Pan Yun watched them disappear into the distance. When she turned back, the Imperial Guards assigned to follow Xue Shao had also arrived.
The Imperial Guards primarily operated in the Capital City, and their main targets of surveillance were court officials. Only when they received a mission would they leave the capital to investigate.
Nor did every censor have Imperial Guards following them.
At the very least, when Pan Hong had served as a censor, he had not had any by his side, whether he was in the Capital City or inspecting the northern regions.
Xue Shao was an exception. It was not because of any problem with him personally, but because of the special nature of the place he was inspecting.
South of the Yangtze.
A region that had been treated differently ever since the Grand Ancestor High Emperor founded the dynasty.
South of the Yangtze was wealthy, and its people were crafty at heart, so the Grand Ancestor High Emperor had used heavy taxes to dismantle their power and ease the burden on the imperial treasury.
It had been effective at first, but the gentry and merchants of South of the Yangtze were exceedingly clever. Within a few years, the only ones truly bearing those heavy taxes were its farmers.
They had even dared to reach out and pluck at the Grand Ancestor High Emperor's beard. While the founding emperor was still alive, they had brazenly carried out the Zhejiang-Jiangxi-Fujian civil examination fraud.
Though that test had ended in failure, their efforts had never ceased.
Land annexation in South of the Yangtze and parts of Fujian had always been the most severe. No matter how incorruptible an official was upon arriving in those regions, when he left, he would be stained all over with ink—black, slick, and greasy