Zhu Houzhao could not but carry out reforms, so that the entire Chinese civilization would not lag behind the West.

The reformist civil officials could not but reform with Zhu Houzhao, perhaps for the sake of their own family capital interests, or perhaps for the sake of the heart of the world for the public, and the ideal of peace for all generations.

Because of this, in the six years of Zhengde, the reform was still in progress, and it entered a period of deep water, which hit the interests of the powerful gentry group even harder.

Naturally, the powerful gentry will not tolerate the loss of their own interests all the time, they will try their best to smuggle, they will also try their best to evade taxes, and even still try to get rid of the emperor and reformist officials, and secretly support some vassal kings who want to seize the world.

A letter from Zhu Chenhao, the king of Ning, to expand the number of guards appeared in front of Zhu Houzhao's court in the summer of the sixth year of Zhengde, and since Yongle reduced the amount of the vassal king's guards so that the vassal king did not have strong military strength to fight against the central court, the central court has always been secretive about the vassal king's request to expand the guard, and even severely reprimanded.

However, this time, after Zhu Chenhao, the king of Ning, sent the song to Beijing to ask for the expansion of the guards, many civil officials chose to remain silent, and there were even officials Xie Ne who believed that the expansion of the guards of King Ning could strengthen the control of the Ming Dynasty over Jiangyou and avoid another large-scale civil uprising, and it was out of control.

Except for a few cabinet ministers and a few scholars and servants who raised objections, most of the civil servants did not have a single word of opposition to the proposal of the provincial official Xie Ne.

Zhu Houzhao knew that these civil officials were unwilling to obstruct King Ning's request to expand the guards, and he also knew that they were also trying to give King Ning a chance to rebel, as long as the emperor was willing to let King Ning expand the guards, then King Ning could naturally use this to expand his troops and horses so as to have the possibility of a successful rebellion.

However, Zhu Houzhao did not plan to investigate who accepted the bribes from King Ning, and he himself received the benefits of King Ning.

According to the eunuch Wei Bin's report, the business of the Royal Industrial Company was greatly taken care of by King Ning, and many of the products produced by the Royal Industrial Company were ordered by King Ning at a price half times higher than the market price, so that Zhu Houzhao himself had earned more than one million taels of silver from King Ning since the second year of Zhengde.

Moreover, King Ning now orders or auctions goods from the Royal Industrial Company at a high price in the form of commercial activities almost every year, so Zhu Houzhao does not want to attack King Ning now.

Zhu Houzhao also knew that King Ning's money was exploited from the people, and the people's grievances had already boiled in Jiangxi, and even the popular uprising in southern Gan was related to King Ning, but if King Ning was not allowed to rebel, Zhu Houzhao really had no way to get rid of this vassal king.

In order to have a chance to get rid of this vassal king in the future and let the Ming reduce the expenditure on the vassal king, Zhu Houzhao decided to condone King Ning first, and promised to expand King Ning's guards, so that King Ning felt that although he was determined to innovate, he was a greedy emperor, and then bribed himself in various ways.

Therefore, Zhu Houzhao planned to wait until King Ning completely rebelled, and then annihilate King Ning, so that the Ming Dynasty would have one less vassal king in the future, and at the same time, let the central court make a windfall by getting rid of a vassal king.

Of course, in the process of gradually raising King Ning's ambitions, Zhu Houzhao himself and the civil officials in Beijing have begun to reap benefits.

In this way, you can benefit yourself, and the officials can also benefit, and you can also let the civil officials have the idea of overthrowing their own rule without thinking about other ways to fight themselves, why not.

Therefore, under Zhu Houzhao's instruction and intentional connivance, from the emperor to the important ministers, they did not refuse the generous gifts sent by King Ning.

King Ning jumped up with joy after knowing that Zhu Houzhao agreed to expand his guards, he had actually been mentally prepared that Zhu Houzhao would not agree or even reprimand himself, but he didn't expect that Zhu Houzhao would really agree to his request to expand the guards, in King Ning's opinion, this was equivalent to lifting the shackles of expanding his army, so this King Ning excitedly immediately ordered:

"Go and invite Mr. Li to come!"

As a civil official who has been Zhishi, he is extremely dissatisfied with Zhu Houzhao's current ruling measures, but he did not choose to forbear like other powerful gentry, but chose to provoke King Ning to rebel.

It just so happened that King Ning also had this ambition, of course, the fundamental reason was that they were dissatisfied with Zhu Houzhao's way of doing business, and they also thought that the gentry and magnates in the world were definitely dissatisfied with Zhu Houzhao, and thought that it was a good opportunity to seize the world.

Now that Zhu Houzhao agreed to King Ning's expansion of the guard, King Ning thought that his rebellion was more likely to succeed, and as soon as Li Shishi came, he told Li Shishi that Zhu Houzhao agreed to expand his guard, and even said with a trace of contempt for Zhu Houzhao: "As Mr. said, Zhu Houzhao is really greedy for money, and now he often bribes him with heavy money, and he really allowed Gu to expand the guard." ”

"In this way, the prince should continue to offer all kinds of rare treasures and beauties to numb his heart, after all, we can't just expand the guards, we have to immediately purchase iron war horses, and at the same time hoard grain and grass, these all need to be purchased from the imperial court, so that Zhu Houzhao is not vigilant, it can only be so!"

Li Shishi said.

"Lone knows that this Zhu Houzhao always pretends to be a Ming Jun and blows the new deal to confuse the people, but in fact he is just Yang Guangzhi's ears!"

King Ning sneered.

……

Although Zhu Houzhao raised King Ning to enrich himself, he was not unvigilant, and now Jiangnan is also stable, Zhu Houzhao directly promoted Yan Song to the governor of Nanzhili, and Wang Yangming patrolled Jiangxi.

King Ning was not alerted to Zhu Houzhao's transfer, and he was even very happy, because he had heard many times from the literati from Jiangnan that Wang Yangming would accumulate wealth and had always made the gentry hateful, and in his opinion, Wang Yangming's inspection of Jiangxi would naturally make the Jiangxi gentry more oriented to him.

Wang Yangming was very low-key after taking office in Jiangxi, so low-key that the entire court, including King Ning himself, almost forgot about him.

Zhu Houzhao didn't mention Wang Yangming much, and when Jiao Fang, the first assistant of the cabinet, anxiously mentioned that King Ning had to be taken off guard, Zhu Houzhao only smiled faintly and said:

"King Ning doesn't have to worry, I have already set a chess piece for him, with this person, no one in the south can mess with my Daming country!"

It is worth mentioning that at the end of the sixth year of Zhengde, Ma Wensheng died of illness in the Hetao, and although he was alive with nitroglycerin, he still only lived one year longer than the original history.

For Ma Wensheng's departure, Zhu Houzhao is still very sorry, after all, although Ma Wensheng has a soft personality, he is also responsible, and he dares to take the blame for himself, he can be regarded as a minister who takes care of the overall situation, and he is a loyal minister, but now he is not allowed by many civil officials.

For this reason, Zhu Houzhao simply used Ma Wensheng's efforts to recover Hamiwei and Hetao as the reason, and on the basis of sealing Ma Wensheng as Yunyang Bo, he posthumously presented him as the Marquis of Yunyang!