Chapter 236 Coercion and inducement"Brother Fusheng, when we went to beg for alms together, you were thirsty and I poured you half a bowl of water. Can you please put me down?" "Heh... after I got back, someone reported me for being lazy. It was you, wasn't it?" "Junior Brother Fusheng, I have never reported you. Can you please let me go too?" "But you took over my monk's room!" "Brother Fusheng, I neither took your room nor reported you..." "But you make me run ten laps every morning and beg for alms every day! Beg for alms! Beg for your sister!" Fusheng looked at the fat and big-eared monk and started to beat him with a rope! "We are just following orders, just following orders!" the monk said repeatedly when he was beaten. This monk came from the north. With his Qi Hai cultivation, he could be considered a middle-level monk in the Golden Buddha Temple. Logically speaking, Fusheng's beating him with the rope was just like scraping. He could easily beat Fusheng to death, but he didn't dare to do so because Zhang Qiming was watching them not far away. Zhang Qiming was holding an account book and looking through it carefully.
Through these account books, he could see the entire temple's income and expenditure, and thus infer the situation of the Golden Buddha Temple. The alms-gathering monks nominally gave 90% of the money they collected to the city lord, but in reality it was only about 70% to 80%. The 10% or 20% of it was collected by the lord through his own accounting. Ninety percent of the remaining ten percent will be sent to Qingzhou and handed over to the Golden Buddha Temple headquarters in Qingzhou. I heard that in Qingzhou, the elder of the Golden Buddha Temple, Elder Ba Ku, had captured a city and was preparing to build a large ship to go out to sea to spread Buddhism. In the Nine Provinces, it was becoming increasingly difficult for their Golden Buddha Temple to survive. If the monks at the Golden Buddha Temple did not have the ability to keep accounts, they might only get one cent out of a hundred cents they begged for. The one percent retention rate is not enough for high-level warriors like them in the Golden Buddha Temple, let alone Fu Sheng who came before? "Tsk tsk tsk..." But when he saw the assets of their Golden Buddha Temple, Zhang Qiming withdrew his sympathy. The Golden Buddha Temple actually had seven or eight hundred taels of gold, including some that they embezzled, some that they did not provide to Qingzhou, and some that they kept. How miserable are they? Compared with Fusheng who hanged himself naked and ordinary people who don’t have enough food to eat, they don’t deserve any sympathy at all. They are accomplices of the evil, they look pitiful, but they are not pitiful at all! How big is the entire Picheng? These bald donkeys can't excrete gold or silver, so how many people will they have to plunder! Zhang Qiming simply calculated in his mind and felt that it was not unfair at all to kill all these bald donkeys! He looked up at Fusheng, who was panting. Fusheng was skinny and had only eaten a full meal today. He insisted on hanging these dozens of monks in the main hall of the Golden Buddha Temple. You know, hanging people is a strenuous job, especially since most of these monks are fat. After just hanging five or six people, Fusheng was so tired that he saw stars and held on to the pillar to catch his breath. "Let me do it! If you keep hanging like this, you won't be able to finish even after dark!" Zhang Qiming looked at Fusheng and said. Fusheng nodded, he really had no strength. He felt really weak, too weak. He watched Zhang Qiming easily tie up dozens of monks' hands and hang them on the beams of the main hall of the Golden Buddha Temple. Since the beams on the main hall were too small to hold them, they were hung on the beams under the eaves outside the main hall. "I wonder how Mr. Zhang will deal with them?" Fusheng asked, looking at the dozens of hanged monks. Zhang Qiming simply said, "Just leave it hanging like this. After a few days, they will be out of energy."
"..." Fusheng felt that this donor Zhang had a great murderous intention! Fusheng did not try to persuade this man who had killed people in the Golden Buddha Temple. When he was at his wit's end, he wondered if he had worked harder to beg for alms at the Golden Buddha Temple, he would not have ended up in this situation. But he thought about the value of one tael of gold and his goal of begging for ten taels of gold every month. I also feel that these people really don't deserve sympathy. "I plan to distribute the money from the Golden Buddha Temple to the poor. You are very familiar with Picheng. Tell me where the poor people in Xia Picheng are." Zhang Qiming said. He felt that the money was cheated from those people, so he had to return it. This is the truth. "Ah?" Fusheng was stunned and said, "Send the money back?" "Yes!" said Zhang Qiming. "Not appropriate!" Fusheng shook his head. "What's wrong?" "There's no such thing in the world, and it's useless even if you send it back." Fusheng said as he sat on the threshold of the hall. Zhang Qiming also sat down and said, "Why is it useless?" "It's obvious that Mr. Zhang has never been in the underworld. To survive in the underworld, one must know how to cheat, deceive, coerce and bribe!" Fusheng sighed, which he did not understand, and said: "The so-called intimidation is like City Lord Nangong, who has three gangs under his command, monopolizing all kinds of people in Pi City. All the eating, drinking, defecating and urinating of the people in the city are subject to their control." "Even when we transport manure every day, there are manure tyrants. If you don't pay, the manure will be thrown at your door! What about other things?" "So-called inducement is what we do at the Golden Buddha Temple. We say a few words, recite a few scriptures written by someone unknown, build a big Buddhist temple, and package ourselves. We induce others to hand over their money willingly." "He even took the initiative to become a monk and worked as a laborer for nothing." "It's a pity that Picheng is keeping a close eye on the Golden Buddha Temple and forbids it from buying land or tenant farmers. I heard from my fellow apprentices in the north that the former Golden Buddha Temple in Yizhou had tens of thousands of hectares of fertile land. There were thousands of people farming alone, and the rent alone was a huge sum of money every year!" "So, Mr. Zhang, you think too simply. You give them the gold, and their money goes around and around, either to the City Lord's Mansion or to the Golden Buddha Temple." "If Mr. Zhang really wants to do something kind, why not buy two taels of meat and send it to my door. Remember not to send too much, or someone will miss it." Fusheng explained the unspoken rules of the underworld to Zhang Qiming clearly, leaving Zhang Qiming silent for a long time. This is totally different from the chivalrous and righteous person he imagined! Isn't it about killing the bully and distributing the money to the poor? Isn’t that the end of it? But no one has ever thought about why there are bullies who give money to ordinary people, and what will happen after the heroes leave? "It is meaningless to act impulsively to do good deeds. It is only to satisfy one's own vanity and ambition. Acting like a hero against a single bully cannot change the fate of the victim who is oppressed." “Even when the hero leaves, the new bully will use the oppressor who was saved by the hero as an example to establish his authority and cause greater tragedy to the oppressor.” Fusheng looked at Zhang Qiming talking to himself, and he heard Zhang Qiming continue talking to himself: "Teacher, is there no meaning in being chivalrous and righteous?"
"Of course it makes sense to be a hero. That is, don't feel sympathy for those tigers, leopards, jackals and wolves, because you are a human being, but they may not be human!" Hey……
(End of this chapter)