Qin Official

Is Cheng Miao still alive? At noon the next day, when Heifu, his subordinate Dong Yi and several Lang Wei arrived in Yunyang County in a light vehicle, they received an affirmative reply from the jailer Cao Jiu: not only alive, but also alive and well.

Cao Jiu was the brother-in-law of Sima Xin, the jailer of Xianyang Nan City, and he knew Dong Yi. As soon as he heard that Heifu came to inspect on the order of the emperor, he immediately respectfully invited him to the county jail.

"My subordinate Cheng Miao is working abroad, so I asked my officials to send someone to bring him back..."

Heifu looked at this small county jail. The layout was somewhat similar to Anlu's, which gave him a sense of familiarity. He turned around and asked, "How long will it take?"

"It took half an hour to go back and forth, and I asked the official to wait for a moment..."

Hei Fu was given soup to quench his thirst, and the county magistrate accompanied Hei Fu in a chat. Cao Jiu retreated outside the hall and asked his acquaintance Dong Yi in a low voice: "Your Majesty, you want to see Cheng Miao?"

Dong Yi shook his head.

Cao Jiu's expression changed: "Your Majesty wants to kill Cheng Miao?"

Dong Yi still shook his head: "Zhonglang Hu Ling said that His Majesty ordered him to come and see Cheng Miao and see what he was doing. As for whether to kill him on sight, Zhong Lang Hu Ling did not say, and I dare not speculate rashly. Heart."

Just as Cao Jiu breathed a sigh of relief, Hei Fu called him to the court again and asked about Cheng Miao's deeds.

"In what year was Cheng Miao imprisoned, and what crime did he commit?"

Cao Jiu hurriedly said: "Report to the superior, Cheng Miao has been in prison for ten years. The crime was Fan Yuqi's rebellion. Cheng Miao was recommended by him as a jailer and then entered the palace as a minister. When Fan Yuqi defected, Cheng Miao not only Instead of confessing his crime, he defended Fan Yuqi. His Majesty was furious and sentenced him to be a vassal and sent him to Yunyang to serve his sentence..."

"I see."

Heifu suddenly realized that Qin allowed officials to recommend others as officials, but once the recommendation was successful, the recommender and the recommended person were tied together. If the person being promoted commits a crime, the person doing the promotion will be punished because of improper recommendation, and vice versa. More than ten years ago, Lu Buwei and Lao Ai were overthrown, and their retainers who were officials in the court were almost wiped out.

What Qin Shihuang hates most is betrayal. Fan Yuqi once served as Zhonglang General and went on many expeditions to capture cities and territories and made great contributions to Qin. However, after being defeated by Li Mu, he chose to defect. Of course, the emperor was extremely angry and used a thousand catties of gold. , the capture of Fan Yuqi was heavily rewarded by thousands of families in the city.

Cheng Miao not only failed to draw a clear line in time, but instead defended it. It would be a good thing if he was not executed.

However, the person who could make Qin Shihuang miss him even after ten years would never be that simple.

Heifu asked again: "What kind of labor has he done in Yunyang in the past ten years?"

Qin did not raise idlers, but forced the criminals who were sentenced to prison to work as long as they were able to work. Even prisoners sentenced to death have to work to exchange for food if they are not dead for a day.

Therefore, in the Qin State, prisoners and ministers can be regarded as synonyms.

Cao Jiu glanced at the county magistrate and replied honestly: "Although Cheng Miao is a subordinate minister, as the "Sikong Law" says, subordinate ministers who have the skills to be workers should not think of them as servants, raisers, or city officials. Cheng Mao He was familiar with laws and regulations and could write well, so the government did not send him to do coolies. Instead, he worked under Ling Shi to help arrest criminals. Except that he had no salary and had to live in a prison after returning every night, he was the same as an ordinary head. They are no different than minor officials. After deducting food and clothing, every time they do official business, they still get four coins..."

Heifu laughed: "So, when you said that Cheng Miao was working outside, he actually followed Ling Shi to handle the case?"

The county magistrate looked unhappy and glared at Cao Jiu. Cao Jiu also wiped his sweat and replied: "Wei, that's exactly what it is."

It was his idea for the county magistrate to let Cheng Miao serve a light sentence. Although it made sense legally, if His Majesty became angry, they would also be affected.

“It’s good to have special skills.”

Hei Fu secretly thought that Cheng Mao was very lucky. The treatment he was enjoying now was probably similar to that of Song Jiang who was sent to Jiangzhou in Water Margin. As long as he didn't commit suicide by writing anti-poems, it wouldn't be a problem for him to live in such a muddle.

But why was this person remembered by Qin Shihuang? Before Hei Fu came, he asked some of Qin Shihuang's old ministers. They said that when Cheng Miao was a minister, he was ordered by the emperor to revise Qin's writing. Unfortunately, he later committed a crime and the matter was ignored...

This time the emperor sent Heifu to visit the prison, which may be related to this matter.

At this time, Cao Jiu also mentioned that the little money Cheng Miao earned every time he went on business trips was used to buy pens, ink and slips. Whenever he had free time, he would always write in prison...

Heifu became interested and did not want to wait for Cheng Miao to come back, so he asked Cao Jiu to take him to see Cheng Mao's residence in prison.

After entering Yunyang Prison, Hei Fu discovered that the prisons here were also divided into three, five, and nine levels.

The lowest-class one lived in Chengdan, with no bedding or windows, just some moldy straw on the ground. Ten people were crowded into a small area, and there was an unpleasant smell inside.

The medium-sized ones were the rooms for prisoners such as Gui Xin, Bai Can, Sikou, and Chung. Although the food was poor and the bedding was damp, they could accommodate five people to a room. One interesting thing is that Chung Mi used to be with Cheng Dan. As a parallel severe punishment, in recent years, treading and water hammering have become popular in the world, and pounding rice is not so tiring, so it has become a medium punishment.

The best place is located on the second floor of the prison. Except for the fact that the door is locked from the outside and the windows are equipped with railings, it is not much different from ordinary houses. Cao Jiu led Heifu to open the door and enter. It was the afternoon and the sun was shining through the windows. Enter, the whole room is illuminated...

"Sir, this is Cheng Miao's residence."

Heifu opened his mouth slightly, this is not a prison cell, it is clearly a calligraphy exhibition room! However, I saw that the three mottled walls were covered with hundreds of slips written densely in black characters.

"these are……"

Cao Jiu smiled and said: "It was written by Cheng Maang in the past ten years. He used the money given to him for each official case to buy pen and ink slips. There is nothing wrong with what he wrote, so we did not interfere."

After carefully walking around the scattered slips and slips on the ground, Heifu approached the wall and took a closer look. What was written on it was not some anti-poetry, but "The Way of Being an Official" that every Qin official must recite.

"Everyone who is an official must be pure and upright, cautious and firm, be selfless in review, observe meticulously, be quiet and not harsh, and review with rewards and punishments..."

After just one glance, he immediately discovered that the characters on these slips were quite different from what he saw every day!

It is not the most common Qin seal script. Although Qin seal script has been improved from the complex large seal script of the Zhou Dynasty, it still retains some habits of bronze inscriptions. The gestures are circular, horizontal and vertical, and the thickness is basically the same. It must be written slowly. .

Not even the Six Kingdoms characters of Wei, Chu and other different shapes that Heifu had seen before.

"Somewhat like the shorthand style used by Nanjun officials when recording cases..."

The Qin bamboo slips excavated by later generations are basically in this shorthand font. For the sake of speed, officials often subconsciously simplify the seal script, reduce the number of strokes, and turn the fonts into square and flat characters.

No, the font in front of me has changed more completely than the shorthand script of Xiaozhuan. Almost every character has been transformed from complexity to simplicity, circles to squares, and arcs to straight lines.

That's right.

Heifu was a little excited because he actually saw here a font that has been passed down to later generations, instead of the ancient seal script that felt strange no matter how hard he learned it.

"This is……"

"Official script!"

"Thank you for the name, sir!"

Just when Heifu blurted out these two words, a middle-aged man with gray hair wearing prison ocher clothes also appeared at the door. He looked at the room full of ten years of hard work and sighed:

"official script, official script, is written by the official; official script, official script, is also the official script, which is not the seal script! What a good name!"

After saying that, he bowed heavily to Hei Fu: "This is what Cheng Miao wrote in the past ten years. Even if Your Majesty wants to grant me death, Cheng Miao can still die with a smile on his face!"

"Cheng Jun said something serious."

Heifu walked over and supported Cheng Miao. At the same time, he looked thoughtfully at the comparison tables between seal characters and official scripts on the other two walls. Almost all of the four thousand seal characters had a one-to-one correspondence with the official script.

I understand in my heart why Qin Shihuang has always been obsessed with Cheng Mao. This may be related to a national policy that the emperor plans to implement recently!

"Trains share the same track, books share the same text!"

This time the emperor moved to Linguang Palace, but he brought the three great calligraphers Li Si, Zhao Gao and Hu Wujing with him, and sent him to have a look at Cheng Miao. The purpose was very obvious.

"Why don't I take advantage of this east wind and do that thing?"

An idea that had been hidden in Heifu's heart for a long time, under the temptation of a room full of official scripts, he could no longer hold back at this moment...