Volume I: River City Encounter Chapter 63: What True Professionalism Means (Part 1)

Among the six ministries of the imperial court, the Ministry of Personnel stands supreme. However, when compared to the six functional departments of a county yamen, the Revenue Department holds the greatest authority, making the chief clerk of the Revenue Department the foremost among all clerks.

Consequently, the routine duties of the Revenue Department naturally surpassed those of the other five divisions in the county yamen. As a result, Jiangcheng County's Revenue Department had always maintained the largest staff of clerks—previously numbering eight. Even after the recent turmoil, five clerks had still remained on duty. Yet now, with the other three taking leave on various pretexts, all the workload inevitably fell upon the shoulders of the remaining two: Li Ling and Lin Qing.

Lin Qing was considered a veteran within the county yamen, having served a full year in the Revenue Department a couple of years prior. He considered himself to have some experience, but he still found it overwhelming to have such a massive responsibility thrust solely upon his shoulders. Merely looking at the constant stream of documents and ledgers being delivered through the door made his scalp tingle, and the data requiring meticulous and extensive calculations left him no room for the slightest relaxation. He could only bury his head in his work and give it his all.

Yet no matter how hard he tried, he could not keep pace with the dossiers sent over one after another from other officials for review and verification. After toiling bitterly for the better part of the day, with dusk rapidly approaching, he had only managed to check and calculate a little over a dozen documents. Meanwhile, no fewer than thirty or forty ledgers lay piled before him on his desk, inducing a deep sense of helplessness.

If things were already this difficult for him, Chief Clerk Li's situation must be infinitely worse. Fiddling with his counting rods as he calculated the details of a tax record, Lin Qing sighed inwardly, not daring to look too closely, and even felt a twinge of regret for his choice.

In fact, Fang Zhiyuan and the others had previously hinted that he should join them in taking leave to make things even more difficult for Li Ling, but in the end, he had refused to collude with them. This was not merely because of his kind nature, but rather because he believed that aligning himself with Chief Clerk Li would be far more advantageous than making an enemy of him. He had never truly belonged to that clique, nor was he part of Zhuang Hong's faction. If he could seize this opportunity to build a good relationship with Chief Clerk Li and thereby win the appreciation of the magistrate, it would undoubtedly greatly benefit his future prospects.

Yet now, Lin Qing was starting to have regrets. Having such a burdensome and trivial workload fall entirely upon the two of them was trying enough, but his greatest fear was that some error might occur in the process, leaving him to take the blame. The risks truly outweighed any potential gains.

"Perhaps I should find an excuse to take a few days off starting tomorrow as well?" Just as Lin Qing's mind wandered toward giving up, Li Ling's voice called out from the inner room: "Lin Qing, come in here and take a look at this."

"Yes." Lin Qing replied with a guilty conscience, as if the other man could see right through his thoughts. He steadied himself, then quickly walked inside, bypassed a folding screen, and arrived at Li Ling's desk. With a single glance, he saw that the long desk was piled high with sixty or seventy documents—nearly double the volume on his own desk. Several of them lay open, and the paper beside them bore a series of twisted, strange symbols that left anyone looking at them completely baffled.

Immediately afterward, however, Lin Qing's gaze was drawn to those open documents. They had all been meticulously verified, signed with Li Ling's name, stamped with his official seal, and confirmed to be error-free. Beneath them lay another thick stack of fifty or sixty ledgers, suggesting that this entire pile had already been checked and processed by Li Ling.

How could this be possible?

In barely half a day, he had labored anxiously, manipulating his counting rods just to make sense of a dozen or so related documents and ledgers, yet this Chief Clerk Li had already calculated some fifty sets of accounts? And he had even stamped them directly, meaning no one else needed to verify them. Where on earth did he get such confidence?

Lin Qing's heart was filled with doubt, his facial expression shifting constantly as he stood there in a momentary daze. It was not until Li Ling gave a low cough and called out repeatedly, "Lin Qing, Lin Qing..." that he snapped back to his senses and hurriedly replied, "I am here. Does the chief clerk have any instructions?"

"Take a look at this. I have a lingering feeling that the tax revenues submitted by Shilipu last year are somewhat problematic, yet Master Wang's office passed them anyway." Li Ling pushed a tax form toward the other man, pointing to a row of data in the middle. "I've already checked the population figures there; they are quite comparable to several other towns. Yet the tax silver submitted last year was nearly forty percent lower than elsewhere. Is there something fishy going on here?"

Lin Qing quickly gathered his wits and replied, "You may not be aware of this, Chief Clerk, but the situation in Shilipu is indeed somewhat unusual. Despite their population and land area being no different from other villages and towns, it is a stronghold for the imperial examinations here in Jiangcheng County. There are three holders of the provincial imperial degree alone, alongside eight or nine scholars who have passed the county examinations."

"Does that have anything to do with their tax revenue being so low?"

"Of course it has a great deal to do with it. Degree-holders and scholars are exempt from taxes. Furthermore, this exemption extends not just to their own households and surnames, but also shields the lands of their relatives and clansmen from taxation. While scholars are relatively minor—saving only a bit of tax silver for their own families—a provincial graduate can exempt at least two hundred mu of grain tax, along with various other levies. That is easily enough to spare a dozen households from paying government taxes altogether. Now, with three provincial graduates and eight or nine scholars combined in Shilipu, it naturally causes the town's tax revenue to plummet by about forty percent."

Li Ling frowned. "Was this a policy established by the imperial court from the very beginning?"

"Yes. It wasn't just under our Great Yue Dynasty; as early as the Song Dynasty a hundred years ago, there was already this policy of favoring the scholar-gentry. The conditions offered back then were even more generous, all to encourage the common people to participate in the imperial examinations." Having spent many years in the county yamen, Lin Qing was very clear about these matters.

Only then did Li Ling begin to understand. Previously, he had known that attaining scholarly status granted exemption from taxes and corvée labor, but he had never expected that it could also benefit those living nearby. Yet he still harbored one question: "What do they stand to gain from it? Why would they willingly let the villagers of the same town take advantage of them?"

"On the one hand, it naturally earns them a good reputation, as benefiting one's local community is something people will firmly remember. On the other hand, there are tangible benefits as well. In reality, those villagers place their own land under the names of the graduates and scholars, and every year they pay them a considerable amount of money and grain as compensation—though admittedly much lighter than actual taxes. Should a famine or similar disaster strike, these graduates can genuinely acquire the land at the cheapest possible prices..."

A thought stirred in Li Ling's heart. This was simply using state policies to buy themselves a reputation and reap benefits, and eventually, they could even use this pretense to brazenly annex land... Perhaps this was the key reason why so many people in this world rushed blindly to take the imperial examinations, refusing to give up time and time again. After all, the benefits were tangible; even if one failed to become an official, one could still amass a fortune rivaling a state.

Soon, he snapped back to his senses and smiled, "Thank you for your guidance this time. Alright, finish up what you're working on; it's almost time to close the offices for the day." With a wave of his brush, he signed his own prominent name to the document at hand, picked up the small official seal of the Revenue Department, pressed it down firmly, and casually placed the document right atop the tall stack on his left.

Lin Qing hesitated, but ultimately could not hold it in any longer. He spoke in a low voice, "Chief Clerk Li, are these all the documents that you have already calculated and are ready to present to the magistrate?" He pointed to the stack of at least fifty documents, asking in sheer disbelief.

"Yes, is there a problem with that?" Li Ling asked casually, hearing the strange tone in his voice. As he spoke, his brush moved across the paper beside him, jotting down a string of numbers. After a brief mental calculation, he arrived at the result, cross-referenced it, and signed his approval on yet another document—all in less than two or three minutes.

"This... he doesn't even need to use counting rods? He can just glance at it a few times, make a few marks, and calculate everything?" Lin Qing blinked his small eyes, filled to the brim with astonishment. This efficiency was simply too terrifying.

Overcome by curiosity, Lin Qing cast aside all notions of propriety between superior and subordinate. He immediately pulled a document from the stack that Li Ling had already verified and cleared, and began to read it closely. Li Ling offered no objection to this action; he merely glanced over with a faint smile and remarked casually, "The one you're holding is the grain tax situation for Sanliwan Village last year. It seems to be three dou and two sheng more than the previous year, totaling five hundred and forty-two shi, six dou, and seven sheng..."

Hearing this rapid succession of numbers, Lin Qing's body trembled once more. Yet the complex data on the page was far too intricate for him to calculate simply by mental arithmetic. Gathering his courage, he took the document back to his own desk, set up his counting rods once again, and spent a long while working through the figures. Sure enough, the numbers matched Li Ling's statement down to the very last unit, causing him to draw in a sharp breath of cold air—this was simply too incredible...

Stunned into a daze for a good long while, Lin Qing finally regained his composure. He picked up that document, along with a ledger from his own desk that he had already finished calculating, and brought them both to Li Ling. "I must ask Chief Clerk Li to verify this one as well."

Understanding his intent, Li Ling did not refuse. He took the document immediately, scanning it at ten lines a glance while memorizing the figures and performing mental calculations. Within moments, he had his answer: "The tax silver for Dawang Village should be two hundred and thirty-six liang, five qian, and four fen. However, they have only paid one hundred and ninety-eight liang and six qian, leaving thirty-seven liang and nine qian and four fen unpaid. We ought to dispatch someone to urge them to settle the balance."

Lin Qing's eyes widened abruptly. He had calculated this exact result three whole times, spending the better part of an hour on it. Yet here, in front of Chief Clerk Li, it had taken less than the time it takes to brew a cup of tea to arrive at the answer, and it was entirely without error... The gap between them was simply too vast!

At that moment, the look in Lin Qing's eyes as he gazed upon his superior had completely changed. "Chief Clerk, how... how on earth are you able to calculate these accounts with such precision and speed?"

"Ah, that's simply because I've had an interest in mathematics since I was a child, and I happen to use a method of calculation completely different from the arithmetic methods you all use," Li Ling replied vaguely, unable to provide a more reasonable explanation on the spur of the moment.

Yet this was more than enough to fill Lin Qing with admiration and boundless anticipation. "With the chief clerk possessing such skill, the duties of our Revenue Department can finally be completed on time and to the highest standard!"

Li Ling merely smiled. To be frank, handling these duties was making a mountain out of a molehill for him. Organizing routine data and ledgers, alongside mental addition and subtraction, truly formed the absolute foundation for a professional chartered accountant; it hardly even showcased his true professional competence.