After the court meeting on July 15 of the third year of Chongzhen, Emperor Chongzhen was in a good mood because of a major event in his heart.

At this time, there were no major urgent matters to be dealt with in the court, so Emperor Chongzhen rarely handed over the government affairs of the court to the cabinet ministers, and the military affairs were handed over to the minister of military aircraft.

In mid-to-late July, the heat of the Ming Dynasty was unbearable, even in the Forbidden City, which is known for its tall and magnificent architectural specifications.

However, compared with the harsh and long winter, the Chongzhen Emperor still prefers to endure the heat of the capital in summer.

The emperor, empress, and harem concubines in the Forbidden City naturally have a way to spend the summer.

That is, in the coldest time of winter, the eunuchs in the palace took ice from the lake formed by the mountain spring water at the foot of the West Mountain, and stored it in several underground ice cellars in the palace, and then took it out in the summer and placed it in the palace of the emperor and the concubines.

However, this year's summer was special, just in time for the Ming Dynasty's Empress Zhou to be pregnant and expecting to give birth, and the practice of collecting ice from the cellar to cool down in winter was stopped.

According to the Tai Hospital, as well as the advice of Empress Yi'an, Princess Le'an and others, not to mention placing a large amount of ice cubes in Kunning Palace to cool down, it has become taboo to open the windows for ventilation.

Such precautions specifically set for expectant pregnant women are, of course, some absurd things for the current Emperor Chongzhen.

But he is also worried about the level of medical care in this era, whether it can really ensure safety when a pregnant woman has a problem.

Since all people are so careful to observe such old customs, he himself cannot be maverick and have to destroy them.

can only be the same as everyone else, staying in this sweltering heat, accompanying this Ming Empress who is known for her virtuousness.

The situation of the royal family in this life is very different from the original history.

Emperor Chongzhen no longer needs to constantly reduce the amount of money in the palace as he did in the original history, and he no longer needs to constantly cut down on food and clothing, or even wear and sew patched clothes, shoes and hats.

And Empress Zhou did not need to be like in history, in order to support Emperor Chongzhen's call for thrift and food to reduce the amount of money in the palace, and personally led the female officials and maids in the palace to spin and weave, and make clothes, hats, shoes and socks by herself.

On the contrary, now there are large sums of gold and silver sent to the palace every quarter by various commercial houses, restaurants, factories and mines under the Baohe Company, as well as large dividends sent to the palace on time by Portuguese businessman Gotinho and others every June and December, and the private money in the hands of Empress Zhou alone has exceeded one million silver yuan.

Including the current imperial sister-in-law, Empress Yi'an, the concubines of the palaces who now live in the Forbidden City all have a lot of wealth in their hands.

Even the most tranquil and quiet Concubine Jing Yuan, who has no quarrel with the world, already has a net worth of more than 100,000 silver yuan, and it is also a lot more generous to reward the female officials in the palace and the maiden relatives who came to visit them in the palace.

In addition to silver, there is no shortage of novelties for food and clothing in the harem now.

The best silk from Jiangnan, the best bird's nest from Nanyang, the best Korean ginseng from North Korea, and the best glassware from the entire Ming Dynasty are all being contributed to the harem of the Forbidden City.

Of course, now the most magnificent imperial concubine among the concubines in the harem of the Forbidden City is still the Li Concubine Tian family, who is well run by her mother's family.

In October of the first year of Chongzhen, Tian Hongyu obtained the exclusive right to make and sell the royal four-wheeled carriage that originally belonged to Taifu Temple in Jiangnan from the hands of the emperor through his daughter, and then sent his eldest son Tian Dunji to his hometown Yangzhou and founded the Jiangnan Carriage Company.

Although the Tian family's Jiangnan Cheriot and Horse Company had to pay ten Chongzhen silver yuan to the Royal Baohe Company for every four-wheeled carriage it produced and sold, but by virtue of the status of the emperor's relatives and even more by relying on the monopoly operation in Jiangnan, Concubine Tian's maiden family quickly became rich.

In just two years, the Tian family's Jiangnan Carriage and Horse Shop sold tens of thousands of four-wheeled carriages in Yangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou and other places where the rich people of the Ming Dynasty gathered, and then accumulated huge wealth.

In May this year, Concubine Li's elder brother Tian Dunji, that is, Emperor Chongzhen's eldest brother, heard that his sister was pregnant with a dragon, and even sent someone to take the canal and waterway from the south of the Yangtze River to Beijing, and specially sent a luxurious four-wheeled carriage with a whole body of red sandalwood texture and inlaid with jade, gold and silver, so that on both sides of the canal, inside and outside Beijing, everyone knew that Concubine Li's Tian was pregnant.

Of course, the queen Zhou's maiden home, Jiading Bofu, is now much more developed than in the past, and there is no longer any need for the queen's mother, Bu, to come to the palace every once in a while to find her queen's daughter to cry and fight the autumn wind.

Today, relying on the eighteen cement kilns all over the land of Gyeonggi, relying on the prominent status of the father of the empress and the emperor's father-in-law, Jiading Bo Zhoukui has become the largest cement manufacturer and contractor in Beizhili at the foot of the Son of Heaven.

Zhou Yi, the younger brother of the queen Zhou's mother's family, who is not a martial artist, except for eating, drinking, prostituting, gambling and playing with women, in other aspects, what is it really not good for.

But in the past two years, since Jiading Bofu has run the cement industry, this Zhou Yi has only been interested in cement firing, as well as the use of cement bricks and cement slabs to build houses and gardens.

In March of this year, he really figured out the kind of cement prefabricated slabs that were added with iron wire or steel bars to increase their strength.

When Empress Zhou told this matter to Emperor Chongzhen as a joke, Emperor Chongzhen was surprised and delighted.

The emperor, who has never had a good impression of this Zhou Yi, praised this brother-in-law to Queen Zhou a few words because of this, which made Queen Zhou very happy.

This Zhou Yi and his father Jiading Bo Zhou Kui sold their nephews and grandsons at the critical moment when Beijing broke in the original history.

If they could escape from Beijing with Emperor Chongzhen's heirs and flee to the south, the history of the Ming Dynasty might be different, at least the civil and military generals in the south would have a candidate for emperor who was not controversial.

What is hateful is that these imperial relatives of Jiading Bofu chose to welcome the so-called new dynasty and want to keep their wealth in Beijing, which is really hateful and pathetic.

In this life, if it weren't for Empress Zhou's face, now Emperor Chongzhen would have found an excuse to kill Jiading Bofu cleanly.

Now, although they did not attack the Jiading Bofu, they even gave them the opportunity to make a fortune for the sake of one of them being the father of the queen Zhou and the other being the half-brother of the queen Zhou.

Even allowed the father and son to undertake various projects from the Ministry of Households, the Ministry of Industry, Shuntianfu, and even the Governor of Xuanda, the Governor of Rehe, and other imperial institutions and local governors in the name of the emperor's relatives and relatives, and made a fortune.

But from beginning to end, Emperor Chongzhen never gave a good look to the Zhou father and son in Jiading Bofu, and never had a good word.

Since the end of the battle of Juyongguan at the end of last year, this Emperor Chongzhen has now known that in this life, it is basically impossible to have the tragedy of the destruction of the country in March of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, but he has never been able to let go of the father and son of the Zhou family in Jiading Bofu.

Therefore, the Empress Zhou of Jiading Bo Zhou Kuito interceded and wanted her son who was not doing his job to enter the internal affairs office like several other noble princes, but was rejected by Emperor Chongzhen.

If it weren't for the fact that Emperor Chongzhen still loved Empress Zhou as always, asking for warmth and meticulousness, Empress Zhou would have to wonder if she was not doing well in those places, so that the emperor had opinions about herself and her mother's family.

On the night of July 21 of the third year of Chongzhen, in the anxious waiting of Emperor Chongzhen and the concubines in the palace and the wives of the imperial relatives and relatives, and under the service of a large number of palace doctors, stable women and palace maids, the queen Zhou of the Ming Dynasty gave birth to a prince in Kunning Palace.

The news quickly spread out of Kunning Palace, and soon, the entire palace and outside the palace were full of jubilation.

Emperor Chongzhen was in a happy mood, and immediately asked Wang Chengen to take out the gold and silver that had already been prepared, and rewarded everyone who gathered in the Kunning Palace.

However, in addition to being happy, now Emperor Chongzhen's heart is also mixed, and I hope that the eldest son born to this queen can avoid the tragic fate in his history.