Chapter 484

The next day.

Three military orders from the Ministry of War's headquarters had, after two days, spread to all garrisons in the capital region.

The Ministry of War and the Five Military Governor's Office, acting on the order of the Superintendent of Military Affairs, had organized their personnel and began dispatching inspection officers to more than a hundred Guard Posts in the prefectures of Shuntian, Baoding, Hejian, Zhending, and Yongping to launch an investigation into farmlands, military households, and armaments.

However, this inspection seemed destined to become a joke from the very start.

Even before the inspection teams arrived, all Guard Posts in the capital region had already, through emissaries from the major military mansions in the capital, informed one another.

Guard Post commanders, none of whom wanted their source of income cut off, all, following the instructions of the Prince of Nan'an and others, prepared to adopt a strategy of dragging things out, concealing what they could, and bribing where possible.

They thought, the court had not been the first to say it wanted to inspect farmlands these past years; each time it had been thunder with little rain.

As long as they treated the inspection officials well, stalled for ten days or half a month, and waited for the Prince of Nan'an and others in the capital to move against Jia Jing and topple him, everything would be fine.

Moreover, eight or nine out of ten of the inspection officers sent, especially those from the Five Military Governor's Office, were related to them by marriage or old friendship,

either long-standing family acquaintances or having exchanged gifts; who would truly offend lifelong relatives over a mere posting?

Thus, as soon as the inspection officers arrived at the local Guard Post, they were treated as honored guests.

The Guard Post commander personally welcomed them, set up a banquet to greet them, and fine wine and delicacies flowed in; amid the clinking of cups, the officials who had come to inspect had already cast the inspection to the winds.

After eating and drinking their fill, specially selected maidservants led them to the prepared upper chambers to rest, with pillow-side whispers and warm fragrances at their ears—who would still remember anything about farmlands or military households?

The next morning, the Guard Post's clerk handed them a neatly copied "inspection register," the ink still fresh,

one could tell it had just been rushed out yesterday; the numbers matched the old registers exactly, as if not a single mu of land had been encroached upon in decades, nor a single military household been put to private labor.

The inspection officers tacitly accepted the register, never setting foot in the fields, and sat down to continue drinking and watching dances.

Some even pretended to flip a couple of pages, furrowed their brows slightly, and asked a few irrelevant questions, while the Guard Post side readily supplied answers;

many more couldn't be bothered to pretend, tossing the register onto the table and immediately becoming sworn brothers with the Guard Post commander.

Regarding the Guard Post officers' seizure of farmlands and conscription of military households, the vast majority of the informed officials who came to inspect chose to turn a blind eye.

As for the reason—

First, the commanders of the capital region's Guard Posts were mostly hereditary military leaders who had operated locally for generations and had become entrenched local magnates.

They commanded private troops, held fertile fields, and even local officials dared not provoke them—let alone these civilian officials sent from the capital.

To offend them meant not only that the task would fail, but even whether one could return to the capital intact was uncertain.

Second, the families of these inspection officers, going back several generations, who didn't own a few mu of land tied to the military farms? Investigating others inevitably leads to investigating oneself.

Third, the Guard Posts were extremely generous with silver this time; a single inspection trip could yield anywhere from a few hundred to over a thousand taels, equivalent to several years' salary.

Since it offended no one and brought real profit, why not do it?

Only a tiny handful of clueless individuals took it seriously; Yao Qisheng, a Langzhong of the Ministry of War's Bureau of Clearance, was one of those few.

He was a proper degree-holder from the imperial examinations, a jinshi, assigned to the Ministry of War for over twenty years, yet because he always carried the stubborn insistence of a scholar to uphold principle, he had never received promotion or advancement.

He was assigned to the Dingzhou Guard Post; upon arriving at the Guard Post, he neither accepted banquets nor gifts, gave no face to the Guard Post commander, and immediately demanded the fish-scale registers and the military household grain registers.

The Dingzhou Guard Post commander bore the surname Ma, given name Baoguo, and was a distant relative of the Marquis of Governing the State, Ma family.

Seeing Yao Qisheng's obliviousness to flattery, he first gave a stern-faced admonition, saying "Why be so serious?" and "Nobody has it easy," then hinted that he could offer more "travel expenses."

Yao Qisheng was unmoved and continued to insist on examining the original registers.

Ma Guozhu then changed his expression and sneered:

"Since Minister Yao is so inflexibly impartial, then go ahead and inspect yourself. However, my men are all rough fellows; if there is any clash, don't blame me for not giving prior warning."

That afternoon, Yao Qisheng, accompanied by his few attendants, went to the Guard Post's archive hall, but was blocked at the door by the guards on duty.

The guards said the key was with the commander; the commander said it was with the clerk; they passed the buck.

Yao Qisheng stood outside the archive hall for half an hour, unable to enter the door.

He swallowed his anger and returned to his lodgings, only to find the room in disarray: his luggage rumpled, his personal documents scattered across the floor, even the few law books he had brought torn of their covers, with threatening words written in blood.

His attendants on the spot were frightened out of their wits and urged him to return to the capital.

Yao Qisheng gritted his teeth and said he would memorialize to impeach him, but he couldn't even leave the Guard Post's gate, as Ma Baoguo had already sent men to block the several roads leading out of the Guard Post.

Even more chilling events were yet to come.

That night, a Langzhong-level official from the Ministry of War who had come with Yao Qisheng went out alone to relieve himself, but did not return by morning.

The next morning, someone found his body in a dry well behind the Guard Post, with blunt-force trauma to the back of the head.

The Guard Post coroner examined the body and declared it a case of somnambulism: he had slipped and fallen into the well, committing suicide.

At the same time, Pan Yong, an Experiencer of the Five Military Governor's Office dispatched to the Tianjin Guard Post of Hejian Prefecture, having gotten dead drunk at the welcoming banquet, was escorted back to his lodgings.

The next morning, a servant found him lying face-down in a shallow pool in the rear courtyard of his residence, already lifeless, with ligature marks on his neck.

The pool was no more than three feet deep—even a three-year-old child could not drown in it—yet Pan Yong happened to die in that very pool.

The Guard Post's report concluded: "After drinking, he played in the water and drowned."

Such circumstances had only passed two days when Jia Jing received secret reports from the Embroidered Uniform Guard everywhere; he snorted coldly, yet did not choose to immediately dispatch troops to suppress.

Because all of this was actually within his expectations.

His reason for first sending officials from the Five Military Governor's Office and the Ministry of War to conduct the inspection was none other than to fish, to see how many usable personnel remained in those two agencies.

After all, the Ministry of War and the Five Military Governor's Office were also targets he intended to rectify this time!

At the same time, this step was also a political laying of groundwork: on one hand, luring the enemy deeper, to draw out all the "enemies" hidden in the shadows.

On the other hand, it was also a gradual increase of pressure, to solidify the charge of "violent resistance to the law" against the Guard Post officers, to shape public opinion, gather more evidence, and provide legitimacy for the subsequent deployment of large forces to suppress them.