Great Ming: He Complains of Poverty Every Year, Until Old Zhu Pays a Surprise Visit and Is Stunned

After transmigrating, Song Yin became the magistrate of Pei County. His memorials always complained of ruined roads, disaster victims starving to death, and bandits running rampant. In reality, he'd built eight "roads" wide enough for horse-drawn carriages to travel side by side, filled the granaries until grain piled outside the walls, and sent housing prices soaring higher than those in the capital.

Zhu Yuanzhang was stunned as soon as he passed the county boundary marker on his homecoming: the road was smooth, and rice stalks bent beneath their heavy grains. He turned into a gambling den in the county town and watched a man get beaten to death in broad daylight. Song Yin stepped down from a gold-trimmed carriage pulled by six white horses, his arm around a famous courtesan, and settled the case by ordering a thousand taels in compensation. Furious, Old Zhu wanted to send troops to raid the place, but Empress Ma stopped him. "Let's take a look first."

The more they investigated, the stranger things seemed. The dead man had abused his family and sold his children; the thousand taels in compensation went straight toward buying a garden home in the second ring. The yamen runners took a hundred taels as a meeting fee, then led them to Song Yin's glass exhibition hall. Xu Qing spent forty thousand taels to buy the county magistrate's post in Ping County, even though his resume showed only three years' experience managing silk. Once in office, he promoted trade and made the county prosperous. Song Yin patted Old Zhu on the shoulder and laughed. "It doesn't matter whether an official is corrupt or not. A good official is one who gets things done."

Old Zhu stared at the glass mirror that reflected every eyebrow hair and stayed silent all night.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.