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Home/ There’s A Beauty / Chapter 70 (Part 2)

Once You Shu starts working seriously, he will ignore the things around him. He didn’t notice the man’s departure, and only felt a slight chill on the top of his head, so he covered his head with a bath towel and continued to write. 

It wasn’t until the servant knocked on the door with a bowl of hot ginger soup and two steamed dumplings that he suddenly came back to his senses.

“Huh, where is the person?” While muttering slightly, he went to open the door. The steam rushing towards his face made him sneeze loudly.

Fortunately, the ginger soup was placed in the food box and was not affected. Instead, it was the servant boy whose face was sprayed with saliva all over. He just wiped it casually with his sleeve and said with a smile, “Master, the ginger soup you ordered is ready. Hurry up and drink it while it’s hot.”

“I didn’t ask you to make ginger soup.” You Shu was slightly puzzled.

The servants in the yamen are mostly men, and the only two maids also took the initiative to resign a few days ago, saying that the master could handle it himself and didn’t need their services. 

In the end, men are different from women, and their thoughts are not so delicate, so when they saw their master coming back in the rain in the middle of the night, no one thought of giving him a bowl of cold medicine or some midnight snacks to warm his stomach.

The boy was very puzzled and asked, “Didn’t the master send someone to the kitchen and tell us to make a bowl of ginger soup quickly? He also said that you are hungry and it is best to make something that is easy to digest. Look, these are steamed dumplings with fresh skin. It will easily melt in your mouth and you can immediately fall asleep after eating them.”

After the two maids resigned, there was no one waiting in You Shu’s room to serve him. Previously, several servants also came to keep the vigil at night, but he drove them away one by one. 

Now in the middle of the night, someone suddenly brought ginger soup and food, even saying that it was his own order. How could it be? After thinking about it for a while, You Shu could only think of one possibility.

He asked in a low voice, “Do you remember what the person who ordered you to make ginger soup looked like?”

The boy nodded first, then thought about it carefully and shook his head. There was a look of doubt in his eyes as he muttered unconsciously, “It’s strange. I remembered it just now, but how could I forget it this quickly?”

It must have been the smokescreen used by the Lord Yama. It seems that he is indeed a good person, no, a good god. Thinking of this, the fear and anger of being monitored instantly dissipated, and You Shu’s impression of the man became even better. 

After drinking the ginger soup in one gulp, he picked up the chopsticks to eat the steamed dumplings, saying vaguely, “I know who it is. You have nothing to do here, go back to sleep.”

“Okay. This little one will sleep in the side room. If the master needs anything, please call me.” The boy immediately left and closed the door tightly.

As You Shu expected, the heavy rain lasted only for a day and night, and the embankments in the upstream county town were all washed away, affecting seven or eight towns in Suichang.  

Fortunately, the villagers evacuated in time, avoiding any casualties. However, the vast majority of fertile fields were completely submerged by the flood, which also took away all the harvest in the first half of this year.

You Shu had already built many shanties on the outskirts of the city to accommodate disaster victims, opened warehouses in a timely manner to store grain, and prepared free decoctions to prevent epidemics.  

Although their homes were buried under the water, the people affected by the disaster were able to survive. They had porridge to drink every day, medicine to eat, a house to live in, clothes to wear, and a blanket to cover themselves. They were in a very peaceful mood.

Moreover, the county magistrate has long issued a decree, stating that after the flood receded, he would recruit corvees to repair the destroyed public facilities such as embankments, roads, bridges, and post stations. He will pay a monthly salary of one or two taels of silver to take care of food and housing.  

Ordinary low-rise houses can be built with only a few taels of silver, which means that after a few months of work, villagers would be able to rebuild their homes. Not only that, the County Magistrate also cancelled taxes for the second half of the year and distributed grain seeds to each village for free so that everyone could make up for the harvest in a timely manner.

The promulgation of various government decrees has completely relieved everyone of their worries. So how could they not shed tears of gratitude? 

It wasn’t until this moment that the people of Suichang understood why the county magistrate has been purchasing goods on such a large scale in the past few days. He had long foreseen the impending natural disaster, and in order to ensure the survival of people under his rule, he sold off all his possessions one by one.

Even the illiterate farmers can roughly calculate the amount of silver needed to build such a huge shantytown, along with daily supplies of rice, soup, medicine, and clothing. There wasn’t a trace of falsehood in the financial reports posted by the county magistrate on the public bulletin board.

Lord Qingtian! A living Bodhisattva who saves lives! How many lifetimes of virtue do the people of Suichang County have to accumulate to meet such a good official who cares about the country and the people, and is willing to die for them? 

As soon as everyone saw County Magistrate Zhao passing by, they spontaneously gathered around him, greeting him loudly. They did not dare to kneel down because Magistrate Zhao said that it was dangerous for many people to be crowded together in one place. If they knelt down, a stampede might occur. He would rather get hurt than see everyone else die in vain. It is his duty to ensure that the people under his rule live and work in peace and contentment, and he does not need anyone to be grateful.

These words may seem simple, but they are truly spoken to everyone’s heart. From then on, people hid their gratitude deep in their hearts and strictly implemented the decrees issued by County Magistrate Xiao Zhao. 

He urged everyone to pay attention to personal hygiene, and told them to take a bath frequently; 

He asked everyone to take care of the elderly, weak, women and children, so young and strong men took the initiative to shoulder the responsibility of taking care of everyone; 

He asked everyone to sprinkle lime on the corners of the house, and the white powder could be seen everywhere in the resettlement area; 

He isolated those who were slightly sick, and no one felt fear or hesitation, and immediately bid farewell to their loved ones, moving to another place…..

He gave instructions to the people and handled the post-disaster affairs in an orderly and proper manner. The floods are still raging, the rain is still pouring, but Suichang is calm and stable.

In contrast, the surrounding counties have long been in chaos. Many villages were submerged by floods, resulting in countless casualties. However, the county magistrates could not provide food for disaster relief, and could only block the surviving villagers outside the city gates, leaving them to fend for themselves.  

Some people sold their children for food, some fell into the wilds and became bandits, and some committed suicide by jumping into the river. That scene could be called a purgatory on earth.

After hearing about the situation in Suichang County, a large number of disaster victims swarmed in, doubling the pressure on You Shu. Fortunately, he was well prepared and could barely make it through. 

After seven or eight days later, the rain slowed down slightly, and the convoy of relief supplies sent by the imperial court finally arrived. First,it stopped at the state capital, and then it was distributed to each county one by one. Suichang, which had the largest number of disaster victims, was the last to receive money and food, with the least amount.

Seeing the twenty carts slowly entering the city gate, You Shu’s face was as black as the bottom of a pot, but the imperial envoy was still grinning broadly, as if in a very happy mood. He turned a blind eye to the thin and weak victims squeezed on both sides of the road and arched his hand, saying, “Mr. Zhao, I have kept you waiting. Where is the warehouse? Can you lead us there?”

“There’s no need to go to the warehouse. We have been waiting for this batch of money and grain for a long time, let’s just divide it directly.” You Shu raised a dagger and slashed through several sacks on the top, and then opened the wooden box containing silver.

By the time the imperial envoy tried to stop him, it was already too late. What came out of the sack was not rice, but fine sand; what was inside the wooden box was not silver, but bricks. What’s going on here? The victims were stunned at first, and then asked angrily, “Where’s our food? Where’s our money? Where have you all taken it?”

After being exploited for so many years, how could they not understand the twists and turns around here? It was nothing more than layers of deductions, and nothing was left when the convoy finally arrived at Suichang County. The upper echelons have been filling their own pockets and enriching themselves, while ignoring the real victims? Oh heaven, what kind of world is this?

What is even more hateful is that they also plan to use the method of stealing the sky and changing the sun to frame County Magistrate Zhao. If County Magistrate Zhao did not inspect the supplies on the spot, but directly transported them into the warehouse, closed the door and then opened it again, how would he prove his innocence when distributing money and food next time?(stealing the sky and changing the sun= commit a big fraud)

Maybe the superiors will accuse him of being greedy for ink and silver, and he would probably be beheaded! What a cruel mind! What a dirty trick! The victims were so angry that they pushed the imperial envoy to the ground and beat him until You Shu finally tried to persuade them to stop.

You Shu arrested everyone, kept twenty cartloads of criminal evidence, and then continued to resettle the victims. After the flood, he would definitely write down the matter and submit it to the new emperor to see how he would deal with it.

Half a month later, the floods slowly receded, and the victims began to rebuild their homes. However, many officers and soldiers suddenly came to Suichang County, tied up You Shu, and took him to the state capital prison to be imprisoned. 

Only then did You Shu realise that the imperial court had already sent an imperial envoy to investigate the embezzlement of disaster funds. I don’t know how Prefect Wang did it, but the imperial envoy actually believed that the disaster funds were not stolen due to greed of the officials, but by bandits, and You Shu somehow became the leader of the bandits.

You Shu asked the imperial envoy to present evidence, but the other party sneered and said, “The bandits robbed various counties and killed many officials, but they did not attack Suichang County alone. How do you explain this?”

“How can I explain it? Because the bandits are also the villagers who were affected by the disaster. They are kind and righteous, and they cannot bear to harm tens of millions of compatriots in the city, nor can they bear to kill me, a good official!” You Shu’s excuse only resulted in a beating with a cane from the imperial envoy, who finally forced him to press his fingerprints on the charges. 

You Shu’s reading ability is very strong, and he can clearly read the written content with just a glance.

They actually planned to blame all the actions of the Prefect Wang on You Shu, and they found witnesses to create account books as evidence. Every clause was well-founded and logical, indicating that they had been planning for a long time. And this imperial envoy must have been bribed by them to cooperate with this matter.

For the first time, You Shu felt hopeless because the imperial envoy actually carries the Shangfang sword with him. The other party could just kill him first and then make up false evidence. That is to say, he can silence himself without needing to bring the case to capital for retrial, and the dirty water poured on his head could never be washed away.(Shangfang sword=sword of the state, symbolizing the power of the emperor)

What should I do now? You Shu thought for a moment, and finally bit his fingertips and drew a soul-leaving talisman on his forehead. On the verge of life and death, the only person he can turn to is King of the Underworld, which is really ironic.

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