao Xiang's account book.

Su Che glanced at Mao Xiang, the luck on the top of his head was red, red like blood, and there was a touch of black and yellow entangled with each other.

Then Su Che glanced down at the ledger.

It was empty, with only one seal.

At this moment, Su Che understood what was going on, this should be the first scene of the empty seal case, because of the creation of Jinyiwei, so Jinyiwei immediately used this empty seal to make an article, and used the handle of these literati officials to add officials to himself to the knighthood.

At this moment, the Ming Empire has been more than ten years, and the matter of empty printing has been carried out as an unspoken rule, the whole court, all officials, know about this matter, and the big guys have a very tacit understanding to cover the news, and Zhu Yuanzhang, as the founding emperor, has not known about this matter until now, and has been kept in the dark.

It's no wonder that Zhu Yuanzhang is angry, the whole court, all the officials, all know about this matter, and even those officials who say that they are loyal to the emperor are silent about this matter!

It's a chilling feeling.

Lao Zhu was deceived so badly.

These thoughts flashed through Su Che's mind, and he stared at the ledger and whispered:

"Empty seal?"

"Your Majesty, this is the money and grain account handed over by Hu Guangcheng to the Ministry of Households, perhaps because of the carelessness of the clerks, he handed over an empty account book." Jin Yiwei Commander Mao Xiang said with a smile.

"What do you want to say?" Su Che squinted at Mao Xiang.

Mao Xiang's heart was cold, cold sweat dripped down his cheeks, goosebumps all over his body rose, he was actually clever in front of the emperor, this is really looking for death!

Mao Xiang hurriedly said: "Your Majesty, although this is an empty account book, it is covered with the big seal of Hu Guangcheng's announcement of the political envoy, which shows that this empty account book is their deliberate behavior...... How many dirty things are there, the minister does not dare to say. ”

"We got it." Su Che said lightly.

Hearing this, Mao Xiang, the commander of the Jinyi Guard, was stunned for a moment, he never thought that in the face of this empty account book, His Majesty the Emperor would have such an attitude? Shouldn't it be the anger of renunciation at this moment?

You know, this is a crime of deception, such a serious crime, shouldn't he be investigated immediately?

"We already knew about this before, you have second-hand information, step down." Su Che shook his head and said.

Hearing this, Mao Xiang instantly realized that someone had robbed the credit, who was it? Who is it that robbed him of his incredible credit?

It's a big case, and it's very easy to investigate.

First of all, the numbers such as "one", "two", and "three" in Chinese characters are easy to add to the pen, but the strokes of the add are not difficult to identify.

Secondly, the seals are made of red ink, and the accounts are made of black ink. If it is written first and then stamped, then the red clay should be on top of the black ink, otherwise there will be ink written on top of the ink, which can be judged to be an "empty seal" behavior.

Furthermore.

The empty seal case also established two new rules for future generations:

First of all, the accounts should not use so-called lowercase numbers such as "one", "two", and "three", let alone Arabic numerals, but so-called uppercase numbers such as "one", "two", and "three".

Secondly, the seal must be "on the ink", that is, the red ink must be stamped on top of the black ink to prove that it is the seal after the words have been written.

These two systems, which have been used to modern times, are still the most basic principles of the financial and official document system, which fully illustrates the very correct rules.

This "empty seal case" may be the first test that Zhu Yuanzhang left for Su Che?

Let's see if Su Che can handle it more perfectly?

At this moment, when Mao Xiang heard this, he honestly retired, and then left the hall.

And Su Che held his chin and stared at the empty account book, his eyes were gloomy, and he couldn't help but think.

After the empty seal case, Zheng Shili, a native of Ninghai, Zhejiang, wrote to Zhu Yuanzhang.

Zheng Shili believes that His Majesty's desire to punish these officials with empty seals is to prevent traitors from obtaining empty seal paper and endangering the common people by deception, but this is impossible, and put forward four views:

First, the empty seal account book is stamped with a sewing seal, and the specific imprint on each piece of paper is not complete, unlike a paper and a print, even if it is scattered, it will not be able to do anything, not to mention that the white paper with the seal is also easy to get.

Second, the money and grain account figures, the government must be in the province, the province must be in the ministry, the entry and exit is right or wrong, and finally the household department has the final say. The distance between ministries and provinces is thousands of miles away, and the distance is three or four thousand miles. Printing first, then writing, this is a stopgap measure, and it has been around for a long time.

Third, national legislation must have clear laws, and then punish violators in accordance with the law. However, there is no law against the empty seal in the country, and everyone has always done it without knowing that they are guilty. Now once you are punished, you can't convince people.

Fourth, it is very difficult for the state to train a qualified official, and the officials who can be appointed to the county guard are all cultivated over decades, and these officials are not grass and can be revived, and they cannot be easily killed.

As soon as this article came out, Zhu Yuanzhang, who was furious, immediately ordered that the beheading sentence that had been stopped be executed as soon as possible, and in addition, let Jinyiwei hurry up and arrest Zheng Shili and put him in prison first, and then check it out to see if there was someone behind him.

After this incident, Zheng Shili smiled and said: "Gu Wushu is enough to use his ears. I speak for the country, and I will die if I divide myself, who will seek it for me? ”

An impassioned gesture.

However.

The reason why Zhu Yuanzhang is so angry is also very simple.

Because Zheng Shili's intercession seems to be sincere and reasonable, but in fact it is short-sighted.

Of course, it is not easy for the imperial court to train officials, and those who can be prefects and governors can be called capable officials, but if they can be officials, they can be corrupt?

Zheng Shili was just interceding in the previous paragraph, and the latter paragraph was a bit of a hidden threat, which is the most commonly used defense by corrupt officials-

We are the pillars of the administrative system, even if there is a slight corruption, but it will not collapse, and if you punish everyone now, will you not tear down the entire pillar system? Therefore, the emperor should tolerate our little bit of corruption, this is also for the sake of your country!

For the sake of the political support of the ruling clique at the top, for the integrity of the administrative system at the bottom, in short, to maintain the rule, corruption should be tolerated.

Many people think this way, many emperors do the same, and basically every emperor in all dynasties has turned a blind eye to these small stains.

How many officials have made a fortune with this money!

After all, it's for the sake of the big picture!

Without officials, how can the emperor govern the world?

It's okay to kill one official, but do you want to kill all officials???

This directly angered Zhu Yuanzhang, and he said: Then kill all the financial officials!

Kill!

Kill him with a river of blood, kill him with a bright future!

Lao Zhu is so strong in doing things, and he doesn't talk about "thinking about the overall situation"!

He is the big picture!

Many people in later generations called the empty seal case a big injustice.

There are even more people who defend the empty seal case.

The problem is that corruption may not be a big deal in a strong time.

But for the slow erosion of a huge empire, it is difficult to return.

After the seemingly minor corruption behaviors such as fire consumption, drifting, and envy that were popular in the Ming Dynasty were completely tolerated by the above, the officials cleverly set up various names such as fire consumption and drifting, so that this "loss" became bigger and bigger.

By the end of the Ming Dynasty, there was even eight or nine out of ten taxes that went to the fire, and the imperial court could not collect taxes, and eight or nine out of ten of the military salaries sent by the imperial court were lost, leading to a mutiny at the front.

The root cause of these chaos is that it was planted early in the empty seal case.

If Zhu Yuanzhang punishes him more harshly, he will be able to make these chaos appear later, the country will be stronger, and the national honor will continue longer.

But this kind of behavior is also incomprehensible to many people.

Including this Zheng Shili, who is full of justice and boasts of being loyal to the country!

How can it be reliable to play with empty seals like this and act entirely on the conscience of officials?

On the road, you can "lose" as much as you want!

Over time, the consequences became more and more serious, and the Yuan Dynasty was so short that it had the credit of this empty seal.

Dealing with this case, Zhu Yuanzhang thought about it for a long time, and finally resorted to thunderous means and a big blood change.

From Yuan to Ming, many things have been entrenched, and Zhu Yuanzhang has no better solution, so he can only use his own method - kill! Kill them all!

The so-called empty seal is not so much the "old example" of the Yuan Dynasty as the accumulation of disadvantages of the Yuan Dynasty.

The Yuan Dynasty was originally extremely extensively managed, the so-called "imperial power does not go down to the provinces", and the financial implementation was fundamentally the "tax package system", so that the bureaucratic machine had already grabbed excess gray interests in it.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, there were many big cases, such as the "Empty Seal Case", "Guo Heng Case", and "North and South List Case".

In a sense, it can be seen that Zhu Yuanzhang has opened a knife against the shortcomings of this bureaucratic system.

In the empty seal case alone, Zhu Yuanzhang killed all the palm seal officials in the country, connecting more than 40,000 people, causing the administrative system of the Ming Dynasty to almost collapse.

And at this moment, Su Che appeared here.

Nine times out of ten, it was Zhu Yuanzhang who took this problem as Su Che's test!!

This is...... The first test!

(End of chapter)