Since last year, the Ming Dynasty has continued for more than ten years, and the wind and rain seem to have come to an end, especially in the northern provinces, the rainy season is not in chronological order, the spring and summer rain has been dry, and the autumn Yiyang and obscene rain do not stop, resulting in a poor harvest in the year, and some fields even have no harvest.

This is a big problem in any dynasty. Because for an agrarian society, the main population depends on the sky for food and the ground for food. If the government does not take into account the fact that the common people have been affected by the disaster, and collects the land taxes as in the past, and violently treats the tax arrears, a large number of peasants will go bankrupt. When the unemployed peasants leave their homes, there will be a wave of displaced people who have not reached the foundation of the dynasty.

As an old minister who witnessed the Ming Dynasty struggling out of the quagmire step by step, Shen Mo was not paralyzed by the peaceful and prosperous times in front of him, and he knew the difficulties of the common people, and the situation today was not easy.

Fortunately, in order to protect the stable implementation of the article and prevent the rice from hurting the peasants, the imperial court adopted the policy of "not saving surplus silver and purchasing excess grain" in the six or seven years of successive bumper harvests, and has already hoarded enough grain for 20 years.

I have food at home, and I don't panic, but I can't be careless at all. Because judging from his past experience, after the original catastrophe, the imperial court did not allocate relief food, but why was the land still full of hungry prisoners? The main reason is not that the food for disaster relief is insufficient, but that the victims of the disaster have not gained much in the end after the government at all levels has brushed the skin layer by layer.

In order to avoid disaster relief and send as much grain as possible to the affected people, Shen Mo sent troops to take care of the Chang Ping positions in various places, and the household department sent commissioners to be responsible for releasing grain. And kick those noisy officials to the province to supervise the entire disaster relief process. For the officials of the affected prefectures and counties, according to the severity of the disaster, the test index was changed from the tax amount to the survival rate of the common people. Shen Mo emphasized in the court mail sent to the states and counties that if you give me a few more grains one by one, you must feed me a few people, and if you burn the human field and cross a certain number of lives, you will directly burn this official uniform!

On the issue of disaster relief, he expressed a radical disagreement with taxes. For tax collection, he always asks for specific situations to be treated on a case-by-case basis, and if there are extenuating circumstances, the examination results can be appropriately reduced, so as not to force the local officials too much on the common people. From last year to this year, more than 30 officials who failed to provide disaster relief and withheld money and food were investigated and punished one after another.

Under his strict control, the officials of the premises had no choice but to provide disaster relief honestly. Of course, silence is not just given to the task that I don't want to do. On the one hand, he ordered the governments at all levels to fight disasters and save themselves, and to promote a drought-resistant and high-yield crop in various provinces, which has been introduced into the Ming Dynasty for more than ten years, and has been planted and bred into sweet potatoes in Fujian. On the one hand, the Ministry of Industry was instructed to organize the construction of water conservancy projects, and the province alone built more than 13 diversion canals and dredged more than 2,000 miles of rivers, so that not only can it effectively dispatch the imbalance of water resources in space and time, but at the same time, it can enable a large number of young and strong people to have something to eat, so that they will not be idle and disturb society.

This prolonged natural disaster was not entirely a bad thing, at least the resettlement work to Luzon, Annam, Champa and other places greatly benefited from this.

It has long been a household name that you can get rich in the South Seas, but because it is difficult to leave the homeland, when you can eat, Lao Cangsheng will not consider leaving her hometown and going to distant Luzon to make a living. But when they can't even eat, instead of staying at home and waiting for death, many people are determined to try their luck and maybe find a way to break through.

There are many people with this mentality, and the number of people who sign up has skyrocketed. And the local government is under pressure to pass the exam, and the release of people is much happier than before. Of course, there is also a factor of tax reform at play, and the current implementation of the whip is based on the tax per acre, rather than the capitation tax, which makes the local officials less concerned about the movement of the population.

It was a very cloudy day, and after silently meeting with the shift Yushi who was sent to the provinces to supervise disaster relief, it was already dark and he couldn't see his face clearly, and he was just about to order someone to hold the lamp, when his chief guard walked in quickly, and whispered in his ear: "Mr. Yu is here." ”

Gas..."Shen Mo's heart sank, and he nodded for a moment before he said, "Let him wait for me in Zhilu." Then I didn't rush back, I lit the lamp and continued to work.

After the tea, it was getting darker and darker outside, and the wind was blowing, so that the two windows of the room were rattling, and Shen Mo stood up, walked to the door and muttered: "It's going to rain, my mother is going to get married," and after that,..., he went to the canteen in the apse to eat, and talked with a few scholars for a while, before returning to his own house.

After Shen Mo came in, Yu Ana bowed, then stood up and stood on his right hand. There is no palm lamp in the straight house, only the silhouette of the person can be seen, but neither of the two has the intention of lighting the lamp. In the midst of a whimpering wind, Shen Mo spoke first: "How did you get here?" ”

"At this pass, no communication method is safe, and subordinates can only take the risk once." Yu Yin said quietly: "But adults don't need to worry, this palace is no different from our backyard." ”

"It's still good to have a heart." Shen Mo sighed and said, "Recently, I always feel unsteady......"

"Yes..."Yu Yin replied softly and said, "My subordinates have found out, and the emperor is going to get rid of it at the birthday banquet of Empress Dowager Chen on the fifth day of the fifth month of May." The reason why it was chosen on that day is because it is the fifth festival of Duanduan, and it is customary to drink realgar wine with strong color and taste. This liquor is not easily detected when it dissolves the highly toxic Sichuan bird's head, and can delay the outbreak until twenty hours later. ”

Although he had been mentally prepared, after listening to Yu Yin's words, Shen Mo was still bent over by the impact. The wind blew into the hall from all directions with a sharp whistling sound, and the windows were blown by the wind, and the guards outside hurriedly closed the windows.

"Don't turn it off." Shen Mo said loudly: "I can't hold back" ,... the guards had to stop their movements, and instead hold the window firmly to keep it moving.

Silently holding the coffee table, he sat slowly on the chair, looked at the curtains that were scraped and fluttered, and said sadly: "I have always been lucky......

"Your Excellency, it's long past time you have left unrealistic thoughts." Yu Yin said quietly: "In fact, from the beginning, this is a game of chess to the death!" ”

"Am I alive or dead...... "Is it rare that I really have to walk into a dead end?" "It's strange to come, he said this, the wind gradually fell, but the sky slowly darkened, this is going to rain.

"It's not too late for adults to wake up." Yu Yin said softly: "There are twenty-seven kinds of subordinates who make the emperor die in a horizontal death, nine of which have no evidence, and the most favorite son of his subordinates is to quietly exchange the wine for the emperor, so that he can eat the consequences of his own ......." As if to answer him, the heavens and the earth turned white, and a bolt of lightning streaked across the night sky, followed by a thunderclap, and it fell to the ground, as if it were exploding outside the door.

The torrential rain poured down with the thunder, and the silent hand waved slightly. Liu Dadao, the chief of the guard, immediately said to those guards: "All retreat!" ”

The guards quietly withdrew. Then another series of lightning struck, and soon a muffled thunder rolled from far away from the sky. Shen looked at Yu Yin silently, and asked slowly: "Junfang, am I the object of allegiance, or the ideal Zaixiu?" ”

",..." Yu Yin didn't expect Shen Mo to ask like this, he turned pale and said, "Is there a difference?" ”

"Of course!" Shen Mo raised his voice and said, "If you are loyal to me, you will only carry out my orders honestly; If you take me as an ideal, you will kidnap my will! ”

"Junfang, hear this thunder." After a rolling thunder, Shen Mo looked at him miserably and said, "How much does the emperor have to do with you when he comes to this point?" ”

"The emperor is above, if his subordinates have a little other heart, let the heavenly thunder kill me immediately!" In the midst of lightning and thunder, Yu Yin knelt on the ground and swore to the sky: "What the emperor did was definitely not designed by me!" Your Excellency should know that you and the emperor can only have one in the end, standing on top of the Ming Dynasty, which no one has changed! ”

"It's not something you should worry about." Silent looked through the wide open window, looked at the sky-like rain curtain outside, and said quietly: "You should know what I ...... most taboo." ”

There was no thunder, Yu Yin was still shocked, beads of sweat dripping down, he leaned over and knelt on the ground and said, "My lord may have misunderstood, the third young master looked for me, but I didn't see him." ”

"If you see him, you won't see me again for the rest of your life." sighed lightly: "He wants to be Cao No, but he also has to ask me if I want to be Cao Cao first." If you want to be Jia Xu, I'm afraid that you will end up becoming Yang Xiu...". In the end, that kind of piercing ridicule can already freeze people.

Yu Yin's face was originally pale, but after hearing Shen Mo's words, he immediately became whiter, he raised his head high and said: "The subordinates are still the same as ten years ago, and the reason why the subordinates dare to assert themselves is nothing more than loyalty!" If one day my heart is mixed with another thought, God will hate it, God will abandon it! Man and God punish it together! ”

"It's okay to make an assertion, there will be a next time, if you don't kill God, I will accept it personally!" Shen Mo saved up enough strength there, and shouted: "Junfang, don't force me, don't force me!" ”

There was another muffled thunderstorm, and Yu Yin's whole body felt like he was drenched in the rain.

After some beating, Shen Mo ordered him to get up and sit down. This time, Yu Yin was much more honest, and asked softly: "In this current game, what are you going to do?" ”

"How?" Silent laughed at himself sadly: "Even if the emperor wants to harm me, he still knows how to hide people and informants, what can I, as a courtier, do?" ”

"The subordinates can do it cleanly, including me afterwards, all the insiders of the city disappear from this world, and keep it as a headless unsolved case, a mystery for the ages." Yu Yin said to the killing of the emperor, who had reached the realm of madness: "If the adults feel sorry for the first emperor, then don't give an order, let me act without permission!" ”

"Revoke this idea!" Shen Mo shook his head and said: "Although the contradiction between me and the emperor is not generalized, whether it is the royalists or the people who support me, they all know this matter. If the Emperor dies now, no matter how much evidence there is to confess that he died of natural causes, people will think of me. Picking up the teacup, he found that it was empty, he casually put it down and said: "Now is not the five generations of troubled times, but the two hundred years since the founding of the country, there is no Ming Dynasty that has not yet lost the country, here, it is not about becoming a king or defeating a coward, but about the chaos of the ministers and thieves Everyone will be punished!" As long as I bear the notoriety of killing the king, even if it is just a suspicion, the city will forever lose its reputation as righteousness. With a bitter smile, he said: "No matter how great our ideals are, what can we do without the support of righteousness?" ”

"What does the adult mean to go", Yu Yin simply guessed steadily, waiting for Shen Mo to give an answer.

"Needless to say". Shen Mo sighed deeply and said: "Ten years of reform has come to a dead end, and everything is entangled in the dead knot of imperial power. If you don't bring this mountain down, everything will be a ...... in the mirror." After a pause, he said with great difficulty: "Actually, I haven't thought about that idea. But soon it was denied, first, I received the favor of the two emperors, the temple and no, the first emperor, treat me as a brother and brother, if I murder his descendants, not only in the eyes of the world is not as good as beasts, even I can't pass this level. Second, and most importantly, my enemy has never been the self-righteous emperor, or even the supreme imperial power entrenched in the sky above the Forbidden City, but the servility engraved in everyone's heart! If this point is not broken, even if the king is killed, it is just a cliché court struggle! If you don't believe it, looking at the history of the twenty-first year, the great emperor who was killed by his courtiers and lost, there are not a hundred but eighty, in addition to satisfying personal ambitions and bringing disasters to the common people, which one brought hope to the country? ”

"Nice for adults". Yu Yin also sighed and said: "But the emperor is eighteen this year, even if you cover the sky with one hand, how many years can you cover?" In fact, over the years, the reason why the reform has fallen into a predicament is directly related to the emperor's gradual growth, you are good, this Ming Dynasty, there are always some panicked guys who can't be slaves, they are clamoring to let the emperor take power**, I'm afraid that as the emperor grows older, there will be more and more such voices. ”