Chapter 669 - The New Regime in Danzhou

After surveying the area, Liu Yixiao selected the Chaotian Temple inside the city as his headquarters. The Western Detachment established camp and built a stockade outside the walls. Old cities in Hainan's prefectures and counties were mostly cramped and confined, lacking infrastructure and plagued by poor sanitary conditions—unsuitable for any serious development. Following the Lingao model, the Civil Affairs People's Committee planned to select sites for entirely new towns. These would initially serve as administrative and military garrison centers, gradually attracting merchants and slowly forming new urban cores.

Once the Danzhou Work Team had settled into Chaotian Temple, Liu Yixiao immediately summoned Yin Chengshi, the Danzhou County Bailiff who had organized the surrender, to report.

"Your humble servant... humble servant... Yin Chengshi..." Along with the name announcement from the courtyard came a local attendant jogging up to deliver a shou ben—the man's personal dossier.

The shou ben functioned as a biographical record, useful for quickly understanding someone's background. Liu Yixiao had learned about these documents in training lectures and knew how to read them. He opened it, glanced through the contents, then flipped to the Conversion Handbook beside him to translate the cyclical dates to CE. The man was fifty-eight years old.

Yin Chengshi's registered residence was Beizhili. His degree was "Selected Tribute"—which explained precisely why, at his advanced age, he had ended up at the ends of the earth as a lowly county bailiff.

A fifty-eight-year-old, serving as a minor official in a wilderness far from home. Though he might scrape together some money, the price was the constant possibility of leaving his bones in this desolate place. Quite miserable. Small wonder that petty officials like Sun Ruiwu felt no attachment to the Ming whatsoever.

"Show Bailiff Yin in."

Yin Chengshi entered with visible caution. Having already sold himself over to the new regime, he naturally needed to demonstrate his sincerity to the utmost. A county bailiff was "below the flow"—his official robes bore no rank patch—but he wore his freshly laundered garments with conspicuous neatness.

"Your humble servant Yin Chengshi pays respects to Your Honor." He spoke smoothly, already kneeling to kowtow.

Liu Yixiao had grown accustomed to the kowtowing customs of this timeline's natives, but having such an elderly man prostrate himself still felt deeply awkward. "Rise. We don't practice that here."

"Yes, yes. Thank you, Your Honor." Yin Chengshi rose carefully and presented his gift list.

The list represented a joint offering from Danzhou's gentry and wealthy households: ten pigs, one hundred chickens, one hundred bolts of local cotton cloth, twenty bolts of silk, and fifty shi of unpolished rice.

Liu Yixiao nodded and had someone receive the offerings. He examined this first Ming official to surrender proactively. Yin Chengshi looked ancient—like seventy or even eighty—though his movements remained surprisingly agile. Natives of this timeline tended to appear decrepit once they passed fifty, but Liu Yixiao hadn't expected quite this degree of weathering.

Yin Chengshi stole a cautious glance at his new superior. His state of mind was complicated indeed. He had no desire to die as a Ming martyr, yet he feared these foreign rulers might not value his allegiance—and even more, he feared they might suspect his surrender was a trap, which would mean immediate execution.

He had heard the Australians' reputation: not particularly bloodthirsty, but utterly ruthless when they chose to kill.

"You're the only official left in the city?"

"Yes, Your Honor." Yin Chengshi felt slightly reassured. If the man was asking about local affairs, he wasn't planning to kill casually.

Danzhou had originally possessed four officials, though the positions were chronically understaffed. After the prefect's suicide, only Yin remained. He himself had served as county bailiff here for over five years and knew local conditions intimately.

Liu Yixiao questioned him about populations, taxes, and power structures. Yin Chengshi answered thoroughly, demonstrating remarkable familiarity with local affairs—answering one question with ten. Liu Yixiao found himself quite satisfied. Technical competence aside, this level of administrative knowledge surpassed that of most officials he had encountered.

It seemed this was a useful man. Appropriately retaining local officials willing to serve was established policy, set by Liu Muzhou himself—especially before sufficient new cadres became available to replace them. Beyond immediate utility, it could also serve as an encouraging example for officials elsewhere.

"You must have done quite well for yourself as county bailiff."

"Well, this... this..." Yin Chengshi's face contorted, suddenly fearing he was about to be squeezed for bribes. County bailiffs could indeed make excellent profits. "Your humble servant did enjoy some benefits, but never dared go too far..." He glanced at Liu Yixiao, wondering silently how heavy a gift would satisfy him. He did have another gift list concealed in his sleeve. He hastily produced it.

"This is your humble servant's small personal token—a mere trifle—please accept it, Your Honor."

The most valuable item on the list was one hundred taels of silver, plus cloth and silk. For this backwater, producing a hundred taels for a bribe meant this bailiff had been quite skilled indeed at accumulating wealth.

"You're quite good at extracting money."

The words struck like a thunderbolt. Yin Chengshi went weak at the knees—he was convinced these Australians were staging a "righteous judge" performance, planning to use his head to win popular support. He immediately kowtowed repeatedly, begging for mercy.

"I won't take your gift. At your age, coming all this way to be a petty official—isn't it all for a bit of money?" Liu Yixiao's tone was magnanimous.

In truth, he was seething inside. Liu Yixiao despised corrupt officials and felt an impulse to execute every one he encountered. But he understood that killing wouldn't solve the problem.

Right now, they needed people. He couldn't afford to lose the assistance of a local official who understood the area so thoroughly.

"Yes, yes. Your humble servant deserves death..."

"Deserving death under the Ming—we don't concern ourselves with that," Liu Yixiao said. "Our Ao-Song regime consistently takes a 'dialectical' approach. Your past crimes were caused by the Ming system; you too are a victim of that system."

Yin Chengshi couldn't comprehend how he, a corrupt official, had somehow become a "victim," but he agreed enthusiastically with whatever the Australians said, nodding and repeating "yes" at every pause.

"...But now that you serve Ao-Song, there is no room whatsoever for such behavior. Understand?"

"Your humble servant understands, understands perfectly!"

"Good. Take your gift back. I don't want it. I now appoint you General Liaison Officer for Danzhou and Deputy Director of the Danzhou Post-Disaster Management Bureau. All dealings with local natives will flow through you. You must handle affairs properly—no extortion, no troublemaking."

"Your humble servant absolutely would not dare," Yin Chengshi assumed an expression of profound remorse. "Your humble servant will reform completely and serve the Ao-Song Emperor with his whole heart!"

"Gather all the runners and clerks who haven't fled from the yamen. I have work for them."

They brought out Danzhou Prefecture's official seal. Liu Yixiao ordered immediate posting of a public notice—informing citizens inside the city and in the surrounding countryside not to panic, to continue their occupations peacefully.

After gathering basic administrative personnel, Liu Yixiao ordered cases to be heard on-site in the Chaotian Temple courtyard. The Danzhou prefecture jail and the penal office's detention cells still held over a hundred people. These needed to be cleared quickly.

He had brought retained personnel from the former Lingao County yamen's penal office to assist with case handling. They began reviewing the detained prisoners. The Arbitration Court's Legal Research Office had conducted specialized research on clearing cases and prisons after regime takeover, consulting Wang Zaomin and retained penal staff as advisors and studying procedural issues and abuses in considerable depth. The result was a comprehensive manual for takeover personnel.

This manual detailed regulations for case processing and prisoner disposition after regime change. Historically, peasant revolts or dynastic transitions that captured cities would "release all prisoners" as a display of "benevolent governance." But by modern standards, this approach was deeply problematic.

No matter how dark a regime or how corrupt its judiciary, prisons couldn't possibly contain only innocent, wrongfully convicted people. Genuine criminals inevitably lurked among them—some even violent and dangerous.

Releasing everyone indiscriminately might feel satisfying in the moment, but it produced chaos and created massive social instability. Even in the old timeline, such examples were not lacking.

With the retained personnel's assistance, Liu Yixiao quickly sorted through the dossiers and prisoner situations.

Tax and rent defaulters—all released immediately. Those confirmed as actual criminals would, following Lingao's precedent, form a labor reform team to be relocated within the city. Prison conditions were atrocious and would only waste precious manpower.

Retrying cases where people claimed wrongful conviction wasn't particularly difficult either. Almost all wrongful convictions couldn't fool insiders—sometimes they couldn't even fool outsiders. The main obstacles to overturning verdicts had always been entangled interests and personal relationships. Now that heaven and earth had changed, those relationships no longer existed, making matters straightforward to sort out.

In less than a day, they had resolved the most pressing prison administration issues. The ancients highly valued local officials' judicial capabilities, considering it among the most important metrics for evaluating administrative competence. The work team's immediate attention to this matter upon taking power earned them considerable image points with the populace.

As public sentiment in Danzhou gradually settled, Liu Yixiao sensed his preliminary work was showing results. He summoned Yin Chengshi to prepare a list—Liu Yixiao was about to convene what he called the "First Danzhou Political Consultative Conference."

"Every village must send representatives. Furthermore, every wealthy household and gentry family in the county must send one person to attend the conference." Liu Yixiao gave General Liaison Officer Yin Chengshi his instructions. "The Post-Disaster Bureau committee positions will be filled by the wealthy families. This is for the benefit of the local community. No absences will be permitted."

"Yes, your humble servant understands!" Yin Chengshi responded with visible enthusiasm.

Through convening the Political Consultative Conference, they would first establish a "liaison officer" system at the grassroots village level. Through this system, they could ensure preliminary control over local communities and guarantee transmission of government orders.

Conscripting labor, requisitioning grain, assigning tasks—these weren't acts of simple coercive extortion but rather the most effective methods for rapidly imparting governing will to the grassroots. Through such measures, they would quickly gain control of substantial population and resources for the work team's ongoing use.