In the blink of an eye, it was the thirteenth year of the Apocalypse, and before he knew it, Zhu Youxiao found that he had been the emperor for six years. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

In just six years, the Ming Dynasty at this time had completely changed from a declining feudal dynasty with sharply intensified social contradictions and was about to perish to a trust empire with highly developed productive forces, a sharp increase in social wealth, and a greatly enhanced national defense strength.

In this regard, Zhu Youxiao felt very gratified, in the past six years, although he has not been able to put his heart and soul into the guts, but there is indeed not a day when he has not put time and energy into state affairs, so that he has not been a good duna.

But it is worth it to make the Ming Empire what it is today.

For Zhu Youzhen, who was escorted back from the northwest, Zhu Youxiao did not execute him, after all, this Zhu Youzhen did pass his various temptations, which also shows that this Zhu Youzhen may have a black belly and may be ruthless, but he is indeed a person who has the country and society in his heart and understands the righteousness.

This may be the reason why the original Emperor Chongzhen finally chose to hang himself despite many inconsistencies during his reign.

Although in fact, Zhu Youxiao is just a modern person, and Zhu Youzhen is not a brother, but when he thinks that Zhu Youzhen is also a tragic historical figure, he also has some pity for him, which is also one of the reasons why Zhu Youxiao did not execute Zhu Youzhen at the beginning, and at that time, it was not only considered that he would kill Zhu Youzhen without permission, but also did not rule out sympathy for this future Emperor Chongzhen.

Now that Zhu Youzhen has no idea of being an emperor, and is much more honest, there is no need for Zhu Youxiao to leave himself with an infamy of killing his brother.

What's more, he now absolutely controls the military and financial power of the whole country, and the entire social class has also changed, even if Zhu Youzhen wants to rebel, there is no possibility of rebellion.

But in order to declare his imperial majesty, to show other vassal kings, and to let other vassal kings be honest, he still deprived Zhu Youzhen of all his duties, and still detained him in Xiyuan, so that he and the Zhou family could live a life of leisure.

However, in the months between Zhu Youzhen's escort to Beijing and his dismissal from his official position and his detention in Xiyuan on the grounds that miscommand had caused huge losses to the Western Expedition, Zhu Youxiao did not meet Zhu Youzhen.

Until this time, after the Spring Festival of the thirteenth year of the Apocalypse, Zhu Youxiao and Empress Zhang Yan set up a family banquet with the palace to entertain Zhu Youzhen and his wife Zhou.

Zhou was very happy, rather than letting Zhu Youzhen go out and suffer a lot, it was better to be detained by the imperial brother in Xiyuan like this, although he couldn't go out, but it was also peaceful.

And Zhu Youzhen is obviously much more honest than before, as soon as he saw Zhu Youxiao, he came over first and saluted: "I've seen Your Majesty!" The shouting was "Your Majesty" instead of "Imperial Brother", which was obviously much more respectful, but Zhu Youxiao also felt that Zhu Youzhen was already far away from himself.

However, I can also feel that the years of military career have also made the impulsive and irritable King Shin much calmer and more cautious, at least in front of his own king, he finally has a sense of awe.

"As long as you're afraid of me, I don't expect you to be grateful to me", Zhu Youxiao couldn't help but think like this, and then let Zhu Youzhen sit down, and said: "Since you have returned to the capital and no longer marching and fighting, you have to think about the future days, and don't think about living like this, I don't care about idlers, and now the Ministry of War is preparing to run a newspaper that publishes armaments, you can do a compilation with the title of the head of the Ministry of War, don't look at this is just a job with a pen, but the knowledge in it is not small, The most tempering patience, are you willing to do it? ”

Zhu Youzhen didn't dare to disobey Zhu Youxiao's wishes, not to mention that now that he has nothing to do, he is very happy to have something to do, and he is busy thanking Zhu Youxiao.

Zhu Youxiao is also happy to be enthusiastic, in a short period of time, he does not plan to let Zhu Youzhen participate in the military war, after all, the current Zhu Youzhen has made a lot of meritorious contributions in the war of recovering Liaodong and destroying the Horqin and Khalkha departments and the Western Expedition, and therefore has some prestige in the military system, so from the perspective of the emperor's selfishness, he intends to hide this Zhu Youzhen temporarily.

Zhu Youzhen such a vassal king in the Ming Dynasty did not create much of a military threat, before it would bring a heavy economic burden to the central court at most, now these vassal kings are locked in the capital, and all have to engage in various industries to be self-sufficient, although the court gave a lot of money, but there is no way to carry out land annexation and also have to pay taxes, they can no longer become a burden on the empire.

Therefore, the current Zhu Youxiao is no longer worried about how much trouble these vassal kings will make and how much trouble they will bring to themselves.

And now for the Ming Dynasty, the biggest problem is no longer the financial pressure brought by the privileged class of feudal kings and gentry, but now the biggest problem is that with the development of industrial capital, a new capital class has begun to appear, and now because of the Thomas capitalism of the Ming Dynasty, that is, the state controls capital, which leads to the officials who control the state apparatus began to change to capitalists, and they represent different capital forces behind them, which also leads to the officialdom is still serious.

The struggle between the first assistant and the second assistant was still intensifying, and Li Mingrui thought that he could successfully help His Majesty Zhu Youxiao get rid of Zhu Youzhen, and thus further establish his position in Zhu Youxiao's heart.

But what Li Mingrui didn't expect was that his trip to the northwest saved Zhu Youzhen from the bitter cold land in the northwest, although His Majesty didn't blame him, and all this was arranged by His Majesty, but Li Mingrui still felt very depressed, he thought that he didn't succeed in showing his wit and talent in front of His Majesty Zhu Youxiao this time.

Qian Qianyi was different, he was in a good mood when he saw Li Mingrui's face full of displeasure because of the miscalculation of Zhu Youxiao, the king of letters, and even deliberately asked Li Mingrui why he was angry.

Zhu Youxiao also expressed helplessness about the open and secret struggle between these two cabinet scholars, he naturally hated party strife, otherwise he would not have returned to Lu Xiangsheng, who had military power, and stayed in the local area, otherwise he was not sure whether once people with military power participated in the government politics, it would make the party struggle in the court more intense.

In the original history of the Chongzhen Dynasty, the struggle between Lu Xiangsheng and Yang Sichang has never been broken, and even Chongzhen has been used to being used by these civil officials, so that whenever there is a stir, these civil officials will make a big fuss, coupled with Chongzhen's own character flaws, so that many ministers have been innocently wronged.

Now Zhu Youxiao doesn't want to be used by these civil officials, so he is also impartial to the struggle between Qian Qianyi and Li Mingrui, of course, he will also beat it from time to time, at least not let the struggle between these two parties affect the normal operation of the imperial court and its policies.

Li Mingrui was a core member of the royalist party, and he was also the key person who initially chose to stand on the side of Emperor Zhu Youxiao to challenge the ruling class of scholars, so Zhu Youxiao also gave him many benefits in the royal capital.

Not only did he get dividends in the royal capital, but also allowed them to fund the operation of new products such as soaps, perfumes, and facial masks that the imperial court could not take into account, just like the Royal Weaving Bureau run by the Mao family.

Therefore, the current Li Mingrui family is also extremely wealthy, and even in essence, it is already a big capitalist, especially after the opening of the sea trade, the royal people's livelihood company run by his Li family has made a lot of money.

It can be said that Li Mingrui has now become the representative of the emerging capital family, and it is not only him, but also Gong Yonggu, Yang Tingchun, Huo Weihua, the secretary of the Ministry of Industry, Guo Yunhou, the secretary of the Ministry of Households, and the military attaches of the Praetorian Guard system, etc., are all emerging vested interests after the reform of commercial taxation and the opening of maritime trade.

They advocated that the Ming Dynasty continue to expand overseas trade and open the markets of some closed countries, especially Japan, to maximize their commercial interests, and even advocated the use of giant ships and cannons to recapture the overseas vassals that originally belonged to the Ming Dynasty but were now taken away by Western colonists.

And Qian Qianyi was able to enter the royalist camp, not because his political philosophy was the same as Zhu Youxiao's, and even his pursuit of interests was not the same as that of the royalists, and the reason why he was able to become the first assistant was because he was shameless enough and ruthless enough to himself.

But in essence, he is still a traditional gentry, representing the interests of the traditional gentry class, he is against the gentry and the gentry pay in one piece, so although his discipline has been disgraced by the gentry in Jiangnan, but because he is the highest-ranking official of the traditional gentry in the court, he has become the leader of the new traditional gentry officials.

Although Qian Qianyi and other old-fashioned officials who are still trying their best to maintain the interests of the gentry class do not dare to directly oppose the new policy policies of His Majesty the Emperor Zhu Youxiao, they will also indirectly cause some stumbling blocks in many cases, and the most direct manifestation is that they are fighting more and more fiercely with Li Mingrui and others.

In many cases, although Qian Qianyi, the leader of the old school, was a shameless person who was criticized and reviled by others, most of the officials belonged to officials such as the Hanlin Academy and Kedao, and these officials who regarded themselves as clean streams were more or less incorruptible in terms of discipline.

Although Li Mingrui and other reformist officials are determined to reform, because they occupy most of the most profitable institutions in the Ming Dynasty at present, it is inevitable that every reformist official is honest and self-disciplined, and many times, these officials are doing practical things while trying to reap the benefits as much as possible.

Therefore, when the two factions are fighting, especially when fighting against crimes such as corruption, many times, the old guards become the righteous side, and the reformists are exposed because of their unsuccessful methods.

In this way, Zhu Youxiao was forced to stand on the side of the reformists in many cases, but sometimes he had to support the old-fashioned school intellectually, especially from the perspective of justice.

This does not seem to be common, when Wang Anshi changed the law, there was a saying that most of the officials who supported the change were villains, and there was also such a phenomenon in Zhang Juzheng's new policy, even in the late Qing Dynasty Westernization Movement in the original history and later generations, there were also incidents like Yang Naiwu and Xiao Cabbage, and in the background of the incident, the conservative party represented by Weng Tongyi represented the righteous side, and Zuo Zongtang and other Westernists were the villains of this unjust case.

Therefore, this is also the reason why Zhu Youxiao is no longer completely aware of these old-fashioned officials after the eradication of the Donglin Party, and even selectively allows some honest, self-disciplined or obedient old-fashioned officials to occupy high positions and hold important positions, the purpose of which is to let them play a supervisory role in the reformist officials.

In particular, these old-fashioned officials were appointed as officials in the field of science and technology, so that although they had the power, they could not interfere in the direction of the government, but it did make the reformist officials have to be more restrained.

This can be regarded as a kind of imperial trick, and what Zhu Youxiao has to do is to maintain the balance between the two parties, so that the reformists can steadily and effectively promote reform and development, and the old-fashioned officials must play a good supervisory role, so that the entire Ming Dynasty will not become rapidly corrupted due to the accumulation of wealth.

Sometimes the degree of corruption in a capitalist country is not much better than that of a feudal state, so Zhu Youxiao has to pay attention to this.

However, there was an incident recently that made Zhu Youxiao smell bad signs, because Liu Ruyu, the governor of Dongchang, presented a letter that was placed in the study of Cao Sicheng, the imperial historian of the left capital.

The content of this letter was written by Cao Sicheng, the imperial historian of Zuodu, to His Royal Highness Zhu Youzhen, the king of letters, but the content was just to ask about poetry and rhythm, but despite this, this is still a relatively sensitive event.

Because according to Zhu Youxiao's intentions, it was forbidden for His Royal Highness King Xinwang to interact with each other, except for a few officials of the Ministry of War who had to interact with each other because of official business, so this undoubtedly aroused Zhu Youxiao's vigilance.

However, Zhu Youxiao did not rashly arrest a Tang Zuodu Yushi and go to the edict to ask why he didn't know the interests and wanted to deal with a declining vassal king who had been controlled, and he was still a vassal king whose identity was still sensitive, this is purely not what an official with a little IQ does, not to mention that colluding with the vassal king is a taboo for officials.

Zhu Youxiao's intuition was that this incident should definitely be a conspiracy, and most likely it was a struggle between the reformists and the old-fashioned. Therefore, Zhu Youxiao decided not to move, and explicitly ordered Dongchang to treat the incident as if it had not happened but could be secretly investigated.

At the same time, Zhu Youxiao is also waiting for whether officials of a certain faction will rush to stand up and point fingers at Cao Sicheng after he deliberately does not expose this matter. Many of the big officials in the court are more cunning than foxes, and Zhu Youxiao sometimes finds it difficult to find out the real team of these officials even though he is close to the east factory, and many times Zhu Youxiao can only distinguish them by knocking on the side.

Therefore, Zhu Youxiao now doesn't know that Cao Sicheng and Li Mingrui are close, so he has to see who stands up first, as long as who stands up first and points a sword at Cao Sicheng, he can judge that that faction can't hold back and wants to do things.

But now he can at least judge one thing, that is, Cao Sicheng can no longer be a neutral person on the surface, otherwise no one will get a letter about Zhu Youzhen in his study.