280 Issuing a Decree
After lunch, Little Ah Yu sat in Wang Dalang’s donkey cart. The cart was filled with Little Ah Yu’s clothes, the small steamed buns prepared by her family, and some small gifts for the villagers.
They were basically things from the bun shop.
In the carriage of the donkey cart sat Old Madam Wang, Little Ah Yu, and Tang Yuan, who was taking care of Little Ah Yu.
The little lamb sat outside with the Spirit Treasure Rat on its head, side by side with Wang Dalang.
Little Ah Yu had not returned to the village for a while. She realized that the road back to the village was not so shaky now.
Curious, she lifted the curtain of the carriage and looked out. She saw that the road was very wide and there were not many large stones on the road. The soil on the ground was compacted and flat.
Little Ah Yu asked, “Big Brother, has anyone repaired the road?”
She still remembered that when she was riding the donkey cart with Grandma previously, the entire carriage swayed from left to right and bumped up and down. Sometimes, she could not even sit steadily and could only be carried by Grandma.
“That’s right. The villagers came to pave it. This year, as the villagers had earned more money, they used their own money to replace the laborers, so when everyone was free, they helped to pave the village’s road.”
Wang Chuanfu and the others had also participated in it. The entire year, the farming period was only four months. Two months of planting and two months of harvest. The rest of the time, they were tilling the land or doing other things. Overall, they were quite idle.
Since they had nothing to do, they might as well do something good.
Little Ah Yu nodded. “Oh.”
The villagers were so diligent.
Only Tang Yuan’s eyes darted around. In that case, Ah Yu and the others’ village was quite rich.
Moreover, they were good people. She had followed her two uncles to many places in the past and had never seen anyone build a road like this.
They were all waiting for the county magistrate to give the order for everyone to participate in the labor, or for the rich country landlords of the village to pay others to pave the road for their convenience.
If their village was not bad, she would find someone in the village to marry and live in this village in the future.
Although Tang Yuan was only ten years old, her intelligence was already different from others. That was why she thought so far ahead.
Halfway through, someone from town had reached the Wang Family. They were sent by the county magistrate.
That person was Zhang Zhan’s servant who specially sent gifts to the Wang Family to thank them for helping to take in Da Niu and the officials.
After Zhang Zhan took over as the county magistrate, he was very swift and decisive. He first cleaned up the county magistrate’s office and took this opportunity to eliminate those who lived a frivolous life and bullied the commoners.
Even County Lieutenant Cao was not spared. Previously, Zhang Zhan felt that County Lieutenant Cao was a very upright person. It was only when he investigated the previous county magistrate that he realized that County Lieutenant Cao was not completely innocent. He was just not completely evil.
Zhang Zhan’s crime was punished with a demotion. He went from an eighth-grade county official to a ninth-grade official registrar.
The responsibility of the punishment trial was also handed over to the new county magistrate. The Cao family, which was protected by County Lieutenant Cao, was also implicated.
After confirming that the evidence provided by Da Niu and the others was true, they dug out the backup plan left behind by the former county magistrate.
They actually seized tens of thousands of taels of silver and placed them in the county treasury. The originally poor county office that even required Zhang Zhan to pay a little out of his own pocket to maintain was finally not as insufficient as before.
After Zhang Zhan took office, the first decree he issued was from Wanning City.
“From today onwards, the system of marriage will no longer require matchmaking. Everyone can marry freely. You can find your own witness, marriage host, or the county city to represent you.”
The authority of the matchmakers that had once pressed down on people’s heads collapsed.
As soon as this decree was issued, some were happy, while others were upset.