"I report to Your Majesty, the yellow register of the capital has been delivered to the Ministry of Revenue yesterday and is being kept there. I plan to present it to you after verification at tomorrow's morning court." Fan Min replied respectfully.

  "No need to wait until tomorrow, you just say where the Yellow Book is and I will order the guards in front of the palace to bring it over." Zhu Yuanzhang was obviously eager to take a look, couldn't even wait for one day, Fan Min naturally listened to the orders and quickly told the guards in front of the palace about the location of the Yellow Book on taxation in the Ministry of Revenue.

  "Take this opportunity to simply tell the various ministers about the Yellow Book." The old man's impatient temper flared up, wanting to hear it quickly.

  "Yes, sir!" Minister Fan cleared his throat and began a detailed explanation.

  "This yellow book was compiled in the first month of this year by imperial order, and it took four months to complete. Your Majesty's original intention was that since the labor service was not evenly distributed and the grain tax was not clear, there was a deliberate attempt to compile this book. It includes households from all over the country, compiles the people of the world, categorizes them, and has three major categories: civilians, military personnel, and artisans. Under each category, there are more than 80 subcategories, including Confucian scholars, doctors, diviners, school officials, strongmen, kitchen workers, tailors, etc. In addition, a separate register of stoves is used to record salt-making households, which can be said to include all occupational household registrations."

  Its method is to take 110 as one Li, and in each Li, ten households are promoted as the head of the Li for more than ten people. The remaining hundred households are divided into ten Jia, with ten households in each Jia, and one large household is promoted as the head of the Jia. Every year's labor service and taxes are managed by these heads of Li and Jia, who are responsible for the households under their jurisdiction.

  Every ten years, a rotation is carried out, and the positions of the heads of Li and Jia are re-determined. In each Li, a register is compiled, which includes the number of able-bodied men, labor service, and land rent. The register is accompanied by a map. Widows, orphans, and solitary individuals who do not perform labor service are registered as miscellaneous.

  Land taxes are collected twice a year, with summer taxes and autumn grains, based on households. In addition, Buddhist monks and Taoist priests pay taxes according to their landholdings. Those who have land should be included in the register; those without land are compiled together as miscellaneous. Those who do not have land or pay taxes are treated as vagrants.

  Those who refuse to obey orders can be immediately arrested, and those who resist arrest can be executed on the spot by the local authorities.

  "This book is also in four volumes, with the main volume sent to the Ministry of Revenue in the capital and the remaining three volumes kept at the provincial government, prefecture, and county levels for verification purposes. It is revised once every ten years, along with the replacement of village heads and other officials. From then on, each county, prefecture, province, and provincial government would compile and verify tax revenue and population data, which would ultimately be reviewed by the Ministry of Revenue. If any discrepancies were found, the Provincial Inspector's Office would be responsible for investigating to the bottom of the matter. This is the Yellow Register for taxation.

  Fan Min roughly introduced the purpose and regulations of the Yellow Register, which can be said to have strictly divided the people into different levels of identity according to the Yellow Register method, greatly enhancing the fairness and transparency of taxation, labor, and corvée."

  Zhu Yuanzhang nodded repeatedly, apparently very satisfied with the yellow book of taxation. At this time, the guards in front of the palace also brought the original yellow book according to Fan Min's instructions, and a whole box of yellow books was placed in front of Zhu Yuanzhang. This is only the taxation yellow book of the capital city, as for the other provinces, prefectures and counties, the timing of the issuance of government orders is different, so the time for verifying and delivering the yellow books to the Ministry of Households is also different.

  The old man casually pulled out a booklet and began to carefully flip through it. Coincidentally, the first page of the booklet was written with the "Yellow Register of Fengyang Prefecture, Fengyang County", which detailed the situation of each household and family, as well as the number of people available for labor service. At the beginning of the drawing, there were several diagrams attached with names, which were exactly the households that had been compiled as scattered and isolated.

  The old man curiously took a closer look and found that the people in these paintings were somewhat familiar. After recalling for a moment, he suddenly remembered that these people were actually his fellow villagers who had followed him to conquer the south and north. After declaring himself emperor and establishing the country, this group of elderly men with disabilities were sent back to their hometown of Fengyang to enjoy their old age. He didn't expect to see them again today in this yellow register of labor service.

  "Good! Good! This yellow book is well-written, very detailed and clear. Every household's land and population are all accounted for, and the number of taxes and labor levies to be collected each year has a standard reference. Now let's see how those corrupt officials can still embezzle and fill their own pockets!" The more Zhu Yuanzhang read, the better he felt. With this yellow book in place, the taxation system would be transparent and clear for all to see, making it much harder for anyone to manipulate or cheat.

  "Come, distribute it to the officials so that they can also see what this yellow book is all about." The eunuch hastily distributed the yellow book from the box to the ministers in the imperial court.

  The noble and powerful generals picked up the book, just pretending to flip through it, let alone some generals who couldn't recognize a single character. No matter how good this yellow book was, it had nothing to do with these warriors who took knives to the battlefield. The leading families of nobles looked at the direction of the civil officials with schadenfreude.

  But Wen Chen and others, except for the officials of the Ministry of Revenue who had already seen the Yellow Book, all the other officials of the six ministries, the six departments, and even the officials of the five temples of the Ducha Yamen were looking at it seriously.

  Especially the officials of the Ducha Yuan, the Ministry of Justice and the Supreme Court are even more serious about it. It can be imagined that in the future when investigating corrupt officials, this yellow book will become an important piece of evidence.

  Zhu Yuanzhang sat steadily on the dragon chair, watching the performance of the officials below. As for the military generals, it was not necessary to mention, and they didn't even need to look at them. The civil officials from the Ministry of Revenue were already aware of the Yellow Register affair, so they couldn't see anything unusual. However, this did not mean that Zhu Yuanzhang did not attach importance to the Ministry of Revenue. If the main culprit of the stolen official grain was chosen from among the six ministries, the most suspicious would be the Ministry of Revenue. If it weren't for this, he wouldn't have replaced a new Minister of Revenue to preside over the compilation of the Yellow Register.

  As for the officials of other government departments, except for the Grand Court of Revision, the Ministry of Rites, the Ministry of Personnel, and a few "clean" government departments, all have some suspicion. The Ministry of Rites is in charge of granting titles and rewards, which involves money and grain; the Ministry of War has military rations allocated to it, although provided by the Ministry of Revenue, but it's hard to guarantee that they won't embezzle funds; as for the Ministry of Works, it's even more obvious - construction projects require financial support. As for the Ministry of Punishment, this is one department that the Emperor least wants to suspect, because if someone from the Ministry of Punishment were involved in this matter, it would prove that the Ministry of Punishment is no longer fair and strict, but rather corrupt and protective of its own interests. Compared to the Provincial Surveillance Commissions, they are not much cleaner either.

  Now that he has the Yellow Register, Zhu Yuanzhang wants to settle the country's taxation and tax distribution in a fair and open manner within a few years. He has always hated corruption the most, and this time he wants to use the Yellow Register to investigate and punish those who dare to be corrupt and lawless.

  Actually, Zhu Gongzi knew that corrupt officials and greedy clerks were unstoppable, and he understood that human nature is always greedy. However, at a time when the country had just been established, there was already a group of parasites sucking the blood of this young child, which was absolutely intolerable. Didn't the previous dynasty's officials' extortion and oppression lead to the rise of righteous armies everywhere? Zhu Yuanzhang didn't want his hard-earned nation to be destroyed by those people.

  The entire corrupt system is like a huge net that shrouds this young and fragile country, while the corrupt officials are like leeches on the net, scattered in every corner, recklessly sucking the blood of this country to fill their own pockets.

  Zhu Yuanzhang, this giant dragon is now hovering in the sky, looking at the giant net shrouded in clouds and fog, wanting to break through with its claws. In the past, there were groups of wolves lurking around, and the giant dragon was hesitant to take action to break the net. But now that Xu Da's northern expeditionary army has killed the wolf in the north, the giant dragon will also have a free hand to tear apart this greedy giant net...

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