Chang'an.
This was not Cao Mao's first visit to Chang'an. He had come once before, when he pacified the Shu Kingdom.
On this second visit, Chang'an had seen some changes.
If nothing else, the roads had become much smoother, and Cao Mao traveled along them quite steadily.
Clearly, not having Jiang Wei around was very important for Yongliang.
Cao Mao dealt with more than a hundred officials in Yong Province.
The highest-ranking official directly involved in criminal offenses was the governor of Shangjun.
This governor was quite a character. He stopped at nothing to gain promotion, repeatedly falsifying his achievements and staging one performance after another himself. He sang Shangjun's praises to the skies, colluding with the commandery's officials to fabricate reports and repeatedly exaggerating the results of his administration.
He truly dared to report anything. He reclaimed a thousand mu and dared to boast of several thousand qing; he resettled a little over a thousand households and dared to claim thirty or forty thousand Qiang households.
Damn it, even the whole of Yong Province probably could not scrape together forty thousand Qiang households!
There truly was no bottom to his boasting. Most hateful of all, these false reports had received "confirmation" from Zhuge Xu and the others, earning him titles and rewards.
Cao Mao had almost been unable to resist sending someone to whip Zhuge Xu again.
This man's name was Shi Jian.
Shi Jian came from a poor and humble background, but he loved reading and applied himself diligently. He befriended many famous scholars, made a name for himself, and thus gained an opportunity to become an official.
At the imperial court, he had served as gentleman of the Secretariat, attendant censor, and assistant to the minister of the Secretariat. During his tenure, he had been impartial and