Ma Mingyuan saw that the matter was revealed, his eyes rolled wildly, thinking about how to get out.

"Your Royal Highness, Your Majesty is wrong, but Your Majesty is doing this for the sake of the prince!"

Zhu Hongsan was almost angry, still for me?

"Okay, let's ask Elder Ma Ge to tell me why it's for this king!"

Ma Mingyuan was in charge of the sarcasm in Zhu Hongsan's words at this time, and hurriedly said: "Your Majesty saw that the King of Chu was worried that the local gentry in Guangdong would not cooperate every day, and His Majesty was also very anxious, so he thought that he could use the township test to win them over, so he used the opportunity of the Wenhui to win over a few small families, and promised to give them a reputation and let them come out to be officials, and the ministers are all for His Highness!" ”

"So the king has to thank you?"

Ma Mingyuan didn't even dare to say it!

"I don't know what Ma Ge is doing to buy people's hearts? Do you want this king to be the emperor of Han Xian or the king of Chen Liu? I don't know if the old country name of Ma Ge has thought about it, is the new dynasty called Wei or Jin? ”

Zhu Hongsan's words were very heavy, Ma Mingyuan couldn't stand it anymore, and he didn't even dare to say it when he knelt on the ground!

Tong Yangjia on the side was very relieved, this opportunity not to step on a hundred feet, so that Ma Mingyuan will never be able to turn over, let alone when!

"Your Royal Highness, Lord Ma may have a last resort, Your Majesty wants to ask the State of Prison to bypass Lord Ma in the face of the princess and the prince!"

Tong Yangjia's words were very heartfelt, ostensibly begging for mercy for Ma Mingyuan, but in his words, he reminded the King of Chu to worry about Ma Xiaofang and the prince pleading for Ma Mingyuan.

Ma Mingyuan heard what Tong Yangjia meant, knelt on the ground and scolded Tong Yangjia for not dying well.

Watching these two people scolding back and forth, Zhu Hongsan also had a headache. He wants to protect Ma Mingyuan, but this matter is too big to deal with him, and he can't do it, but what crime will he use to deal with him?

At this time, Zhu Hongsan saw the impeachment of the Ministry of Industry and the inaction of the Sihui County Order sent by Tong Yangjia on the table, Zhu Hongsan's heart moved, and he had an idea.

Zhu Hongsan patted the table and said, "Okay! Don't be noisy! ”

"Cao Fang, you are going to write an edict, Guangdong Xuezheng Wupin has experienced Ma Shaoji's private sale of exam questions, and he should have been beheaded, but this dynasty has given preferential treatment to Shi Dafu, and the crime has been reduced by one degree, and Ma Shaoji has been assigned to Changhua Iron Mine to open the mine; Ma Jiyuan, the waiter of the Ministry of Industry, was not strictly managed, and the Ministry of Industry was full of loopholes, and was now demoted to Nanyang Luzon County Order, and took office on the same day; Hanlin bachelor Ma Mingyuan... Zhu Hongsan thought for a long time and said, "Ma Mingyuan, you can do it!" ”

Ma Mingyuan didn't expect this ending, he was all abolished, his eldest brother went to be a county magistrate, his nephew went to open a mine, and he was not yet fifty years old to be a minister, and he knelt in the hall and cried loudly for a while.

Zhu Hongsan looked at Ma Mingyuan, waved his hand, and asked Cao Fang to send Ma Mingyuan out. On the side, Tong Yangjia saw the fall of the Ma family, and his heart blossomed.

The news spread the next day, and the Guangdong officialdom was shaken, but I didn't expect that Ma Mingyuan was still a cabinet elder yesterday, and he will be a minister today. Someone who understood said: "This is not bad, this is still the prison country to see the princess's face lightly, this has to be put in the past, the head of the person who did not kill in the imperial examination case is rolling!" ”

The listeners nodded again and again, and their hearts appreciated the benevolence of King Chu more and more.

Zhu Hongsan's edict to Ma Jiyuan was to take office on the same day, that is, he would leave the next day. When Ma Jiyuan was packing his luggage, Ma Mingyuan came to visit his eldest brother.

As soon as Ma Mingyuan saw Ma Jiyuan, he knelt on the ground and said, "Big brother, it's me who deserves to die, it's even the eldest brother!" ”

Seeing that his younger brother Ma Jiyuan had nothing to say, after all, he was the younger brother of his first compatriot, Ma Jiyuan stepped forward and picked up the second brother and said: "Second brother, you have been smart since you were a child, and your father and mother always praised you when they were alive, but have you forgotten what your father said to our brothers before he died?" Dad said that the King of Chu is eloquent and strategic, the master of heroic martial arts, not inferior to Emperor Taizu and Emperor Chengzu, so you don't play your little cleverness in front of King Chu, have you forgotten? ”

Of course, Ma Mingyuan remembered his father's words before he died, and he still remembered that his father said that if he was so stubborn, the Ma family's catastrophe would not be far away.

Ma Mingyuan was reprimanded by his eldest brother and didn't have anything to say, Ma Jiyuan saw that his younger brother was depressed, and said: "Second brother, it's not bad for you to be a scholar, you have been studying hard at home in the past few years, as long as my sister and nephew are fine, the King of Chu will use our brother in the future." After Ma Mingyuan finished speaking, he picked up his luggage and went to the dock with his son Ma Shaoji to get on the boat, Ma Mingyuan was going to Luzon, thousands of miles away, and Ma Shaoji was going to Changhua to mine.

The news of the Ma family's bad luck soon spread throughout Guangdong, and even Zhang Jiayu, who was far away in Nanxiong Mansion in the north, also received the news.

Seeing the edict of the King of Chu on the newspaper, Zhang Jiayu sighed, maybe he was right to leave Dongguan, he was not a native of Huguang and had no merits, and he was not played to death by those old foxes in that place.

Zhang Jiayu has been in Nanxiong Mansion for half a year, and he feels very fulfilled here.

Historically, Nanxiong City was an important commercial town connecting the north and south of the Dayu Mountains, because it was located at the southern foot of the Dayu Mountains and bordered Jiangxi and Jiangnan in the north. Since Tang Kaiyuan opened the Meiguan Ancient Road, the ancient road is like a ribbon, connecting Zhangshui in the north, going down the Ganjiang River, and entering the Yangtze River; It is connected to Zhenshui in the south, down to the Beijiang River, and into the Pearl River, connecting the two major water systems of the Yangtze River and the Pearl River. Xiongcheng is at the southern end of this ribbon and has become a transportation hub for north-south water and land transportation. The goods merchants in the coastal area of Guangzhou go up the Beijiang River to Xiongcheng by waterway, and then go to Lingbei by land through the ancient road, and the goods merchants in Lingbei go to Nanxiong through the ancient road, and then go down the Beijiang River along the Zhenjiang River by waterway to the coastal area of Guangzhou. In this way, both land and water, combined transportation by boat and vehicle, and smooth flow of goods.

There are four main land transportation routes in Nanxiong: one takes the Meiguan Ancient Road into Jiangxi Dayu, the second takes Dafang into Jiangxi Xinfeng, the third goes to Nanmu into Jiangxi Qiannan, and the fourth takes Baishun into Renhua. These four roads are the most prosperous in Meiguan Ancient Road, which is an important post road in ancient times, and the facilities are quite perfect. In the Ming Dynasty, there was a Lingjiang station, there was a post book, 14 runners, and 14 subordinate stations were laid: Hongmei shop, Da Yuling shop, Xiaoling shop, Huoji shop, Lidong shop, Shitang shop, Shashui shop, Changji shop, Changning shop, state gate shop, East pulp shop, Xiuren shop, Gulu shop, Dutang shop, Yingluo shop, Huangtian shop. There is a shop every ten miles, and there are four soldiers in each shop, a total of 56 people. Due to the large number of merchants coming and going on the post road, the inns and teahouses serving the merchants also prospered, and gradually formed the streets of Weizhen. From Meiguan to Nanxiong City, there are seven "streets" on the post road of more than 60 miles: Pheasant Gongsheng Street, Xinlukou Street, Xiaoling Street, Zhongzhan Street, Lingtan Street, Lidong Street, and Shashui Street. The so-called "street" means that many shops are lined up on both sides to form a street, and there are no less than seven or eight hundred shops in these seven streets; It receives more than 1,000 merchants every day, about 450,000 people every year.

Legend has it that there is a "champion tomb" on the top of Meiling, and the tablet is engraved with a couplet; "Thousands of people worship every day, and watch the lights of thousands of homes at night." It means that the "feng shui" of this tomb is very good, and thousands of people climb Meiling every day, step by step, as if worshipping it, and every night overlooking the mountain, the village shop lights are shining, like thousands of pearls scattered on the ground. Although these are legends, they also reflect the objective fact that there are many merchants who come and go on the ancient road. Take the salt transportation as an example, about 5 million catties of salt must be transported from Nanxiong to all parts of southern Jiangxi every year through the ancient road, and at least 100,000 people will be transported to the porters alone. In the Song Dynasty, Shaoguan Cen smelted copper in water, and Shuitong supervised the coinage, and there were five or six million catties of copper coins every year, and the porter had to get more than 100,000 yuan through the ancient road to the north. There are other merchants, uncountable. All this shows that there are many people who traffic goods to and from the ancient road, and it is not surprising that thousands of people come and go every day.

Nanxiong's water transportation, the main waterway is Zhenjiang, up to Xintian, down to Shaoguan, Guangzhou, the navigation capacity is quite large. At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, the building ship was navigable, and the general of the building ship, Yang Fuping, rebelled in South Vietnam, and tens of thousands of building ship divisions went straight down to Guangzhou from the Zhenjiang River. At the end of the Song Dynasty, 97 families with 33 surnames in Zhuji Lane moved south, and most of them drifted along the Zhenjiang River on rafts for more than two months to the South China Sea. With the development of commerce, water transportation has become increasingly busy, boats and rafts have come and gone, and wharf facilities have gradually improved. During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, there were more than 500 ships coming and going from Nanxiong City to Wuzhi. There are five professional wharves along the river in the state city: one is the salt wharf, which is specially used for salt ships; The second is the Longsao Pavilion Wharf, which mostly picks up and unloads goods for tourists and merchant ships on the Zhenjiang River; The third is the big wharf, and the fourth is the Qingyunmen wharf, which is close to the downtown and is the busiest, mainly used for the stack; The fifth is the wooden wharf, which is exclusively for the use of bamboo and wood merchants. At the same time, it has also given rise to an industry that specializes in transportation.

Now because of the lack of officials in Nanxiong Mansion, there is only one member of the prefect's yamen who is in office from Wupintong. After Zhang Jiayu took office, he visited the checkpoints and castles in Nanxiong, Shaozhou, and decided to set up the Yamen of Shaonan Military Preparation Road in Nanxiong.

The first thing Zhang Jiayu did when he arrived was to contact the garrison in Shaozhou, there was a regiment of the new army, and there were quite a lot of people, but most of them were recruits, and the veterans were all transferred to Nanzhili and Nanyang by the king of Chu to fight.

This regiment commander Ma Liang is also very depressed, although Ma Liang's surname is Ma, but it has nothing to do with the Ma family, Ma Liang's hometown is from Shaanxi, he is a serious rogue, and he joined the New Army after being captured by Zhu Hongsan in Henan.

Ma Liang was very happy to hear that the new governor had been sent to him from Guangdong, and immediately came to Nanxiong to meet the new chief.

After meeting, Ma Liang said straightforwardly: "It's great that the adults are here, now we are short of muskets and gunpowder, please solve it!" ”

Can the new army still lack armaments? Zhang Jiayu had been in contact with high-level information at the military aircraft department, and knew that there were mountains of muskets and gunpowder in the warehouse now, how could there be a shortage here?

"My lord doesn't know, Shaozhou and the north of Nanxiong are quite peaceful, so the supplies of the military department are given half of it, but fortunately, the brothers' food and drink are enough, it is this weapon and armament, now the brothers can only use a musket every three people, and it is good that there is nothing to do in the long run, if there is a change in the north, it is too late to transport it from Guangdong!"

Zhang Jiayu didn't expect to encounter a big problem on the first day, and hurriedly promised Regiment Commander Ma that he would help him solve it.

After sending off the head of the Ma regiment, Zhang Jiayu wrote the first letter to Zhu Hongsan, telling him the actual situation of Nanxiong, where the flow of people is dense and the people who come and go are complicated. The local garrison lacks equipment and the number is too small, if there is an emergency, I am afraid that it will not be able to control it, so I want to ask the king of Chu to give an order, allocate enough weapons and ammunition to the new army, and prepare to train a militia of 10,000 people, please ask the king of Chu for permission.