The First Lackey Under The Empress

The chilling sensation lasted only a moment before dissipating suddenly.

When Zhao Du'an turned his head to look, he saw the windows of the small building's second floor were tightly closed.

"Go check the Yellow Registers," Mo Zhaorong said beside him, equally uncomfortable.

"Alright." Zhao Du'an nodded, no longer dwelling on it. At this moment, he had never felt the capital to be so safe.

......

The storeroom for the Yellow Registers wasn't on "Ring Island."

According to the old warehouse keeper, this was because fires were lit for cooking on Ring Island, and to prevent fires, the storeroom was located on one of the other five islands.

Soon after, the three arrived at "Cherry Island" by boat.

As soon as they disembarked, they saw the enormous east-west warehouse.

Outside, densely packed like clotheslines, were bamboo poles, from which hung many huge square Yellow Registers, and many people were going in and out, seemingly airing them.

"This is the Yellow Register?" Zhao Du'an asked curiously.

The old warehouse keeper nodded with a smile:

"The sun is good during Dog Days, it's the perfect time to air the large registers. It's just a pity that there are too many accumulated, and even working from morning till night, it's difficult to dry them all."

Zhao Du'an said, "It's bigger than I imagined, and the paper is better."

Mo Chou sighed:

"The Yellow Registers are already quite expensive to produce, let alone the fact that they involve taxes. Over the centuries, the Great Yu Dynasty has spawned a chain of vested interests attached to the ten-year register creation…

Hmm, you're the one who said that term, it's quite apt.

Every year, the islanders have to air the registers to prevent them from being eaten by insects, but the visible insects can be killed by the sun, but the countless invisible insects that are profiting from the Yellow Registers are growing fatter day by day."

You even understand this? I thought you only knew how to compete with me for affection… Zhao Du'an glanced at her in surprise.

He then remembered that the woman beside him was, after all, the First Female Official in charge of the Six Bureaus.

The two followed the old warehouse keeper into a storeroom.

Inside, were rows of long wooden shelves, on which countless Yellow Registers were displayed.

Zhao Du'an felt as if he had come to some distribution warehouse. The wooden shelves were ten feet high, requiring wooden ladders to climb, and there were also movable wooden planks above.

If the roof leaked, it could be tilted to pour rainwater into the ditches on the ground, to avoid wetting the Yellow Registers.

Zhao Du'an casually picked up a register, dusted it off, and opened it to read.

He discovered that it was a record of the population changes over generations of a family in a village in a certain county under the Jiancheng Dao Regional Government.

How many people were in this family, what their names were, how old they were, which year the baby was born, which month the old man died, all were clearly recorded with each stroke.

One register every ten years, millions of registers here. If the Yellow Registers recording this family were lined up, it would be the family's six-hundred-year family history.

Considering that the Great Yu Yellow Register warehouse recorded the births, aging, illnesses, and deaths of all the common people in the world.

This magnificent warehouse was like a museum of history.

Zhao Du'an vaguely recalled a somewhat illogical but romantic anecdote he had heard in his previous life:

From Qin Shi Huang's unification to the modern era, it's only been over two thousand two hundred years, which sounds like a long time, but if calculated at seventy years per person, it's only thirty people apart.

Thinking about it this way, the distance between himself, a modern person, and the Qin Dynasty is only the lifespan of thirty people.

The thousand-year-old camphor tree at the entrance of his old home village was planted during the Han and Tang dynasties.

"What are you thinking about?"

Mo Zhaorong asked softly, thinking that he was pondering, seeing him silent for a long time.

The big ice block still has its advantages.

Whenever it comes to important matters, serious matters, she can temporarily put aside her prejudices and not compete with the Zhao thief for affection.

"It's nothing, I was thinking that this paper is indeed very good."

Zhao Du'an stroked the thick cardboard of the Yellow Register.

"You said that before," Mo Chou rolled her eyes. She was also holding a Yellow Register, and said:

"What do you care about the paper for? The focus is on the words on it, how to solve it."

Zhao Du'an closed the Yellow Register, took out a handkerchief to wipe the dust off his hands, and said:

"Don't solve it."

"Ah?" Mo Chou was stunned. The female official, like a knowledgeable and well-mannered young lady, didn't understand.

Zhao Du'an looked at her as if she were an idiot, and explained helplessly:

"As you said, the numbers on these Yellow Registers have been constantly concealed and tampered with by the people below for hundreds of years, and have long been distorted. They are just a pile of useless waste words, what use can they be?

Or are you saying that you think I have some way to restore the truth of this large-scale, contaminated archive?"

Zhao Du'an's tone was very calm.

Before seeing the Yellow Register warehouse, he had indeed thought about whether he could use some mathematical methods to solve the data pollution.

But after seeing the scale of this world's first archive.

He gave up this unrealistic idea.

The six hundred years of Yellow Registers had long been completely polluted.

Of course, the most important point is…

It's meaningless.

"These Yellow Registers are already废掉(fèi diào - ruined, useless), and we no longer need them. Remember the core of my Golden Three Policies?

In the past, the imperial court collected taxes based on population, so it had to know how many people there were in the dynasty, and who they were.

But from now on, we will collect taxes based on land, and the land doesn't have legs, it can't run away. Isn't there still the 'Fish Scale Atlas' here, which was compiled from the initial measurement of the land under heaven?

Those are somewhat useful, but the land still needs to be re-measured…

As for these millions, tens of millions of population records…"

Zhao Du'an turned around, his gaze towards this vast warehouse, his tone light and dismissive:

"The greatest value is only the paper itself.

I remember that there is a method of making armor, which is to hammer many layers of paper into cardboard. The armor made is light and can withstand ordinary arrows. If these Yellow Registers are taken to make armor, a large sum of money allocated to the Ministry of War's Ordnance Manufacturing Bureau can be saved…

Or, simply pull them out and sell them. Such good paper, someone will always buy it.

Whether it's re-pulped or doing something else, it should be able to sell for a lot of money…

Isn't the national treasury very short of money?

Selling the registers on these islands should solve the immediate crisis."

Mo Chou beside him was already dumbfounded:

"You… you said… sell them? Make them into armor? Are you crazy?"

She found it somewhat difficult to accept:

"This is the household registration of all the people in the world…"

Zhao Du'an glanced at her calmly:

"It's waste paper that has no reference value and no practical use."

"But…"

"There is no 'but'. Or, tell me, once the head tax is replaced with a land tax, what use will these things have?"

Mo Chou was speechless, somewhat dazed.

On the one hand, emotionally, she believed that the archives that the Great Yu Dynasty had painstakingly built and guarded for six hundred years should be invaluable.

On the other side, reason told her that Zhao Du'an was right.

Six hundred years of accumulation, nearly ten million household registrations, seemed to have indeed reached the end of their lifespan.

And their final value was to turn waste into treasure.

To contribute a perhaps considerable sum of silver taels for the implementation of the new policies.

"I know it's hard for you to accept, but you'll get used to it."

Zhao Du'an habitually patted her on the shoulder:

"Let's go."

This time, Zhao Du'an only flipped through one Yellow Register before ending the six-hundred-year mission of these five islands.

Mo Chou was still somewhat dazed as she followed Zhao Du'an out of the warehouse.

The old warehouse keeper, who was guarding the door, put on a smile:

"Miss Mo, Master Zhao, would you like to see the other warehouses? The closest to us is Island Nine, or Island Seven is not far either."

This old clerk, trapped on the island and guarding the archives for nearly twenty years, had no idea what kind of changes would happen next.

"No need, just send us back."

Zhao Du'an said faintly.

Although rationally, he believed that the madman on the shore and the "Lake God" in the lake would not threaten him.

But the feeling of being watched lingered.

Making him unwilling to stay in this place any longer.

"By the way, what did you just say about Island Nine and Island Seven?"

Zhao Du'an asked curiously:

"Aren't there only five islands in total here? Do they each have names?"

The old warehouse keeper explained:

"It's normal that you don't know, sir. What I'm talking about is not the official name, but the old term used by us island keepers.

Speaking of which, it was when Emperor Taizu was in power that the order of the islands was determined.

Legend has it that when Emperor Taizu fought into the capital and created the Great Yu Dynasty, he rode around the capital to survey the terrain and compiled a list of the islands and hills he saw.

The five islands in our Later Lake are numbered five, six, seven, eight, and nine… also called the Five Divine Mountains.

It is said that in the eyes of Emperor Taizu, anything taller than the city wall was considered a mountain.

Hehe, but after hundreds of years, in order to dredge the river, many of the islands from that time are gone, and not many people remember this saying anymore…"

Zhao Du'an was suddenly stunned.

He glanced subtly at Mo Chou, who was staring blankly at the warehouse behind her, seemingly absent-minded, and asked, seemingly casually:

"Oh? There's such a saying? I've never heard of it. What are the other islands you mentioned?"

The old warehouse keeper, without suspecting anything, smiled and introduced them one by one.

When he mentioned that the island ranked "eleven" was in the capital.

And that it was flattened hundreds of years ago to facilitate shipping.

Zhao Du'an's heart quietly quickened, and a thought emerged in his mind:

"Yuanzu Temple, secret passage, eleven!"

These were the keywords that Old Xu, the Great Yu Taizu, had told him that day.

Zhao Du'an had been paying attention to them in various ways these days, but he had no clue.

"Is it possible that the 'eleven' Old Xu mentioned is the eleventh mountain he named when he surveyed the terrain back then?"

Zhao Du'an suppressed his excitement and bid farewell to Mo Chou, pretending to be calm, and returned to the Later Lake pier by boat.

Only when the two of them landed did the faint surveillance on their bodies suddenly disappear.

…

The man and woman, each with their own concerns, were not in the mood to bicker, and immediately rode back to the city.

Mo Chou went to the Xiuwen Hall to discuss the matter of selling the Yellow Register warehouse and raising money with Grand Tutor Dong and others.

Zhao Du'an, on the other hand, made the excuse that it was almost noon and he wanted to go eat, and parted ways with her.

Once he was alone, Zhao Du'an first came to the section of the river near the location of the "eleven" island six hundred years ago in the name of eating.

He found a famous restaurant and had a hearty meal.

After confirming that he was not being followed, Zhao Du'an quietly came to a secluded spot on the riverbank and hid under a bridge.

First, he took off his clothes, shoes, and socks and put them all into the space magic tool.

Then, Zhao Du'an bit the storage scroll in his mouth and quietly sneaked into the lake, heading towards the old site of "eleven" island.

In the height of summer, the sun was scorching.

Allowing him to see the scenery under the lake with the help of sunlight.

After swimming for a while, he finally found the traces left by the excavation of the island back then.

After hundreds of years of erosion, it had almost become a flat ground.

The deeper he dived, the dimmer the light became.

Fortunately, the Hun River was not very deep, and with the enhanced eyesight after advancing to the high rank of Mortal Fetus, as well as the powerful underwater breath-holding ability, he could search for a long time.

However, Zhao Du'an circled around the bottom of the lake twice, but found nothing.

"This won't do, the area is too large…"

Zhao Du'an pondered for a moment and suddenly had an idea.

He silently circulated the martial arts technique of the Great Yu royal family, and his body surface was covered with a glow.

Then, his faintly golden palm suddenly pushed towards the bottom of the river.

Reversed Galaxy Hanging!

The silt at the bottom of the lake was pushed away by a vast force containing Qi energy, and circles of water waves slowly spread out at the bottom of the lake.

Zhao Du'an concentrated and sensed.

Just as he was about to give up, he suddenly sensed that the Qi energy he had released seemed to have a slight disturbance when it passed through a certain place.

His spirits lifted, and he constantly narrowed the range, finally determining that there were faint fluctuations near a certain rock at the bottom of the lake.

"Glug glug."

Zhao Du'an spat out a string of bubbles, swam over happily, and used his hands to clear away the silt at the bottom of the lake.

Gradually, a strange "formation" pattern, about ten feet in diameter, inlaid on the stone, was revealed in front of him after hundreds of years.

"There really is something!"

Zhao Du'an was overjoyed and quickly tried various methods, but none of them worked.

Only when he pressed his hand on the formation and infused it with the Qi energy in his body could he vaguely feel the circular formation at the bottom of the lake light up with a few faint rays of light, which quickly dimmed again.

And at the same time that Zhao Du'an was trying to "knock on the door" again and again.

The Imperial Palace.

Deep in the Martial Treasury.

The fifth floor of that abandoned old building with Emperor Taizu's stone wall.

In the room, Empress Xu Zhenguan of the Great Yu Dynasty was sitting cross-legged on a futon, practicing in seclusion.

Suddenly, the Empress, who was immersed in contemplation, suddenly opened her beautiful eyes, and her stunning face changed slightly:

"Dragon Soul?"

Once again, she felt the aura of the Dragon Soul.

Extremely strong.

Thanks to Leng vs Luo for the 100 coin reward.

The Great Yu Yellow Register warehouse is a reference to the Great Ming archives, but in the end, it was useless and was sold off. It is said that selling household registrations at stalls in the capital at that time was very lamentable.