No matter how the times evolve, there will always be a group of people who will hold the power firmly in their hands.

And the imperial court or the political power is often only one and the same relationship with these people.

Li Xu sat on the chair, the emperor knew very well that the spread of power needed a violent machine to maintain, and this machine needed parts to cooperate with each other to work.

At present, these people are actually an important component of the ruling apparatus of the imperial court, just like the Loyal Army, but now this element is as corrupt as the Loyal Army.

Li Xu also knows in his heart that in the current world, there is not enough right to speak for the people, and only the strong can speak.

In the court and even in the whole world, he is a strong man.

At the local level, these people below are the strongest, and their authority is even more entrenched than their own.

"Your Majesty is very loving, and the guilty ministers dare not be ashamed. ”

Wang Shouyi had the highest status among these people and was the first to speak.

"When the emperor was in power, he said to me that if you want to rule the world, you must choose two thousand stones. ”

In the official system of the Qin and Han dynasties, the rank of officials was determined by the level of the emperor, and the first rank of two thousand stones was the level of the history of each state. An important policy during the reign of Li Xu's father, Emperor Shen, was that all officials who were selected as local assassins must resign in person.

And the God Emperor can take this opportunity to carefully examine the incoming magistrate.

The administrative division of Dayu itself tends to be fragmented, because theoretically the prefecture is the largest administrative division, and it needs to be under the management of important institutions from the three provinces, including Zhongshu Province.

However, there are more than 300 states in Dayu's territory, and this number is too large except for those prefectures and counties.

Therefore, the Divine Emperor's strict control of the policy of managing the history of assassination is also good governance.

"Sinner," tears rolled in Wang Shouyi's eyes, "Back then, the God Emperor mentioned his face, and the sinner always remembered it, and the most hateful thing was that the Wen Party was powerful at that time, and Yu Fuguo covered the ......sky with one hand."

In fact, Li Xu's status was very low back then, and he would not be mentioned by the God Emperor at all, so the emperor was talking nonsense at all.

As for Wang Shouyi, although he had indeed seen the God Emperor, it was estimated that he had never gone to his heart. Because the reason why Wang Shouyi went to work was because the treasury caught fire when he was in charge of Daizhou Assassin Shi, and the fire dragon burning warehouse that could be as famous as the Yin soldiers borrowing grain was confirmed, but at that time, the court remembered that he was from a famous family, so he was invited home.

Of course, Wang Shouyi will not admit to this crime, so his departure is not because of greed, but because of the "persecution" of the Wen Party and Yu Fuguo, which is really an excellent excuse.

Li Xu smiled slightly, although the emperor would not follow him and extend the punishment he had imposed on him as persecution, he did not interrupt his description.

"Your Majesty, the ministers had some conflicts with the loyal and righteous army before, and it was really they who prevented the ministers from making a case to Your Majesty. ”

As soon as Wang Shou said this, a big hat smashed at Ma Qiang, and Ma Qiang's head was a little dazed when he was depressed because of this incident.

This remnant of the fish party smashed out, Li Xu didn't react for a while, thinking about what kind of fish this fish party was, and later realized that it was Yu Fuguo, and the corner of his mouth smiled slightly.

This Wang Shouyi really brought out the old habits of the year with one mouth, and this fabricated crime really went deep into the bone marrow.

"The disadvantages of Dayu have been deep, and since I inherited the unification, internal and external troubles have been continuous. The disease of the country is not in the gut, in fact, it has reached the bone marrow, and if it is not applied, it will spread sooner or later. Li Xu's words were not only said to the following four "representatives of public opinion", but also to Tian Hongzheng around him.

"With such a lot of shortcomings, I want to refresh and clean, but it is like walking on thin ice. The emperor sighed and said: "Being in the deep palace of the ninefold, the ethereal imperial capital, thinking and worrying, lest the behavior or go against the way of the ancestors, or harm the cause of our people." Therefore, cloth clothes and vegetable food to take a cautious heart, if there is a year, Confucius has a saying, etiquette and loss of courtesy, so I ask you about the gains and losses of the imperial court administration, in order to prepare for the school. ”

The emperor's words were half-literate and half-white, and the people around him were covered with fog, but the people below could understand that the emperor did not mention how the loyal and righteous army was in his words, and it seemed that the lawsuit between them and the loyal and righteous army seemed to have been gently put down by the emperor.

However, Wang Shou and Yu Wenming glanced at each other, and the two of them had a heart.

They all knew that the official face did not let go lightly, the emperor just did not make up his mind, as long as the matter was not concluded for a day, it meant that it could be raised by the court again as a scary stick at any time.

"The bag is non-refundable. ”

"The grass people are here. ”

"Your reputation, even within the Imperial Capital, I have heard of it. ”

"The grass people are terrified. ”

Bao Buhui is the master of Baishamen, and his martial arts have broken through the innate realm, and he can probably be among the first-class masters in the rivers and lakes.

But his biggest sign is wealth.

Li Xu's words changed, and he did not stop on the so-called conflict of the loyal and righteous army, and directly turned to Bao Buhui, who was engaged in selling salt among the four.

"You have a good business, what's so fearful about this. Li Xu had a smile on the corner of his mouth: "Hedong is rich in salt, and you also got rich by selling salt, so I want to ask you, the salt tax of the imperial court is getting lower and lower year by year, and you help me to refer to it in detail, what is going on." ”

In this era of low productivity, sweetness and sugar were exclusive luxuries for the aristocracy, while salt was a daily necessity for the common people.

Since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty implemented the salt and iron monopoly, salt has become a patent project of the imperial court of successive dynasties, providing a lot of wealth.

Today, in Dayu's financial revenue, the income obtained through the salt and iron transportation system accounts for half of all income, which is really the lifeblood of the imperial court.

Dayu's current salt industry system was designed by Han Gang, and it varies according to the situation in different places, and when it comes to the Hedong generation, which is rich in salt pond resources, it is actually a standard official monopoly.

The whole Shanxi region is represented by the solution pond, which has abundant salt pond resources, which can provide a large amount of salt. Dayu practiced a standard bureaucratic system here, with all salt ponds managed by the imperial court and local households employed to produce salt.

In addition to distributing the salt harvested by the imperial court to various departments, most of it was sold to salt merchants, and then the salt merchants' trade tax was also levied.

In this way, the profits of salt were distributed upstream controlled by the imperial court and downstream controlled by salt merchants.

The imperial court had a monopoly on salt production, and could set the price of salt at will to make huge profits.

The downstream circulation link was handled by the merchants, and it was circulated to various places through the market, which greatly reduced the operating costs of the imperial court.

At the same time, according to Han Gang's design when he carried out the salt and iron reform, he also fully took into account the natural defects of market regulation methods, and also set up salt warehouses in areas where salt was scarce, and sold them according to the price of salt, so as to ensure the supply of salt to the people and prevent them from being exploited by profiteers.

However, while the system is perfectly designed, there is a fatal problem.

That is, the imperial court, which occupies a monopoly position, really can't control its own hand.

As the turmoil increased, so did the expenses of the imperial court, which eventually reached its peak during the reign of the Emperor of the Gods.

So the imperial court used the simplest method to raise the price of salt, and now the price of salt for a bucket is almost 300 Wen, but it has increased three times since when Hangang first established the system.

When Han Gang created the system, it happened to coincide with the troubled times, and it can be said that money is cheap and food is expensive. Now that the imperial court is peaceful, the price of grain has long been lower, but the price of salt is still high, and the people are naturally miserable.

At the same time, the high price of salt also led to a large expansion of private salt, which in turn hurt the income of the imperial court's salt industry.

The owner of Baishamen is a big salt merchant on the ground east of the river, and naturally he is also a smuggler of salt.

The emperor's words naturally made him frown, and the expression on his face was complicated.