For a scholar leader like Zhang Pu, if he only secretly returned to China to visit relatives and friends, then everyone would turn a blind eye. After all, even if he is an outdated scholar leader, he still has an extremely wide range of social connections, and even the Jinyi Guard, who spies on him, doesn't want to make any trouble for himself.

However, as soon as Zhang Pu returned to China, he ran to the capital and hooked up with the directors of the Sihai Trading Company, so his whereabouts were naturally closely monitored, and his every move was recorded and sent to the emperor in writing, including the conversation between him and the directors of the Sihai Trading Company.

In Chongzhen's view, the purpose of exiling scholars like Zhang Pu was not to punish and torture, but to end the social life that existed in the past. For later generations, most of them know that there should be three deaths, the first is the death of physical life, that is, the end of biological life; the second is the death of social life, that is, the end of the value of a person's existence in society; The third is the death of emotional life, where those you have loved, those who have loved you, erase your existence from their memories.

Exile is to forcibly separate a person from his or her original social identity, and then let this social identity gradually fade away. When people use time to cut off the connection with this social identity, even if the person returns to this society again, he will not be able to regain his past identity, and will become a familiar stranger in the eyes of everyone.

Although four or five years of exile is not enough to end Zhang Pu's past social life, if the other party honestly closes the door to live his own small life, Chongzhen has no intention of driving him overseas again.

However, after seeing a series of reports on Zhang Pu's whereabouts after returning to China sent by Lu Qi, he couldn't help but feel a little unhappy, but he was a little curious and said: "What does this Zhang Pu want to do when he returns to China?" Even state capitalism came out. Could it be that he fooled those Japanese people in Osaka, and even believed himself? ”

Although Chongzhen was talking to himself, Lu Qi, who heard this, did not dare to slack off and suggested: "Why don't you send someone to arrest Zhang Pu and then escort him back to Japan?" Or is it expelled further? ”

Zhu Youzhen took his eyes off the document, looked up at him and said, "Then there is no need to be in such a hurry, I really want to see what he wants to do, and I also want to see who in this capital will support him." The report said that he still wanted to see Cui Chengxiu, did Bachelor Cui agree? ”

Lu Qi shook his head and said, "Although this Fan Yunsheng is the director of the Four Seas Trading Company, he is only a businessman after all. In his capacity, he wants to visit Bachelor Cui, but if he wants to act as an intermediary, he will inevitably be a little weak to ask Bachelor Cui to meet Zhang Tianru in private. What's more, Zhang Tianru and the Jiangnan literati did not attack Bachelor Cui at the beginning, so the minister heard that Bachelor Cui had rejected the meeting between the two, but Fan Yunsheng didn't seem to have given up, and was thinking about going through the door of the Internal Affairs Office to invite Bachelor Cui again. ”

Zhu Youzhen laughed and said, "This Fan Yunsheng's courage is very big. Okay, you can come forward to help him say that he will be together, but let Cui Chengxiu keep it a secret, don't announce to them what I mean, and let him listen to what this Zhang Tianru wants to say to him. ”

Lu Qi immediately nodded and agreed: "Please rest assured, Your Majesty, the minister will definitely take care of this matter." However, these ordinary directors of the Four Seas Company jumped up and down, did they want to give them some warnings, so that they could do things for His Majesty with peace of mind? ”

After Zhu Youzhen was silent for a while, he waved his hand and said: "Forget it, after all, the Four Seas Trading Company is a place to make money in partnership, not my court, there is no need to get a group of lifeless bureaucrats to come out." Although they are a little selfish, they want the company to make more profits, at least it is still commendable, let them do it first.

However, Fan Yunsheng can still care more about him, give him a little more autonomy, and see what tricks he can come up with. Have you inquired about the purpose of the Japanese mission's visit? ”

Seeing that Zhang Pu's page was finally turned over, Lu Qi was relieved, after all, he didn't care about the news of Zhang Pu's return to China at first, who would have thought that this person would not go home to see his relatives and friends first, but rushed to the capital non-stop, which caught him off guard, and began to supplement the information of Zhang Pu during this period after returning to China.

It was also the emperor who knew that the Social Investigation Department and Jinyiwei were very busy now, so they did not investigate the whereabouts of Zhang Pu's return to China because they had missed it, otherwise Lu Qi really didn't know how to explain it to himself.

After hearing that the emperor had changed the subject, Lü Qi immediately reported: "According to our contacts with the Japanese mission and the monitoring of the Toyotomi Senhime Mansion. The Social Investigation Department believes that the purpose of the Japanese mission in Beijing should be twofold.

The first is to welcome back Toyotomi Tomoya, the eldest son of Toyotomi Chihime, in order to establish the second-generation core of the Toyotomi family; The second is to promote the internal affairs reform of the Osaka shogunate, which is to emulate Japan's reforms, and to gain Japan's support for this. ”

Chongzhen pondered for a long time after hearing this, and then said to Lu Qi: "Go find out Zhou Kangen's report, and let me take a look." ”

In addition to the daily description of Japan's economic and social situation, the report of the Governor of Osaka, Zhou Kangeng, arrived in Shanghai on the same ship as the Japanese mission, and this report also contains a paragraph of Zhou Kangeng's personal views on the reform of the Japanese shogunate in Osaka.

In the eyes of the governor of Zhou, the group of shogunate reformers led by Yoshikawa Kosuke can be regarded as a real Japanese political elite with an overseas vision in today's Japan, which includes the whole of Japan under the Edo shogunate.

Such a group of Japanese political elites tend to take a pro-Ming stance, which is enough to ensure the protection and stable improvement of the special interests of the Ming Dynasty in Japan in the next 20 to 30 years. Of course, after twenty or thirty years, if the shogunate reforms modeled after the Ming did work, then the special interests of the Ming and other foreigners in Japan would have come to a time when they would continue to be curtailed.

Of course, the imperial court could also consider uniting with Japan's feudal forces to liquidate and liquidate them before these political elites could play their role, thereby destroying the leadership of Japan's shogunate reform and ultimately losing hope for peaceful change in Japan.

However, in this way, the Ming Dynasty will completely lose the support of the pro-Ming forces of all strata of Japanese society, so that the special interests of the Ming Dynasty in Japan will lose the protection of local forces. We need to increase investment to ensure that local feudal lords and people do not rise up to resist the oppression of local people and resources.

This may lead to the contradictions between our country and local forces becoming more intense, and even entering the situation of our country falling into a long-term war in Vietnam. Once such a situation arose, then Japan became the most troublesome enemy of the Ming Dynasty in East Asia, and by virtue of its good geographical location, the Japanese archipelago not only cut off the connection between the mainland and the northern continent, but also caused problems for the connection between the mainland and North America.

Therefore, Zhou Kangeng's personal conclusion is that it is more appropriate to verbally support Japan's shogunate reform in order to gain the favor of the Japanese reformist elite. For the Ming Dynasty, the ideal state was to strike a balance between the Japanese reformist elite and the feudal forces, rather than leaning towards either side, in order to obtain the greatest benefits. Joining any party rashly will damage the interests of Daming.

In the long run, of course, he thinks the reformist elite has a better chance of winning the final victory. Because since Japan was forced to open the country and signed many unequal treaties, the people at the bottom have been on the verge of bankruptcy. The samurai of the feudal lords, apart from complaining and constantly increasing their armament, had no countermeasures to the social reality that was about to collapse, causing a large number of people at the bottom to see reform as the last way to save themselves and Japan.

After reading Zhou Kangen's report again, Zhu Youzhen held his chin for a long time before he said aloud: "Arrange it in the past two days, I want to go to the dojo of Miyamoto Sword Master to have a look..."

Without waiting for Lu Qi to agree, Zhu Youzhen had already packed up Zhou Kangen's report and looked at the pieces from everywhere again. Although the area of drought in Chongzhen 14 years was much smaller than that of the previous year, the consequence of the two consecutive years of drought was that locusts began to multiply on a large scale.

This year, the arid area continued to move southward, and the area between the Yellow River and the Yangtze River became the center of the arid area. The most serious area is the Anhui region where the Tonghuai River is located in Henan, and even the Hubei region has experienced a whole month without rain.

At this time, the water conservancy projects built from the early years of Chongzhen finally played a huge role in resisting drought, especially in Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong and Hubei.

Although the Hubei region has also suffered from drought this time, the local summer harvest has been reduced. However, the reduction in grain output in Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Hebei is not large, and the development of farmland in areas outside the Sai Loop, such as the Hetao, has greatly compensated for the decrease in grain output in the south.

The locust plague originated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, with the local garrison and the people working together, to prevent it from expanding to other places, thus greatly reducing the losses caused by the locust plague.

The most important thing is that after the food panic caused by the devastating famine last year, imports from Nanyang and other grain-producing areas have not stopped since the beginning of the year. After a frenzied year of shipbuilding last year, this year's shipping capacity in the coastal waters of Daming has increased by one-third compared with last year, and rice from Burma, the Malay Peninsula, Luzon and Thailand has surpassed the nearest rice from Vietnam and Cambodia, which has greatly eased the pressure on the grain-producing regions of the south.

And last month, Chongzhen personally issued an order allowing the northern provinces to use wheat instead of rice to pay taxes, which means that farmers in wheat-producing areas do not have to sell wheat and then buy rice to pay national taxes. Thanks to the intervention of such a series of measures, although the drought situation in the disaster-stricken areas has not improved much, the situation of the people in the disaster-stricken areas is much better than last year.

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