Chapter 312: The Case of Selling Officials (Part 1)

Li Qingan learned about Pugu Huai'en's wife and daughter visiting him while having dinner with his whole family. He immediately sensitively linked the incident to the official sale case that occurred during the day. If this was just a coincidence, it would be so coincidental that it was suspicious.

After dinner, Li Qing'an was full of doubts and no longer chatted with his family. He immediately returned to the military yamen. He wanted to review the list of the promoters in the past two months. Generally speaking, the promotion of the Anxi Army has strict procedures, mainly divided into two categories: one is the promotion of military merits, and the other is the promotion of non-military merits. There is no need to elaborate on the promotion of military merits. The promotion is mainly aimed at civilian logistics officials and soldiers who have no chance to go to the battlefield. The difficulty of promotion is much greater than that of those who have made military merits, mainly depends on the combination of daily assessment and service years.

The main reason is that the envoys of each army are submitted to the registration list, and then the Sima Department of the Anxi Army is reviewed and approved by the Jieduan. If the Jieduan is not there, the Deputy Envoy of the Jieduan will be approved on his behalf. Among them, officials above the lieutenant must be approved by the Jieduan, and they must be submitted to the Ministry of War for filing.

Li Qing'an quickly found Zhao Ying's name in the Hanhai Army's file. He was the guard of the north city gate of Luntai County. Last year, he was promoted to the ranks and chief because he had served for five years and was not a participant.

Two months ago, it happened to be the annual evaluation and promotion time for non-military meritorious personnel. Because Li Qing'an was not in Anxi, the deputy envoy of the Jiedushi Feng Changqing approved the promotion of the lieutenant below. There was another problem here. Feng Changqing could only approve the officers below the lieutenant, and officers above the lieutenant must be approved by himself. However, Zhao Xing's wife said that she was promoted to the lieutenant, so there was a little trick here. Of course, Feng Changqing would not approve the approval level, so the problem should be on the promotion list from the Hanhai Military Post.

With the assistance of several officials, they quickly found a thick stack of Hanhai military merit lists, a total of 327 people, including their resume evaluations, basically all of them were officers below the lieutenant. In this list, there were signatures of the deputy envoy of the Hanhai Army, Pu Gu Huai'en and the envoy of the Zhengshi Nan Jiyun. In other words, the list was drafted by Pu Gu Huai'en. 327 people were finally approved, 212 people were eliminated, which was Feng Changqing's severity and meticulousness.

Li Qing'an opened page by page, and almost every page had rejected people, and there were reasons for Feng Changqing's handwriting. Basically, it was not enough to have insufficient years and failed the assessment. When Li Qing'an turned to the fourth page, Zhao Ying's name suddenly appeared in front of him, and it was also rejected. There were two reasons. One was that he was promoted to the team leader last year, which did not meet the rules of promotion every three years. Secondly, there were only two middle and upper grades in the six-year assessment, which did not meet the at least three middle and upper grades required to promote the team coach.

Li Qingan suddenly discovered the problem. He was not a lieutenant, but a brigade commander. He was stunned for a moment and immediately ordered his guard to say, "Go and find the young woman in the afternoon!"

After a moment, the young woman was taken into the room. She was still wearing heavy filial piety and knelt down timidly, not daring to say a word.

"I want to ask you, have you remembered it wrong? Your husband told you that you could buy it, was it a lieutenant or a brigade coach?"

"Reporting to the general, I remember correctly. It is indeed a lieutenant. Because my husband said that the lieutenant only needs 300 trump card, and the lieutenant only needs 600 trump card. I asked him why he didn't buy a cheaper truiden. His veterinary truiden has full quota, and only one truiden truiden is still empty."

"You remember correctly?"

"I remember correctly at all, I dare not hide it at all."

Li Qingan stared at the young woman for a while, and finally waved his hand and said, "You go down!"

The young woman was taken away, and Li Qing'an's thoughts returned to this stack of promotion books. He looked through the other rejected promotions, most of which were low-level mistakes, either because of insufficient years or insufficient conditions.

The problems found by Feng Changqing were very obvious. If the simple mistakes such as insufficient years and insufficient assessment were only caused by one person, it could be said to be a temporary negligence. However, such a large number of people have made the same mistakes. As a general who has led troops for many years, would Pu Gu Huaien not know these problems?

This means that it is likely that Zhao Ying is not the only one who bought an official, but Zhao Ying is just an iceberg that surfaced.

Li Qingan closed the promotion book and he had already roughly understood the activities. If Pu Gu Huaien was a true seller, then he would at least do two tricks. One was to sell the official position of the brigade commander to the price of the lieutenant, and the second was to not refund the money. The buyer took the risk at his own risk. Once the promotion failed, he would refuse to admit it. Most people swallowed their anger, and Zhao Ying finally committed suicide due to bankruptcy.

Li Qing'an calculated the money that Pugu Huaien had corrupt. Even if he only collected money from those who did not meet the conditions, even if Zhao Xing was the only one who was a low-ranking official, then for one hundred people, each of them would have made at least 30,000 guan.

That's why he felt guilty and asked his wife and daughter to visit his family. He also sent a pair of valuable jade qilins to link these scattered events together, and all doubts were solved.

Li Qingan paced back and forth in the room with his hands behind his back, feeling extremely worried. He was most worried about whether Nan Jiyun was involved in the case, and whether other troops in Anxi's army were the same. If they were all corrupt, it would be that Li Qingan had dereliction of duty.

At this time, Sima Cen Shen of the Anxi Army hurried in. He held a promotion summary book in his hand and bowed to Li Qing'an: "I'm not good at judging you with the general!"

"I want to check what, do you know?"

"I understand it."

Cen Shen handed the summary list to Li Qing'an: "This is a summary report on promotion submitted by the various armies this year. Please check it out."

Li Qingan immediately took the general book and quickly flipped it. A string tense in his heart suddenly loosened. Fortunately, although each army had candidates for rejection, most of them were not more than ten, and at most, Li Fei Yuanli's Hezhong Army. Nearly twenty people were rejected, but he reported more than 400 people. This ratio was still within an acceptable range. If there were any problems, it would be the ones below who were under their jurisdiction.

Only Han Haijun, the number of people rejected was so dazzling. One hundred and fifteen people, Feng Changqing even put a question mark on the side with a pen, which shows that he knew it. Why didn’t he tell himself earlier, but let him discover it? Could it be that Nan Jiyun was really involved in the case?

At this time, the personal soldiers came from outside the door, "Mr. Yan is here!"

Li Qing'an was excited. He was about to find Yan Zhuang! He came and hurriedly said, "Come in!"

The door opened, but two people came in, one Yan Zhuang and the other Pei Yu, who was sent by him to the Byzantine Empire.

Li Qingan was overjoyed and said to Pei Yu anxiously: "Don't you go to Talas City? When did you come back?"

"I heard that the general was back, so I rushed back with a quick whip."

"Come on! Come on! Please sit down."

Li Qingan took Pei Yu down affectionately, and Yan Zhuang next to him sat down with a smile, not disturbing them to reminisce about the past. Li Qingan married Dugu Mingyue and became a relative of the Pei family. Pei Yu became his clan, and he was pragmatic and capable, and would have a bright future in the future.

Pei Yu sat down, Li Qingan poured him another cup of tea and said with a smile: "If Pei Ge Lao saw his grandson turned into black charcoal, he would feel sorry for him."

Pei Yu also smiled and said, "This is very convenient. I thought I was a Turkic person along the way, so I could not disguise myself. Even the Byzantine emperors thought I was a Turkic person."

"Did you meet Leo III of Byzantine?"

Pei Yu shook his head and smiled, "Leo III died in the early years of Tianbao. Now his son Constantine V is reigning. However, although the general wrote the wrong emperor, Constantine V did not care. He thought that Emperor Zetian was still reigning in the Tang Dynasty!"

Li Qingan laughed, "This is very interesting. I have only made a mistake for ten years, but they have made a mistake for fifty years."

After laughing, he asked again: "What is his attitude towards the advice in my letter?"

Pei Yu's smile also went away. He sighed and said, "Although Constantine V was young, he was very cautious. He said that he did not know much about the situation of the Tang Dynasty and hoped to communicate more with the Tang Dynasty. He did not mention the joint attack on the Great Food with the Tang Dynasty."

Li Qing'an nodded. He could understand the Byzantine Emperor's prudence. After all, he was not the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty and could not represent the will of the Tang Dynasty. If he agreed rashly, Anxi changed to a new Jiedushi but did not admit the union, Byzantium would be embarrassed. However, since the Byzantine Emperor did not explicitly refuse, it means that he was also moved by the union attack on Dashi.

Thinking of this, he asked, "Did he say how to strengthen communication? Is there any written reply?"

Pei Yu said: "There is no written reply, but he said that he would send an envoy to Saiye at the appropriate time. Judging from his tone, he seemed to hope that Yitir City could become a transit trade city for both countries."

‘Trade!’ Li Qing'an nodded. He roughly understood that the Byzantine Empire wanted to trade with the Tang Dynasty, which was also a way of communication.

"How do you think of the Byzantine Empire?"

"Their capital was built near the sea and was an unparalleled fortress. I don't know how to conquer it. The city was extremely prosperous, especially the foreign business was very prosperous, and ordinary people were poor, but the nobles made profits from foreign business and lived a very luxurious life. They also raised silkworms and weaved silk, but the quality was very poor. Therefore, a piece of silk from the Tang Dynasty sold five Byzantine gold coins there, and the supply was still in short supply."

Pei Yu took out a gold coin from his arms and handed it to Li Qing'an and smiled and said, "This is their gold coin, their name is Jinsori."

Li Qing'an has been paying attention to coining these two days. He quickly took the gold coins and looked carefully. The gold coins were not big, a bit like the newly minted silver coins of the Tang Dynasty. It is an irregular circle with rough workmanship, no holes in the middle, and there are figures on both sides. The front is an image of Christ, the back is like a scepter, and there is a circle of Roman characters. Although it is rough, it has a high gold content.

Pei Yu pointed to the statue of Christ and said with a smile: "This is the saint they worship, but the Byzantine emperor was opposing the worship of saints. The army was everywhere destroying the saints and burning the priests to death. Because the situation was too chaotic, I didn't stay for too long, so I came back."

Although he was very concerned about Byzantine affairs, the case of selling official positions was imminent. Li Qingan patted Pei Yu on the shoulder and smiled: "You have worked hard all the way, go back and rest first. I will talk to you in detail about Byzantine affairs tomorrow."

Pei Yu knew that Li Qingan saw that Yan Zhuang had something important, so he stood up and smiled and said, "Then I will say goodbye first."

He nodded to Yan Zhuang, then stepped back. When Pei Yu left, Li Qingan temporarily put the Byzantine affairs aside and asked Yan Zhuang, "What's wrong with King Qing? Will he go to Shazhou?"

"My subordinates have already talked with Mr. Yan. Mr. Yan said that the problem is not big. King Qing is always dissatisfied with Kucha. As long as we can build a King Qing Palace in Dunhuang, he will persuade King Qing to go to Dunhuang to take a look, and eventually let King Qing live in Dunhuang for a long time."

Li Qingan was still very satisfied with Yan Zhuang's efficiency. He knew that Yan Zhuang was brought from the Jun Zhan, so he smiled and said, "What's the situation of the food?"

Yan Zhuang did not go to the Amanhe exchange site. He arranged food and water transportation in the village. He had just returned to Zhuye with the first batch of food from the village. He smiled and said, "The first batch of 100,000 stones of food has been shipped back, and everything is going well. I estimate that within two months, we can get one million stones of food, which is enough to deal with the immigration and the Tubo war."

Li Qingan just asked about food casually. He was concerned about the case of selling official positions. He threw the summary list to Yan Zhuang, "Look at it! What can you see?"

Yan Zhuang was in charge of military supplies in Sui Ye, and did not involve personnel. He did not understand the shady scenes of the promotion. After reading the list for a long time, he said, "It seems that the number of Han Hai Army was rejected is a little too many."

"The problem lies here. This afternoon, a military family came to make an appeal and said that her husband spent 600 stagnant to buy an official position, which was Hanhai Army. The most difficult one was to buy an official position and the money was not returned, so he committed suicide. Pugu Huai'en was most likely the person who collected the money behind the scenes."

Li Qingan sighed and said, "My most worry is that Nan Jiyun is also involved in the case, so I want to hear Mr. Yan's opinion."

Yan Zhuang thought for a while and said, "If Nan Jiyun is not involved in the case, only Pu Gu Huaien is involved in the case, what will the general be going to deal with him?"

"Kill this person and order the three armies!"

"No!" Yan Zhuang stopped him decisively.

"What's wrong?" Li Qingan turned around and asked strangely.

"General, if you kill anyone from the Anxi Army, there is no problem, but Pu Gu Huai'en can't kill him!"

"Mr. Is Pugu Huaien from Shuofang Army?"

Yan Zhuang nodded, "That's what I mean. I heard that Pugu Huaien is very prestige in the Shuofang army. If the general kills this person, I am worried that the Shuofang army will start to make trouble. Even if it doesn't make trouble, how can the general explain to the emperor? The general has ordered the three armies to do this matter. How can he not know? The emperor will definitely send the censor to the army to make trouble on the excuse of investigating the sale of officials and make a big fuss, and eliminate the general's confidants one by one. The consequences of this, the general must think twice!"

Li Qing'an did not consider this consequence. Yan Zhuang said it well. Li Longji would not let this opportunity go. When the Tubo Battle ended, he would definitely use this excuse to stir up trouble in the Anxi Army. Even if he could not dismiss himself, he could still eliminate his confidants one by one, causing his vitality to be greatly damaged. In this case, family scandals should not be made public.

"But if you don't kill him, it will be difficult to get rid of the hatred in my heart!" Li Qingan said hatefully.
Chapter completed!