"Emperor Qiqi, I didn't find any trace of King Fu!" Jin Yiwei commanded Peng Cheng to walk into the imperial study to report.

"Keep looking, no matter what it takes." Zhu Cihong's face was a little gloomy and said.

"Yes!" Peng Cheng was about to withdraw after receiving the order.

"Wait!" Zhu Cihong suddenly stopped Peng Cheng again.

Peng Cheng immediately turned around and came back, standing there respectfully, waiting for Zhu Cihong's orders.

Zhu Cihong's fingers lightly tapped the dragon's head on the dragon chair.

Before Ying Longjun went to Yangzhou and Suzhou to purge the salt administration, Zhu Cihong had already sent Jinyi Wei secret agents to spy on intelligence in the two places for two months, and some Jinyi Wei secret agents accidentally discovered that King Fu appeared in Suzhou, and had contacts with the three major families and the governor of Suzhou. This was confirmed in the interrogation of the three major families of Suzhou and the governor of Suzhou a few days ago, and not only that, but it was also learned that each of the three major families had given King Fu 150,000 taels of silver.

Zhu Cihong realized at that time that King Fu might have the intention of rebellion, it seems that he took the Empress Dowager Zhou to the south to ascend the throne safely, and King Fu was not reconciled, and must have been waiting for an opportunity to regain the throne.

In order to collect evidence that King Fu wanted to rebel, Zhu Cihong ordered Jinyiwei to send secret agents to secretly track and monitor King Fu's every move.

The Fuwang family was established by the old Fuwang Zhu Changxun, the son of Zheng Guifei, the favorite concubine of the Wanli Emperor, because of the willingness of Wanli to mess around, the Fuwang family has been rich in Luoyang since the beginning of Luoyang, and there are 50,000 hectares of land under the name alone, which is the most of the vassal kings of all dynasties.

It is rumored that when Li Zicheng broke through Luoyang, the forces secretly established by the old Fu King had the ability to take him out of Luoyang along with the current Fu Wang, but the old Fu Wang was too fat back then, and his body of more than 300 catties greatly restricted his movements, and also greatly limited the escape speed of the entire Fu Wang family, and no matter how he escaped, he couldn't escape the pursuit of Li Zicheng's pursuers.

Perhaps Lao Fu Wang was too tired at that time, and he knew that he was dragging himself down like this, and the whole family was going to die with him, so he gave up himself very decisively, and only let the dead man escape with his son Fu Wang and his family, so Lao Fu Wang was captured by Li Zicheng.

Just imagine, if the old King Fu was not so fat and successfully escaped from Luoyang, there would be no pot of Fulu soup that Li Zicheng cooked in Luoyang in history that shocked the world.

To get back to the point, all in all, the secret power and wealth of the Fuwang family should not be underestimated, among which the Fuwang Zhu Yousong can rely on these capitals to give him the confidence, has been secretly waiting for an opportunity that will allow him to regain the throne of the Ming Dynasty and ascend to the coveted throne.

"Since Zhu Yousong's fat pig is unwilling and has been secretly plotting against me, trying to seize my throne, then I will fulfill him, Peng Cheng, I ordered you not to take him back to Nanjing after you find King Fu, and directly kill him outside!" Zhu Cihong's eyes narrowed slightly, revealing his murderous intentions.

Originally, if King Fu lived in one place, even if Zhu Cihong wanted to kill King Fu, he would really not be able to do it without evidence that could definitely prove King Fu's rebellion, but now it is different, King Fu is secretly hiding, which just gives him an excellent opportunity.

"Yes!" The commander of the Jinyi guard made Peng Cheng's body shake slightly, and he retreated.

The imperial study was quiet again, and Zhu Cihong continued to deal with the follow-up of the private salt case.

Because too many people were involved in this smuggling salt case, 40,000 Ying Long troops and thousands of Jinyi guards swept across the coast, arresting more than 40,000 people, and the cells in various places could not be filled.

The next step was to reassign people to take over the positions that had been vacated by the Great Purge.

Including the officials of the two major salt administration departments, the imperial court had to send more than 240 officials to take over.

This is a headache, Zhu Cihong has been on the throne for more than a year, although he has already made a holy decree to open a science and take scholars, but this kind of thing can not be done all at once, and students from all over the country also have time to come to the capital to take the entrance examination, and it will take about next spring to officially start the examination.

After discussing with the cabinet, it was almost the method of demolishing the east wall to make up for the west wall, and the officials were busy for nearly 10 days before drawing up the list of appointments, and the matter was barely resolved.

After the re-dispatch of the salt transport envoys, Zhu Cihong immediately issued an order to reform the existing salt administration, abolishing the original salt introduction system, replacing it with directly collecting taxes at the time of production, and strengthening supervision, making it as transparent as possible, and trying to record the output of every catty of salt.

At the same time, in order to reduce the price of salt without losing the taxes paid by the imperial court, Zhu Cihong directly worked on the cost of salt production, replaced the traditional boiled salt with the method of large-scale development of salt pans for drying salt, and wrote down the process from how to open up salt pans to how to divert sea water to dry sea salt according to what he knew from memory, and let the two major salt ministers start experiments.

Although it is said that once the boiled salt is replaced by large-scale salt, it will inevitably damage the interests of many people who make a living by boiling salt along the coast, but for the interests of more people in the entire Ming Dynasty, Zhu Cihong can only make such a choice, but it is not without a solution, Zhu Cihong cleaned the salt administration this time, investigated and dealt with more than 2,000 large and small merchants Haoqiang, etc., in addition to the money, but also confiscated a total of nearly 100,000 hectares of fertile land, when the time officially canceled the boiling salt, all salt households were given some fields to cultivate.

After cleaning the salt administration, he obtained more than 142 million taels of dirty silver, and now that the Ming treasury is abundant, Zhu Cihong is full of confidence and is ready to start putting the next step of reform on the agenda.

The next step will be to cancel the privileges of all the noble clans, and to them as if they were ordinary people, and to collect taxes from them, so that the Ming Dynasty will have nearly 25 million taels of additional taxes every year, and Zhu Cihong will never let it go.

Moreover, this is not only about the treasury revenue, but also about the fortune of the Ming Dynasty, why do you say that, as we all know, the fall of each dynasty in Chinese history, in addition to the later officials, the main reason is that each generation of dynasties will inevitably produce serious land annexation in the later period, especially concentrated in the hands of those clan gentry who have the privilege of not paying taxes, so that the ordinary people who own land are less, and the court can receive less taxes. The imperial court could not collect taxes and could not support the operation of the imperial court, so it could only continue to raise taxes, which was a vicious circle, and it was a vicious circle that became more and more serious over time.

Zhumen's wine and meat stinky road has frozen bones, landlords and powerful people are annexing land all the time, the land in the world is limited, more and more people gather in the hands of those who have privileges and do not need to pay taxes, the land to pay taxes is getting less and less, the imperial court in order to maintain the operation of the ordinary people who own the land continue to raise taxes, ordinary people not only have to always be on guard against the annexation of their land by the privileged class, but also face the persecution of the imperial court every year.

Whenever ordinary people lose their land, in order to survive, they can only rent the land of the landlords and the powerful, and the land tax rate of the landlords and the powerful is extremely high, almost all of them are two taxes and one, or even three taxes and two, four taxes and three.

If the disaster year is only one year, ordinary people can barely survive after selling their sons and daughters, but once they encounter several disaster years in a row, it will force those ordinary people who have no land to a dead end, and as long as someone takes the lead in uncovering the pole, it will be the world's prairie fire, and the peasant uprising at the end of the dynasties is nothing more than that, and it is no more than the same during the Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty.

What Zhu Cihong wants to do is to abolish the privileges of those clan nobles and powerful landlords, cut off their great convenience for land annexation, and when the time comes, strictly limit the tax rate of land leasing and relax the restrictions on commerce and trade, so that land is no longer the only way for the nobles to make profits, and then they can break their motivation for land annexation at the root in one fell swoop.

There is no doubt that Zhu Cihong's move is definitely the most daring and unprecedented of the previous dynasties, whether it is the Tang Dynasty and the Song Ancestors or the Taizu of this dynasty, the cattle people have never dared to do this, because the influence is too great, and the establishment of the dynasties of the past dynasties is indispensable for the participation of those scholars and heroes, not only because of their merit, but also because their combined power is too great, so big that they will shake the country at any time, and they will even lose the country if they don't do it well.

However, although this is difficult, Zhu Cihong does not dare to say that his wisdom is comparable to that of Tang Zong and Song Zu and Taizu of this dynasty, but he also has his own support.

The Firearms Bureau has made some progress in the research and development of new gunpowder and primers, and the important core antirecoil device of recoilless artillery has reached the last moment, and a breakthrough can be made recently.

Once the recoilless cannon is developed, the Firearms Bureau will be able to mass-produce lightweight field artillery, and the combat effectiveness of the Ying Long Army will instantly increase several times.

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