Chapter 74: You Know You’re Going To Die! Seeking Monthly Tickets
“You’re spouting nonsense.”
Fu Youwen, snapping out of his shock, looked at Zhang Biao with disbelief and asked:
“When did the Emperor issue a decree? I was unaware! How dare you impersonate an imperial decree!”
“Hahaha!”
Zhang Biao laughed wildly again, then grabbed Fu Youwen by the collar and said coldly:
“Fu Youwen, to be honest, I really want to wring your head off! How did you, with your pig’s brain, get into a high position? And you accuse me of impersonating an imperial decree!”
As he spoke, he scanned the officials in the Ministry of Revenue and then nodded, saying:
“Good! Since Vice Minister Fu dares to question the Emperor’s decree, let’s go find Commander Jiang! And ask him if it was the Emperor’s personal oral decree!?”
Having said that, he prepared to call for someone to fetch Jiang Huan.
“No need!”
Just then, a familiar figure, accompanied by several Imperial Guards, walked over and looked calmly and coldly at Fu Youwen, saying:
“Vice Minister Fu, Censor Zhang’s words are all true. I, this Commander, personally heard the Emperor’s oral decree promoting Censor Zhang of the Censorate, a seventh-rank official, to Left Vice Censor-in-Chief of the Censorate, to supervise the Ministry of Revenue’s money and grain, and land taxes.”
“What!?”
Fu Youwen was once again utterly shocked.
He hadn’t expected this to be true, and even less had he expected Jiang Huan to appear here.
However, since the Emperor was so heavily relying on Zhang Biao, why was Zhang Biao still so frenzied? Not only was he not grateful for the imperial favor, but he had also angered the Emperor three times.
What exactly did he want to do?!
Why was he doing this?!
If he had revealed his authority earlier, he might have been able to give him some money, so why did he have to use this method?!
Countless questions surfaced in Fu Youwen’s mind.
However, he did not compromise because of this.
Because he firmly believed that the crime Zhang Biao and the others committed in the Hall of Supreme Harmony was absolutely a dead end.
Thus, he braced himself and resorted to his old method.
Crying poverty.
Then he heard himself say with a choked voice:
“Censor Zhang! It’s not that I, your subordinate, am unwilling to give it! It’s truly impossible to give it!”
“Your actions yesterday in the Hall of Supreme Harmony are already a grave crime!”
“Currently, the Emperor is unwell, and no decree has been issued for salaries. If I, your subordinate, were to disburse salaries privately, it would be improper in principle and illegal! Even if you killed me, your subordinate would not dare to obey!”
What he said had some truth to it, and Shen Lang and the others, upon hearing this, saw their hopes, which had just ignited, dim once more.
Indeed, angering the Emperor was too great a sin.
“Improper in principle? Illegal?”
Zhang Biao let out a cold laugh, released Fu Youwen, and said mockingly:
“Old Fu, when we wanted to reason with you or talk about the law, you cried poverty and acted shamelessly. Now that we don’t want to reason, you bring up principles and laws? You’re quite adept at playing double standards!”
Saying that, he took a step back and nodded:
“Fine! No money, right? Alright! Then today, we’ll have an ‘On-site Financial Audit Meeting of the Ministry of Revenue’! Accountant Shen!”
“Here! Brother Biao!”
Shen Lang jolted and quickly took out his treasured abacus, which he had obtained from who knows where.
“Department Director Sun!”
“Here!”
Sun Gui raised high the chamber pot lamp, which had been relit and was emitting a faint glow and a light scent, trying his best to shine the light on the door as if it were an audit spotlight.
“Editor Li!”
“Here!”
Li Mo had finally found the shoe he had pretended to drop, but his recording tools were truly gone. He simply picked up a sharp stone, preparing to carve characters on the steps in front of the Ministry of Revenue.
“Fellow colleagues!”
Zhang Biao said to the people behind him, “Everyone, be energetic! Today, we’re going to help the gentlemen of the Ministry of Revenue sort out their accounts! Let’s see how the National Treasury became empty!”
Hearing this, Fu Youwen’s heart sank, and he had a bad premonition.
He then heard Zhang Biao clear his throat and begin to call out numbers:
“Item one! In May of Hongwu year twenty-four, the Zhejiang Provincial Administration reported the repair of the Qiantang River embankment and allocated eight thousand taels! How much was actually used for repair materials and labor? How much was the surplus? Where is the surplus? Vice Minister Fu, your brother-in-law bought a new house by the West Lake in June of the same year, what was its estimated price?”
Boom!
Fu Youwen’s face instantly turned ashen.
Zhang Biao didn’t give him time to react and spoke at an extremely rapid pace:
“Item two! In the autumn of year twenty-four, twenty thousand taels of military pay for the northern frontier were dispatched from Ying Tian to Datong. How much was lost in transit? Who was the escort officer? It seems to be a distant nephew from your hometown? After escorting this batch of pay, he returned to his hometown and married a third concubine, with a generous bride price!”
“Item three! Ten thousand five hundred taels were subsidized for the price difference in replacing old grain with new in the capital granaries. The quantity of new grain entering the granary does not match the ledger, right? Did that batch of mismatched grain ultimately end up in the ‘Feng Sheng Grain Store’ in the south of the city? What was the surname of the grain store owner? It seems he also has the surname Fu?”
“Item four…”
Zhang Biao, one by one, item by item, time, place, amount, person in charge, and the final suspected destination…
He recounted them as if he were counting his own family, with perfect clarity!
Many details were even clearer than those remembered by the accountants in the Ministry of Revenue!
You ask where he got this information?
Naturally, it was from countless previous instances of seeking death, where he had heard snippets, asked indirectly, or even from ‘kind people’ on some online platforms, waiting for the day to commit a major offense!
Meanwhile, Shen Lang was clattering away beside him, his fingers barely leaving the abacus, and his mouth rapidly spitting out astonishing numbers:
“Preliminary estimate: three thousand taels of embezzled military pay! Five thousand taels of surplus repair funds were misappropriated! Eight thousand taels of profit from the granary price difference! Total: four thousand three hundred taels! And that’s not even all of it!”
Sun Gui, hearing this, excitedly swayed the chamber pot lamp in his hand, the light flickering, as if he were DJing this accounting show.
The “clack-clack” sound of Li Mo’s stone carving made the officials inside the Ministry of Revenue’s office tremble with fear, as if he were carving their epitaphs.
Other low-ranking capital officials were also filled with righteous indignation and joined in the clamor:
“Good! Well calculated! Calculate it clearly!”
“Excellent! We must calculate how much of our hard-earned money they have embezzled!”
“Damn it! No wonder you always cry poverty and have no money to pay us our salaries! It all went into your pockets!”
Fu Youwen, listening to Zhang Biao’s perfectly accurate recounting and the escalating amounts, felt as if every word was a knife stabbing him in the heart.
Cold sweat poured down him like rain, his official robe was already soaked, and his lips trembled so much that he couldn’t speak a coherent sentence.
“No, it’s not like that, Censor Zhang. Please listen to my explanation.”
He tried to argue in vain, but his voice was as weak as a mosquito’s hum.
“Explain?”
Zhang Biao sneered dismissively, “You might as well explain yourself to King Yama!”
“Oh, right.”
As he spoke, he suddenly seemed to remember something and added, “Also! Vice Minister Fu, the jade Guanyin you gifted to a certain Empress for her birthday last year, it was quite valuable, wasn’t it? Where did the money come from? Which department’s accounts did it go through? Do you need me to lay it out for everyone to hear?”
Rumble!
This sentence was the last straw that broke the camel’s back!
It involved the palace; this was clearly intended to drive him to his death!
“Stop! Please, I beg you! Stop calculating! Grandfather Zhang! Ancestor Zhang!”
Fu Youwen completely broke down, his voice hoarse and choked with tears as he wailed:
“I was wrong! I was truly wrong!”
“No! You don’t know you were wrong, you know you’re going to die!”
Zhang Biao said expressionlessly, refusing to yield even when he was in the right:
“You had your chance earlier and you didn’t take it! It’s not just about money anymore!”
After saying that, he turned to Jiang Huan beside him and said lightly, “Commander Jiang, what do you intend to do?”
