At the beginning of June, the weather is getting hotter.

In the slightly empty and deserted palace.

A side hall for recreation.

Zhou Ming, who was wearing a loose and breathable short coat and shorts, was sitting on a marble table in the hall, holding a deck of playing cards in his hand, and was fighting the landlord with his playmates.

Zhou Ming's playmates are two women and one man.

The two maids were two maids who served him personally, named Hyrou and Marcia.

Hai Rou is 16 years old this year, less than six months after entering the palace, with a delicate appearance, perfect development, and a relatively mature personality.

Marcia is only 14 years old, but he has been in the palace for eight months, and he has been with Zhou Ming for a long time, as for his appearance, he is more delicate than Hai Rou, but he is in the development period, and he is still at an obvious disadvantage in some aspects.

In fact, Zhou Ming knew that Hai Rou and Marcia were not maids selected from ordinary families at all, but the granddaughters of the two important ministers of the court, and they sent their concubines into the palace and sent them to Zhou Ming's side, and anyone with a little bit of brains should know why they did this.

Of course, the Lucis family was very unhappy about this, and was ready to select two maids from the Lucis family and send them to Zhou Ming to serve them closely.

But it was unanimously opposed by the "royalists".

"This is the rule, don't want to break it in the Lucis family!"

Indeed, this is a rule, a rule that has been tacitly continued for nearly three hundred years, and it is also one of the measures to maintain a balance between the "royalists" and the "aristocratic faction".

That is, the emperor cannot be occupied by a certain faction.

The same is true for the harem, the empress must be a woman of the Lucis family, but the emperor can also marry three concubines, and these concubines must be the women of the ministers' family.

So Zhou Ming, who is often faced with the seduction of the maids Hai Rou and Marcia intentionally or unintentionally, understands why the average life expectancy of the first 16 emperors is less than 50 years old...... What a lot of work.

There is also the male companion sitting opposite Zhou Ming, named Reggie, who is the same age as Zhou Ming, but is a month younger.

Reggie is also a member of the royal family, the grandson of the royal patriarch Rubster, and the main reason why Reggie was able to move into the palace and become Zhou Ming's companion was for the stability of the empire.

Once something happens to Zhou Ming, Reggie is his substitute...... On the premise that Zhou Ming has no heirs.

This inevitably brings up a question: what if the royal patriarch Rubuster has a different heart, and Reggie's young heart has an idea that he shouldn't have?

Zhou Ming's personal safety was in danger.

However, Zhou Ming is not worried, a royal patriarch Lu Boster is loyal to the royal family, upright, and has no flowers in his stomach.

As for Reggie, after a short time together, Zhou Ming found that this is a more upright boy, who can be said to be scheming, innocent and kind.

Therefore, Zhou Ming took the initiative to ask for Reggie to stay in the palace and become his playmate...... Patriarch Rubster nodded in agreement.

In this way, with two maids and a royal cousin, Zhou Ming has three partners...... There were four people in total.

With four people, in order to pass the extra free time in addition to cultivation, things like chess, flying chess, playing cards, and mahjong were invented by Zhou Ming one after another.

Not only that, Zhou Ming also asked the businessmen in the "business zone" to open a chess and card product sales store, selling chess, flying chess, playing cards, mahjong and other products, and also arranged service personnel to teach how to play.

Once launched, but half a year, the entire imperial capital has fallen into all kinds of gambling activities, mahjong is in the circle of high-class ladies, rapid popularity, and even in the most month, mahjong sales reached an exaggerated 100,000 pairs, bringing more than one million gold tower of profits.

But gambling is not a good thing, Zhou Ming is doing this, isn't he hurting his empire and letting a large number of people fall into the abyss of gambling?

In fact, even if Zhou Ming did not invent the above chess and card tools, those who are addicted to gambling still have various gambling methods and conduct various games...... You must know that gambling has begun to appear since human beings entered the feudal era, and the higher the social productivity, the more prosperous the gambling trend is.

Rather than strictly restricting, it is better to reasonably guide, orderly and standardize, so that people can understand the truth of "small gambling is pleasant, big gambling hurts the body".

In the end, it enriches people's entertainment life, and by the way, it also takes a small profit from it.

"Four twos. ”

"Wang Fang, I won. As a landlord, Zhou Ming has all the cards in his hand.

"Oh, Knox, why did you win again, we all lost. Marcia pouted, unwilling to push the last golden pagoda shield in front of him in front of Zhou Ming.

"That's it for today, and I'll give you another 20 guilders each tomorrow. Zhou Ming swept all the money on the table into a cloth bag, tied the pocket, and handed it to the butler behind him, Elle Potter.

"Hey, I can only see tomorrow's luck. Reggie shook his head in annoyance.

"Hai Rou, has there been anything important happening in the imperial capital recently?" Zhou Ming asked.

"Well, no, except for the 'Emperor Hoe' incident that happened last month, there is still some influence among the people, and there are no other things. Hai Rou, who is quite familiar with civil affairs, said.

The Emperor Hoe Incident?

It turned out that in the "business area" opened around the palace, Zhou Ming asked the merchant to open a farm tool shop, specializing in selling all kinds of farm tools, including a hoe, because it is made of alloy materials, it is not only light in weight, not easy to rust, but also has a long service life and is extremely reliable.

What's more, because it is a hydraulic factory that manufactures products in batches, the cost of this hoe is half that of ordinary cast iron hoes.

With such a cost-effective hoe, it stands to reason that the sales volume should be quite high, but because the business area is located in the core area of the imperial capital, the agricultural population is very small, so it has been open for more than three months, and the hoe has not sold much.

The turning point of the drama is the agricultural zone around the imperial capital, there is a place called Serra Town, an old farmer in the town, accidentally came to the imperial capital to play, when visiting the business area, accidentally entered the farm tool shop, saw a lot of hoes, and was immediately surprised: "The shop opened by His Majesty the Emperor also sells the hoes we use?"

I tried the hoe again and found it to be lightweight and easy to use, and it was very easy to wield.

When I asked about the price, I was even more surprised, the price was not only not high, but half cheaper.

The old farmer bought two hoes on the spot and carried them home.

When he was doing farm work in the field, with the new hoe in his hand, the old farmer couldn't help but show off: "This kind of hoe is the emperor's hoe, it is particularly easy to use, and the price is only half of it!"

As soon as this live advertisement went out, it spread ten, ten, and hundred, and countless peasants ran into the imperial capital to buy the so-called "emperor's hoe".

In just two months, tens of thousands of "Emperor Brand Hoes" have been sold.

Naturally, the influence of rumors also grew, and in the eyes of the peasants, the emperor seemed to be a manual laborer who also had to cultivate and use a hoe.

This naturally alarmed the officials, and the Royal Praetorian Guard dispatched on a large scale, and within half a month, tens of thousands of peasants were arrested, and all of them were convicted of "slandering the saints", and should be sentenced to death according to the law, and tens of thousands of heads were about to fall to the ground.

Knowing this, Zhou Ming couldn't sit still, and hurriedly stopped it.

He even rushed to the execution ground in person, brought a hoe, and in front of tens of thousands of people, hoeed off a few grasses on the ground and washed away the "sin of slander" on these peasants.

And announced on the spot: the emperor farm tool store will establish sales outlets nationwide, and the emperor brand hoe will be sold to farmers across the country.

It even provides interest-free loan services, so that those farmers who are not in a good financial situation can use it first and pay later.

As soon as these messages were announced.

"Long live the Emperor!"

"Long live the Emperor!"

Those peasants were moved to kneel and kowtow, tears in their eyes.

Even the ordinary citizens who were watching next to them also knelt on the ground and shouted long live.

Suddenly, among the middle and lower classes of the empire, Zhou Ming had an excellent reputation for the first time and was sincerely supported.

The emperor's hoe incident came to an end.

However, in mid-June, after a heavy rainstorm that lasted for ten days, an urgent report suddenly came from Andohar County, more than 200 miles east of the imperial capital:

The catastrophic flood broke out, and there were countless casualties in Andohar County, and the imperial court was in urgent need of rescue!