Chapter 461 - Chapter 461: Chapter 457: No Face_1 (1/2)

Chapter 461: Chapter 457: No Face_1

Yingbao smiled as she watched Wuyang stumbling towards her and tumbling into her arms.

“Miss!” Wuyang hugged Yingbao, seeking praise.

“Our Wuyang is really capable.” Yingbao patted his head and picked him up.

At this moment, a shepherd rode a large water buffalo from a distance and stopped when he saw a large crowd.

Wuyang pointed at the water buffalo with curiosity, wanting to go over.

Yingbao didn’t move. Wei Zhan and Chu Shun had already walked up to the shepherd to ask about local conditions.

For example, whether anyone had run away from farming, become a bandit, or whether anyone was exploiting the people by collecting excessive taxes, and so on.

The shepherd thought for a while, picked his nose and said, “Yes, a few days ago some government officers came and asked each family in our village to contribute a stone of grain. They said a commandery princess had arrived from Beijing, the princess had a lot of servants and needed a lot of grain to feed them. The officers said they were collecting the grain by the order of the princess.”

Upon hearing this, Wei Zhan’s heart filled with rage. He asked, “Are these government officers the ones who usually come to collect taxes?”

The shepherd boy nodded.

“Very well.”

Wei Zhan let the shepherd boy go and turned back to Yingbao, “It looks like the government office is completely corrupt from top to bottom. Without proper reform, it won’t work.”

Even though they were reducing taxes for the people, the officers still came to collect grain. Until such hypocritical scum was eliminated, the county would never be free of corruption.

Yingbao: “Don’t expose this matter for now. When we go back let’s post a notice to recruit a few teachers. Let’s claim that we are finding them for the children. We can recruit both martial and literary teachers, two for each.”

Wei Zhan was confused, “What’s the point of recruiting just a few? There are dozens of officers in this county, and every officer is backed by a powerful family. If we want to replace them, recruiting less than a hundred will not be enough.”

“We are using this as a cover. No one knows how many we are recruiting. Once they pass the examination, we can keep them all,” Yingbao said.

Wei Zhan realized, “That could work. I’ll put up the recruitment notice in every village. Make sure each village can recruit six people.”

Yingbao: “Remember, they must be honest people, and very poor.”

When hiring people, it’s best to choose those from poor families. They will be dedicated to maintaining their jobs in order to provide a stable income to support their families.

She wanted to replace those hereditary junior officials and officers with children from poor families.

Of course, if these officers behaved themselves, she was not against being lenient to them.

Because of the Imperial Court’s hiring policy, namely hiring government officials and officers with wages instead of rotating duties among the citizens as before, these positions gradually became a source of income for some people. Over time, some people even held onto these positions for generations, leading to rampant corruption.

The government officers colluded, bullying and oppressing poor families without fear of retaliation. Even if they killed someone, the victim’s family had nowhere to seek justice.

Just earlier this year, she had made an example of one, yet they barely behaved for three months before causing chaos again.

This time, they dared to act in her name. This was intolerable.

Returning to Zhouhe County, Wei Zhan immediately had clerks write recruitment notices, which were posted in every village market.

Then people came one after another to apply for jobs.

Among them, Wei Zhan checked the household registration of each applicant, confirmed their identity, and then eliminated those whose family members were junior officials or officers, as well as those from the rich and prominent families. About forty people were left.