roccoschili Chapter 250 The money-grubbing Juren
Chapter 250 The money-grubbing Juren
It is said that during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, Cao Wuji of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, served as the governor of Menghua, Yunnan (now Weishan Yi and Hui Autonomous County, Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture). He had a son named Cao, who was elected in the Gengwu year and was a disciple of Zhuang Zipu, the governor of Jiangsu.
In the [-]st year of Qianlong's reign, a large-scale plague occurred in Wuxi, and many people died of the disease.
Hua, the son of Hua Jianguang, a famous local family, has always liked to do good deeds and accumulate virtue. When he saw many people died tragically but no one restrained them, he felt compassion.
He plans to sell several ancient paintings to pay for the burial of the unclaimed bodies.
Hua gave these calligraphy and paintings to Cao Wuji's son, Cao Juren, and entrusted him to sell them. He also told him: "If these paintings are sold, they should not be less than [-] taels of silver. I will use them as expenses for burying the people who died of illness in this city." .”
Cao Juren agreed.
He thought that the plague was raging in Wuxi at that time, and no one cared about these external things, so he went to Suzhou with Hua's ancient paintings, hoping to sell the paintings to Zhuang Zipu.
Zhuang Zipu learned that Cao Juren sold these paintings to collect the corpses of those who died from the plague. He was grateful that he was doing good deeds and the ancient paintings were also good, so he gave him eight hundred taels of silver.
After Cao Juren returned to Wuxi, he only took eighty taels of silver and gave it to Hua, and said to him: "Those paintings are not easy to sell now, so I only sold them for so much silver."
Hua doesn’t know whether it’s true or not, so he can only say how much it is. He collected some extra money and spent it all. He only bought a limited number of coffins. He first buried the bones that were exposed in the wilderness. He had not thought of a way to solve the coffins needed for the other corpses.
Not long after, Cao Juren died of illness.
The prefect Cao Wuji was so sad that he burned the ultimatum in the Dongyue Temple and complained to the Dongyue God. He said that he had always been an upright official and treated the people like his own son; his son had never committed any crime, and he should not have a white-haired man punishing a black-haired man.
After returning from Dongyue Temple, Prefect Cao Wuji had a dream when he was taking a nap at home. In his daze, he saw me, a man in Tsing Yi, coming to him with Dongyue God's name card, claiming that it was Dongyue God's invitation. He went.
Prefect Cao Wuji followed the man in Tsing Yi to the outside of a main hall. A god wearing a crown and a python robe came down the stairs to greet him.
Cao Wuji knew that it was Dongyue God.
Just listen to him say: "I have seen the ultimatum sent by Mr. Cao. Your Majesty's complaint is justified, and I also admit that you blame me. However, your son has indeed had bad behavior recently, and this has erased his Yangshou." .”
Prefect Cao Wuji asked hurriedly: "What bad thing has Quanzi done that makes people angry?"
Dongyue God said: "Your son has bad conduct and embezzled other people's donations, leaving hundreds of people dead in the wilderness."
Prefect Cao Wuji was shocked: "Isn't it possible? Although I don't know how to teach my son, I also let him pass the exam of Xiaolian. I shouldn't be able to do such a thing, right?"
Dongyue Shen sneered and said: "If Master Cao doesn't believe it, you can go home to your son's study and open his box to check."
After saying this, he ordered someone to come with a prisoner in chains.
Prefect Cao Wuji took a look and saw that it was his son.
He couldn't help but feel sad and burst into tears. He was about to step forward to hug his son, but he missed it and woke up in an instant.
He got up hurriedly, went to his son's study, opened the box and checked, and sure enough there was more than [-] taels of silver in it.
Cao Taishou asked the servant who took care of his son's daily life, and then he found out that the money was obtained from his son's help selling paintings for Hua.
He asked his daughter-in-law again, but she didn't even know about it.
Prefect Cao Wuji sighed to the sky! From then on, the grief for my son continued to decrease!