Shocking

Scenes like this were playing out simultaneously in the mansions of over twenty officials in the capital at this very moment. However, not every official was merely driven by simple greed for wealth.

At the residence of Liu Zong, the South City Commander of the Five Wards Military Warden Office.

Zhao Sheng, the Centurion of the Brocade Guards leading the team, had bloodshot eyes, and the hand gripping his saber was trembling violently. He did not look at the mountainous piles of illicit spoils in the courtyard; instead, he stared fixedly at a hidden cellar in the Liu family's backyard.

The moment the cellar door was broken open, a nauseating stench of blood and foulness rushed out.

Holding a torch, Zhao Sheng walked inside. The sight before him caused even these Brocade Guards, who were accustomed to life and death, to gasp, their stomachs churning wildly.

It was an underground altar covered in bizarre runes drawn with fresh blood. In the center of the altar lay the corpses of seven young boys and girls, no older than seven or eight! These children were completely naked, their faces twisted in extreme terror. The blood in their bodies had been completely drained, turning them into skin-and-bones mummies.

And beside these dried corpses, several low-level evil spirits—creatures the size of wild dogs, covered in pustules and reeking of foul odors—were hunched over the skeletons, greedily gnawing on the remaining flesh!

"Beasts... absolute beasts!" Zhao Sheng's teeth ground together loudly, blood vessels bursting in his eyes.

The Great Zhou laws explicitly stated that anyone who raised evil spirits and sacrificed human lives would not be tolerated by heaven and earth! As the commander responsible for the security of the South City, Liu Zong had actually committed such an atrocious act in his own cellar just to practice some demonic martial art! Those were seven living, breathing children!

"Kill! Chop these monsters into minced meat!" Zhao Sheng roared wildly, taking the lead and charging forward with his saber.

A few sharp flashes of the blade passed, and those low-level evil spirits were hacked to pieces by the Brocade Guards before they could even let out a scream.

Zhao Sheng rushed out of the cellar and looked at Liu Zong, who was being held down in the courtyard. This commander of the Five Wards Military Warden Office, who usually spouted morality and acted all high and mighty before the commoners of the South City, was now so terrified that he had soiled himself.

"Lord Zhao, I am falsely accused! I didn't raise those evil spirits, it was... it was my wife who got them from somewhere!" Liu Zong was still desperately trying to argue his way out.

Zhao Sheng didn't listen to his nonsense at all. He strode forward and, with a backhanded slash, directly sliced off Liu Zong's right ear!

"Ah—!" Liu Zong clutched his bloody head and rolled frantically on the ground.

"Drag this utterly conscience-less beast, along with all the male members of his household, out onto the streets of the South City like dead dogs! Beat the gongs and drums, and let all the commoners come out to see the true faces of these animals!" Zhao Sheng pointed at Liu Zong, roaring with a hoarse voice. "Dying ten thousand times is not enough for trash like this, worse than pigs and dogs! Confiscate his entire estate and throw them all into the Imperial Prison! I will personally memorialize His Majesty to have him flayed and stuffed with straw!"

For an entire night, the sky above the capital was dyed red by the light of torches. The sounds of crying, begging for mercy, swords being drawn, and heavy objects collapsing intertwined, resembling a living hell. The corrupt officials who usually rode roughshod over the commoners finally understood that when the Emperor's thunderous wrath truly descended, the power and background they took pride in were not even worth a piece of paper.

...

Just before the break of dawn, a touch of grayish-white appeared on the horizon.

Inside the Sweet Spring Palace, Wang Hao still maintained that same posture, though the brazier on the floor had already gone out.

Tap, tap, tap...

A flurry of hurried footsteps broke the silence of the great hall. Hai Dafu, the Superintendent Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial and the Seal-holding Eunuch of the Inner Treasury, hurried in, holding a thick ledger.

Hai Dafu's head was covered in sweat, and his official hat was skewed to one side. But he couldn't care less about fixing his appearance. His plump face was quivering with excitement, and even the pitch of his voice had changed:

"Your... Your Majesty! The confiscations... they are done! We're rich! Your Majesty, we've struck it rich!!"

Hai Dafu fell to his knees before the imperial desk with a thud, holding the ledger high. He was so excited that tears were streaming down his face—yet another character worthy of an Oscar.

Wang Hao, who had been resting with his eyes closed, abruptly opened them. "Read! Read it to me word by word! Exactly how much was confiscated?!"

Hai Dafu swallowed hard and opened the first page of the ledger. Just looking at the total figure made him feel dizzy again, as if his heart was going to leap out of his throat.

"In... in reply to Your Majesty!" Hai Dafu took a deep breath and shouted with all his might. "In this joint operation by the Brocade Guards and the Western Depot, a total of twenty-four officials' residences were raided. We seized silver ingots, gold bars, various jewels, paintings, calligraphy, antiques, and jade... Converted into value, the total is... a total of eighteen million taels of silver!"

"How much?"

"Eighteen million taels of silver."

With a loud bang, Wang Hao slammed his hand onto the imperial desk and stood up abruptly. The sturdy imperial desk in front of him, crafted from century-old golden thread nanmu wood, was actually cracked by his palm strike!

Eighteen million taels?

Wang Hao's breathing instantly became heavy, his fists clenched tightly beneath his dragon robes.

And these parasites, merely twenty-four middle and lower-tier officials, had actually embezzled this much. It wasn't that the Great Zhou had no money; all the money had gone into the pockets of these corrupt officials!

A monstrous wave surged in Wang Hao's heart. Was he angry? Of course he was angry. The soldiers at the borders were mutinying in the snow because their wages couldn't be paid, and the disaster-stricken commoners in Jiangnan were exchanging their children to eat because they had no food! The empire of the Great Zhou was already riddled with holes, yet these vampires feeding on the great tree of the empire were disgustingly rich!

But alongside the anger came a kind of wild ecstasy that words could not describe! This path of raiding corrupt officials was the right one. Look how fast the money came in! After raiding the corrupt officials, he would raid the noble families.

"Not only that..." Hai Dafu's voice calmed down slightly, but it still carried a tone of hyper-excitement. He continued flipping through the ledger and reading, "Your servant hasn't finished reading. Besides the silver, we also confiscated prime fertile lands and irrigated fields around the capital region and Jiangnan, totaling 1.2 million mu! Various businesses, pawnshops, brothels, and other properties numbering over a hundred and sixty!"

"Additionally, in the homes of the Ministry of War officials, we found over three thousand embezzled weapons below the Earth-tier, over five hundred bottles of cultivation pills below the Earth-tier, and even five hundred warhorses, along with three hundred chests of Western Regions Fire Spirit Stones..."

With every number Hai Dafu read out, Wang Hao's heart pounded violently.

Sudden wealth!

This was absolutely an epic wave of sudden wealth! The total value had already surpassed the illicit funds of those evil servant eunuchs.

Wang Hao slowly closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and forcibly suppressed the joy in his heart.

Previously, in order to completely control the military power and forcefully buy the loyalty of the three hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, he had spent a small half of the confiscated money and distributed six hundred thousand mu of land. He had been worrying these past few days. He wanted to avoid touching the one hundred million taels rewarded by the system if possible, but his next plans lacked a lot of funding and couldn't be carried out at all.

And the result? By taking the initiative to strike, these "lovely" civil officials, these imperial ministers who constantly preached about benevolence, righteousness, morality, and incorruptibility all day long, had obediently delivered this monstrous wealth right to the edge of his blade!

Hahaha... hahahaha!

Wang Hao suddenly burst into laughter. The sound echoed through the empty Ganquan Hall. At first, it was just a low, cold sneer, but it grew louder and more unbridled, shaking the very pillars and beams of the great hall until they seemed to tremble.

As he laughed, a surge of anger swelled within Wang Hao's heart. These were the very bastards who constantly demanded money from the imperial court every single day, even scheming to get their hands on his own privy purse, all while putting on an act of pleading for the people and being fiercely loyal to the sovereign and the country. It was too damn disgusting.

Good! What honest and upright imperial ministers! What a display of uncorrupted virtue!

Wang Hao took large strides down the imperial steps and snatched the ledger right out of Hai Dafu's hands. He stared at the astronomical numbers written in red cinnabar ink.

Eighteen million taels of silver... one point two million acres of land... Wang Hao muttered to himself, his eyes fixed intensely on the ledger. Then, he abruptly raised his head, his gaze resembling that of a bloodthirsty, ancient ferocious beast that had finally broken free from its chains.

Since they love money so much, since they love clinging to the bones of the Great Zhou Dynasty to suck its blood... Hai Dafu!

Your servant is here! Hai Dafu kowtowed heavily.

Pass down my decree! Wang Hao enunciated every word, his voice laced with piercing ice. The adult males of these twenty-four families shall all be executed by a thousand cuts! The women shall be banished to the official brothels. As for the confiscated gold and silver...

Wang Hao viciously slammed the ledger onto the ground. All of it shall be confiscated into the imperial treasury! I will use their money to arm my troops; I will use their land to reward my soldiers; and I will use their blood to tell the entire court of civil and military officials, and all those prominent noble clans—

The sky of this Great Zhou is my sky!