"Mother……"

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

The citizen who stopped the road to complain hugged his child tightly to the woman and cried profusely. 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, the time has passed so long that those who came to visit their relatives 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 physique and appearance have changed greatly, 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, leaving the affairs of 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 him 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 walking 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 Ping'an 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 he 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 feuding 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 taken away, and that mother and child were separated. It was really 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 courtier who was a woman of the common people thought about the past events in the second year of Qianyuan, when the rebellious minister Shi Zi Siming led his army to capture Luoyang. His biological mother, Empress Dowager Ruizhen of the Tang Dynasty, disappeared in the chaos.

The birth and death of the biological 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 affectionate and filial, and your longing for your mother is known to the world. The love of this son of a man is also the conduct of a king.

.

However, 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? For beasts in the mountains, the isolation of mother and child is also contrary to the ethics and holy principles, let alone human beings? I am your Majesty's minister, how can it be seen that such a tragedy happens?

I turned a blind eye in Daozhou, and 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, raise him for more than ten years, and turn him into a dwarf as a tribute to your majesty...

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. These cruel officials and evil gentry deceive the people.

For a subordinate to deceive a superior, it is contrary to ethics and the holy way. If the Empress Dowager Ruizhen is in Daozhou, she will not bear to see her..."

…

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

Xia Ping'an put down the memorial and asked Xue Yue to call someone in. After a while, he saw Sicang from the governor's office walking in with his head lowered and several account books in his hand.

Sicang, the governor 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 Ping'an said calmly.

"Yes!" The Sicang stood up carefully, 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 your Majesty to take a look!"

Xia Pingan took the account book, opened it and flipped through a few pages. After looking at it, 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. I also asked the officials below, and the officials also said that the Daozhou Governor's Office has always been doing this. Although I think it is 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 replenishment stipulated in the laws of Daozhou City, but they do not let the people of Daozhou City know.

For every child 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" those people robbed from the treasurer every year amounted to thousands of silk pieces. This was not a small amount of money. You must know that in this era, a horse only cost 40 pieces of silk, and the profit sharing

The people who made the money were officials related to the governor's office, euphemistically called "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 about it!"

The treasurer gritted his teeth and said, "My lord, the imperial court only needs one dwarf every year as a tribute, 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 wealthy families in Chang'an and 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 house 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
Chapter completed!