Chapter 446

As soon as he got the interrogation results, Wei Yuan immediately sent people to arrest all the leaders of that merchant caravan, and then interrogated them personally.

The one who came forward to make friends and contact the officers was a deacon, and the manager of the merchant caravan was an unremarkable middle-aged man with late-stage Dao Foundation cultivation and mediocre talent.

Upon seeing Wei Yuan, he shouted injustice.

Wei Yuan sat still, flipping through the files in his hand, and after waiting for him to get tired of shouting, he said, "You want to buy land in Qingming?"

A flash of shock appeared in the manager's eyes, but his face was blank, saying, "I just do business between two places, trading grain, cloth, and armor ore; these are not prohibited! I never thought about buying land; does Qingming have farmland for sale?"

Wei Yuan said coldly, "Since this military governor could come to interrogate you personally, you should know the severity. With your little bit of cultivation, you still want to hide something from me? I'll give you one last chance; if you don't tell the truth, then I'll behead you. This military governor doesn't need to explain to anyone when beheading someone. Speak, who instigated you?"

The manager's face changed, but under the shock of Wei Yuan's Dharma Form aura, he trembled all over, his sea of consciousness frozen, almost unable to move.

He suddenly kowtowed repeatedly, saying repeatedly, "This little one is willing to speak! Willing to speak!"

At this moment, the door opened, and a jailer came in, handed over a confession, and said, "My Lord, the deacon has already confessed everything; they were entrusted by Wang Kui, the nephew of the Xiang State Duke of the Zhao Kingdom, to come to Qingming to seize the opportunity to buy farmland. He said he had already looked at several pieces of land, and the locations are as follows."

Wei Yuan scanned the confession and knew that those pieces of land were all close to the core area of Qingming, basically reaching the standard of spiritual fields, belonging to quasi-spiritual fields. Now because the spiritual fields were still far from being fully opened, they had been planting ordinary rice, producing six hundred catties per mu.

Spiritual fields and ordinary fields were completely different prices; the price of ordinary fields in the human domain was a few taels of ordinary silver per mu, and even top-quality fertile land was only one tael of immortal silver. While spiritual fields started at one hundred taels of immortal silver. These quasi-spiritual fields in Qingming that looked like ordinary fields would be worth at least eighty or ninety taels of immortal silver after being converted into spiritual fields, and this one in and one out was a difference of nearly a hundred times.

These few pieces of land totaled over three thousand mu, but the benefits after conversion were hundreds of thousands of taels of immortal silver!

Liu Fei's compensation request was five mu per household, which didn't look like much, and even if it were top-quality fertile land, five mu was much lower than the compensation for normal border army elites. And in order to get compensation, Liu Fei also proposed that all surviving soldiers in the battalion could forgo military merit rewards, which looked very righteous.

If Wei Yuan agreed to his request, the thousand-plus mu that could be divided by the two hundred or so people who died in the battalion alone, plus the similar requests from other battalions, would all be carved out of the three thousand-plus mu of potential spiritual fields.

Unfortunately, Wei Yuan knew every piece of land in Qingming like the back of his hand, and this little trick couldn't deceive him at all.

Clearly, this great battle happened suddenly, and exchanging compensation for land was a temporary idea.

It had to be said that this plan was quite brilliant; the compensation that all the arrested officers could apply for totaled about ten thousand mu, which was just a drop in the bucket of Qingming's current five million mu of farmland, but if it were replaced by other places, or if the person in charge of this matter were Cui Yu, Xu Yi, Yu Yu Zhizhuo, etc., it might have already been approved.

After the families of those who died in battle got the land, the merchant caravan would quietly buy the land from their hands, and then Wei Yuan wouldn't be easy to handle. If he forcibly took it back, it would damage Qingming's reputation, and at the same time offend the Zhao Kingdom's powerful nobles, and he wouldn't be in the right.

Wei Yuan had already figured out the cause and effect before coming, and getting the deacon's confession verified what he thought in his heart, so he said to the merchant caravan manager: "Colluding with officers, secretly investigating the geography and farmland of this official's jurisdiction, either one is a capital crime. Someone, take him down and behead him, and hang his head on the gate of Yong'an City to show the public." The merchant caravan manager never expected that the situation would turn into this result in an instant, and he was suddenly as pale as paper, kowtowing repeatedly, and shouting loudly: "If you kill me, you will chill the hearts of the merchant caravans under heaven! Young Master Wang will not let you go, and the Xiang State Duke will not let you go!"

Originally, there should be a cold laugh and a ruthless remark here, such as "Do you believe that as long as I say one word, I can do this and that..."

But Wei Yuan felt that ruthless words were limited and it was completely not worth wasting them on a merchant caravan manager; spraying them on that "Young Master Wang" was also a bit of a waste, and only the Xiang State Duke was worthy of enjoying this treatment.

So Wei Yuan waved his hand, and the cultivator dragged the manager out, and in the blink of an eye, there was a miserable shriek. Wei Yuan heard the miserable shriek and knew that these jailers were still following the rules.

If it were replaced by the executioners of the Western Jin, there would be many tricks; whether you gave money or not at the time of execution was completely different. If you didn't give money, they would use dull knives, and it wouldn't be clean even after several cuts.

Except for the manager, the deacon who came forward to connect with the officers was also beheaded, and the rest of the caravan's upper-level managers were all detained and used as hard labor, and their families were not allowed to redeem them. Half of the caravan's property was confiscated as compensation, and the other half required the caravan boss to come to Qingming to plead guilty in person before it could be retrieved.

After dealing with the merchant caravan, it was the officers' turn.

Liu Fei was convicted of exceeding his authority, forming a clique for private interests, secretly investigating geography, inciting mutiny, intending to rebel, etc., and was still beheaded after offsetting his crimes with his past merits, only exempting him from the step of showing his head to the public. All soldiers of the Third Battalion were exempted from punishment, but their military merits were cleared.

The captain who colluded with the enemy was beheaded, and his head was shown to the public for three months. The rest of the commanders were stripped of their military positions and merits, and used as criminals to re-accumulate merits. Their soldiers were exempted from punishment, and their military merits were halved.

After dealing with the troublemakers, Wei Yuan also announced the compensation regulations for those who died in battle.

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First, depending on the status and cultivation of the deceased, the status of the orphans would be automatically upgraded according to the corresponding military merit; second, the monthly grain ration for the orphans would be raised by one grade; third, the orphans would receive one opportunity to advance to Dao Foundation; if there was no talent for advancement, they could be converted into a certain amount of immortal silver. Fourth, a one-time compensation of a certain amount of immortal silver.

At the same time, Wei Yuan also revised the systems of criminals, soldiers, civilians, and registered officials, and after optimizing the details with the "Human Realm Fireworks," he re-promulgated them.

Status promotion still adopted the merit accumulation system; it was very easy for criminals to be promoted to soldiers, while the levels in the registered official status were numerous, and the difficulty of promotion was very great, requiring the beheading of thirty thousand enemies to be promoted to a regional commander, which destined that the number would not be too many. It was mainly because the imperial court only promised Wei Yuan two regional commander positions, one of which was occupied by Cui Yu.

Therefore, the core of this entire system was actually in the grade from soldier to civilian, the key being how to make people willing to be promoted from soldier to civilian. Whether this path to promotion was effective depended on what could be obtained at the civilian stage and whether there was enough attraction.

And the only thing that could attract people at present was farmland. Regarding land, both the Great Tang and the world beyond the heavens attached great importance to it. Great Tang history books believed that the annexation of land by powerful families was the main reason for the destruction of the dynasty. But the data from the world beyond the heavens showed that the concentration of land in the hands of the wealthy did not affect anything. This was quite contradictory.

In addition, the world beyond the heavens also had land sharing, or restrictions on circulation, etc. It was just that Xu Xu Wenwu had no knowledge in this area, only knowing the "what" but not the "why," so the data recorded was also very scattered, and after the reverse deduction of the "Human Realm Fireworks," this had a systematic insight.

The world beyond the heavens finally moved toward two extremes: land sharing or complete private buying and selling without restrictions.