For a few days, Deng Haonan went out of the palace to Yueyuan Yazhu to cheer for Miss Xing Yuan, but the result was empty.

This Xing Yuan is really rare to see, and he is a busy man, today he invites an official to visit the lake, tomorrow he invites the dignitaries of the capital to enjoy the flowers, and the day after tomorrow he invites the chief writer of the Beijing newspaper to visit the mountains and poems.

At the beginning of April of the thirteenth year of Shenwu, with the beginning of the election of the third cabinet of the imperial government, the general elections in all states and provinces across the country have also entered the countdown stage.

Since the second year of the reign of the Ming Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty, the five-year general election system has been implemented, and the list of personnel for the first three terms is relatively fixed, basically the important ministers of the former dynasty, and the close ministers of the Son of Heaven hold great power. As these veterans of the Wanli, Taichang, Tianqi, Tongzhi, and Shenwu dynasties grew older, although their influence was still strong, the years were not forgiving, and they had to give up their positions and give the young talents below a chance to come forward.

Of course, this qiē is ultimately thanks to the Emperor Deng Haonan. It was precisely because the emperor delegated power to the three ministries that they had the opportunity to run for election based on their ability. In the past, the emperor directly appointed cabinet ministers and officials of various ministries and departments, which inevitably led to some inappropriate appointments and dissatisfaction of the parties and the people.

Now that the emperor is enlightened, he delegates power to the people of the empire, who vote and are notarized by the imperial supervisory organs, so that the appointment of officials must be unanimously approved by the people of the empire, and the maximum impartiality, openness, and stability of the imperial government must be maintained.

The cabinet election of the Chinese Empire is held on April 8 of the last year of the five-year system and ends on July 15 of that year, and lasts for 100 days, which is called the 100-day general election or spring election.

During the general election, each party in the Imperial Government will nominate a candidate for the Emperor's approval, and will run for the post of First and Auxiliary Minister of the Cabinet under the supervision of the Imperial Prosecutor's Office, the Supreme Court and the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

At this time, there were more than a dozen large and small parties in the imperial government, but the largest was still the Donglin Party, which governed the country with Confucianism, and was a conservative party. In addition, the more influential is the monarchy party, which is composed of a group of people who worship the Shenwu Emperor fanatically, because the personality cult of the Shenwu Emperor is extremely extensive, the monarchy party includes all strata such as the peasants, industry and commerce, and the army, and has become the second largest party in the empire after the Donglin Party. The second is the Democratic Party, which is dominated by progressive parties dominated by imperial thinkers, philosophers, scientists, etc. There are also parties representing all strata of the party, but none of them are as large as the first three and do not reach the proportional share of the candidates nominated.

The Donglin Party nominated Gu Mingzhe as a candidate, the Junguo Party nominated Yang Sichang as a candidate, and the Democratic Party nominated Zhou Lianggong as a candidate.

After the three were confirmed, the imperial government issued an official letter to the lower houses of the 72 states and provinces of the empire, and the local lower houses answered the three candidates for the first and second assistants.

The Q&A is determined by a draw of lots from the local House of Commons to the local people, and each state and province draws three main questions from a bunch of questions on the development of local people, and then asks three candidates. "If you are elected as the Prime Minister, how will these issues be resolved?" and decide who to vote for based on the answers of the three candidates.

The question of the choice of local states and provinces is to represent the will of the local people, so if the candidate's answer satisfies the local state and province, it is equivalent to satisfying the local people, so that the candidate who has won the majority of the local state and provincial votes can be guaranteed to be recognized by the majority of the people after he becomes the chief assistant of the cabinet, and the imperial power will be stable and the society will be stable.

The questionnaires of the three were all conducted under the strict supervision of the Imperial Supervisory Authority, and no one could help them answer the questions, and no one except the parties knew which candidate answered which question.

The Q&A period is one month, and the second month is to announce the answers of the three candidates, and then the lower houses of the 72 states of the empire will vote on the answers.

The outcome of the vote will essentially determine their fate, because the emperor will most of the time respect the will of the people of the whole country and will basically not oppose the outcome of the vote.

In the end, Gu Mingzhe, the candidate of the Donglin Party, won more than half of the support with 52 votes, and naturally became the successor of the first and auxiliary ministers of the fourth cabinet of the empire.

In second place was the monarchist candidate Yang Sichang, who received sixteen votes, according to the imperial constitution. The first party became the ruling party after gaining the right to form a cabinet. And the second largest party will be the supervisory party, supervising the ruling party. As a supervisory party. The Imperial Metropolitan Procuratorate will be controlled by the Monarchical Party as a supervisor of the Donglin Party's governance. The third largest party, the Democratic Party, won four votes and became an opposition party, but Zhou Lianggong will be given the post of director of the Imperial Anti-Corruption Office to help the people supervise the behavior of the Donglin Party and the Monarchy Party.

It can be said that any political party in power will become the object of supervision by other political parties. If the ruling ability is poor, the other parties have the right to apply to the emperor for impeachment of the ruling party's policies. If the emperor approves it, a session of the House of Representatives will be convened and submitted to the Senate for impeachment of the first and auxiliary ministers.

In the third month, Gu Mingzhe, as his successor, will be subjected to in-depth scrutiny from the Imperial Supervision Unit. This is a difficult hurdle, because the censors are the unsuccessful monarchy and the Democratic Party, and they will conduct the most "cruel" review of whether the candidate has committed a crime before and other criminal records.

If there are no problems in the review, the Metropolitan Procuratorate and the Independent Commission Against Corruption will report to the emperor to approve Gu Mingzhe's appointment, make him the first and auxiliary minister of the next cabinet, and allow him to form a cabinet.

This method of mutual checks and balances and mutual restraint was all thought up by Deng Haonan, and he tried his best to keep the government clear.

At the same time, in order to ensure the continuation of the policy, the ruling party has to compromise with the opposition parties and make certain concessions, which will further reduce the possibility of party disputes and maintain political stability.

All of them are under the control of Emperor Shenwu, and although the power has been delegated to the three departments, the real power is still in the hands of Deng Haonan. If Deng Haonan is willing, he can take back all his rights at any time, and no one dares to resist the orders of Emperor Shenwu. It's just that Deng Haonan doesn't want to ruin the happiness of the descendants of the Deng family in the future because of his own rights and selfish desires, and he is responsible for the continuation of the Deng royal family. Because he knew that the absolute monarchy could not last forever, he wanted to take advantage of his youth to create a stable system of constitutional monarchy and separation of powers that was acceptable to both the king and the people, so as to continue the rule of the Deng royal family.

Of course, Deng Haonan is so sure because he is still young, and he can still govern for at least a few decades, and with his strong control ability, he believes that the empire will follow the path he has set under his rule.

After the cabinet election, local states and provinces also began to run for governors and governors. Their election process is similar to that of a general election, in that they are nominated by local parties, notarized by local supervisory authorities, and evaluated by the local House of Commons and the public.

However, in local elections, in addition to giving speeches in the local lower house, candidates must also speak to the local people outdoors to canvass for votes, so that the local people can understand what their parents will do during their five years in office and what kind of benefits they will bring to the people, so as to determine which candidate they will support.

Due to the vast size of the empire, the citizens of the empire in the seventy-two provinces are too widely distributed, so there will be no national referendum election during the general election of the central cabinet of the empire. But the voting system works in local state capitals.

Citizens must be registered to be eligible to vote. The requirement for citizens of the Chinese Empire to be at least fifteen years old is that the average life expectancy of the citizens of the empire is too low, only less than thirty years old, so they have civil rights when they reach the age of fifteen. Of course, criminals in custody, if not deprived of the rights of citizens of the Reich, also have a vote.

Citizens register to vote in their place of residence and usually need to re-register if they move to a new place. The purpose of the registration system is to prevent cheating. Each citizen needs to hold his or her identity and proof of residence in order to receive a valuable ballot, and then put an X on the candidate on the ballot. As for why it is not a tick, but a cross, this cannot be explained, because from the day there are ballots, people have crossed out.

With the start of general elections in the states and provinces, there was a lot of buzz everywhere, candidates toured the prefectures and counties to canvass for votes, and the people of the empire cast their precious votes for their ideal parents.

At the local level, there is sometimes an interesting clash between candidates, where several candidates appear in the same prefecture at the same time. This caused the three of them to compete on the same stage, each showing their talents to canvass for votes, bringing extraordinary lively scenes to the prefecture and county, and some even directly surpassed the local Oiran competition, becoming a beautiful democratic landscape in the empire.

Of course, there is also the phenomenon of mutual exposure. Candidates expose their opponents' shortcomings as a way to strike at their opponents. Although this method is a bit shameless, for the empire and for the local parents, exposing each other's shortcomings will make the people know more about the parents and make the wisest choice. In the general direction, this is for the benefit of the country and the people.

There are also some candidates who, in order to attack their opponents, will do whatever it takes to slander their opponents. At this time, the Imperial Supervisory Organs will come out to investigate and collect evidence, and the local police department, the procuratorate, and the Independent Commission Against Corruption will conduct an in-depth investigation, and once the evidence is conclusive, the candidate's qualifications will be directly revoked, and on the contrary, the qualifications for defamation and defamation will be revoked. In short, the Empire's supervisory organ, Skynet, is the most trusted organ of the Empire's citizens. Compared with the Dongchang Jinyi Guard of the former Chaoming, the world is different.

Of course, today's Imperial Jinyi Guard is still not treated well by the people of the Empire, because the Imperial Jinyi Guard's Zhenfu Division, one of which is the Imperial Security Bureau, and the other is the Imperial Military Intelligence Agency, which are all secret agencies. Ordinary people are naturally averse to such institutions, both ancient and modern. At this time, the citizens of the empire would rather offend the police and gendarmes than provoke spies.

Elections are in full swing in various regions, but the most interesting thing is the position of governor of the capital Gyeonggi region.

These days, Lai Youguang, one of the candidates for governor of Zhili, has been touring everywhere to canvass for votes, but no matter how wonderful his speech is, there are always a large number of people who can't get along with him, frequently looking for trouble, exposing his old background, and making his speech very unsuccessful.

After returning to his residence, Lai Youguang was furious.

Suddenly, a black shadow flashed, and Lai Youguang was suddenly alert.

"Who"

"It's the first time that Lord Lai has such a violent feeling"

"How did you get in?"

"Lord Lai's house is so incorruptible, there are only one or two servants guarding the door, is it difficult to come in?"

Lai Youguang snorted coldly and sat down to drink tea by himself.

A person walked out of the dark, wearing a mask, sat on the other side of the coffee table, opened the folding fan, and said leisurely: "Lord Lai seems to be unhappy recently."

Lai Youguang glanced at the man, and said unhappily: "I don't know what's going on, it seems that someone has been against me recently."

"Adults also have uneven things"

Lai Youguang said angrily: "It's not that the reform of the imperial court has made us officials in the past where can we show our heads like this, standing on the podium every day, like a play to please the people, these ten years of hard work, decades of officialdom, now the old man's face is lost." ”

"My lord seems to be a little out of breath, why don't you think about our mention?"

Lai Youguang snorted coldly and said: "The Ming Dynasty has been dead for more than ten years, and now that the empire is in peace and security, under the prosperous dynasty, you will be dead." I advise you, don't hit a stone with an egg."

"That's right" the man laughed and said, "This Deng Haonan is indeed very capable, but he is not a god, there is always a way to break him"

"Do you mean that you have amassed enough strength to deal with the Empire?"

The man stood up, put his hands behind his back, and said confidently, "This huge empire looks very strong, but his weaknesses are also quite obvious."

Lai Youguang saw that he had something in his words, and said, "It looks like you are very confident, why don't you come and listen to it?" ”

The man laughed and said, "Do you think I'm going to sue you for this court eagle dog?" ”

Lai Youguang smiled faintly and said, "It's okay if you don't tell me, then please."

Lai Youguang picked up the tea bowl and motioned to see off the guests.

The man smiled, sat down again, and said, "Don't look at each other's hole cards, it's boring to say something practical, we'll help you win the election."

Lai Youguang smiled and said, "Okay, then I'll see your sincerity first."

The man got up, it seemed that Lai Youguang was good for a while, put on the paper fan, and said coldly: "Sure enough, it's an old fox, but remember what you said."

After saying that, he turned around and left, Lai Youguang just glanced at him coldly, and continued to drink his tea as if nothing had happened.

After a while, Lai Youguang got up, opened the secret door, and entered the tunnel.

Beneath the tunnel is a different scene, a basement, with jewels and luxury.

"Lord"

Lai Youguang sat on the soft bed, and his own beautiful maid stepped forward to serve.

"Go, find out who is causing trouble for me?"

One of the servants stepped forward and said, "Your Majesty, my subordinates have been paying attention to this matter, and after investigation, we found that behind many of the troublemakers, it seems that they have something to do with this year's Oiran Xing Yuan."

"Xing Yuan?"

Lai Youguang frowned and said, "Who is this Xing Yuan?" Did the old man offend him? ”

The servant said: "The lord's anger is all due to his subordinates, and this Xing Yuan is Xing Wanfen, the daughter of Xing Zhihua, the magistrate of Shaoxing County, Hangzhou Prefecture."

"What? It's Xing Wanfen."

Lai Youguang suddenly stood up, grabbing the servant's neck and being excited and nervous.

"The lord's anger and subordinates have arranged for people to kill her as much as possible"

Lai Youguang nodded and said, "Let's not do it first, it's better for the people over there to come forward."

The servant said, "Lord, are you really going to cooperate with them?" ”

Lai Youguang snorted coldly and replied: "Let them make trouble, if there is a advantage to take advantage of, then why not?" ”

"What the Lord means—"

"Have you ever heard of borrowing a knife to kill someone?"

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

In the imperial study of the Forbidden City, Emperor Deng Haonan has received a relevant report on Lai Youguang's lecture tour canvassing.

"What do you think?"

Deng Haonan looked at Wang Chen on the side, and the latter said: "Back to the emperor, Weichen has already sent someone to investigate, and behind this qiē is a woman's manipulation."

Deng Haonan was a little surprised, judging from the intelligence, it must not be an ordinary person who can instigate so many dignitaries and dignitaries to secretly make trouble for Lai Youguang. But it turned out to be a woman, which surprised Deng Haonan.

"Who? What kind of woman has so much power? ”

Wang Chen replied: "Emperor Qi, it is Xing Yuan Xing Wanfen, the eight best flower queens in the capital this year."

It turned out to be him? Deng Haonan couldn't help but be surprised.

Then, Wang Chen explained: "We have investigated, this Xing Yuan is the daughter of Xing Zhihua, the prefect of Shaoxing County, Hangzhou Prefecture, in the seventh year of the previous dynasty, when Lai Youguang, the prefect of Hangzhou, suddenly attacked Xing Zhihua on the last day of his term of office, impeached Xing Zhihua for embezzling public funds, and harboring key criminals of the Donglin Party. As a result, Wei Zhongxian immediately ordered Jinyi Wei to arrest Xing Zhihua's family, and although there was no evidence, they were still sentenced to death. However, when the family was executed, Xing Zhihua's daughter Xing Yuan escaped, and then went to her aunt's house to change her character Chen, whose name was Yuanyuan, and escaped a catastrophe. However, when Chen Yuanyuan was sixteen years old, he suddenly disappeared, and a year earlier Chen Yuanyuan appeared again under the name of Xing Yuan and won the top card of the Oiran in the capital. Since she won the first brand, relying on her beauty, she has attracted countless dignitaries and dignitaries in the capital, and many people are even willing to do anything for her. The troublemaking of Lai Youguang's speech this time was the emperor instigated by Xing Yuan behind his back——"

Wang Chen shouted a few times, and Deng Haonan came back to his senses.

"She's Chen Yuanyuan?"

"Yes, Your Majesty"

After Wang Chen's confirmation, Deng Haonan couldn't cry or laugh for a while.

"It turns out that she went to approach the dignitaries for this reason, and I thought she was a person who tended to be inflammatory."

Wang Chen thought for a while, and suddenly said: "Your Majesty, Weichen thinks that this Xing Yuan's identity is confusing, and Weichen hopes that the emperor can remain vigilant."

Deng Haonan looked at Wang Chen in amazement and asked, "If you have something to say, you can say it directly."

Wang Chen then said: "This Xing Yuan also has a lot to do with Zhu Ping of the Teahouse, but that Zhu Ping is a suspect that our Security Bureau has been monitoring."

"What?" V