Don't move, this child bride is not easy to mess with.

The country was about to be defeated, and the emperor called on his ministers to donate money to help pay for the army.

what's the result? The emperor only raised two hundred thousand taels. The emperor's father-in-law was well-known as a wealthy man. I wanted him to give out one hundred thousand taels of silver to set an example, but he was only willing to give out ten thousand taels.

The emperor had no choice but to ask the abbot to give him twenty thousand taels.

The old guy went to the queen to cry. The queen couldn't stand it, so she gave him five thousand taels privately, hoping that her father would be able to make up the money if he gave him another five thousand taels.

However, what neither the emperor nor the empress expected was that in the end, the abbot only paid thirteen thousand taels. He even withheld two thousand taels of the five thousand taels of silver secretly given by the queen.

Come on! The richest prince is like this, and the ministers are naturally like the Eight Immortals crossing the sea, each using his magical powers. Although they all have hundreds of thousands of dollars, they all pretend to sell houses and land to collect money.

In the end, the capital city was captured, and the rebels confiscated 70 million taels of silver from the homes of ministers in Beijing!

If you want to use righteousness and justice to persuade them to donate money from these people, just dream.

The emperor is not easy to use, let alone Xie Chengan.

Therefore, Su Mulan originally wrote the note, broke it and then put it back together, and added Zhao Jingzi's name.

According to Jiang Ruiyan's understanding, what she meant was to let Xie Chengan find Zhao Jingzi, let him return to his old business, pretend to be a thief and steal these squires and landlords!

In order not to implicate innocent people as much as possible, Jiang Ruiyan had already ordered Lin Xu to investigate all the large households in the county. All those who are unkind and have bad deeds for the sake of wealth are recorded in the book.

What shocked the two of them was that there were 242 people in Anlan County with fields of more than 500 acres, and less than one-fifth of these people were found to have no bad deeds.

None of those with a net worth of over ten thousand taels are clean!

Even Tong, who had helped Xie Chengan make up for last year's summer grain, was also suspected of forcibly buying people's farmland.

However, most of the family members of these wealthy families are not guilty of any crime. If we really use Su Mulan's plan and let Zhao Jingzi lead people to cause trouble, how can we do it without affecting innocent people?

Although Jiang Ruiyan is proficient in curtain studies, it is his first time entering officialdom, and he is not a decisive person. Seeing that Xie Chengan couldn't bear it, he didn't persuade him any more.

Seeing that Su Mulan was in a daze, Mrs. Jiang thought that staying in Su's house for a long time had caused her to be tired. After chatting for a while, she took Xie and Jiang away.

Since Jiang decided to move to Anlan, he naturally sent people to buy a house first. There were servants who had already gone to tidy up the house for Jiang's stay.

Xie Chengan and Jiang Ruiyan have residences in the county government office. For the convenience of working and for safety reasons, they still live in the county government office.

Jiang had met Su Mulan in person, as well as her younger siblings from the Su family and the Yu family. Although she was not very satisfied with the marriage, she felt that it was acceptable.

Xie Chengan is not young anymore. If he hadn't been dedicated to his career, he would have gotten married long ago. Now that he has passed the Jinshi examination and obtained an official position, it is unreasonable not to get married.

Together with Jiang Ruiyan's marriage, it has become Jiang's biggest concern at the moment.

Jiang took the two of them back to their residence and brought up the matter of marriage. Unexpectedly, both of them politely declined the proposal.

Although Jiang Ruiyan had long since given up on Lu Lan, it was his "first love" after all, and he couldn't bring himself to get interested so he went to see her get married.

Xie Chengan knew that Su Mulan was not from this world, and according to her, she would leave when the time came. The two of them had no intention of getting married.

Jiang became depressed now, and even looked at the two brothers who had a very harmonious relationship in front of him, and felt suspicious in his heart.

Xie and Jiang felt guilty under Jiang's suspicious look, so they quickly fled together on the pretext that there was still business to deal with in the yamen.

Children and grandchildren have their own blessings, and the Jiang family is not from a noble family. Since the two brothers are not in a hurry, she has no choice but to put her mind to it and arrange the money-making property at home first.

Time flies, and it’s June in the blink of an eye.

Sure enough, there will be a severe drought this spring!

Previously, everyone still had old grain in hand, and had been looking forward to spring planting, waiting for the new grain to come out. Now that the old grain has basically been eaten up, the new grain seems to be gone.

Everyone everywhere became uneasy.

First, some villages with insufficient grain storage are already using commune warehouses to store grain. However, new news unexpectedly broke out.

More than 70% of the grain stored in social warehouses do not match the accounts!

In other words, the grain is still on the books, but there is no corresponding grain in the warehouse!

When everyone reported to the county government, Xie Chengan was shocked. After sending Lin Xu to investigate for several days, he learned the reason - the food in the warehouse had been sold!

Speaking of this, it has something to do with Su Mulan.

Years ago, Su Mulan knew that there was going to be a natural disaster, so she encouraged Xie Chengan to buy food. She also spent one hundred thousand taels of silver to buy food.

Because Xie Chengan had confiscated a lot of property from Da'anliang Temple, in addition to handing over most of it, the county government also withheld 300,000 taels of silver.

With money, Xie Chengan would naturally have the confidence to buy food. He sent people along with Su Xiaobai and Li Fan to Taihu Lake to buy 300,000 shi of grain, which was eventually stored in the granary of Da'anliang Temple.

Although Sumulan went to Taihu Lake to buy food in order to avoid rising local food prices. But with the participation of the county government, this move will inevitably be noticed by those who are interested.

Coupled with the reduction in production last year, the squires and landowners with extensive land also had a premonition that something bad was going to happen. Then they saw that the county government was buying large amounts of grain, so they also bought grain.

This caused local food prices to skyrocket. The original price of rice and wheat was eighty cents per dou, but due to large quantities of purchases, the price increased to two hundred cents per dou. Even grains have risen to one hundred cents per dou.

It wasn't until Xie Chengan set up official warehouses to stabilize grain prices that they dropped a bit. Years ago, the income was stable at 120 cents per dou of rice and flour, and 80 cents per dou of miscellaneous grains.

But now that ordinary farmers have run out of old grain and are unable to collect new grain, grain prices suddenly skyrocketed again. Now the price of rice and flour is 220 cents per dou, and the price of miscellaneous grains is 110 cents per dou!

Before Xie Chengan could react, he learned from a message from the mansion that the severe drought had affected more than 20 nearby mansions. Not only in Qingyang Prefecture, but also in Anlan County, food prices are rising sharply!

When food prices rise, those who guard the warehouses naturally become restless.

Although the private warehouse was handed over to the village for care, ordinary people were not willing to take turns doing this work. Most of them entrusted the village elders and others to hire idle people.

These people are already restless and usually fine. How can they not get upset when they see the price of food soaring? Some of them are stealing by themselves, while others are colluding with the village elders to resell food.

Overt and covert robbery, the methods are different, but the results are similar. 70% of the warehouses had less than 30% of the grain left.

And the other 30% of the communal warehouse is not full, but the fields in the countryside are thin, and there is no surplus grain storage. Not a grain of food!

Fortunately, Xie Chengan had food in his hands, so he didn't panic.

It lasted until mid-July, with droughts in spring and summer, and no harvest in summer. Things became more and more serious.

It was also at this time that the news came from Di that the emperor was leading an army of 500,000 to the Northern Expedition!