After the strategy of competing for hegemony in the ocean was determined, the Ming Dynasty led the development of foreign trade by the imperial court on the one hand, and vigorously expanded its naval power on the other, and a tense atmosphere permeated the entire coast. However, the successive achievements did not make Zhu Youxiao dizzy, he knew very well that he was only using the knowledge he had to fight the enemy for a time gap, and if he wanted to truly realize national rejuvenation, it would take a lot of tempering.

For example, in this western expedition, on the surface, the Ming army fought a devastating victory, but in fact, there was a hidden crisis. If Qiuluo could work together with King Zanshan and Zhuang Lang Tusi in Qinghai at that time to attract the Ming Dynasty army to penetrate into the Tarim Basin, and then ambush Zuo Guangdou and Xiong Tingbi's baggage troops from behind, then the Ming army would be wiped out, and subject to the influence of weather and terrain, logistics supply would be very difficult, which also made Zhu Youxiao clearly aware of the difficulties of the expedition.

At present, although the Tumut tribe in Qinghai and the Turpan Khanate in southern Xinjiang have surrendered, and the imperial court has also set up local officials, the specific affairs still depend on the chiefs of various tribes, and the situation of local autonomy has not been fundamentally changed. These tribes have always rejected the spread of the Central Plains civilization and resisted the various decrees of the imperial court, which made Zhu Youxiao very annoyed. He wanted to follow the example of Liaodong and immigrate to the border in large numbers to assimilate the nomads through forced intermarriage and education, but the Western Regions were too remote and the battle line was too long and easy to be harassed by the barbarians. In addition, in the past few years, the implementation of a whip law and the spread of land into acres in the hinterland, the common people have begun to pioneer on a large scale, and the rash migration of the population at this time will inevitably intensify social contradictions.

In order to solve this problem, Zhu Youxiao decided to make an exception to hold a court discussion in the early dynasty and brainstorm to discuss specific methods.

"Your Majesty's martial arts and martial arts, creating an unprecedented event in the history of the Han family, is enough to be called an emperor through the ages. The ministers invited His Majesty to Mount Tai to seal the Zen, pay tribute to the heavens and the earth and the ancestors, and write a book to say that future generations will pay respect. ”

Zhu Youxiao almost got goosebumps after listening to it, and thought that it was really good for literati to mislead the country, no wonder Emperor Chongzhen could play a good hand of cards very badly, it is estimated that he has heard too much of this kind of. But from another aspect, it also shows that what he did has won the support of everyone, so he said:

"My virtue is shallow, and I really don't dare to make mistakes. In the past few years, whether it is the use of troops abroad or internal reform, it is all thanks to the lives of the three armed forces and the support of the subjects. At present, Qinghai and Turpan have been attached to the imperial court, plus Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning in the northeast, and Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia outside the border, there are two capitals and twenty provinces in the country, and there are also a large number of shortages after the southwest has been changed to land and returned to the stream. ”

This matter involves the Ministry of Officials, and Han Xi, the first assistant of the cabinet, also holds the important position of the secretary of the Ministry of Officials, so he naturally replied immediately:

"Holy Lord, last year the national census was carried out, and there were more than 16 million households registered, with a population of more than 84 million. In order to stabilize eastern and southwestern Liaoning, the household department successively migrated more than 400,000 households from Shandong, Henan, and Beizhili. After the establishment of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, more than 60,000 households were transferred from Nanzhili, Zhejiang, and Anhui, which has reached the limit. At this time, all the state capitals are fully implementing the new policy, and the enthusiasm of the people to reclaim the land is very high. ”

Before the census last year, the population was more than 55 million, but after a year's inventory, it suddenly increased by nearly 30 million. According to historical records, the population of the Ming Dynasty at this time was almost 170 million, or even close to 200 million, but the vassal kings and landlords concealed a large number of tenant farmers in order to evade taxes. After the imperial court implemented a whip law and spread the land into the mu, this situation of concealing the population was alleviated to a certain extent, but this matter implicated the interests of this scholar class, and if he didn't do it, he would be killed like Wang Mang, so Zhu Youxiao didn't dare to solve this problem immediately, so he asked casually:

"In my early years, I heard from Shenzong that the population of the whole country had exceeded 80 million in the forty-fifth year of Wanli. Now, six years later, and the population has only grown by more than four million, it seems that I am not only not the first emperor of the ages as you call me, but also an incompetent faint king! ”

This is to use the compliment of the ministers to laugh at themselves, and to mock the household and the officials to conceal the truth, these old foxes naturally understand, but this is a common phenomenon, and there are royal families to take the lead, and no one is willing to spit out this piece of fat. Han Xi's old face was flushed, except for kowtowing and asking for guilt and not daring to talk, the other ministers also fell to the ground one after another when they saw this, and the atmosphere in the Imperial Palace was extremely serious for a while.

It should be explained that the scholars of the court are very backbone, sometimes they don't care about the black gauze hat for the sake of reputation, and they dare to fight wits and courage with the emperor when they meet some stubborn donkeys, which is very iron-headed. Except for the ruthless Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di, no one else has a good way to deal with it. Zhu Zhanji is cultivating eunuchs, Jiajing is alchemizing and cultivating immortals, Wanli is not going to court, and he is a carpenter when he arrives at the Apocalypse. Chongzhen wanted to do something, but he was killed by the Donglin Party and finally hanged in the coal mountain, which shows that the emperor can take turns, but no one can move the interests of the bureaucracy.

Thinking of this deep meaning, Zhu Youxiao did not continue to ask, but sighed earnestly:

"The minister reads the history of the rise and fall of the past dynasties, and finds that the trend of the world must be divided for a long time, and it must be divided for a long time. The reasons for the demise of the great unified dynasties varied, but at the end of the dynasty there were land annexations and population declines. When the peasants lose their land, they become displaced people, and in times of disaster, they will rise up in order to survive, and this has even become a kind of dead circle, and no dynasty can solve this problem. In the second year of the Apocalypse, the Wenxiangjiao uprising broke out in Shandong, which was the first real peasant uprising after the founding of the country. ”

The people trembled when they heard the word "ruined country", but they quickly regained their calm, thinking that the uprising of the Xiangxiang Sect was due to the shouting and locust plague in Shandong for many years, and the land was barren and there was no harvest, which made the cult followers take the opportunity to bewitch the victims to cause chaos, which was by no means a common phenomenon. Besides, the surname of the Ming Dynasty is Zhu, and if you want to be unlucky, the old Zhu family is in front, and if you want us to take out the land and population, let's start with the vassal kings in various places!

At this time, the hall was silent, and the monarchs and ministers were thinking about their own interests, and the scene was very embarrassing for a while. Fortunately, Zhu Youxiao is used to hiring extras, and Fan Jingwen, as the emperor, took the opportunity to say:

"The saint is old enough to seek the country, and it is definitely not for the ministers to figure it out. Now that the barbarians have surrendered, the life of the sea is a great opportunity to implement the new policy, why should the saint worry about the sky. ”

Zhu Youxiao saw that he calmly came to an opening remark, and pulled himself in to make a cushion, like a dumb person eating coptis, he couldn't tell one from the other, and on the surface, he had to pretend to be humbly taught, signaling him to continue, but in his heart he secretly scolded these old foxes one by one.

Fan Jingwen was also aggrieved, thinking that you asked me to come out to push my family into the fire pit, after all, officialdom pays attention to harmony and light, who wants to offend people publicly. Fortunately, he has already dragged the little emperor into the water and made his position clear, and then he began to talk eloquently, from Emperor Taizu's division of the vassal king to the abolition of the prime minister and the establishment of a cabinet, and then to Zhang Juzheng's implementation of reforms, in fact, he is discussing the contradictory relationship between the monarch, the subjects, and the people. Although the imperial court has made up for the deficit through the development of commerce and trade, the land annexation is becoming more and more serious, and it will not be long before the newly cultivated land will fall into the hands of the landlords, and the people will really rebel at that time.

After some debate, the court has formed two diametrically opposed factions. Fan Jingwen, Sun Chengzong, Xiong Tingbi and others advocated recounting the population, measuring land, and accounting for taxes. Han Yi, Zhu Kuiyuan, Yang Lian and others advocated taking advantage of the situation and making progress step by step. The two sides each sent imperial historians and officials to debate in court, and there was a great tendency to be incompatible. Zhu Youxiao leaned on the dragon chair and watched their performance, thinking that this was a conflict of interest between the emerging nobles and the traditional scholars, and there was no need for him to come in too early. This is an opportunity to start with the road construction plan, and as long as the traffic is smooth, all problems will be solved.

Although the imperial court has been building galloping roads and post stations in recent years, it has not formed a unified decision-making, and it is limited to the eastern region and a few strategic points, and the official roads in the central and western regions are still very simple and narrow, especially when encountering mountains and rivers, which are more closed, and many places can only rely on the shoulders to carry people.

In order to solve this problem, one is to find new building materials such as steel and cement, the second is to plan the road network in a unified manner, and the third is to raise funds. In terms of materials, with the influx of Western experts and the efforts of local craftsmen, the development of smelting technology in the Ming Dynasty was greatly accelerated, and raw steel for laying large keels was also developed. As for the unified road network, Zhu Youxiao's initial plan was for the central government to pay for the construction of five vertical and four horizontal main roads, and to raise private capital to build local roads, and then to repay the loans by collecting road maintenance fees.

The five vertical and four horizontal are as follows:

North-South Line 1: from Jingshi to Vladivostok, passing through Shanhaiguan, Ningyuan, Jinzhou, Shenyang and Tonghua.

North-South Line 2: from Beijing to Shanghai, passing through Tianjin, Cangzhou, Jinan, Xuzhou and Nanjing.

North-South Line 3: from Beijing to Guangzhou, passing through Baoding, Kaifeng, Wuchang, Nanchang and Changsha.

North-South Line 4: from Xi'an to Anzhou Mansion in Yunnan, passing through Chengdu, Kunming and Langjiang.

North-South Line 5: from Jinzhou, Liaoning to Mohe, passing through Yingkou, Liaoyang, Shenyang, Tieling, Fushun.

East-West Line 1: From Beijing to Lanzhou, passing through Guihua, Baotou and Ningxia Town.

East-West Line 2: from Xuzhou to Lanzhou, passing through Kaifeng and Xi'an.

East-West Line 3: from Shanghai to Chengdu, passing through Ningbo, Nanjing and Wuchang.

East-West Line 4: From Shanghai to Anzhoufu, passing through Ningbo, Hangzhou, Jianning, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Qingyuan.

These five vertical and four horizontal lines with a total of nine lines can connect the main towns of the Ming Dynasty together, facilitate transportation in various places, and can effectively prevent local separation, but limited by the productivity at that time, it will take at least 30 years to complete this huge construction, and a lot of financial, material and human resources will be invested. However, once it is put into use, the benefits brought to future generations are permanent, so Zhu Youxiao decided to upgrade the five vertical and four horizontal to the national strategic level, and decided to fight for it all his life.

All that remains is to find start-up capital, which is the biggest headache for Zhu Youxiao. The imperial court's annual revenue has been fully invested in the military, science and technology, education, and other fields, and on the one hand, it has to increase the East China Sea Fleet and the South China Sea Fleet, and on the other hand, it has to develop firearms, build academies, and arsenals. In this way, it is necessary to transfer the internal bank, but now that the internal affairs office is managed by the queen, it will take a lot of trouble.

During dinner, Zhu Youxiao specially arranged to be alone with Zhang Yan, with high-burning silver candles indoors, and fragrant red sleeves of beautiful women, and the atmosphere was particularly romantic. Zhu Youxiao is like a male dog in estrus, telling meat jokes one after another, and teasing from time to time. Zhang Yan is already smart in ice and snow, coupled with her experience in the palace, she is also a person who can gain insight into clues, and seeing her husband so attentive, she naturally knows that he has something to ask for. At first, I thought that Zhu Youxiao wanted to choose a concubine, but slowly found out that he was asking for money, and suddenly pouted and pretended to be angry.

Seeing this, Zhu Youxiao held her jade arm with one hand, held the beauty's cheek with the other, and said affectionately:

"I am willing to follow the example of Emperor Tang Ming, and ride the red dust for the concubine to laugh, but the road is far away, and the mountains and rivers are blocked, I am afraid that the concubine wants to eat fresh lychees, and I can't do anything."

Seeing that what he said was true, Zhang Yan mistakenly thought that Zhu Youxiao wanted to follow the example of Emperor Tang Ming to spoil Yang Yuhuan, and asked innocently:

"Does Zhu Lang want to eat Lingnan lychees?"

At this time, the beauty's pink neck hung low, revealing two sexy collarbones, looking down at the melting crisp looming, the jade skin inside was better than snow, exuding a woman's unique fragrance, Zhu Youxiao said with a wicked smile when he saw this:

"I really want to!"

Seeing that he was visiting his chest with bad intentions, Zhang Yan hurriedly put away his hands and tidied up his clothes, and said angrily:

"Zhu Lang is so frivolous, it is not a gentleman's doing."

Zhu Youxiao was not annoyed, stood up and walked under the window, pushed open a door and leaned over the windowsill. A bright moon happened to hang above his head, reflecting the melancholy on Zhu Youxiao's face. Zhang Yan is still a little girl after all, she knew Zhu Youxiao's tricks, and hurriedly stepped forward to comfort them, and the two of them stopped talking, intertwining their arms.

Zhu Youxiao took the opportunity to say:

"The ministers of the previous dynasty discussed the construction of five vertical and four horizontal national highways in the territory of our dynasty, saying that after the transportation is convenient, the goods and specialties from all over the country can be transported in time, which is conducive to the development of trade and increases the tax revenue of the imperial court. But now the silver is used in the southeast sea frontier, and I am also a good woman who can hardly cook without rice. ”

Zhang Yan snuggled in her husband's arms, already soft, and when she heard that Zhu Youxiao was knocking on the side and asking for money, she immediately pushed Zhu Youxiao's hands away, and said with a wicked smile:

"Building roads is a matter for the imperial court, and Taizu is not allowed to interfere in politics in the harem, and the little woman is powerless."

Seeing that the plan was discovered, Zhu Youxiao unwillingly hugged the beauty's waist and continued:

"The road is smooth, and then I can take my concubine to visit the famous mountains and rivers and be a fairy couple."

Unexpectedly, Zhang Yan was no longer in the oil and salt, and the lotus step moved out of the hall lightly, leaving only a string of silver bell-like laughter. Wang An and the others had long known that the emperor was afraid of guilt, and they didn't think it was strange, so they stood aside and watched the excitement with a smile.