Chapter 125

In the days that followed, almost every day Ye Tao had to spend the better part of the day arguing with a bunch of idle literati. At first, it was only aimed at Ye Tao's contempt for the sages and his disrespectful remarks about His Majesty's literary achievements, but later the scope of attack became wider and wider, and they began to say that Ye Tao was making unwarranted accusations and vicious curses against the great cause of Dongping. Some people brought up the matter of Ye Tao and the Seven Seas Trading Company selling Huoxingdan (Mars Bullets) to Persian merchants, saying that Ye Tao disregarded national security and was suspected of aiding the enemy. But Ye Tao had people pull out the correspondence between the Yishi Workshop's Yicheng headquarters and Min Yue, the sales records filed with the Ministry of Works, and each signing approval by the Ministry of Works. At the same time, the price of Huoxingdan and Menghuoyou (Fierce Fire Oil) was slightly higher than that of Huoyoudan (Fire Oil Bullets). But this price was seized by some people, saying that he was engaging in behind-the-scenes operations, accumulating wealth, and endangering military construction, etc. Helpless, Ye Tao transferred all the sales, storage, transportation, and use effect evaluations of Huoxingdan and Huoyoudan from the Blood Kirin Army, threw out the concept of overall cost of ownership, and at the same time proved through document data that the Huoxingdan sold internally was lower than Huoyoudan after removing the maintenance cost, while Huoyoudan was sold without any responsibility. Anyway, wherever there might be a problem, someone would start attacking from there, and the list of charges was actually as many as dozens.

And Ye Tao was completely provoked, and launched a full-scale debate with this group of impeachment teams, which were mainly composed of officials from the Censorate, scholars from the Yong'an Hall and Wenhua Hall, and supplemented by officials from the Ministry of Rites and the Ministry of Personnel who were closely related to Pang Rong and mindful of the sage's teachings. He refuted their accusations and impeachments one by one, citing detailed and completely reliable figures to illustrate the transparency of any project he had handled before and after. For any accusation, he first asked the other party to provide evidence.

The matter related to Huoxingdan may be the first time in Dongping history that the concept of "procedural justice" has been considered. After this debate, Tan Xiaopei ordered Huang Xuping to formulate new regulations on the issue of responsibility and responsibility traceability procedures. So that officials no longer have to worry about being suddenly turned over for old accounts from a few years or even decades ago. As long as a certain regulation is reasonable and legal in procedure, then even if improprieties are indeed discovered in the future, it must be resolved through procedures. There is no possibility of conviction based on a casual remark from a censor.

And Ye Tao constantly demanded that the other party provide evidence, and then constantly produced extremely reliable evidence to illustrate the legitimacy and rationality of his various actions, proving his innocence, which also made Tan Xiaopei think deeply... He was also really annoyed by the Censorate's too casual and subjective impeachments, and relevant decrees might be issued soon.

Perhaps it was because he was young, or perhaps because the anger in his belly had made Ye Tao not want to care about other things, he actually debated with quite a few of the "political enemies" in the court. Usually, when being impeached by many officials, most people will argue, feel guilty, or be frustrated, and will adopt a strategy of retreating to advance, such as pleading illness. They are convinced that as long as they have the ability, as long as His Majesty still trusts them, and still needs their ability and connections, they will naturally be reinstated after the storm has passed, and after the political enemies who attacked them most fiercely have made mistakes themselves. But Ye Tao had no such idea at all. He didn't want to be an official that much, but he couldn't tolerate someone splashing dirty water on him. He did what he was supposed to do every day, debated with officials in the hall in high spirits, and took back copies of those memorials impeaching him every day to study and analyze. The next day, there would inevitably be targeted remarks, and as Ye Tao became more and more familiar with the set of impeachment, defense, and counterattack, as Ye Tao's friends and the fair-minded people in the court who couldn't stand it began to stand on Ye Tao's side more and more obviously, as Prince Tan Weiming, Yicheng Governor Peng Detian, Yicheng Navy Commander Min Yue, and General of the Left Xu Jingtian, who was far away in Yunzhou, used facts to prove that Ye Tao's actions were legitimate, and that there was absolutely no corruption in all the projects he handled, and even vouched for Ye Tao with their official positions and merits, this vigorous debate finally had a momentum to come to an end.

And even at this time, Ye Tao refused to make the slightest concession in face. The opposing camp showed goodwill through Dou Anqi, the Minister of Rites who had been acting as a peacemaker in the middle, wanting to take a step back, but was rejected by Ye Tao. In this battle, there was only victory and defeat. If the other party was not completely beaten to death, there would be trouble in the future. And Ye Tao was fed up with the Censorate's disregard for facts, failure to organize evidence, fabrication of crimes, and arbitrary expansion of the scope of attack. He could not tolerate the act of expanding the scope of attack to his family, his character, his origin, and his class.

And with the help of Tan Weixin and Zeng Man, Ye Tao's biggest counterattack began. With the help of Tan Weixin, who was now forming the Central Archives Bureau, and Zeng Man, who was sorting out the Dongping's domestic internal affairs guard forces, he had a clear understanding of the files of those outspoken officials over the past ten years.

And before the court meeting on a certain day, he moved a full six boxes of documents to the Hall of Political Affairs. After the daily affairs were routinely handled at the court meeting, and the fixed program for this period of time, the debate, began, Ye Tao started to act recklessly.

"Song Youjun, Zhu Jingwen, and Peng An, please leave the Hall of Political Affairs," Ye Tao said coldly.

"Why?" Everyone present was shocked. This was probably the first time in the history of Dongping court meetings that a minister (or rather, a minister without a position) had expelled three officials from the court.

"Insufficient security clearance," Ye Tao said lightly. He flicked his clothes, and the gesture of wanting to dust off some dust was truly the deepest contempt for those "political enemies."

The concept of security levels was a specification that began to be implemented in the Dongping court center with the establishment of the Central Archives Bureau. Security levels are divided into twelve levels from low to high. Officials can access the documents and records of that level based on their security authorization, or access documents one level higher than their security authorization with the accompaniment of an official with higher authorization. Although this document specification had only been implemented for less than a month, everyone had already recognized the rationality and operability of this specification. However, Ye Tao's proposal in this situation was obviously deliberately intended to give the other party a disincentive. As the collaborative developer of the Central Archives Bureau's security technology and document classification management technology, Ye Tao's security authorization was very, very high. But no matter what level those three poor guys were, Ye Tao could have sufficient reasons to expel them... because the definer of the security level of the document now was Tan Weixin.

After the three people from the Censorate walked out of the Hall of Political Affairs with resentful eyes, Ye Tao had the guards bring in the document display rack with casters, and unfolded the charts on the display rack.

"This is the asset investigation of everyone who has accused me of corruption in the past ten years," Ye Tao said lightly, and then began to explain the data on the chart. The horizontal axis was time, and the vertical axis was the approximate value of the total assets. Ye Tao used simple and clear charts to illustrate the asset changes of these people. The time and events marked on the timeline dissected the officials' resumes very clearly, and the upward-sloping broken line of each official was a bit shocking. With the officials' promotions and transfers, the salaries issued by the court naturally increased. Dongping does not prohibit officials from doing business, but if it is a regular investment, without official-business collusion, the rate of return on investment will not be very exaggerated. An official in a place like Danyang, unless it is a matter of marriage or funeral, the income and expenditure in terms of gift giving is generally maintained in a dynamic balance. As for the court's gifts due to certain supplies, there is even a record to check. Outside the chart, Ye Tao even very kindly explained the impact of fixed asset appreciation and unexpected events on the investment business... However, the curves of several people were indeed a bit exaggerated. It is no longer a rare thing that the increase in assets is directly proportional to the level of official position. Among those officials who impeached Ye Tao, there was even one who needed Ye Tao to move a stool and stand on it to roughly represent his outrageousness in terms of asset growth and how wealthy he is now. Ye Tao remembered seeing this scene in a documentary made by a guy who failed to run for president of the United States before... It was really shocking, and it was worth his while to set the vertical axis of the coordinates so loosely.

Naturally, in front of the powerful data and the powerful charts that Ye Tao had compiled with the help of many people, the "political enemies" were undeniably defeated. The Censorate faced a comprehensive investigation, and the learned scholars of Yong'an Hall and Wenhua Hall were suddenly silent. But Ye Tao's appointment was still undecided.

After many days of delay, the affairs of Yunzhou finally had arrangements. Due to the complexity of military, political, and economic affairs in Yunzhou, and Yunzhou has always existed as an independent region, Yunzhou will have a period of time to transition from an independent polity to a part of Dongping. This transition period is initially set at five years. And these five years will be divided into three stages. The first is the military stabilization stage. This stage will be fully responsible by General of the Left Xu Jingtian, with the troops transferred from Dongping to Yunzhou as the main force, and the original military strength of Yunzhou as the auxiliary force. There will be no major adjustments, with the goal of consolidating the existing territory and maintaining territorial security.

The second is the integration period. During the integration period, the Dai family will cooperate with the person in charge from Dongping to consolidate assets and hand over assets that are not suitable for clan control to the Dongping court for operation in various ways. At the same time, a census of the population, a survey of various resources available for development, and a preliminary integration of local political and economic forces will be carried out in Yunzhou to maintain local stability and development.

Then there is the adjustment and development period, which requires the people of Yunzhou to work together to explore a path suitable for the development of Yunzhou. Yunzhou is different from the main body of Dongping and needs a completely different development model. It needs Yunzhou's managers to have sufficient ability to respond to external military threats and invasions, to be able to form powerful cavalry corps under military pressure, to prepare for Dongping's future unification war, and to need Yunzhou's development in economy and other aspects to become a sample of Dongping's future conquest and development, a sample that people yearn for...

"Damn it, isn't this just a special zone?" Fully understanding that there are obvious multi-party mediation and compromise components in this strategy, and also Tan Weixin's secret ideas, Ye Tao still felt that Yunzhou's long-term strategy was too forward-looking. In particular, the division of the three stages immediately resolved the fierce competition for the position of Governor of Yunzhou that was surging in the court. Everyone had nothing to say about General of the Left Xu Jingtian being in charge of reorganizing the army, and Tan Xiaopei had plenty of time to consider who to entrust Yunzhou to.

And because Yunzhou is too unique, the governor's authority is not enough to manage Yunzhou, Dongping will set up the Yunzhou Pacification Commissioner's Office for the first time in history.