The emperor was furious, and Wei Zi saved the situation.

Throughout the ages, being an official is a very good way out, which can not only bring glory to the family, but also bring tangible material income. Even honest officials need not worry about food and clothing. After all, his salary can support his family. However, this kind of thing that we take for granted happened unexpectedly during the reign of Zhu Yuanzhang. An upright official with Taoism was too honest to go back to his hometown and was executed by Zhu Yuanzhang! What's going on here?

As we all know, Zhu Yuanzhang rose from the peasant masses to a very high position, so he always cared for the people himself, which was very shameful for corrupt officials, and therefore the most severe criminal law in history was implemented, which also made officials afraid to enrich themselves, so the officialdom in this period was quite clear.

Zeng Bing, the protagonist of the original story, is also a fairly honest official. He was born in Nanchang, Jiangxi, and received a good education. In his early years, due to his extensive knowledge, he was elected as Zheng Xue in Haizhou by the imperial court. This position is roughly equivalent to the current leader of the education department. Later, due to the obvious political achievements during his administration, he was recommended to Zhu Yuanzhang, and was officially promoted to Beijing official as the minister of punishments.

Speaking of Zeng, he was conscientious when he was an official. He is an honest and frank person. When he finds problems in his work, he will report them bluntly. Zhu Yuanzhang appreciated this most, so he always trusted it very much. Later, when the imperial court wanted to set up a post of "participating in politics" in various places to supervise local officials on behalf of the imperial court, it was sent to Shaanxi as a trusted official to participate in politics.

During his tenure, he gave full play to his talents in this field and exposed many bad phenomena. But over time, it will inevitably expose too many drawbacks of the imperial court, and sometimes even verbally offend Zhu Yuanzhang. Who is the emperor? Can my deputies comment on him? So, in a short time, the big leader fired his official position in a fit of pique and let him go back to his hometown to reflect.

Now things are coming. Because I was too upright and upright, being an official is even more clean. Coupled with the low salary given by the court, when he wanted to return to his hometown in Nanchang from Shaanxi, even the fare was not enough. In desperation, he sold his four-year-old daughter privately.

At first I thought it was just a family matter, but later it spread to the emperor. In Zhu Yuanzhang's view, the salaries paid by the imperial court to officials were enough for them to live a rich life, but this antique full of benevolence, righteousness and morality was able to make such an act of selling children and women, which really violated ethics. His original honest and upright image suddenly collapsed! The emperor was so angry that he immediately issued an order: he was executed on the spot! Since selling children and girls, this person is no longer worthy of being a parent!

To outsiders, it once seemed to be culpable of punishment. He deserved to sell his daughter. In fact, if you know the background at that time, you will understand that Zeng was still very wronged because he was really desperate. The emperor asked him to return to China. If he didn't leave on time, it would be a rebellion. The consequence of this crime may be that he was beheaded and beheaded. If he wants to leave, he can only find a way to raise money. Some people may ask, he is a senior official, but is he that poor?

It turned out that the income of Sanpin officials at that time was 35 stones of grain. It would be nice if they were really distributed in the form of grain, but this is not the case. In order to carry out the new economic policy, the imperial court printed a kind of paper money called "Bao Chao", which had no mass base in the market where gold and silver were widely used as trading means at that time, so the imperial court could only apply this new policy to officials first and convert their salaries into this new currency. However, in the actual trade circulation process, this kind of treasure money is not recognized, and the result is repeated depreciation, while the treasure money obtained by officials cannot be exchanged for physical objects, so it is getting poorer and poorer.

Therefore, Zeng's tragic fate was caused by the court's failure to solve the inflation problem from a deep level, and Zhu Yuanzhang, who executed him, was the real culprit.