Chapter 187

"Ancestral rules, ancestral rules my foot! My entire life's glory is ruined by these ancestral rules!"

Only Zhu Youjian spoke softly from the side,

"Respected Ancestral Grandfathers, I'm afraid the ancestral rules are not so easily abolished."

"Emperor Shizong did indeed open the seas in his later years, but shortly after Shizong's passing, the sea ban was reimposed. When your elder brother, the Emperor, was on the throne, he also opened and banned the seas several times. I believe the southeastern gentry clans have long controlled the maritime transport in the southeast, making it difficult for the court to intervene again."

A look of confusion appeared on Zhu Qi's face.

"That doesn't make sense. If the southeastern gentry control maritime transport, shouldn't they be hoping for the seas to be opened...?"

As soon as Zhu Qi spoke these words,

he immediately noticed the other Emperors looking at him as if he were an idiot.

Only Zhu Yuanzhang forced himself to be patient, squeezing out a smile uglier than crying on his face and asked,

"Boy, let me ask you: if you could smuggle, would you be so full of energy to pay taxes to the court?!"

"Why do you act as if you have no brain?!"

Zhu Qi looked aggrieved and said,

"Then how is the sea supposed to be opened?!"

Everyone's gaze focused on Jiajing.

Jiajing stood there stunned and chose to remain silent.

It takes three years to learn to speak, and a lifetime to learn to shut up.

Jiajing naturally understood this principle.

The more one speaks, the more mistakes one makes.

When handling affairs in court, Jiajing even liked to let his ministers speak in riddles so he could shift the blame more easily.

Let alone with something like this.

It was even more impossible to speak recklessly.

If things went well, the ministers of their respective dynasties would remember the merit as belonging to them.

If things went badly, Old Zhu would be the first to scold him.

Whoever wants to stick their neck out, let them do it!

Zhu Yuanzhang's old face grew gloomy as he stared at Jiajing and asked,

"Speak! How did you open the seas?!"

Jiajing looked at Zhu Yuanzhang without changing his expression and said,

"Respected Ancestral Grandfather, you just heard it. My method for opening the seas also failed to proceed. After my passing, didn't the sea ban return?"

Seeing Jiajing's uninvolved, slippery demeanor,

how could Zhu Yuanzhang fail to understand what Jiajing meant?

"This is our own family matter, our own world! Don't you know how to manage it?!"

A thousand horses galloped through Jiajing's heart.

What good would it do if I managed it well?

Wouldn't I still be the Emperor during the Jiajing reign?

Jiajing's straightforward appearance looked exactly like that of a veteran bureaucrat who had been muddling through officialdom for years.

Zhu Yuanzhang only felt his blood pressure gradually soaring.

Just at that moment,

a message suddenly popped up in the chat group.

【Great Ming's national strength has successfully risen, automatically unlocking the 'Disguise Talisman,' which can be stacked with the 'Teleportation Talisman.'】

【The 'Disguise Talisman' is ineffective only against members within the chat group and allows any two members of the chat group to swap faces.】

Of course, the authority to use the Disguise Talisman remained in the hands of the group owner, Zhu Yuanzhang.

Jiajing, who had just joined the chat group not long ago, hadn't even figured out what this line of text meant yet

when he saw Zhu Yuanzhang, who had been stunned into silence by him, furiously scolding him.

"You boy won't speak, will you? Let me help you! Let's see if you speak now!"

Before the words had even faded,

Zhu Yuanzhang immediately chose to use the 'Disguise Talisman,' swapping Jiajing's face with Zhu Houzhao's.

Then he used the 'Teleportation Talisman.'

Before Jiajing could even come to his senses, he felt a beam of white light appear beneath his feet.

The old Daoist Priest's face immediately showed a trace of terror.

"This... is this an immortal technique?"

Before Jiajing could come to his senses,

he had already appeared on the grassland outside Xuanfu.

Looking at the grass beneath his feet and the cattle and sheep in the distance,

Jiajing felt the Forbidden City was so warm and cozy for the first time.

"No, Respected Ancestral Grandfather, where is this? I was wrong, I'll speak, okay? Please let me go back quickly!"

Zhu Yuanzhang's old face sank, and he spoke softly,

"Now you know the palace is good? It's too late!"

"You stay there and honestly open the seas for your brother's reign before talking about anything else!"

Jiajing, with a tearful face, looked at Zhu Yuanzhang and said,

"Respected Ancestral Grandfather, the elixir I refined is almost ready; I can't miss a dose! If I miss a dose, my achievement will be ruined."

Hearing this.

Zhu Yuanzhang finally realized what was going on.

So this kid has been taking pills every single day?

"Fourth! Stop staring and hurry up to scatter his alchemy furnace for us!"

Hearing that Zhu Di wanted to scatter his own alchemy furnace.

Jiajing completely lost his composure.

"Great-Grandfather, that is a divine medicine with miraculous..."

"Pah!"

"You'd better go out and plow two mu of land; that's more useful than that broken thing!"

The greatest virtue of the Zhu family emperors is that they basically never pursued immortality.

Especially Zhu Yuanzhang and his son.

Historically, any monarch who established great achievements.

Would basically frantically search for various pills to take in their later years.

The only two exceptions were the old Zhu father and son of the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty's Kang Maizi and Kang Maizi's precious great-grandson.

On the wu day of the eighth month of the fifteenth year of Yongle, someone from Oning County presented golden elixirs and formula books; Zhu Di didn't even lift his eyelids to look at them.

He turned his head, issued an edict, found a squad of Embroidered Uniform Guards, and sent them specifically to Oning County to force that person to eat the golden elixir himself, and on the way, they also burned the formula books—(from the Veritable Records of Emperor Taizong Wen...)

Zhu Di, looking at Jiajing in the chat group, couldn't help but sneer.

"You kid, hurry up and get to work."

"If you work fast, maybe I'll still leave you two pills; if you work slow..."

Hearing Zhu Di say this.

Perhaps this was the power of faith; hearing that the "immortal medicine" could be saved, Jiajing's soles seemed as if they had been smeared with oil.

He immediately ran towards the distant city wall.

Zhu Yuanzhang in the chat group watched Jiajing sprinting and his mouth corner twitched slightly.

"Didn't expect this kid to run so fast..."

Zhu Yuanzhang gave a look to Zhu Di in the chat group.

Zhu Di immediately understood and exited the group chat.

Then he strode forward towards the front hall of Qianqing Palace.

At this moment, Zhu Houzhao was already leaning on the imperial desk and dozing off.

Zhu Di saw Chen Hong, whom he had just kicked a few times, staring at him with ill will; Zhu Di's heart immediately felt disgust.

"Where does your emperor usually sleep?"