"What do you understand?"

Emperor Hongzhi looked at Zhu Houzhao's appearance, his face was relieved, he finally looked like a prince, and he was also very curious now, what did Zhu Houzhao understand.

"Father, do you know what the price of grain is now?"

Zhu Houzhao did not answer directly, but asked about the price of Emperor Hongzhi's grain.

"It's... It's probably seven or eight pounds, this is a famine after all. ”

When Emperor Hongzhi heard this, he was speechless, he stayed in the palace every day, and he was surrounded by important ministers in the court, although there was a famine now, but it was more about discussing how to relieve the disaster, how to adjust the grain, as for how much money was a pound of food for the people, he really didn't know.

"Now the price of grain has reached more than 50 wen a catty, and when there is no famine, the price of grain is only a few cents a catty, and this grain has increased more than ten times."

Zhu Houzhao is very clear about this, when he was here in Tianjin, because he was idle, and Liu Jin asked him to sympathize with the victims, he knew the price of this grain very well.

"More than fifty pounds?"

When Emperor Hongzhi heard this, he was immediately dumbfounded, even if he did not distinguish between grains and four bodies, he opened his mouth when he ate and stretched out his hand when he came to clothes, he also knew how terrifying this grain had been.

"The grain in the Texas warehouse and the Linqing warehouse must have been taken away by those grain merchants and officials together, and now this grain is as expensive as gold, and people must eat it when they are hungry, even if they are bankrupt, it is important to fill their stomachs first."

"Now they have a large amount of grain in hand, which is no different from holding a mountain of gold and silver, and they have got the grain in the government, and they don't have the final say on how much this grain sells."

Zhu Houzhao sneered all over, and instantly saw everything behind this.

"Yes, yes, I didn't expect you to be able to see this layer, you have grown up a lot, it seems that this time I went to Tianjin in vain."

Emperor Hongzhi looked at Zhu Houzhao and said with a smile.

Why did the grain in this official warehouse disappear, Emperor Hongzhi must have known that the officials and merchants below colluded to resell the grain in the official warehouse.

Such things are normal and have been happening since ancient times.

The officials guarding the granary are like rats in the granary, all of them are full of fat and oily stomachs.

In normal times, the new grain in the granary is replaced with old grain, polished rice is replaced with bad rice, good rice is exchanged for secondary rice, sand is infiltrated into the grain, grain is resold, and losses are falsely reported.

In this regard, although Emperor Hongzhi has always known, he is also helpless, because even if a group of officials are dismissed and replaced with new officials, they will soon repeat the old way, and the later leeches are not full, but even more powerful.

Many times, he turns a blind eye, as long as it is not too excessive, the right to acquiesce in the existence of such a behavior, which is a very helpless thing, even if he is the emperor, he has nothing to do.

This time, the grain in the official warehouse was gone, and he guessed it at the first time, and most of the grain was resold by officials and grain merchants in collusion with each other.

It's just that what he didn't expect was that at this juncture, these officials dared to resell grain on a large scale, which was simply to the point of lawlessness.

"Of course I saw it clearly, and I also knew that they had bigger plans."

Zhu Houzhao was slightly proud, he rarely received praise from Emperor Hongzhi, but now he was naturally very happy, and continued: "Making the country difficult to make money is not their real purpose. ”

"Actually, their real purpose is to target me, the crown prince, or our royal family."

Zhu Houzhao's words were simply earth-shattering, when Emperor Hongzhi and Empress Zhang heard it, they couldn't help but widen their eyes, a little disbelieving their ears, why did Zhu Houzhao raise this matter to the height of targeting the crown prince and the royal family.

"Father, don't you believe it?"

Zhu Hou looked at Emperor Hongzhi, who was a little surprised, and continued: "When I was here in Tianjin, Liu Jin told me that when many industries in Tianjin and the Xishan Coal Industry and Glass Factory in the capital went to buy grain, even if they were willing to pay a high price to buy grain, none of these grain merchants were willing to sell grain to us on a large scale. ”

"There are tens of thousands of people in Tianjin who are doing things for me, and there are more than 30,000 people in the capital, Xishan Coal Industry and Glass Factory who are working for me.

"What a ploy!"

Zhu Houzhao couldn't help but be dormant by the other party's calculations, almost interlocking.

"First all the grain merchants united to hoard strange houses and raise the price of grain, and then they colluded with the officials of the official warehouse to hold the last grain into their own hands, and after completing this step, their purpose was soon revealed."

"On the one hand, there will definitely be people in the court who want your father to use your internal money to buy grain for disaster relief, because now the treasury is about to starve to death of mice, only my father's internal money is now very abundant, there were originally one million taels of silver, and my glass factory handed over one million taels of silver, plus the income from this period of time, they must have calculated it and sheared the wool clean at one time."

"Then this is far from enough, they will definitely focus on the business of my glass factory, and when the time comes, there will inevitably be people who say that I, the prince, are competing with the people for profit, and attacking me for participating in the glass factory and many industries in Tianjin, and then the ministers above the court will inevitably respond positively."

"In the end, most of them proposed that the glass factory and many industries in Tianjin should be nationalized and put into the state treasury management, once that time comes, the glass and mirror manufacturing technology will definitely flow out immediately, and finally the glass factory will become worthless, and they will successfully transfer the golden egg-laying hen to their own hands."

Zhu Houzhao peeled off the cocoon, and the head of the analysis was the Tao, telling a big conspiracy against the current prince and the royal family.

Hearing Zhu Houzhao's words, the faces of Emperor Hongzhi and Empress Zhang suddenly became extremely ugly, this finally mastered a little bit of making money for their own family, but they didn't expect to be targeted immediately, and then the famine went to their side, and they didn't look at the emperor and imperial power at all.

"It's really a good plan, not to mention sucking up the money we have saved so hard, and we want to get rid of the hen that lays golden eggs in our hands."

"But that's not what they're trying to do."

Zhu Houzhao gave a thumbs up to the opponent this time while analyzing, and at the same time, the whole person became excited, this feeling of seeing through all the enemy's schemes is really good.

"And what is their ultimate goal?"

When Emperor Hongzhi heard this, he also hurriedly asked.

"Their ultimate purpose is to control the imperial power, to control me and you, my father."

Zhu Houzhao said coldly, after analyzing this, everything has been figured out.

"Control you and me?"

"Control the imperial power?"

When Emperor Hongzhi heard this, he was immediately full of doubts, although he was highly rated in history and was a rare saint, but he was too good to Wenchen, and believed in Wenchen too much, simply put, he was actually a good person, really if he wanted to say smart, playing with power and scheming, etc., he was far inferior to Zhu Houzhao, not to mention Zhu Houxi behind.

"Liu Jin said very well, the reason why the superior is the superior is because he has information in his hands that others do not grasp, and he has mastered resources that others do not grasp."

"Since the change of Tumubao, the power of Wenchen has become greater and greater, in the past, the military power was directly controlled by our royal family, but now the transfer of troops needs to go through the military department."

"The other is the right to appoint and dismiss officials, although our royal family has the right to appoint and dismiss the most important personnel, but the recommendation power of all six important members and feudal officials is still in the cabinet, in the hands of civil officials, in the final analysis, it is still in the hands of civilian officials."

"In addition, this financial power is also under the control of the Ministry of Households, but the treasury has always been very empty, which means that our royal family has lost financial control."

"Now the glass factory under my command and your Xishan Coal Industry are very profitable, especially this glass factory, which is very profitable, and the money earned by this glass factory and Xishan Coal Industry is not counted in the national treasury, but belongs to our internal and dead warehouse."

"This also means that this money is not under their control, and they have no way to financially restrict our royal family and limit our imperial power."

"And as long as we have money, what we want to do, it's hard for them to control us, it's hard to control us like they used to."

"Therefore the court must be poor, the treasury must be empty, and our royal treasury must not have too much silver, because only in this way, when we want to do something, a single empty treasury is enough to dispel any of our thoughts, so as to maintain the previous situation, which has always been under their control."

Listening to Zhu Houzhao's analysis, Emperor Hongzhi looked at Zhu Houzhao like a demon, and he couldn't believe that he could think so far and so deep from these things now, that he even doubted whether the whole person in front of him was his son, the Zhu Houzhao who could only pretend to be sick and skip class, be willful, and playful.

But listening to Zhu Houzhao's analysis layer by layer, his whole face became extremely gloomy.