Snowflake-like letters flew out of Qingjiang Prefecture in all directions, some heading straight for the capital.
The local gentry and wealthy families of Qingjiang Prefecture each had their own connections—none particularly powerful on their own, but formidable when combined. They pooled their various contacts and relationships, determined to file a devastating impeachment memorial against Lin Xuejin, hoping above all else to send this bastard packing.
Once before, Lin Xuejin had been impeached for being too upright and unbending.
Now he was being impeached for being too greedy.
Yet neither attempt had brought him down. The first time, he had resigned of his own accord. This time, he simply submitted a memorial to the throne.
The memorial's contents were straightforward: he proposed borrowing money from the wealthy to develop Qingjiang Prefecture, and guaranteed tax revenues of fifty thousand taels come the autumn harvest. He had the court right where he wanted it. The memorial went up and came back down with an imperial commendation.
Of course, with the court as strapped for cash as it was, the commendation was purely verbal—not a single copper coin of benefit attached. What's more, the Emperor had no idea that what Lin Xuejin had directly demanded already far exceeded fifty thousand taels, and assumed he had merely scraped together a few thousand taels or so. After all, Qingjiang Prefecture's total tax revenue the previous year had barely exceeded twenty thousand taels.
So with fifty thousand taels of tax revenue to recommend him, the Emperor let the matter pass.
The gentry and wealthy families, for their part, had grievances they could not fully voice. In their own memorials, they mentioned only that Lin Xuejin had been reaching everywhere for money, but dared not breathe a word about specific figures.
If you speak of extortion without naming sums, how do you convince the Emperor of anything? They mentioned only in passing that one man had been asked for two or three hundred taels, another had handed over five hundred. The Emperor naturally assumed it involved only a handful of people and no great total—he could never have imagined that Lin Xuejin had gone after the entire city at once.
What could they do? Were they to tell the Emperor that this bastard Lin Xuejin had extracted sixty-eight thousand taels in silver alone—plus tens of thousands more in land and grain?
Then what would the Emperor think? How was it that a prefecture of several hundred thousand souls yielded only twenty thousand taels in taxes, yet these few individuals had been squeezed for over a hundred thousand? With the court in such dire straits, how had these people grown so fat?
Word of Lin Xuejin's impeachment traveled back to Qingjiang, and Jinyuan was furious when she heard.
"How could they do this? They didn't say no when I asked! If they hadn't wanted to give, they could have refused! Why give, and then sneak off to file complaints?"
Lin Xuejin was tickled by her childlike reasoning.
Children were simply adorable.
You go around leveraging the prefect's authority to demand silver, grain, and land—did she think they could simply refuse if they wanted to?
Just as when they themselves reached into the pockets of common people—could those people simply refuse?
"All right, Jinyuan, stop fretting. When does the sweet potato seed stock from Taoyuan Town arrive?"
"Have all the farming households been hired?"
"The seed stock will be here any day now—just a matter of days. The farmers have all been arranged."
"Five thousand households, each planting six mu—that shouldn't be asking too much."
"I had people negotiate with them already. On average, each household gets three hundred jin of grain upfront, enough to last roughly five months."
"After five months, each household receives another five hundred jin."
"The best performers will have more work in autumn, with separate pay in coin."
"If all goes smoothly, the sweet potatoes should be ready for harvest in early autumn—a yield of a hundred million jin."
"Enough to feed two hundred and fifty thousand people to their fill, or enough to keep everyone in the entire prefecture from starving!"
Lin Xuejin shuddered. To keep an entire prefecture from starving—what an immense store of virtue and merit that would be!
In monetary terms, priced even at the rate of coarse grain, it would come to four or five hundred thousand taels of silver.
Against that, a paltry fifty thousand taels in tax revenue would mean absolutely nothing!
An attendant came hurrying in, face lit with excitement. "My lord, my lord—Miss Jinxiu has arrived!"
"Jinxiu-jiejie is here? Ah, Sister!" Jinyuan let out a cry and bolted for the door.
Lin Xuejin gave the attendant a reproving look. "Why didn't you bring her straight in?"
The attendant froze, his smile faltering, not daring to say a word. But—surely every visitor must be announced first? Was this somehow my fault?
A moment later, Jinxiu and Jinyuan came in hand in hand.
Jinxiu gave Lin Xuejin a proper bow. "Jinxiu pays her respects to the Lord Prefect."
Lin Xuejin pressed a hand to his forehead. "Jinxiu, how long has it been since we've seen each other? Why so formal all of a sudden? I'm a little hurt."
Jinxiu laughed. "Ha—Old Lin, your station is different now, isn't it?"
"Ah, 'Old Lin'—now that's what I like to hear."
"What do you mean, different? Haven't I said it myself? Keep the deputy village chief position warm for me. If this prefect business stops being fun, I might go back any day."
"Please don't—you carry a special mission entrusted to you by the Master!"
"You've come in person. I suspect it's not just about delivering the seed stock. What else is there?"
"Sharp as ever, sir. My main purpose this visit is to open a branch of the bank here in the prefectural city."
"That… let me think on it."
Even with Lin Xuejin's limited grasp of finance, he understood the importance of controlling currency—something more fundamental than even the salt and iron monopolies. The court might well refuse.
"Sir, the Master has already thought it through for you. Simply memorialize the throne and say that this is an experiment—and that if the experiment succeeds, this year's tax revenues should exceed eighty thousand taels, perhaps even a hundred thousand."
"If it proves effective, the court could roll it out everywhere and collect far greater taxes."
"If the returns could be that large, what do you think the court would do?"
Lin Xuejin turned it over in his mind. If the court took his word for it and did the arithmetic, they would realize that applied to the whole empire, annual tax revenues could reach twenty million taels!
His Majesty would surely be tempted…
But he knew perfectly well it was all smoke and mirrors. The court officials hadn't the faintest understanding of finance. What was he to do?
He was a scholar, after all, raised from childhood on loyalty to the sovereign and love of country…
"Very well. I'll submit the memorial. Choose your location yourself."
And so, when loyalty to the sovereign and love of country could not be reconciled, Old Lin chose love of country—and to love one's country was to love its people.
Not long afterward, the grandest restaurant on the grandest street in the prefectural city shuttered its doors and was reborn as something called Taoyuan Bank.
The next time Jinyuan wanted to host a banquet, she would have to find somewhere else.
This left her mildly vexed, since the cooking there had been quite good.
But what was done was done, and there was nothing for it.
After all, the premises had been the very ones she had gone personally to demand from the proprietor behind the restaurant…
*Demand.* That was the word.