Chapter 324: Zhu Youjiao Enters Dezhou City

Zhang Kang shot Liu Mao a helpless look and said with a bitter smile, "Sir, we've had the list of people coming out of the capital this time for ages, haven't we? If there were anyone we actually knew, we wouldn't have ended up in this situation of being completely in the dark."

"Then why don't you go work some connections?" Liu Mao said irritably.

Zhang Kang knew his superior was in a bad mood, so he didn't continue arguing with him. Things were as they were — everyone was anxious and jittery, and no one dared to show the slightest negligence.

Dezhou was in a state of panic, but Zhu Youxiao couldn't have cared less.

The reason he'd gotten off the boat at Dezhou for a look was mainly to see the situation and, in passing, relieve the boredom of traveling by ship. If one insisted on asking whether he had some purpose, the truth was he didn't.

Glancing at the Dezhou officials not far away, Zhu Youxiao said to Xu Guangqi, "Tell those people over there to go back. I'm just taking a stroll and don't want to disturb the locality. Have them go back and do their jobs properly. If there's need, I'll summon them."

"Yes, Your Majesty." Xu Guangqi hurriedly acknowledged, then sent someone to inform the Dezhou Prefect. With his status, he naturally wouldn't go deliver the message in person.

At Zhu Youxiao's side, Huang Kezuan said, "Your Majesty, should we issue an edict to the Shandong Governor?"

Zhu Youxiao glanced at Huang Kezuan. Huang Kezuan had only said to issue an edict to the Shandong Governor but hadn't said what the Governor was to be told — clearly there was a trap hidden in those words.

If he summoned the Shandong Governor to receive him and Huang Kezuan said not to let him come, wouldn't that be going against his wishes? And vice versa — that was why Huang Kezuan phrased it this way. This was the art of speaking.

Clearly, the ministers around him had all started speaking this way now.

Though Zhu Youxiao found it somewhat strange, even somewhat disheartening, he also understood that such things were unavoidable — there was simply no way for him to solve this kind of problem.

As he grew more and more assertive, this sort of situation would appear with increasing frequency. The so-called "three paper-pasted Grand Secretaries, six clay-molded Ministers" was basically just this.

When the Emperor was strong-willed enough, his ministers had to weigh their words carefully — and vice versa.

"Tell them no one is allowed to come." Zhu Youxiao looked at Huang Kezuan and said, "I want to see their achievements, see how they govern a region for me. I don't want them tagging along."

"Yes, Your Majesty. Your servant will immediately send someone to deliver the edict." Huang Kezuan hurriedly acknowledged.

Zhang Kang and Liu Mao received the imperial edict soon after, and both wore bitter expressions.

The two had originally hoped to probe for information, but now it seemed there was no hope — they could only leave in dejection.

Still, both men's hearts were now on edge. They prepared to go back and tidy things up properly — they absolutely could not let His Majesty develop any dissatisfaction with them, or else things would surely turn disastrous.

Zhu Youxiao didn't even look at the two of them. He directly ordered, "Prepare to enter the city."

With so many men and horses, it was naturally impossible for everyone to enter the city, so only a select few would go — a dozen or so would be enough.

As for the guards, that was Qi Jin's matter to arrange.

Xu Guangqi called Qi Jin to his side and asked directly, "Have you arranged the manpower?"

"In answer to Grand Secretary Xu, five hundred men were sent into the city yesterday. They've already found their positions — as long as His Majesty enters the city, everyone around him will be our people." Qi Jin said hurriedly.

Xu Guangqi nodded in satisfaction and said, "Then pick a dozen or so more men to serve as his personal escort."

"Rest assured, Grand Secretary Xu — everything is prepared." Qi Jin said.

Receiving Qi Jin's answer, Xu Guangqi walked back in satisfaction and briefed the several ministers present on the situation.

The party then made their way toward Dezhou city.

Dezhou was not originally a large city, but because of the existence of the Grand Canal, trade flourished here and the crowds were numerous — it did present quite a scene of prosperous splendor.

Though Zhu Youxiao's party was not small in number, it didn't attract any large-scale attention.

There were many traveling merchants and resident traders here; a group of several dozen people, though not small, was hardly a rarity.

Only — wherever this group went, they were secretly watched. The gate guards had long since been given their orders, so it was basically unrealistic for Zhu Youxiao to see anything he truly wanted to see.

When Zhu Youxiao reached the city gate, the common folk were queuing in orderly fashion. The soldiers collecting tolls and levying taxes enforced the law civilly, with courtesy and smiles on their faces.

Zhu Youxiao took one look and shook his head.

Too fake.

Never mind the Great Ming era — even in later generations, the problems of "doors hard to enter, faces hard to look at, matters hard to handle" had never been fundamentally resolved; they were simply a universal phenomenon.

Since when did the Great Ming have such good service awareness?

Utter nonsense.

Still, Zhu Youxiao understood in his heart. With him coming like this, the people below would inevitably put on a bit of a show for his benefit.

This sort of thing was even more common in later generations — which was also why so many people at the bottom questioned those at the top.

With things so plainly obvious, why didn't the people at the top know?

The answer was simple: the people at the top simply couldn't see it.

Take himself, for example — if he hadn't transmigrated here, but had truly grown up in the deep palace as an Emperor, what would he think upon seeing this scene?

He'd surely think that with such prosperity, this must indeed be a golden age. Add in the people around him saying a few nice words of praise, and he'd be even more unable to see clearly.

The party walked into Dezhou city.

Zhu Youxiao said with a smile, "It's rare for us, sovereign and ministers, to get out — let's have a good stroll."

With that, he took the lead and walked on ahead.

In a teahouse not far from the city gate, Liu Mao and Zhang Kang, now changed into plain clothes, stood by a second-floor window, carefully watching in Zhu Youxiao's direction.

Liu Mao turned to Zhang Kang and said, "You've passed down all the orders, right? No mistakes, I hope?"

"Sir, rest assured — everything was arranged long ago." Zhang Kang said hurriedly. "This concerns everyone's heads; no one dares to be negligent."

"Have those disaster refugees been settled?" Liu Mao looked at Zhang Kang with a dark face and asked, "I'm not worried about anything else — my only worry is those refugees. If His Majesty were to see them, we'd all be in deep trouble."

Hearing this, Zhang Kang said with some helplessness, "Rest assured, it's all been arranged."

"But this matter can't really be blamed on us. We don't have the court's disaster relief funds or grain — what do the refugees who fled over here have to do with us? You, sir, also organized the wealthy households of the city to donate money and goods, and we've done no small amount of relief these past days. It's just that there are too many refugees, and our Dezhou Prefecture is only so big. The court hasn't allocated funds or grain either — we can't manage everything."

"Easy for you to say." Liu Mao said irritably, "Go tell that to someone else."

"Our area didn't suffer the disaster. If refugees flee to our territory, we have to manage them. If His Majesty saw them, do you think he'd listen to your explanations? Besides, why did the refugees flee? Isn't it because relief efforts were ineffective?"

"The court allocated disaster relief grain — quite a lot of it — and gave plenty of money too. But where did those things go? Don't you know in your heart? Why bother saying such things?"

"If the lid got blown off from our end, how could we keep working in the Shandong officialdom? Would the Governor's office let us off?"

"Sending His Majesty off smoothly with nothing going wrong — that's our greatest fortune. As for everything else, when does it ever become our turn to handle it?"

"People say officials in the capital are hard to serve. Well, being an official in Shandong is easy, is it?"

Listening to his superior's complaints, Liu Mao let out a helpless sigh.

Everyone says that being a capital official is hard while local posts are cushy sinecures, but here in Shandong, the ones calling the shots were not these people at all.

Whose fields were in Shandong? Whose land was in Shandong? In whose hands was Shandong's grain? The officials of Shandong all knew very well.

But what could you do even if you knew? What dared you say? What dared you do? You couldn't even dare to ask.

Some hoarded goods to profiteer, some passed off inferior goods as quality, some drove grain prices sky-high with abandon — what dared you do? You couldn't even dare to ask.

"Your Excellency, rest assured, there's no problem — it was all arranged long ago." Zhang Kang could only console his master this way.

Zhu Youxiao and his group strolled through the city, buying a few things here and there, with everyone accompanying the Emperor on his walk.

They had plenty of opportunities to go out on ordinary days, so naturally they took no interest in such things. Besides, accompanying the Emperor on a stroll kept their hearts in their throats — they had no mood to enjoy themselves.

But Zhu Youxiao didn't care about any of that.

Yet as they walked on, everyone began to notice that something seemed off — because a man had somehow emerged from nowhere and merged into the procession.

Xu Guangqi looked to Qi Jin with a questioning gaze. By all rights, no one should have been able to approach this procession. After all, Qi Jin had arranged guards long ago — if anyone could just walk up here, then what was the point of such guards?

Qi Jin took a look at the newcomer and said hesitantly to Xu Guangqi: "Grand Secretary Xu, that's a man from the Imperial Household Department."

Hearing this, Xu Guangqi furrowed his brow and let out a helpless sigh inwardly.

So His Majesty had not come ashore without reason, nor had he truly wanted to take a stroll around Dezhou — there was business to attend to.

Still, Xu Guangqi understood there was no helping it. If he truly expected His Majesty to ignore everything and see nothing, that was something he himself could not manage either.

After all, the purpose of His Majesty's journey this time was not simple to begin with — Xu Guangqi simply hadn't expected His Majesty to meet with someone from the Imperial Household Department.

Zhu Youxiao glanced at the newcomer and asked: "So you're the head of the Imperial Household Department's operations in Shandong?"

"Reporting to Your Majesty — Wu Jiye, Director of the Shandong Administrative Bureau of the Imperial Household Department, pays respects to Your Majesty." Wu Jiye said hurriedly.

Zhu Youxiao looked Wu Jiye up and down.

He was a middle-aged man in his forties, lean of frame, with a thin handlebar mustache — clearly a very shrewd character.

"How are things in Dezhou?" Zhu Youxiao looked at him and asked.

"Reporting to Your Majesty, the situation in Dezhou is passable." Wu Jiye said quickly: "Though some disaster refugees have come to Dezhou, the numbers are not very large."

"Prefect Liu Mao of Dezhou has also arranged relief, organizing the wealthy households in the city to donate money and grain, setting up porridge stations, and also arranging for physicians to treat the refugees. Though a few people died, they weren't starved to death — most had contracted serious illnesses along the road and couldn't be saved even after arriving here."

Zhu Youxiao nodded and said: "If so, he's done reasonably well. But after I entered the city, I haven't seen a single refugee — could it be that no refugees have come into the city to beg?"

"Refugees are not permitted to enter the city." Wu Jiye thought for a moment before saying: "When refugees arrive here, they are all uniformly settled outside the city walls, and are not allowed to enter and disturb the city's residents."

"When it was learned that Your Majesty was coming, the Dezhou Prefectural Office moved all the refugees to the north. Prefect Liu Mao is a fairly steady man — he didn't directly order people to drive the refugees away, but simply moved all the porridge stations to the north of the city and had all the refugees go there."

Hearing this, Zhu Youxiao nodded.

If what Wu Jiye said was true, then this Prefect Liu Mao of Dezhou could be considered a competent official. As for the matter of moving the people along, there was probably some hidden circumstance behind it.

Letting out a soft sigh, Zhu Youxiao said: "Still, they don't want me to know."

There was no answering that. The affairs of this world had always been about deceiving those above while hiding nothing from those below — and how much more so when it came to the Emperor?

This was someone who truly held the power of life and death — one misstep and entire families were executed. No one dared to be careless.

"What about other parts of Shandong?" Zhu Youxiao looked at Wu Jiye and continued asking.

"Not good." Wu Jiye thought for a moment before saying: "The situation around Jining is the most severe. In places like Juye, the people have been displaced from their homes and are struggling to survive. Large numbers of disaster victims have flooded out of their households, seeking food everywhere."

"Is the court's disaster relief grain insufficient?" Zhu Youxiao looked at Wu Jiye and asked slowly.

One had to understand — earthquakes were not like droughts or floods, which easily left the people without food to eat. Natural disasters like earthquakes caused more damage of other kinds — collapsed houses, reversed river flows — and above all, casualties.

Though the land would also be damaged, it wouldn't reach the point of total crop failure. Plainly speaking, there was still food to eat.

Under such circumstances, once the court's relief grain arrived, things were relatively manageable. As long as the people's hearts were calmed and post-disaster self-rescue and reconstruction were organized steadily, the impact would be very small.

What mattered more was the death toll. In this era, there were few means of disaster relief, and the dead were probably numerous. This was something Zhu Youxiao had no power to change — the level of productivity was what it was.

But most people lived in earthen houses these days, and as long as they weren't buried directly, they could generally be rescued.

Now hearing Wu Jiye say this, it was clear that things were not as he had imagined.

In fact, the reason Zhu Youxiao had come out this time was simple — it was for this earthquake in Shandong.

One had to know that this earthquake had not settled down so quickly — afterward, it directly triggered Xu Hongru's rebellion.

Since around the twenty-ninth year of Wanli, he had joined forces with Wang Sen and Wang Haoxian, father and son, using the Wenxiang sect (a branch of the White Lotus sect) to organize peasants, operating in secret for over twenty years — yet they had never found an opportunity to rebel.

Why did Xu Hongru choose this moment?

It was precisely because of this earthquake. At the same time, the place where he rebelled highly overlapped with the earthquake zone — the disaster victims could no longer survive, so they naturally followed them into rebellion.

What Zhu Youxiao feared was not their rebellion — that couldn't stir up much trouble on its own. What Zhu Youxiao had his eye on was what lay behind their rebellion.

What Zhu Youxiao wanted to move was the hearts of the people of this realm,

What he wanted to overturn was the officialdom of the Great Ming.