After Zhu Yi, the descendants of military nobles who had died in battle at Datong last year followed suit one after another. No one knew how Zhu Yi had persuaded them, but after making a trip into the palace and coming back out, each of them seemed pumped full of chicken blood, eagerly settling old accounts on behalf of their fathers.
What Shi Heng and the others had not expected was that Zhu Mian would take the initiative to submit a memorial confessing his guilt, admitting that he had indulged his subordinates and household slaves in seizing fertile farmland in Henan and Jiangxi.
Seizing this opportunity, Yu Qian joined forces with numerous civil officials and dispatched censors to investigate military affairs across the land.
The Emperor issued an edict: those who voluntarily turned themselves in and returned the fertile farmland and military pay they had seized would not be held accountable for past offenses;
but if the Censorate and Northern Enforcement Division uncovered it first, things would not end so easily.
To assist the Censorate and also supervise its censors, the Emperor followed Pan Yun's suggestion and sent Yun Yan and An Chen of the Northern Enforcement Division to help with the matter.
Each team took along one radio set and one transmitting official who had only just learned the basics of sending messages. This was a newly established Imperial Court post under the Ministry of Rites' Information Department. Its highest-ranking officer was the Chief Messenger, a Subordinate Sixth Rank official, transferred from the Court of State Ceremonial.
Most of the lower-ranking officials had been transferred from the Imperial Academy, while the clerks were all newly trained telegraph operators from the Imperial Academy.
Two censors, one squad of Imperial Guards, one radio set, and one transmitting official.
They headed separately