At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty

chapter 1079 one thousand eighty-nine

At the end of the first month of the fifth year of Yande, part of the investigation team led by Qiao Rui also achieved considerable results in Qingyan and Erzhou.

They swept out more than 100 problematic officials in Qingzhou, all of whom were corrupt and deceived.

From the village head at the grassroots level to the sheriff to the officials around the governor of the state, there are all such officials.

The number of local officials in the Wei Empire was unprecedentedly large, more than three times that of the previous dynasty, so the number of corrupt officials detected was also unprecedented.

For such a problem, Guo Peng actually feels that he has something to do with it.

You are responsible for yourself.

Under the severe torture of corrupt officials, some officials from Li and Shu confided their hearts.

For such an explanation, Guo Peng was silent for a while.

In order to appease the gentry and make preparations to overthrow the gentry, he took the initiative to restrict the promotion path of officials from Li Shu, so that they can only enter the county government to work at the highest level.

Occasionally, some people were able to enter the county government to handle affairs due to special circumstances, but that was a very small number.

It would be impossible to go any higher, and it would cause fierce opposition from the scholars, and it is true that not many of them who have not received systematic education can take up positions above the county magistrate.

Knowing that their promotion channels are limited and strictly restricted, on the one hand, it will cause them to hate and envy scholars, and on the other hand, it will also make some people relax in their thinking and turn their motivation to corruption. power.

Anyway, there is no way to rise, and there is no hope of rising in this life, so it is better to take advantage of the official position and power and earn more money to enjoy it.

Many Li Shu officials who entered the county government to work, under the blow of hopeless promotion, chose to seek personal gain for themselves to fill the emptiness in their hearts.

This is the helplessness of Guo, and the helplessness of the times.

This situation will definitely change, but it must not be now, and it cannot be changed immediately.

Therefore, this kind of thing will continue until the day when the clouds are cleared.

But even on that day, there will still be such things, but there will be no more reasons.

Even so, Guo must do his best to solve these reasons that can be solved, for the sake of the present and the future.

If the huge group of gentry is not wiped out as a system, and this group that stands between the emperor and the common people is not wiped out, the country will not be able to break through its own limitations after all, nor will it be able to break the law of entropy increase.

At the moment when the bureaucratic system is not open, the fact that the entropy in the empire is increasing rapidly makes Guo Peng worried.

On the one hand, for the Northern Expedition, and on the other hand, to break this status quo, he had to forcibly exert external force to interfere with the drastic trend of entropy increase and maintain the stability of the empire.

But after all, this is treating the symptoms rather than the root cause. If the bureaucratic system is not opened up to a greater extent, and the upward channels are not opened to the bottom on a larger scale, the decline of the Guowei Empire will inevitably enter a period of acceleration, just like the Eastern Han Empire.

This is not something that happens overnight. Mr. Guo has been preparing for this for many years and has made countless preparations.

Until then, whoever did something they shouldn't have to pay for it.

At the same time as the officialdom in Hebei was shaken, investigations into the remaining Central Plains prefectures and the three southern states were also in full swing.

Through the comparison of accounts and the precise calculation of the accountants, the members of the investigation team uncovered a large number of criminal officials.

The flames of anti-corruption spread throughout the Wei Empire, and no state could escape such a situation.

In the four years of Yande, nearly [-] officials at the state, county, county, village, and township levels have been beheaded. Local officials throughout the Wei Empire trembled and trembled under the brutal rectification.

It is conceivable that in the five years of Yande, if the emperor's anger has not been poured out, more people will be killed.

But to everyone's surprise, at the end of February in the fifth year of the performance, after collecting reports from all over the country, Guo Peng issued an order to the investigation teams in various places——

This anti-corruption operation will come to an end after the investigation teams from all over the country have punished all the officials who are currently in custody and have indeed committed corruption crimes.

The investigation team can stop the operation and bring all the materials back to Luoyang to end this anti-corruption operation.

Everyone didn't understand what the emperor's intentions were.

Suddenly a large-scale anti-corruption operation was launched, but it was suddenly ended.

Is it because something happened in the investigation that had to stop the operation?

Is it about the royal relatives?

Really not, every move of the royal relatives is under the restraint and surveillance of Guo Peng. If the royal relatives commit any crimes, they will not enter the third division alive for trial.

The royal family's reputation cannot be tarnished.

what is that?

The investigation teams in various places suspected that the investigation teams in other places had found out something that embarrassed the emperor, and they seriously suspected that something might have happened in Qingzhou.

But Qiao Rui also looked strange, because the problem he found had nothing to do with the Mi family. Mi Zhu himself and the Mi family members who lived in Xuzhou's hometown had no problems.

Mi Zhu pays great attention to restraining his family and clan members, and often raises points, so that he personally controls the family's financial power to ensure that nothing will happen to him.

What exactly is going on?

Until the end of March in the fifth year of Yande, when the officials of the investigation teams from all over the country finished all their tasks and returned to the central government, they still didn't understand what happened to make the emperor suddenly end the operation.

Guo Peng did not explain his actions to the officials, he only wanted one result.

The beginning will start suddenly, and the end will end suddenly, it all depends on his mind.

The vigorous first large-scale local anti-corruption campaign of the Wei Empire came to an abrupt end, leaving people with infinite reverie.

However, the more than 700 officials at all levels who have been killed and nearly 4000 people implicated are definitely the real achievements of this anti-corruption operation.

No one understood the emperor's mind, not even the crown prince Guo Jin.

Guo Jin didn't understand.

"Father, why stop? These corrupt bastards should be investigated to the end and all of them should be found out, and they should pay for their actions! No matter who they are, they should be investigated to the end!"

Guo Jin hated these corrupt officials very much, and felt that the investigation was not over yet, and it was not time to stop.

Guo Jin was shocked by the large-scale corruption in the local area. For the first time, he realized that such a problem was hidden in the mighty Wei Empire.

There are so many corrupt officials in such a powerful empire that no one noticed or dealt with.

In this way, they are allowed to devour the interests that should belong to the empire or the common people, and profit from it, and eat their brains full of fat.

Guo Peng listened to him silently, and nodded when he finished.

"What you said makes sense, but it's enough to come to an end now."

"Father, is it enough? There must be more people lurking in it. Father only caught more than 700 officials, and there must be fish that slipped through the net!"

"enough."

Guo Peng shook his head.

"Father, there were only [-] officials in the former Han Dynasty. Of course, killing [-] is a lot, but the number of officials in my dynasty is close to [-]. Killing [-] is not a lot at all!"

Guo Jin insisted on his own opinion.

Guo Peng sighed.

"Corrupt people must be dealt with, but Ah Jin, do you still remember what my father told you? Corrupt people, if you want to kill them, you can't kill them all. Many people don't hate corruption itself. It's not them who hate corruption.

No matter how many you kill, even if you kill 1 or 2 people in one go, there will still be people who continue to be corrupt. Killing corrupt officials is not a one-shot thing, but a long-term, continuous behavior. You can’t expect to kill them all in one go. All corrupt officials.

You kill them all, can you find new officials to replace them in time?Can you be sure that the officials who succeed them will not continue to be corrupt?Are you so confident in them? "

Guo Jin had to admit that what Guo Peng said was reasonable, but she still felt very puzzled.

"But let them go like this?"

"For now."

Guo Peng nodded: "This time, Lin Lin finally got it together and punished more than 700 officials, which is not a small amount, enough to keep these local officials honest for a while.

And for a while, it was enough for the father to conquer Xianbei. Besides, too many people were killed, and it was difficult to find suitable people to supplement him. "

"Father killed corrupt officials just for the Northern Expedition to Xianbei?"

Guo Jin seemed a little hard to accept this fact.

"A Jin, being the emperor is the father, and you will be the emperor in the future. The emperor does everything without a reason and without a purpose. When you do things, you must have a purpose. What you should do and what you should not do, because of this purpose , will become very clear.”

Guo Peng put down the pen in his hand: "Father, why don't you want to kill all the corrupt officials in one go, so that the world will be stable, but this is impossible, you can't kill all the corrupt officials."

"Should they be allowed to continue to embezzle state funds at the local level, oppress the people, and damage father's reputation?"

"Of course not."

Guo Peng shook his head: "Punishing corrupt officials is a long-term process. You need to launch actions like being a father for a long time, uninterrupted, irregular, and quantitative. Don't give anyone a chance to react, and start suddenly. , are not let go.

As for when is the opportunity to take action, it depends on the report of the Linzi camp. The Linzi camp is your eyes and your ears. You can know what is happening outside through it, and then make your own plans. judge. "

Guo Jin thought silently for a while, then nodded slowly.

"What the father said, the son understood."

"This is what my father taught you about the water tank. Officialdom is a water tank. You can only get in and out. If things go on like this, there will be mosquitoes everywhere, and the smell will be unbearable. Only running water can keep it clean. If you want the water in the tank to be clean, you must There is a constant need to use up old water and pour in new water."

Guo Peng picked up the pen again: "What you have to face is a very large country and a group of tens of thousands of people. How to govern and how to punish cannot be determined by your personal likes and dislikes. You can deal with it when you go back. Read "Han Feizi" carefully."

Guo Jin nodded.

"My son knows."

Chapter 1080 One thousand and ninety Guo Jin appreciates Lu Yi very much

Apart from returning to the palace from time to time to accept Guo Peng's orders, Guo Jin is still serving as a county magistrate, governing the people of a county.

Relying on his small group, he is quite familiar with governing a county now, and there is nothing awkward about it.

Guo Jin is already quite familiar with how to understand the instructions of the superiors, how to implement the instructions of the superiors, and how to communicate with the township heads, village heads, and ordinary households at the grassroots level, and she no longer feels confused.

For example, the decree on the management of saline-alkali land.

I received instructions from the superiors that excessive use of water from water conservancy projects to irrigate the land will cause salinization of the land, which will make some land unusable and reduce food production, so this is a very serious problem.

The imperial decree calls on everyone to collect a large amount of rainwater in rainy days and use clean rainwater to irrigate the land.

If there is not enough rainfall, it is required to pay attention to the use of farmland fallow farming method, not to reuse a piece of land for cultivation, and to give the soil time to accumulate fertility.

Such a decree is not difficult to understand, but it is a big matter, related to agricultural production, and it is the most important matter that officials need to pay attention to.

To implement it at the local level, he needs to go to the countryside to enter the villages in person, and give guidance and confirmation from village to village.

Pass the news to the head of the township, and then go to the village with the head of the township, talk face-to-face with the chief of the village, and then hold a publicity meeting for all farmers.

At the lecture meeting, Guo Jin needed to communicate with them in the simplest and most understandable vernacular, and answered their various problems.

The kind of polite sentences when writing articles and decrees are not suitable for this kind of occasion.

"There are all kinds of things in the water flowing on the ground. Everyone knows that there are fish and shrimps in the water. These are all things that can be seen, but there are some things in the water that cannot be seen. Don't look at its clarity. , but there are some invisible things, there are many in the water.

We can't see these things, but they stay in the soil when they get into the soil. The water is absorbed by the crops or evaporated by the sun, but those things will not disappear with the water, they will stay in the land, Accumulate slowly.

Not much at the beginning, but day after day, these things will accumulate more and more as the water flows into the land, and more and more, and more and more. In the end, the land will become like this, just Can't grow food. "

Guo Jin showed the farmers a piece of saline-alkali soil with a white surface, and the farmers nodded after seeing it.

"It turned out to be like this."

"I never thought about why it was like this before."

"After it becomes like this, it will be really difficult to cultivate the land, and nothing can be grown."

The farmers whispered to each other in twos and threes.

Then Guo Jin went on to preach.

"Maybe everyone will ask again, how can food grow without watering the land? This question is easy to explain. Water doesn't only flow on the ground, doesn't it also rain in the sky? Everyone knows Where does the rain come from?"

Guo Jin asked a question.

Farmers, look at me and I look at you.

A bold farmer shouted: "Maybe it was sprinkled by the gods and men in the sky!"

Another bold farmer shouted, "Why don't you say you peed?"

Then the whole group started laughing.