Chapter 389 Cause and Effect
Chen Dongyue wanted to kill Jia Zhongcheng, so she naturally had to start investigating the errands he was doing.
As the grain director, Jia Zhongcheng's main job is to coordinate the payment of salaries to officials.
By the way, this person is still in charge of the largest changping warehouse in Liaozhou Prefecture, Xingmin warehouse.
According to the regulations of the Great Rong Dynasty, in fact, four counties in each state capital were required to set up an Changpingcang.
The function of these Changping warehouses is also very simple. They are used to collect grain at a high price when the price of grain is too low, and to release grain at a low price when the price of grain is too high.
When encountering natural or man-made disasters, a certain amount of food reserves can be allocated to provide relief to the victims.
In a word, Changpingcang is used to regulate food supply, stabilize food prices, and also serves as a disaster relief reserve.
However, after several years of hard work, Liaozhou has not been able to establish a Changpingcang in four counties.
In the poorer counties, there is not even enough people to survive.
Therefore, there are only three Changping warehouses left in Liaozhou Prefecture.
Because Xingmincang is the closest to Prince Kang's Mansion and the government office, its grain reserves are relatively the most abundant.
But this adequacy is only 'relatively speaking' adequacy.
You know, like the large granary in Qizhou Prefecture, their daily accounts and grain books usually have about 100,000 dan of grain.
In Xingmincang, the grain in the accounts and grain books was only half of what others had.
That’s fifty thousand stones.
But Chen Dongyue actually didn't know about these things.
When she wanted to investigate Jia Zhongcheng, she used the simplest way of thinking.
That is what is easy to check and what to check. What can be checked?
Chen Dongyue naturally couldn't see the accounts issued by the government office to official Lumi Luyin.
It is not easy to find evidence that Jia Zhongcheng is a broker.
After much deliberation, Chen Dongyue felt that she had to start with Xingmincang.
Since this granary was related to people's livelihood, she felt it was appropriate to check it out.
Secondly, Xingminzhuang is only thirty miles away from Liaocheng, so Chen Youqian can travel back and forth eight times a day without any problem.
Third... There is no third. Anyway, just check whatever you have.
After making the decision, Chen Dongyue asked Kong Jie to go to Xingmin Village in the middle of the night.
Oh, yes, this is a deceptive thing. I thought about the theoretical operation for a long time, but in the end, Kong Jie actually made a trip.
But in Chen Dongyue's words, Kong Jie was born as a scout, and he must be much better than her at inquiring about information.
As for why Li Xiucai was not allowed to go.
Haha, she has completely forgotten what Li Xiucai did before.
Of course, although Kong Jie lost one fleshy arm, he gained three iron arms.
Although this time he was tricked by Chen Dongyue into investigating the granary, Kong Jie was somewhat uneasy.
After all, he hasn't done any scouting work since he lost an arm.
He was afraid that if he was not careful, he would ruin the errand assigned to him by Chen Dongyue.
But thinking that his unreliable sister-in-law was providing for his food and clothing, he was too embarrassed to refuse such a good sister-in-law, so he had no choice but to go to Xingmincang.
But what Kong Jie didn't expect was that the guards at Xingmincang could stretch their hips like this.
There were two guards at the door, and they were both sleeping.
Although the granary has a wall about ten feet high, for those who really want to steal, this wall is just in vain.
Kong Jie climbed over the wall with one hand.
Entering the grain depot, he felt as if he was entering a deserted place... After all, there was really no one inside.
Although the warehouse was locked, Kong Jie had a lockpick on his right hand today. He just poked into the lock and the door opened.
There are many large wooden warehouses stacked in the grain depot. (As shown in the picture)
Kong Jie put some grain out at the entrance of the warehouse and found that although the wheat looked a little stale, it should still be edible.
no problem.
There were dozens of warehouses piled up in a warehouse. Kong Jie chose to check them one by one between 'checking them one by one or risking death' and 'not checking them one by one for fear of delaying things'.
But before he was tired, he found out the problem.
In the warehouse, the warehouses piled in the front row are indeed all grains.
But after that, as long as the amount of about a basketful is released, all that comes out will be wheat bran and chaff.
To be honest, Jia Zhongcheng's disguise is pretty good.
If it weren't for the fact that when Kong Jie was putting grain, the fingertips of his prosthetic hand accidentally got stuck in the crack of the basket and couldn't be pulled out for a while, so if he accidentally put too much grain, he really wouldn't have discovered the problem in the warehouse.
This time, he couldn't be lazy even if he wanted to.
We have to check each warehouse one by one.
Fortunately, although Xingmincang has more than a dozen grain depots, only about one-third of them are actually in use today.
Otherwise, let alone one night, even if Kong Jie is given two nights, he may not be able to complete the investigation.
According to Kong Jie's verification, at least two-thirds of the warehouses in the granary have problems.
So Chen Dongyue went to Magistrate Meng to talk about this the next day.
When Magistrate Meng heard that it was about food, he was naturally very nervous.
When he came to Liaozhou, his uncle told him.
The Meng family has many political enemies. This time Magistrate Meng came to Liaozhou to serve as an official, and he was also the magistrate at a higher level.
Therefore, Prime Minister Meng asked Magistrate Meng to serve as an official abroad. He did not ask for many political achievements, but asked him not to get into trouble.
Although the issue of the granary is being discussed at the moment, it has little to do with Magistrate Meng itself.
But in the final analysis, he is now the prefect of Liaozhou and will be implicated no matter what.
Magistrate Meng didn't want Yan Guan to find any reason to embarrass his uncle again.
So he immediately asked a few personal guards from his family to go to Xingmincang.
After confirming that there was indeed a problem with the Xingmin Granary, Magistrate Meng brought the grain storage book kept by the government office, and then asked Ma Jingcheng to take people directly to the granary and retrieved the account book from the granary. .
When the two phases are compared, a problem immediately arises.
According to the reported grain storage book, there were a total of 38,000 shi of grain in the grain depot.
However, the account books collected from the granary clearly recorded that there should be fifty-six thousand dan of grain in the granary.
Not counting the wheat bran and chaff that were used for fraud, there was a shortfall of eighteen thousand shi in the accounts alone.
So Magistrate Meng asked Ma Jingcheng to directly invite Jia Zhongcheng.
At this time, after Ma Jingcheng's inquiry just now, Jia Zhongcheng had actually made the move.
In fact, the food in the granary is estimated to be less than 10,000 dan.
The missing grain was all secretly sold by him last year when grain prices were high.
He originally thought that when new grains came out this year, he would buy grains at low prices so that he could make a profit from the price difference.
Who would have thought that some well-fed person would have trouble with him, and then the whole thing would come to light.
That's the thing.
However, according to Chen Dongyue, this matter was not because she wanted to kill Jia Zhongcheng.
But last year, when food was at its peak, Shen Wanfu said that her brother-in-law had a way to get food, so she started investigating.
She wasn't talking nonsense about this.
Hong Xiang told her that Shen Wanfu did get a lot of food for everyone last year.
The key point is that although the grains he got were all old, the prices were higher than those sold outside. Each stone could be hundreds of cents cheaper, so the Inspection Department alone bought many of them.
When Chen Dongyue explained the cause and effect, and Kong Jie added the details of the investigation, what happened in Xingmincang was restored.