The Great Yu's First Grain Supply Officer

In the spring of the fourth year of the Jinghe era, thirty thousand shi of tribute grain aboard official barges arrived at the Tongji River transit granary in Huai'an.

His father was falsely accused of stealing and selling government grain and thrown in prison. The chief of the grain transport guild and the deputy granary commissioner pressed him with a receipt and release agreement, demanding he sign and seal it, taking the blame for swallowing nine thousand shi of grain adulterated with sand and moldy rice. If the imperial inspector found the granary full of it five days later, his entire family would be executed. If he refused, they would haul him straight to the dungeon!

With life and death hanging in the balance, Pei Yanzhou, newly appointed as a trainee clerk, saw the Illustrated Compendium of the Heavenly Craftsmen's Agricultural and Grain Transport Administration unfold in his mind.

He drew out an extra-long, three-foot-two-inch bamboo-jointed iron probing rod and thrust it before everyone's eyes through the double-layered fir partition in the hold of a grain barge. A bowl of aged brine brought up a third of a bowl of red clay and iron grit, while half a cup of rice vinegar exposed the moldy old rice for what it was!

He caught the traitors, broke through the false walls, and recovered the stolen grain. When eight major grain houses shuttered their warehouses and halted trade, he struck back by buying up fifty thousand shi of damp, sprouting wheat across three counties. Using double-layered bamboo baskets and quicklime, he dried twenty-seven thousand shi of golden winter wheat. He even boiled sprouted wheat into malt syrup and pressed six hundred thousand blocks of Xuanwei pepper-and-salt field rations, desperately needed on the northern frontier!

From a low-ranking clerk at a ninth-rank river granary to the Grand Minister of Revenue, a first-rank official of the court, Pei Yanzhou gripped his iron probing rod and declared,