Golden Summoner

"Mother……"

"Stone, stone, come here and let mom have a look, let mom have a look..."

The citizen who blocked the road to complain hugged his child tightly and burst into tears. While holding the child, he kowtowed to Xia Pingan, "Thank you, sir, thank you, sir..."

The crowd and people outside the villa were already excited.

After hearing the news, people from Daozhou City rushed to Changyun Villa. The scene of the robbed children meeting their relatives was a mixture of sadness and joy.

In addition, it has been so long that those relatives who have come to visit can no longer even recognize their own children, because those children, whom they have not seen for many years, have been mutilated and turned into dwarfs. Their physiques and appearances have been greatly changed, and they can only slowly Recognize each other slowly.

Xia Ping'an asked Zheng Ti to drive the child and the woman home in a carriage, and left the matters at the villa to his subordinates.

As soon as he arrived in Daozhou City today, he solved Changyun Villa, which was considered a victory. However, Xia Pingan knew that this was just the beginning. Whether he could successfully strike tribute in Daozhou City this time would depend on the subsequent interactions with the court and officialdom. Game, once the next game fails, the court and the people above may change another governor at any time, allowing Daozhou City to resume paying tribute to dwarf figurines.

So, this matter is not over yet.

While Xia Ping'an was recalling all the recorded deeds from Yangcheng to Daozhou in his mind, he returned to the Governor's Mansion with the officials in the Governor's Mansion.

When they returned to the Governor's Mansion, the entire Daozhou City was in a state of commotion. People lined the streets to greet them and shouted "Qingtian". The situation was completely different from when Xia Ping'an first arrived.

The governor's office in Daozhou City is not big. It is an official office just inside the courtyard. It is divided into a front hall and a back hall. The front hall of the governor's office is the office of the governor's office, while the back hall is the official residence of the governor.

After traveling in and out of the city for a long time, it was already evening when we returned to the Governor's Mansion.

The officials of the governor's office had already prepared the reception banquet. After hastily finishing the reception banquet, Xia Pingan returned to the back hall and went to the study to write a memorial to the emperor.

The current emperor of Chang'an City is Li Shi, Dezong of the Tang Dynasty. To be fair, Li Shi is ambitious. He always wants to achieve something, and wants to work hard to create a situation like the Kaiyuan Dynasty for the Tang Dynasty. It is unfair to say that he is a coward. It’s just that Li Shi was born at the wrong time. There were conflicts between vassals and towns outside, and he didn’t know how to employ people at home. He didn’t know how to recognize people. While he wanted to be the emperor of the sage and restore the glory of the Tang Dynasty, he was struggling at the same time. Due to some random things, many loyal ministers were driven out of Chang'an by him. In the end, he even began to rely on eunuchs to rule, which is really surprising.

Xia Pingan knew that in history, Yangcheng wrote a memorial to Li Shi because of the tribute strike, but he had never seen the memorial and did not know how it was written. At this time, Xia Pingan could only write it by himself. .

Xia Pingan thought for a long time in the study, and finally decided to start with emotion first, and then reason, and persuaded Li Shi to give up the dwarf tribute from Daozhou.

With this thought in his mind, Xia Pingan took the pen and started writing.

"... When I first arrived in Daozhou City, a woman knelt down and cried out for injustice. She said that her child had been snatched away, and that mother and child were separated. It was truly a human tragedy. The woman was crying and grabbing the ground. Her tears were streaming down her face, and her voice was like weeping blood. , His condition is very miserable. Mencius said, "The heart of compassion is the essence of benevolence. Everyone has it, and I can't bear to hear it."

The prime minister who was a woman of the common people thought about the past events in the second year of Qianyuan. The traitor Shi Siming led his army to capture Luoyang. His biological mother, Empress Dowager Ruizhen of the Tang Dynasty, disappeared in the chaos. Your Majesty lost her mother before she could reach the throne. The birth and death of the birth mother is truly a human tragedy and a misfortune for the country. The descendant Zong ascended the throne and searched for the Empress Dowager Ruizhen for more than ten years but could not find it. Your Majesty is the most loving and filial, and the heart of missing your mother is known to the world. The love of this son of a man is also the conduct of a king. .

Since Your Majesty is the king of the world, how can it be seen that the mother of the world loses her son, and the son loses his mother? The separation of mother and child among animals in the mountains is also unethical and contrary to the holy way, not to mention humans? I am your Majesty’s minister, how can you see that this tragedy happened in Daozhou and turned a blind eye? When I asked about it, I found out that the woman’s son had been captured by cruel officials and evil gentry, who wanted to put him in an urn and raise him for more than ten years before turning into a dwarf. I will present it to His Majesty as a tribute...

In the past, the traitor and traitor Shi Siming separated Your Majesty from his biological mother in Luoyang. Now there are cruel officials and evil gentry in Daozhou who use Your Majesty's name to separate mothers and sons of countless people in Daozhou City. This is a disaster, even worse than Shi Siming's. This cruel official and evil gentry bullies the people. For a subordinate to deceive a superior, it is contrary to ethics and against the holy way. If the Empress Dowager Ruizhen were in Daozhou, she would not be able to bear to see her..."

…

Xia Ping'an wrote less than half of the memorial. Xue Yue knocked on the door outside and said that there were officials in the government who wanted to see him.

Xia Pingan put down the memorial and asked Xue Yue to call someone in. After a while, he saw Sicang of the Governor's Mansion walking in with his head lowered and several account books in his hand.

Sicang of the Governor's Office is a civil servant in his 50s, tall and thin, with a cautious appearance.

"The lower official is guilty. Please punish the governor..." As soon as the Sicang saw Xia Pingan, he knelt down and touched his forehead to the ground, not daring to raise his head.

"What's your crime? Stand up and tell me!" Xia Pingan said calmly.

"Yes!" The Sicang stood up cautiously, but still lowered his head and hunched his waist, and handed several account books in his hand to Xia Pingan, "The sins of the lower official are all in these account books. If you dare to hide it, please ask the adults to see it!"

Xia Pingan took the account book and opened it and flipped through a few pages. Xia Pingan frowned and almost couldn't help scolding her again.

Putting down the account book, Xia Ping'an's face was as dark as water.

"How long has this been going on?"

"Your Excellency, this has been the case since Xianguan took charge of the Daozhou Governor's Office. He also asked the officials below, and the officials also said that the Daozhou Governor's Office has always handled it this way. Although the official felt it was inappropriate, But I can't change it. I can only follow the rules of Sicang and don't dare to go beyond them..." The Sicang official answered cautiously.

Damn it, Xia Ping'an was wondering before why the officials in Daozhou City didn't compensate the people at all after robbing their children. The original compensation had already been corrupted by them. It's not like those people didn't know about the Tang Dynasty. What is the amount of supplementary soil stipulated in the law, but they do not let the people of Daozhou City know.

For every child they robbed, those people reported to the treasurer to receive 50 quasi-silk as compensation. The more children they robbed, the more quasi-silk they received here. According to the treasurer's accounts, these quasi-silks were distributed to those who had lost the silk. The child's family, but in reality there is none.

With this amount alone, the "subsidy" that those people evacuate from the treasurer every year amounts to thousands of silk pieces. This is not a small amount of money. You must know that in this era, a horse only costs 40 pieces of silk, and the profit sharing The people who made the money were the officials related to the governor's office, and they euphemistically called it "tribute salary"...

And because they could pretend to receive the "compensation money" from the land offering, the officials in Daozhou City were extremely enthusiastic about paying tribute to the dwarfs, and they arrested only a few children rather than too many.

"What else do you know? Tell me!"

The treasurer gritted his teeth and said, "Sir, the imperial court only needs one dwarf every year for its soil sacrifice, and most of the many dwarf puppets in Changyun Villa are captured from ordinary people's homes in the name of tribute and trained into dwarfs. After the opera figurines are made, they are then sold to Chang'an and wealthy families in various places. Many dwarf opera figurines are even sold to the Western Regions and other places. Every year, foreign merchants come to Daozhou to purchase dwarf opera figurines!"

Xia Pingan took a deep breath, "How much money can they get from selling a dwarf puppet?"

"The less is more than a thousand taels of silver, the more is thousands of cars of silver..."

"Does everyone in the governor's office know about this?"

"Basically know everything!"

"Then why did Zhuang Chao end up like this? Does no one dare to take care of it?"

"Indeed, no one dares to take care of it, because this matter is related to tribute. If there is no tribute, the governor will have nothing to do with it, so he can only turn a blind eye. Everyone in the governor's mansion has received tribute salary. , I won’t say much. In addition, Zhuang Chao often said that he knew the nobles in Chang’an City. Rich nobles often came to buy and sell dwarf theatrical figurines for him. Everyone didn’t know how deep his background was. This Daozhou None of the officials in the city dared to offend him. As soon as Zhuang Chao said he was short of people, someone here would help him go to the homes of poor people to arrest people..."