Chapter 56: You're Saying I'm Supposed to Reward the Capital Camps 400,000 Taels?

Pulling an SSR!

No, wait — I can't start pulling yet. I have to settle this 1.8 million tael reward business first.

Zhu Youjian's heart ached a little. What stung even more was that this 1.8 million taels would most likely just be a splash in the water.

Yet it was a splash he had no choice but to hear.

Zhu Youjian opened the roster of the Messenger Office — only thirty-two men.

Nearly all of them were third-rank jinshi from the second and fifth years of Tianqi.

Their service records were equally sparse: basically, on such-and-such a date, dispatched to such-and-such a place to confer titles, distribute rewards, and so on.

This was perfectly logical. That was simply how the jinshi pyramid worked in the Great Ming.

The very best entered the Hanlin Academy.

The next tier entered the Six Ministries.

The lowest tier — or those with no great ambitions, or those seeking practical achievements — were sent out to the provinces as county magistrates or judges.

And the men in the Messenger Office were all third-rank associate jinshi, lacking connections and backing, yet unwilling to leave the capital, so they stayed in this marginal department, grimly enduring as they waited for an opportunity.

Usually, however, no opportunity ever came.

To put it bluntly, this was the very bottom stratum of jinshi — men of relatively inferior qualifications, but also relatively clean hands.

Zhu Youjian's fingertip slowly traced across those names.

Ma Maocai, Guo Weijing, Yuan Jixian, Kong Wenji, Cheng Liangchou, Gong Tingxian, Chen Xiance, Guo Duxian, Shen Weixian, Zhang Sanmo...

Wonderful. Even worse than the Minister list — he didn't recognize a single one.

The pitiful scraps of historical knowledge from his previous life were utterly useless in the face of these names unrecorded in any canon.

He sighed, pulled over a sheet of snowy xuan paper, and picked up the vermilion brush again.

Consulting the Messenger Office roster, he began writing and sketching.

"Yansui Garrison... Ma Maocai is a local. Perfect — let him go see what the situation in northern Shaanxi is right now."

"Datong Garrison... Shen Weixian, a Shaanxi man. Close enough."

"Jizhou Garrison... Cui Jidi from Yongping Prefecture. A local — he should know the area."

Like a project manager, he tried, in this era without Excel, to achieve the optimal allocation of human resources.

Deleting, revising, crossing out, blotting over.

A perfectly good sheet of xuan paper quickly became a chaotic mess.

Even so, among the Nine Border Garrisons, there were still several places where he could find no messenger with a matching native place.

After racking his brains to arrange everything once, he copied it all out afresh.

"Gao Shiming."

Zhu Youjian set down his brush, rubbed his brow with some irritation, and called out.

"This slave is here."

Gao Shiming bowed and stood at attention.

Zhu Youjian handed over the white paper covered in writing. "First, make the assignments according to this list. For the remaining garrisons I haven't assigned, have the Messenger Office nominate candidates themselves and submit the list."

He paused, then added, "Once the final list is set, have them all come to the palace together. Before they depart, I want to see them in person."

"This slave obeys the decree."

Gao Shiming respectfully accepted the paper. He merely glanced at it, then hesitated slightly.

He wavered for a moment, then still said in a low voice, "Your Majesty, this list... seems to have missed one place."

"Oh?" Zhu Youjian was somewhat surprised. "What place did I miss?"

Gao Shiming kept his eyes lowered and his voice dropped even further. "The guard stations of the capital region, and the Embroidered Uniform Guard."

Zhu Youjian smacked his own forehead hard.

"Look at my memory! I actually forgot the ones right under my nose!"

He laughed self-deprecatingly, picked up his brush again, and hovered it over the paper, as if pondering whom to send.

As he did so, he asked offhandedly, "For this portion, how much is to be rewarded according to precedent?"

Gao Shiming immediately replied, "In reply to Your Majesty, according to old precedent, it is roughly over four hundred seventy thousand taels."

The brush in Zhu Youjian's hand continued to move slowly across the paper, as if still searching for a suitable name.

He was still muttering to himself, "Four hundred seventy thousand... mm, that is quite a sum..."

Mid-sentence, the brush in his hand suddenly stopped.

His entire body seemed to freeze in place.

He slowly raised his head and stared at Gao Shiming in shock.

"How much?"

"Four hundred seventy thousand taels?"

Gao Shiming still wore that expression of reverence ingrained into his very bones. He bowed his head and said, "In reply to Your Majesty: the eighty-one guard stations in the capital, the Three Great Camps, the five patrol battalions, and the Tongzhou and other guards in the capital region total approximately four hundred thousand taels. Additionally, the Embroidered Uniform Guard accounts for roughly seventy thousand taels."

Zhu Youjian leaned back, staring blankly at the exquisite and intricately patterned caisson ceiling above, utterly silent.

He suddenly felt rather ridiculous.

Just moments ago, he had been here laboriously planning the Messenger Office's assignment list for ages.

All so that this reward silver could be distributed as effectively as possible.

And what did it come to in the end?

Here he was, racking his brains, perhaps able to save a few thousand taels, maybe tens of thousands.

Yet these Capital Camps, with their feeble fighting strength, would open their mouths and swallow four hundred seventy thousand taels in a single gulp!

Gao Shiming seemed to sense the violent fluctuation in the Emperor's mood. He hesitated for a moment, then still cautiously ventured to ask, "Your Majesty personally determined this list... was it... to reduce corruption and abuses?"

Zhu Youjian came back to himself, glanced at him, and nodded. "That is one of the reasons."

He paused, then continued: "Beyond that, I also want, as far as possible, to send officials native to those garrison towns to go and see for themselves, and then bring back to me the real situation on the ground."

"They are local-born. Though personal ties may blind them to some things, that is still far better than sending an outsider who gets led around in circles by the men below. In this way, one can also listen to both sides and see clearly."

Gao Shiming heard this, and a flash of understanding passed through his eyes.

He stepped forward and lowered his voice. "If Your Majesty has such an intention, then this slave makes bold to say: on this list, there is perhaps one person who is not quite suitable."

He produced the list again and pointed a finger at a particular spot.

"This man is none other than Cui Jidi."

"This man is indeed a native of Yongping, which matches the Yongping Garrison inside the pass perfectly."

"However, his personal character is utterly corrupt. Before the villain Wei fell, he was constantly hoarding silver, preparing to bribe his way into connections and cling to the eunuch faction."

"On the previous occasion when he went to the Prince of Jing'an's residence to conduct funeral rites, he brazenly solicited bribes on a massive scale. His official reputation is abysmal."

"Furthermore," Gao Shiming shifted tack, "this slave observes that Your Majesty has selected no one for many of the garrisons. That must be because the Messenger Office lacks enough messengers with the corresponding native registrations, correct?"

"That being so, we could in fact select from among the Secretariat Drafters. According to ancestral regulations, for bestowal and reward missions, the standard complement is one messenger and one Secretariat Drafter. The Secretariat Drafters currently on the rolls number several dozen; they should suffice to make up the numbers."

Zhu Youjian looked at Gao Shiming with an unreadable expression.

In an instant, he realized his own foolishness.

Perhaps in strategy, technology, and the grand sweep of history, he possessed an incomparable advantage.

But in matters like this — the selection of some obscure, low-ranking official, in these tangled and deep-rooted networks of personal connections — how could he, an outsider, possibly compare to men like Gao Shiming, these "old foxes" who had spent their entire lives navigating the palace and the official world?

His own crucial task should be to firmly grasp these "great men" at the key nodes, not to personally step in and micromanage these countless "small men"!

This principle was, after all, common sense.

Yet he had momentarily let that enormous reward of one million eight hundred thousand taels of silver cloud his judgment.

The moment this thought turned, Zhu Youjian felt the world open wide before him.

He suddenly laughed, and casually tossed the vermilion brush in his hand onto the imperial desk, where it landed with a crisp clatter.

"Companion Gao."

His voice was full of ease.

"My objectives, right now, are just three."

"First, to ensure, as far as possible, that every tael of silver reaches the hands of those who ought to receive it."

"Second, that these people sent out, after arriving at the garrisons, can bring back to me the real situation — the more real, the better."

He paused, hesitated a moment, and then spoke the final point anyway.

"Lastly… the Capital Camps' fighting strength is feeble, decayed to this extent, yet they are to consume such a colossal sum in reward silver. I… truly find it hard to stomach."

He looked at Gao Shiming, his gaze burning.

"Companion Gao, do you have any good counsel for me?"

Gao Shiming bowed his body deeply, pondered for a moment, and then cupped his hands in reply:

"In reply to Your Majesty, in this slave's humble opinion, this matter can be approached step by step."

"If the aim is to prevent corruption, then in selecting the messengers and Secretariat Drafters, we may choose men of relatively good official reputation and from well-to-do families. Those from good families are less easily swayed by money."

"In addition, for each bestowal mission, the regulation complement is one messenger, one Secretariat Drafter, plus several men from the Embroidered Uniform Guard."

"We can order Tian Ergeng to select from the Embroidered Uniform Guard some younger men of unblemished record and good family background to accompany the missions."

"Civil officials and the Embroidered Uniform Guard are not under each other's command and often look upon one another with mutual distaste. With such mutual oversight, corruption should be somewhat reduced."

As he spoke, he continued to think, his reasoning clear, the words flowing out in a coherent stream.

"If the aim is to probe the localities and listen to both sides to see clearly, then in selecting the messengers and Secretariat Drafters, it would be best to have one of local native registration and the other of a different native registration."

"In this way, the two men will have no deep friendship and come from different backgrounds, and can also oversee one another. The same arrangement can be applied to the Embroidered Uniform Guard."

Here he paused slightly, as if weighing his words, his expression somewhat hesitant.

"As for… as for the matter of the Capital Camps' reward being excessive."

"Your Majesty… could delay issuing the reward, simply stating that the privy purse is temporarily short of funds, and issue it first to the Nine Frontiers."

"On the Capital Camps' side, the reward could be issued after a slight audit of the rolls. In this way… perhaps it could be reduced a little."

"Furthermore, within the Embroidered Uniform Guard, there was much indiscriminate bestowal of ranks during the Tianqi years. Their authorized strength, which was only a little over seventeen thousand in the Wanli era, has now reached over thirty-six thousand…"

After Gao Shiming spoke these final words, he felt his heart was utterly uneasy. He bowed his head even lower and swept a deep bow all the way down.

"This slave is dull-witted. Pondering with all my heart, I could only think of these crude methods."

Zhu Youjian's face still wore a smile, but his eyes suddenly became subtle.

The first and second strategies were, in truth, no more than the schemes of a middling talent — nothing astonishing.

Gao Shiming was more familiar than he with the rules of the Great Ming bureaucracy and its personnel system; it was not surprising that he could think of these.

But this third strategy…

A eunuch, a brush-holding eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial, had actually taken the initiative to bring up auditing the rolls and rectifying the Capital Camps and the Embroidered Uniform Guard?

On what grounds did he dare say such a thing? On so-called loyalty alone?

But he only remembered the names Cao Huachun and Wang Cheng'en; he had absolutely no memory of a loyal and devoted Gao Shiming at Chongzhen's side!

What exactly was this man after?

Only then did Zhu Youjian suddenly realize that his blind spot was not just the Capital Camps, but also this Companion Gao right before his eyes.

He had used Li Guopu for his reputation, employed Yang Jingchen for his rank, and driven Wang and Tian by fear.

Yet regarding this man beside him, the foremost of all the eunuchs in the palace, he knew absolutely nothing about what he wanted.

Mending the fold after the sheep are lost is still not too late.

Zhu Youjian, having thought this far, simply dropped all pretense and spoke directly:

"Companion Gao, since my ascension, myriad affairs have been tangled and pressing, and I have never had the leisure to speak with you in depth."

"Today I've actually found some leisure, but I wonder..."

"—What is your dream?"