The Entire Court Begs His Majesty to Keep the Seventh Prince in Check

Everyone in the capital knows that the Seventh Prince, Xiao Heng, is a walking disaster. He smashes the Taihu rocks in the imperial garden, burns down the new stove in the imperial kitchens, and shoves the Second Prince into a lake to feed the fish. Impeachment memorials pile up higher than a person. Emperor Jing, Xiao Che, rubs his aching forehead, then waves his brush: send him to the poorest commandery, Yong'an, to reflect on his behavior. He can come back once he's improved.

The whole country waits to see the spoiled prince cry and beg to return to the capital in some poor backwater. Instead, everything takes a completely different turn.

A corrupt county deputy thinks he can push around the new, dimwitted prince? Three sentences are enough to expose the core flaw in his fake accounts. The county clerk is so frightened he collapses on the spot, and Xiao Heng follows the clues to raid the deputy's lair, pocketing his first fortune. Local thugs and bullies run a gambling den and lend money at exorbitant interest, driving people to their deaths? He takes his guards and storms the place. The bully is beheaded in public, and the loan IOUs are burned in one big fire. The people cheer. The prison is full of idle mouths wasting food? He puts them all to work repairing dikes, digging canals, and clearing farmland. They get room and board but no pay, and good behavior earns them reduced sentences. He gets infrastructure built at no cost.

He lowers commercial taxes to attract merchants, improves seeds to boost farming, and opens weaving workshops to sell Yun brocade. In just one year, Yong'an Commandery, once so desolate that not even birds would stop there, is lined with shops and overflowing with grain, rich beyond measure. When a mountain flood devastates three neighboring counties and leaves bodies everywhere, Yong'an alone stands firm and is even able to open its granaries to aid its neighbors.

When the news reaches the capital, the officials are collectively stunned: Is this the spoiled prince who could only cause trouble? Emperor Jing is dumbfounded too: I sent him there to reflect, and he secretly became the richest man in the region?

An imperial edict summons him back to the capital. The emperor intends to make him work and teach him discipline, but Xiao Heng immediately launches into a rampage in court. Three years of crooked accounts in the grain transport system? He sorts them out in half a month and exposes a whole string of corrupt officials. The salt and iron industries lose money year after year? One reform sends revenues soaring…