For instigating his nephew how to use his power to collect money in Myanmar, Su Yue will not have any guilt in his heart. He climbed from a merchant to his current position, not only because he was able to settle the kings of the lands of the South Seas, but also because he was able to provide a large amount of money to the Ministry of Internal Affairs every year, which was also very important.

Although since Chongzhen ascended the throne, the original 24 eunuchs of the inner court have been vigorously rectified, and the taxes and mining taxes directly managed by many eunuchs in various places have been cleaned up and reduced. But Chongzhen didn't do these things to respond to the call of the local gentry, but to be a wise king in the eyes of the gentry.

It's that he thinks that the eunuchs released in the palace are uneven, and some of them have caused public resentment in the local area, but the silver handed over to the palace is only a few thousand or tens of thousands of taels. These eunuchs have almost ruined the reputation of the emperor, but they only fatten their own pockets, and the cost of such a way of accumulating wealth is too high.

Therefore, after learning a little about the ways in which eunuchs everywhere looted money, Chongzhen simply stopped this inefficient and corrupt method of direct taxation. Later, there were a series of commercial companies jointly established with merchants, such as the Sihai Trading Company and the Tangshan Iron Smelting Center, and the emperor made these merchants replace the eunuchs who used to collect taxes in various places by giving them privileges and investing in trade, so as to amass wealth for the palace.

The emperor used the merchant as a buffer, which greatly reduced the discontent of the people, and was able to realize a large amount of resources through the merchant, thus expanding the scope of wealth looting. This amassed a huge amount of wealth for the palace, but it didn't have to bear too much public resentment.

Moreover, after Chongzhen obtained these huge wealth, he began to continuously invest in public medical construction, public education and disaster relief operations, which greatly restored the lost image of the royal family during the Apocalypse, and also made the palace's investment in commercial activities supported by some people.

In this process, the reorganized Internal Affairs Office finally understood how to earn pocket money for His Majesty the Emperor efficiently and with low investment. In particular, when the Ming Dynasty's overseas trade began to flourish and exchanges with European colonists began to increase, the Ministry of Internal Affairs finally learned the wrong lessons of the tax supervisors during the Apocalypse and learned from the experience of Europeans in looting wealth in the colonies, and cultivated agents like Su and Yue overseas.

These agents earn money for the Ministry of Internal Affairs in exchange for their protection or for a higher social status. In Nanyang, there are not a thousand but hundreds of agents of the internal affairs government like Su Yue, and with the expansion of the Ming Dynasty's power, the number of agents is also rising. Even a leader like Su Yue has already begun to cultivate his own agents.

In this way, in the past, when the country conquered overseas barbarians, the first thing it pursued was the complete political submission of the other party, so as to try to digest the barbarian land and population into a part of China. Today, however, most of these representatives of the Ming Dynasty put economic interests above political goals, and as long as it is profitable, they do not mind whether these overseas princely states remain independent or not.

As a result, the war against the overseas princely states was becoming increasingly small and fragmented, and the power to wage war was being transferred from the imperial court to the colonial officials and certain merchants. Of course, the cost of such a colonial war was also transferred from the heads of the domestic population to the heads of the colonial people, and such wars became more and more like risky investments by merchants.

The change in the Ming Dynasty's attitude towards colonial warfare was in fact increasingly stimulating adventurers like Su Yue who went overseas in pursuit of wealth, making them see the conquest of a colony as the beginning of their careers.

Of course, compared to the Western colonizers who were all over the world at this time, these Chinese adventurers could only be regarded as young eagles that had just left their nests. They still have some timidity in their hearts, and they don't dare to leave the country too far and go to the unknown and reckless land alone to open up their own careers.

For example, in the large conference room on the first floor of the governor's residence at this time, waiting for Su Yue's arrival were British, Dutch, Portuguese, and even Frenchmen from Europe. Wang Jiayin, who was sitting at the end of the large conference room, lazily listened to Su Yue read out the Burma peace agreement approved by the Beijing imperial court, while observing the expressions of everyone in the conference room.

As the governor's official residence, which was built at about the same time as the new city of Yangon, the two-story brick and wood building under the crowd seat is the heart of the entire residence, and it is also the highest point in the northern highlands of Yangon, so it is very well lit and ventilated.

In the midst of overseas expansion, the Ming Dynasty, faced with the rapid growth of overseas colonies, began to abandon the cumbersome architectural decoration and all-wood structure in China, and instead pursued simple and smooth lines and paid attention to the characteristics of architectural functionality. Even the architects took into account the function of colonial architecture as a fortress in times of war, and also absorbed some characteristics of European colonial architecture.

For example, in the two-story building where Wang Jiayin lives, the first floor is a spacious conference room with tall and well-lit lighting, and symmetrical floor-to-ceiling glass windows are opened on the brick walls on the east and west sides of the house, so that the people in the room can have a good view and observe the external environment at any time.

On the second floor of the building, it was divided into small rooms, which served as the governor's office and rest place in peacetime, and the army could hide in the small rooms on the second floor during wartime, and condescendingly controlled the surrounding environment with muskets, turning this place into a temporary fortress.

In addition to the whitewashed walls and plaster ceiling, the most impressive feature of the interior of the large conference room is a huge oil painting hanging on the gable on the north side. This half-human-tall giant oil painting is naturally painted by Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty, but the shape of the emperor in this portrait is not as rigid as the previous Chinese portraiture, but draws on the most popular imperial portrait painting practice in Europe at this time, placing the emperor in a scene to write.

Although Chongzhen in this painting sits on the dragon chair in the palace wearing the most solemn crown, he is not sitting in a precarious posture, but reclining on the dragon chair, leaning slightly to the right.

In his left hand, he holds an unsheathed saber that stands upright on the ground and occupies the center of the picture. His right hand was pointing to a large globe, and his eyes were staring at a place on the globe through the five jade beads at the front of the crown.

This Western-style painting method vividly expresses Chongzhen's whole person. When people first see it, they can't help but think that this is a real person sitting there. In fact, if one looks closer, one will find that there are many intriguing details in this painting.

For example, the saber that the emperor holds in his left hand is not a ceremonial sword, but a simple battlefield saber, and there are still several gaps in the scabbard of the saber, which seems to announce that the emperor has personally experienced the war. Underneath the sword, it was not an ordinary ground, but a half-rolled map, revealing the eastern part of the Asian continent and most of North and South America, and the point of the sword was where the Ottoman Empire was located.

When Wang Jiayin saw this portrait of Emperor Chongzhen at the age of 30 for the first time, he felt extremely unnatural in his heart. Of course, he was not alone, and when the European painters hired by the court completed the conception of the painting, many civil officials in the court also had the same awkward feeling as him.

This is not because the painting looks like it is not the emperor's poise, but because the emperor shows an aggressive attitude in this painting, which makes some people feel uncomfortable.

Of course, the discomfort of these people did not stop others who wanted to curry favor with the emperor. For example, after Feng Quan knew that the emperor was extremely satisfied with his portrait, he couldn't wait to spend money to have someone copy it, and then sent it to the yamen of the colonies under the jurisdiction of the prime minister's yamen, so that overseas subjects could always admire the majesty of the great emperor, so as to work harder for His Majesty the emperor.

For example, Wang Jiayin knows that even the righteous brothers around him who used to talk about corrupt officials have stopped mentioning such words over the years. Even after seeing the portrait of the emperor, some people deliberately brought their children and nephews to pay homage to His Majesty the emperor's jade face, and they did not dare to be disrespectful in their words.

So much so that now Wang Jiayin wants to find someone to talk about the rebel brothers in the past, such as those who stayed in Shaanxi to rebel with King Gao Yingxiang, but were cut off by the official army, and none of his subordinates are willing to echo him. Even the generals who were close to him like the king himself advised him, "... In the past, although we were brothers, but now we are the official army, they are the bandit leaders who were cut off by the official army, and then the name of the thief is on the lips, it will inevitably arouse the suspicion of the court, it is better to forget about those things. ”

Wang Jiayin was also speechless after hearing this, the brothers who could be entrusted with life and death in the past are now regarded as thieves by them. In the past, these brothers had always sided with the rebels, believing that the uprisings of the displaced people were the result of the unscrupulous actions of the imperial court, but now everyone began to agree with the imperial court's view that the popular uprisings in some places were the evil deeds of a small group of careerists inciting innocent people.

Wang Jiayin actually understands in his heart that the reason why these cronies and brothers have undergone such a big change in their thinking is because they have become the landlords and corrupt officials they hated the most in the past. Although the imperial court sent them to Taiwan, they were not stingy in rewarding them with land and wealth, which were also overseas anyway.

In order to keep the land and wealth they plundered from the Yi people, the peasant rebels, who once hated corrupt officials the most, have now become the most loyal minions of the imperial court overseas, suppressing the rebellion of the Yi people everywhere overseas for the imperial court.

In fact, don't say that Wang Jiayin's cronies and subordinates have abandoned their former identities, and Wang Jiayin's relatives who migrated from his hometown to Taiwan are not the same.

His sons and nephews, every time they met with him, had to say some words of loyalty to the country, and they gritted their teeth at the civilians and overseas people who disturbed social order, saying that they should be treated with the toughest treatment, and the methods used by the imperial court were still too weak.

Every time she heard such words, Wang Jiayin felt a shudder in her heart. He always felt that things should not be like this, he led the people of Shanxi to rebel back then, although he hid a little selfishness, but he did think that the world was too difficult, and the people could not survive, so rebellion was a matter of course. But he never imagined that his family would become like this.

However, no matter how much Wang Jiayin thinks about it in his heart, he can't toss as much as he did when he was young, and he has just turned fifty and is no longer able to change the world he can't get used to. And for the sake of his family and subordinates, he can only go with the flow and go forward, and he can no longer look back at where he came from.

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