The fate was changed, the mistress of the Hou family was slapped in the face and made money to win

Chapter 490 The Truth about Disaster Relief

Songjiang Prefecture in Jiangnan was originally a land of fish and rice. Although it was not very rich, it was rarely affected by disasters and could pay a large amount of grain and tax silver to fill the national treasury every year. Therefore, the sudden flood was beyond everyone's expectations. The crops that were about to mature were destroyed, houses collapsed, and many people died in the flood. What's more serious is that after the flood, there was a shortage of food and clothing. The government's shelter could not accommodate so many victims for a while. Many people were stranded on the streets and began to fall ill. At that time, disaster relief was urgent. Gu Qingyan, the governor of Songjiang Prefecture at that time, wrote to the court and requested the issuance of disaster relief silver. At the same time, he decided to open the Changping warehouse and use the accumulated grain in it for disaster relief first. However, after opening the Changping warehouse, it was discovered that the grain that was originally stockpiled to support all the people in Songjiang Prefecture for two months was less than 20%, and the rest of the grain disappeared. Gu Qingyan was furious and ordered a thorough investigation of the matter. At that time, it was Chu Yisheng's younger brother, the county magistrate Feng Yimin, who was in charge of the Changping warehouse. Feng Yimin was highly suspected, and was imprisoned for serious dereliction of duty, but because all the manpower and material resources were busy with disaster relief, the matter could not be verified immediately. Gu Qingyan wrote again to the court to request that the speed of allocation of disaster relief silver be accelerated, and at the same time, he hoped to allocate grain from neighboring prefectures to support Songjiang Prefecture. The court quickly arranged for disaster relief, and officials from the Ministry of Households allocated grain and silver and transported them to Songjiang Prefecture. At the same time, the Yingshan Division under the Ministry of Works also sent officials to Songjiang Prefecture to be responsible for subsequent house reconstruction and repairs. Chu Yisheng was under the command of the Langzhong of the Yingshan Division at that time, and was a sixth-rank official. Originally, he only needed to follow the arrangements of his superiors, do his job well and dispatch personnel, but at that time, Songjiang Prefecture had already shown signs of an epidemic, and the Langzhong of the Yingshan Division fell ill shortly after arriving, so the task of repairing and rebuilding the house fell on Chu Yisheng. The person who wrote this confession was Xu Liangji, a ninth-rank craftsman and historian of Songzhou Prefecture. At that time, he was responsible for cooperating with Chu Yisheng on various matters, and later became a witness and participant in the entire disaster relief silver embezzlement incident. According to what he wrote in his confession, after the disaster relief silver and grain were transported to Songjiang Prefecture, the officials in charge of the Ministry of Households took the lead in distributing a wave of grain, and the disaster situation was slightly alleviated. The people also had confidence and believed that they could be saved. However, after the grain was released once, there was suddenly no follow-up, and the disaster relief silver was even more reluctant to be issued. At that time, Chu Yisheng had already smelled the signs of something wrong. He secretly inquired and sneaked into the silver vault to check. He found that nearly 90% of the silver boxes had only one layer left on the surface, and the bottom had all turned into stone. A full 400,000 taels of disaster relief silver, the remaining may be less than 50,000 taels. Chu Yisheng was shocked. Before he had time to uncover the matter, he was noticed by the people of the Ministry of Households. At that time, Xu Liangji was also arrested because he found that Chu Yisheng's whereabouts were different. Originally thought they would be killed to silence them, but unexpectedly, in order to save his life, Chu Yisheng suggested that he could help cover up the matter, ignore the quality, and start rebuilding and repairing the house first. At that time, Gu Qingyan had already noticed that there might be a problem with the disaster relief silver, and sent people to investigate. Seeing that it was about to be exposed, the people in the Ministry of Households adopted Chu Yisheng's method and began to allocate silver for rebuilding houses. In order to save his life, Xu Liangji also joined them, because he was from Songjiang Prefecture and had been in the workshop for many years. Gu Qingyan trusted him very much, so he was an excellent candidate to deceive Gu Qingyan. One house after another was built. There seemed to be no problem on the surface, but in fact it was shoddy and could not be lived in. Xu Liangji originally secretly thought about finding an opportunity to expose the matter, but how could the officials from the imperial city not see through his mind? Soon his parents were arrested and used to threaten him, and he could only continue to follow Chu Yisheng's arrangements. But this kind of thing is impossible to be perfect after all, especially Gu Qingyan has never dispelled his doubts from beginning to end. In addition, the relief food has been insufficient, and the people are full of resentment. When they are about to be overwhelmed, Chu Yisheng, who learned that his brother was imprisoned, offered a vicious plan. Secretly arrange people to instigate the people to make trouble, and then take the opportunity to set a big fire and burn all the built houses clean. Then put on the hat of a riot by the people, and put all the blame on the people of Songjiang Prefecture. Seeing this, Jiang Suining couldn't help but grit her teeth, and her hand holding the confession letter clenched unconsciously. Although she has experienced two lives, she still remembers the fire in Songjiang Prefecture at that time. When the flood broke out, she escaped because she went to the mountains with her nanny. Later, when she returned to Songjiang Prefecture, she watched her father busy all day, looking at the damaged streets and a large number of victims. Because she was young, the only thing she could do was to stay in the mansion obediently and never cause trouble. That night, she went to bed late and heard noisy sounds. Han Nian'an was curious and wanted to go out to take a look, but was pulled back by her mother. Han Nian'an was held by her mother, and she was held in the arms of her nanny. Several people hid in the room nervously, and the nanny kept praying, hoping that those people would not rush in. Perhaps those people's initial target was not the Gu family. After the crowd passed, the noise gradually became smaller. But the next fire almost burned half of the night sky of Songjiang Prefecture red. Jiang Suining no longer remembered her emotions at the time. She only remembered that she was standing in the yard, looking at the fiery red sky in the distance, listening to the nanny's exclamation, and couldn't come back to her senses for a long time. The fire burned down all the houses rebuilt after the disaster, and also burned the possibility of her father returning home. After that, she could not see her father anymore. After an unknown period of time, her father finally returned home. The whole person was almost emaciated and exhausted. He plunged into the study, and no one knew what he was doing. Later, his father was falsely accused of corruption... Jiang Suining pulled himself out of his memories, exhaled slowly, and looked back at the confession in his hand. Every word and sentence that followed seemed to become bloody. The people rioted, and the officials in charge of disaster relief in the Ministry of Revenue jointly pressured Gu Qingyan to severely punish the victims. But Gu Qingyan noticed that something was wrong and refused to suppress it bloodily. He even found out those instigators and wanted to get their confessions. But at that time, Gu Qingyan already had spies around him, and the matter was discovered in advance. The state prison caught fire, and those people were burned to death along with innocent people. And this fire was blamed on the people, claiming that they were angry that the houses they had rebuilt with great difficulty were burned, so they retaliated. Looking at the corpses and the burned prison, Gu Qingyan was furious and tried his best to find out the truth. The officials of the Ministry of Revenue failed to win him over. In order to cover up the truth and to eliminate Gu Qingyan, they followed the instructions of the person behind the scenes and put all the blame on Gu Qingyan. Within just one day, the news of the theft of disaster relief silver spread like wildfire. Then, Feng Yimin accused Gu Qingyan of stealing grain from the Changping Warehouse and selling it for profit. Some of the disaster relief silver with the seal of the court and the money that Feng Yimin earned from selling grain were searched out of Gu's house. In addition, a grain merchant came forward to give false testimony, claiming that Gu Qingyan did sell him a large amount of grain. For a time, there was evidence. All those who questioned the matter and believed in Gu Qingyan were either won over, warned, or directly convicted as accomplices. In the end, the tongues of the entire Songjiang Prefecture were in the hands of those people. With a letter of false accusation and various fabricated evidences sent to the imperial city, Gu Qingyan was eventually identified as the culprit who was blinded by greed, embezzled disaster relief funds, and caused the riot.