Chapter 399: Light is Very Expensive

The main text of "I Really Don't Want to Neglect My Proper Job," Chapter 410: Light is Very Expensive. Zhu Yijun discovered that he had seriously overestimated the resistance will of the base Confucians and seriously overestimated the restraint of ritual education on imperial power. He had underestimated the enemy.

He thought these base Confucians would spare no cost—for example, inciting civil unrest, holding refugees hostage, hijacking public opinion, assassinating the King, executing orders with double the effort, and even not hesitating to rebel—to oppose the Emperor's decrees in every possible way.

Clearing land and returning it, opening the sea, and opening up—these new policies had effectively damaged the interests of prominent families and powerful and wealthy families.

Because in the first twenty-one years of the Jiajing Emperor, when he was reforming, he had always been facing these.

However, the resistance will of the base Confucians melted away like snow in the third month of spring in front of the increasingly powerful capital camp.

Now, the court officials are discussing grand construction, but in the end, they have only turned three roads into two and a half. The post road to Ningwei is also on the list for preparation, and because of the white clay, most people have no objections, only feeling that the financial pressure is too great.

And the officials, the mouthpieces of the wealthy families, only shouted twice and immediately stopped, and even "donated" and took out silver to help build the road.

Donation—this was a method adopted by the Great Ming court after the national fiscal revenue dropped significantly since the Hongzhi period. The Governors of the Great Ming, such as Yin Zhengmao, Ling Yunyi, and Pan Jixun, had all adopted this method to varying degrees.

The imperial discussion continued. The preparation of several ocean-going merchant firms of the Maritime Trade Office had been completed, and the merchant chiefs had begun to be appointed. All ocean-going merchant firms were waiting for Wang Daokun to leave office, intending to bite off a piece of meat from the Songjiang Ocean-going Merchant Firm when there was a major personnel change.

Including but not limited to: the allocation of three-masted and five-masted ships, the share of imported grain, the export market for porcelain, iron pots, silk, and cloth, the permits for ships going to sea, and the proportion of supervisory officials in the Maritime Trade Office.

These were all where the interests lay, sharpening their knives.

And the new Governor of Songjiang, after intense discussion, finally got a result: Shen Shixing, a disciple of Zhang Juzheng and a direct subordinate of the Zhang faction.

Wang Daokun was of the Zhejiang faction. The wind and water turn in turns. In order to ensure that Songjiang Prefecture belonged to the court and not the private property of a certain faction, this kind of rotation was extremely common. For example, the two Guangs, which had always been in the hands of the Zhang faction, were in the hands of Wang Jiaping of the Shanxi faction after Ling Yunyi.

This kind of rotation was to ensure the centripetal force of the court and ensure the basic stability of the Great Ming's political landscape. The Son of Heaven manages the capital officials, and the capital officials manage the local officials.

High positions cannot be stolen for long, and great power cannot be occupied for long.

Judging whether a place is a prefecture/county system or an enfeoffment system can also be determined by this standard. If local officials always belong to people of a certain faction, that is enfeoffment, not prefecture/county. For example, the Viceroy of the Luzon Viceroyalty—Yin Zhengmao would hold this position until the last moment of his life.

After the content that needed to be sent to the Wenhua Hall for imperial discussion ended, the Minister of Works Guo Chaobin simply reported the many achievements of the Great Ming Emperor's investment in opening the sea.

Guo Chaobin was not a figure in the three factions; he was an honest man who did work. He held the memorial and said: "The group construction of the Longjiang, Qingjiang, Weihe, Songjiang, Jinshan, and Ningbo shipyards—there are currently 47 factories, with carpenters, sawyers, leather workers, caulkers, blacksmiths, porters, trackers, etc. Last year, they built 2,130 shallow boats, 1,300 flat-bottomed grain boats, 3,200 four-hundred-load drill-wind boats, 4,300 four-hundred-load battle-seat boats, 145 thousand-load three-masted sandwich ships, and 72 three-thousand-load five-masted sandwich ships. There were also hydrofoil sailboats, pleasure boats, star-gazing ships, etc., totaling 【number missing】 ships, and 750,000 grain boxes."

"Built 1,432 schools, including 124 girls' weaving schools, for the children of craftsmen to attend school, totaling more than 123,000 students."

"Before the three generations, the grain transport method was not prepared, and the establishment had nowhere to be examined. Now the Emperor has opened up, set up grain transport ships to manage ships to transport grain. The national plan relies on it, which is truly a magnificent feat for the foundation of our country and a long-term plan for ten thousand generations."

Last year, according to the needs of all parties in the Great Ming, more than 12,000 ships of various sizes were built, and 190,000 adults were settled. "Ding" is an adult laborer. In the statistics, a family usually has at most one or two adult laborers. It can be said without exaggeration that the shipbuilding industry is now the livelihood of millions of Great Ming shipwrights.

In the craftsman schools, there were also girls' weaving schools. Besides reading, they also had to learn weaving. Besides that, they also had to study arithmetic, mainly to calculate accounts for holding the family business in the future.

The rules and regulations, organizational structure, and even the girls' weaving schools of the shipyards—all of this was collectively called the "Group Construction Method," which learned from the experience of the woolen factory by the Yongding River in the Great Ming.

The common people called the grain transport boxes "Taiyue boxes," and it became a habit. Bulk granular goods were all transported using grain transport boxes. Guo Chaobin was used to calling them that and almost said it wrong in the Wenhua Hall.

Just like Zhu Yijun's pedal scooter, they were all called "dry ducks," but its official name was *Cunwu*.

"Vice Minister Wang has great merit, a backbone of governing the country and benefiting the people." Guo Chaobin said sincerely. All of this had to start from the "Memorial on Resettling the Rogues" by Wang Chonggu when he entered the Cabinet. Wang Chonggu was the Vice Minister. Although he never sat in the Wenyuan Pavilion, his promise when entering the Cabinet was the "Memorial on Resettling the Rogues."

"Me? Governing the country and benefiting the people?" Wang Chonggu was originally listening happily to Guo Chaobin talking about the group construction of the Ministry of Works like counting family treasures, but suddenly being mentioned, he was a bit stunned.

He, Wang Chonggu, a usurping sycophant, a fawning flatterer, the "living Yan Song" in the mouths of scholars for the sake of survival, suddenly became "governing the country and benefiting the people," and it was said from the mouth of the current Great Ming public, the Minister of Works. This made it very difficult for Wang Chonggu to accept this change of identity for a while.

Wang Chonggu was the target of the officials' fire besides Wan Shihe. Having been scolded for a long time, Wang Chonggu himself thought he was a treacherous official.

"Otherwise what?" Zhu Yijun smiled and affirmed Guo Chaobin's praise. No matter how much those base Confucians sprayed, the solid achievements were right before their eyes. No matter how many times they said it, they could not shake Wang Chonggu's holy favor.

"Thank you, Your Majesty, for your holy praise." Wang Chonggu hurriedly bowed to thank him. Having long since stopped showing his joy or anger, he still could not stop the smile on his face and decided to give Wang Qian a raise in pocket money.

"Here is an accounting financial report issued by the Inner Treasury. When the three party leaders leave, give it to the wealthy families who invested money. Where the money was spent, where the money was earned, and why they were given so many dividends—it is all written clearly." Zhu Yijun let Feng Bao bring four thick books. This was the profit detail of 37.12 million silver invested since the third year of Wanli.

The leaders of the Zhang, Shanxi, and Zhejiang factions each took one back, and the Ministry of Revenue also took one.

"One issue every year from now on, and each hall will copy and distribute it." Zhu Yijun made it clear that this financial report was once a year, not just this once.

The Great Ming Royal Academy of Sciences, headed by the Imperial Uncle Zhu Zaiyu, had astonishing computing power. Besides calculating the map drawn by the triangular surveying method, they also had the energy to participate in the Ministry of Revenue's year-end audit and investment audit.

Zhu Yijun could actually not show this detail of 37.12 million silver investment returns to the ministers. After doing it well, he could just look at it himself. After thinking about it, he still decided to publish the financial report. He did not use this large sum of silver for his own extravagance, so there was nothing he couldn't show the ministers.

"When the Great Way is practiced, the world is for the public. Your Majesty is holy!" Zhang Juzheng, Wang Chonggu, and Tan Lun stood up and bowed to thank him.

The wealthy families who were tossed about all supported the Emperor, precisely because the Emperor practiced the Great Way and did things in a fair and upright manner.

"After it ends later, call Scholar Shen here. Going to Songjiang to take office is no small matter." Zhu Yijun waved his hand, announced the end of this imperial discussion, and then summoned the local officials who were going to be Governors.

Shen Shixing, the top scholar in the 41st year of Jiajing, was an old "good man" who had been a Grand Secretary for fifteen years, muddling through things in a mess. Shen Shixing looked like a "two-faced," "eight-sided and exquisite," "sourcing from both sides" person who had no opinion, no ability, and no achievements as the Chief Grand Secretary.

As a disciple of Zhang Juzheng, he did nothing when Zhang Juzheng was liquidated. After succeeding as Chief Grand Secretary, he did nothing either, and did not continue to push for new policies. In the end, because he was afraid of trouble in the National Foundation Case, he simply retired to his hometown.

But in Zhu Yijun's eyes, Shen Shixing, who was only forty-five years old now, was a radical in the reform faction. Shen Shixing had criticized his teacher and seat-holder Zhang Juzheng in the sixth year of Wanli. The reason for the criticism was very simple: in the sixth year of Wanli, after Zhang Juzheng returned to the court, regarding the implementation of land clearing and the Single Whip Law in all thirteen provinces of the two capitals, Zhang Juzheng opposed the radical nationwide promotion and chose to proceed step by step, with one policy for one place.

The forty-five-year-old Shen Shixing was a radical, and the fifty-year-old Shen Shixing began to muddle through. Perhaps, under the rolling general trend, he chose to protect himself.

The liquidation of Zhang Juzheng was done by Zhang Siwei as Chief Grand Secretary on the surface, but in fact, Shen Shixing, as a Cabinet Minister, knew very well that it was launched by the Wanli Emperor.

An incompetent person could not climb to the position of Chief Grand Secretary.

"I pay my respects to Your Majesty. Long live, long live, long live Your Majesty." Shen Shixing, the Right Vice Minister of the Ministry of Personnel, walked into the side hall. Besides the affairs of the Ministry of Personnel, he was also the Deputy Chief Editor of the *Great Ming Collected Statutes*.

"Exempt from courtesy, sit." Zhu Yijun signaled Shen Shixing to sit.

The side hall was full of Zhu Yijun's whimsical ideas. On the left hand side of the door was a pile of models of various ships sent by the shipyard, as well as a pool to verify the force of the ship models. On the north side of the right hand was seven display cabinets, filled with various classics, which were the summary of the Great Ming's new policies. In front of the window, there was also a zither. Zhu Yijun did not like music theory; that was Wang Yaozhuo's musical instrument.

This was Shen Shixing's first time coming to the side hall. This was being entrusted with a heavy responsibility and also a smooth rise in his career.

"Vice Minister Shen, going to Songjiang Prefecture this time, I hope you will not fail the expectations of the teacher and manage Songjiang Prefecture properly. Songjiang Prefecture is the bridgehead for the Great Ming to open the sea, and the matter is of great importance." Zhu Yijun did not have any pleasantries but directly stated his expectations.

According to the Great Ming's official appointment and removal mechanism, after this transfer, Shen Shixing would arrive, and Wang Daokun should leave office and hand over. But it was not like that. Wang Daokun would take Shen Shixing for nearly a year, and would not leave office until the term expired next year. Shen Shixing would first serve as a secondary official when arriving at the local area. If he did not do well, the court would choose to let Wang Daokun stay, and the result of Shen Shixing returning to the capital in a sorry state would be to be forgotten in the crowd.

Zhu Yijun explained the tricks here very clearly. Songjiang Prefecture could not become a tail that could not be wagged in Shen Shixing's hands, like the Shanxi faction in Xuanfu and Datong in the early Wanli period, or the existence of Li Chengliang in Liaodong.

If Shen Shixing did well, when he returned to the court, he would be the Chief Grand Secretary of the Great Ming.

"The matter of group construction in the official factory must be careful. Do not be hijacked by the wealthy families. In the eighth year of Zhengton, the Emperor Yingzong issued an edict to build ships to go to the Western Ocean. The following year, the ships were completed, and a civil unrest and a fire burned them clean. You have worked in the Ministry of Personnel for many years and should be very clear that this is not simple civil unrest." Zhu Yijun always spoke very directly. The fire in the Fujian Shipyard in the ninth year of Zhengton burned not only the fleet going south to the Western Ocean, but also several Paulownia Gardens, including the Paulownia Garden of Zijin Mountain.

Zijin Mountain in the Southern Yamen was the location of Zhu Yuanzhang's mausoleum.

"I obey the edict!" Shen Shixing took a deep breath and said quite solemnly: "I will go to Songjiang to guard and inspect this time, and I will definitely not disgrace the monarch's order."

"If you are unable to do so, send a letter to the capital, and I will make the decision for you." Zhu Yijun clearly expressed his support for Shen Shixing. It is not shameful to be unable to fight; it is not shameful to call for help from home; it is only shameful to mess up the matter. Don't worry too much; calling for reinforcements will not lead to a decline in evaluation.

After Shen Shixing left, Zhu Yijun went to the Bureau of Weapons to inspect the manufacturing of firearms. Equipping the Great Ming border army with firearms was already imminent. An old soldier in the Ganzhou Town of the Shaanxi Provincial Administration Commission obtained a musket made in the seventh year of Yongle and was overjoyed, making it his only firearm.

It was not that firearms were not made after Yongle, but the quality of the firearms made in Yongle was extremely good, and they remained active on the battlefield until the Songjin Battle at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and were finally captured by Huang Taiji, becoming one of the collections of the Qing Dynasty palace.

The muskets equipped on a large scale naturally could not be as luxurious as the cavalry camp, using rosewood for gun stocks. That was just a manifestation of attitude, and the Great Ming did not have that much rosewood, and the cost was too high.

The Bureau of Weapons could build 35,000 bird guns a year, and the Ministry of War's Military Equipment Supervision could build 60,000 bird guns a year. The Great Ming border area needed about 300,000 bird guns. In order to prepare for war, an additional 30,000 bird guns and more than 300 various cannons needed to be built, mainly to deal with the Southwest changes after Bayinnaung's death.

The production pressure of the Bureau of Weapons and the Military Equipment Supervision was extremely great.

Zhu Yijun actually always wanted to go to the Wang Gongchang to take a look. The Wang Gongchang was the Great Ming's gunpowder depot. Unfortunately, a gentleman does not stand under a dangerous wall. As an Emperor, Zhu Yijun naturally could not go personally. Fishing is fishing, but if he gets himself killed, he will be laughed at.

Zhu Yijun stayed in the Bureau of Weapons for half an hour. The entire Bureau of Weapons was spotless, and even the leaves were clean. Obviously, it had been carefully cleaned.

"Your Majesty, the Cabinet sent news that the expansion of the Navy is proceeding in an orderly manner, mainly by drawing 12,000 troops from Songjiang Prefecture to form them in several Maritime Trade Offices, and results will be seen within this year." Feng Bao reported the Emperor's inquiry, and the Wenyuan Pavilion was pushing forward with all its strength.

"The Grand Marshal and the Grand General said that the most difficult part of expanding the army is recruiting soldiers. If you pull strong men, they will be a mob, a plate of loose sand. The greatest difficulty in recruiting soldiers is the source of soldiers. Now it is better to solve than before. The shipyard group construction has many strong men." Feng Bao also reported the judgment of the Minister of War and the Regional Commander of the capital camp.

Craftsmen are very law-abiding because in production, not following the rules means paying the price with blood. Many strange rules are summarized with human lives. Craftsmen are natural sources of soldiers because they follow the rules and have strength. Like the "good families" in the Qin, Han, and Tang dynasties, they are families of the middle class.

"How is the steam turbine that the Imperial Uncle is working on?" Zhu Yijun asked about the research and development progress of the Imperial Uncle Zhu Zaiyu on the way back to the detached palace in the Great Imperial Carriage.

Feng Bao said in a low voice: "There is no news. The Prince of De has been obsessed with steam turbines for these years, but there has been no result. Some scholars of the Academy of Sciences have criticisms about this. That thing costs tens of thousands of silver a year."

"Approve another 30,000 silver for the Imperial Uncle and tell him that this matter is not urgent." Zhu Yijun chose to support it with real gold and silver.

Feng Bao said with a smile: "Although the steam turbine is still unusable, the reciprocating steam engine has already had no small achievements. Last autumn, it already had the power of one horse."

The Great Ming's steam engine has two routes: steam turbine and reciprocating steam engine.

The steam turbine, this monster far beyond the era—being able to turn is the ingenuity of the Great Ming craftsmen. This is a dream, a pursuit, poetry, and the distance. The reciprocating steam engine is reality.

Where is the difficulty of the steam turbine? For the current Great Ming, it is all difficulties. Even if it is made, it is just a strange object and cannot be mass-produced.

The principle of the reciprocating steam engine is not very difficult for the Great Ming; it is just a bellows. But from principle to realization, there is a long road to walk, such as the airtightness of the cylinder, the control of steam pressure, and the control of steam input.

The Great Ming's fuel is still too expensive, the trial-and-error cost is high, and the coal is buried too deep.

Sanniangzi sent wool, and after meeting the Emperor, she whipped her horse and left the capital, returning to the grassland. Time began to leave traces on Sanniangzi's face, which did not affect Sanniangzi's beauty; it was the maturity precipitated by time.

Ruyashil took two more concubines, one red-haired barbarian and one golden-haired barbarian, enjoying himself so much that he forgot the West, but in his travel notes, the word "love" was no longer there.

The Ryukyu King Shang Jiu and the Japanese King Ashikaga Yoshiaki's mansions were adjacent, and they fought fiercely with each other. When Shang Jiu was in Ryukyu, he was afraid of Japanese pirates. When he arrived in the embrace of his Great Ming father, he was no longer afraid of the Japanese.

The Ryukyu mansion was one step higher recently, throwing collected dung cans into the Japanese mansion, causing the Japanese mansion to stink. The Japanese mansion counterattacked equally, finally attracting the attention of the Ministry of Rites and the Court of Diplomatic Reception. The Emperor issued an edict, reprimanding the two barbarian kings for wasting, and they were not allowed to throw dung cans again—those were fertilizers.

This also became one of the jokes in the capital.

Shah Buyan, besides liking to listen to storytelling at the Qianmen Tower, suddenly fell in love with visiting academies. The sound of reading aloud made Shah Buyan linger.

A few days later, the Shah envoy found the Minister of the Court of Diplomatic Reception Chen Xuehui and mysteriously presented a treasure: black oil from Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. This oil can burn, but the smell is very unpleasant.

Light is very expensive.

Especially at night, the Great Ming's lamp oil is mainly animal and vegetable oils, such as fish oil from Ryukyu. The lamps lit at night are at least for middle-class families. "Borrowing light from a chiseled wall" is a compliment to learning, and even more a manifestation of material scarcity.

Zhu Yijun saw a barrel of petroleum. He was very sure that this was petroleum. After refining, petroleum can obtain gasoline, kerosene, diesel, solvent oil, lubricating oil, gear oil, paraffin, etc. And this barrel of petroleum was the lamp oil that Shah Buyan carried with him for lighting, because the smell was too unpleasant, so the Shah envoy disliked it very much and changed to fish oil for lighting after arriving in the Great Ming.

"Is the Great Ming really full of treasures and lacking nothing?" Zhu Yijun looked at the petroleum and sighed.

"Should be." Feng Bao was a bit uncertain. The Great Ming lacked gold, silver, and copper, coal was buried deep, and high-quality iron ore was extremely rare. Now Feng Bao discovered that there was one more thing: petroleum.

According to Shah Buyan, this kind of oil in Hormuz only needs a stomp to spray out, and the locals burn these black oils to prevent fire.

The Great Ming does not lack distillation and condensation technology. Zhu Yijun's national cellar uses sweet potatoes and other things to brew, also called "sweet potato burn," which is strong liquor. Distilled liquor technology is not a rare technology in the Great Ming.

The Great Ming palace can obtain 510 catties of petroleum a year, which is then refined into lamp oil. Light oil is used for lighting, and heavy oil is burned to make ink, black and shiny like lacquer, which is far better than pine ink.

The Great Ming does not lack the technology to transport oil. The number of grain transport boxes manufactured even appeared in the Wenhua Hall.

"The Great Ming lamp oil is extremely expensive. Whoever blocks the Great Ming from attacking the Strait of Malacca is a sinner against the name and religion!" Zhu Yijun looked at that barrel of oil and slapped the table.

Open the route, obtain petroleum, refine it in the Old Port, Java, and other places, and then transport the refined products back to the Great Ming to illuminate the human world.

Perhaps it will take a very, very long time, but illuminating the night of the Great Ming is a vision that makes people feel moved.

Shah Buyan was showing his value. He wandered around the Great Ming just to see what the Great Ming lacked, supplement the cargo list, and strengthen the bond between the Great Ming and the Mughal Empire.

The Great Ming is not a warlike country, and even hates war. The demand for warhorses is a short-term demand. Once the Northern Barbarian problem is solved, the motivation to go to the Mughal Empire for trade will immediately drop sharply.

Shah Buyan was not optimistic about these fellow countrymen in the ancestral land. They already had you in me and me in you with the Great Ming. As a Turkicized Mughal, Shah Buyan had to provide a motivation for the Great Ming to go to the Western Ocean for trade. Petroleum was Shah Buyan's supplement.

On the 23rd day of the sixth month of the eighth year of Wanli, Zhu Yijun came to the Quanchu Hall as usual to beg for a meal.

"Xiong Da, I have brought you a gift." Zhu Yijun let Feng Bao bring a lamp. This lamp was more than a foot high. The bottom was a fish carved in copper, and the top was a curved cover. The curved cover was made of copper and plated with a layer of tin on the inside.

Feng Bao pulled the foot-long pressurizing rod to pressurize. After pressurizing more than ten times, Feng Bao slightly unscrewed the switch and pulled the hemp rope. The hemp rope pulled the flint, and the flint rubbed sparks on the fire steel. The sparks lit the sprayed light oil. The flame of the light oil was extremely small, and the tongue of fire hit the lime rod.

Feng Bao continued to turn the light oil switch, the flame gradually increased, hitting the lime, and the lime rod turned from red to incandescent. The bright light filled the entire study of the Quanchu Hall, the Wenchang Pavilion.

"Oil lamps hurt the eyes. Use this in the future. This is bright." Zhu Yijun said with a smile: "In the future, when reading at night, you will definitely be able to see clearly."

"Thank you, Your Majesty, for your holy grace." Xiong Tingbi hurriedly thanked him. He was very diligent. Because he read a lot of books, reading at night was a common thing, so this lamp was exactly what he urgently needed.

Actually, Xiong Tingbi himself knew that the Emperor was just finding an excuse to send things to the Quanchu Hall. Years ago, after the pencil was made, the Emperor immediately said that this thing was very good and sent it to the teacher to use.

Eight years had passed. Anything new in the palace would definitely be in the Quanchu Hall.

The oil was light oil refined from stones, and the pressurizing plug was to let the light oil spray out. The tongue of fire of the light oil hit the lime rod, which would emit white brilliance, and the higher the temperature, the brighter it was.

In order to let the light oil burn fully without producing carbon accumulation, the lampshade of the entire lamp used the chimney principle to make the air circulate more conveniently and burn fully.

This thing was called a lime spray lamp. The Great Ming craftsmen designed it for a full half month, then adjusted it for half a month, and officially started mass production.

"This thing, the Great Ming officials will have one each. If others want to use it, they can go to the Imperial Manor to buy it." Zhu Yijun did not disturb Xiong Tingbi's study anymore and talked to Zhang Juzheng about the rewards. Sharing happiness with others is better than enjoying it alone. Zhu Yijun would also reward good things to the officials.

"How much does this thing cost?" Zhang Juzheng asked tentatively.

"Twenty silver for one lamp, and five *qian* of silver for a catty of lamp oil." Zhu Yijun said with a smile.

"How much?!" Zhang Juzheng's mouth twitched. The things from the Imperial Manor were good, but they were really expensive. Twenty taels—a middle-class family could earn ten taels of silver a year, which was not bad. A sharp soldier in the capital camp only earned eighteen silver a year!

One lamp, twenty silver—why don't you go rob!

"Limited quantity." Zhu Yijun sighed and said: "I don't have much lamp oil either. Things are expensive because they are rare. The products of the Inner Office must be fine products. The teacher has used them and said they are good."

Zhang Juzheng, the Great Ming's "master of bringing goods," Zhu Yijun stuffed all the strange things he tinkered with into the Quanchu Hall. When selling them, they were all "same style as the Chief Grand Secretary," and they sold extremely well.

Zhang Juzheng wanted to speak but stopped. In the end, he didn't say anything. If the Emperor didn't limit the quantity, it would be fine. Once limited, this thing would be resold by the people at a higher price.

The things from the Imperial Manor were all luxury goods. Zhu Yijun dared to ask for ten taels of silver for a book. You could choose imitations, but you would be laughed at.

The Imperial Manor business never cheats the poor.

"As for lamp oil, you have to go to Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. You can stomp your foot there and oil will spray out. Is that oil? That is black gold!" Zhu Yijun signaled Feng Bao to bring a new lamp. The texture on this lamp was python pattern, with a four-clawed golden dragon.

Only Zhang Juzheng and Qi Jiguang in the entire Great Ming used python patterns; other ministers like Wang Chonggu and Wang Guoguang used flying fish patterns.

"I cannot accept it, Your Majesty. There is already one in the study. This thing is extremely precious, so the square lamp is unnecessary." Zhang Juzheng was about to thank him when he saw the busyness outside. The palace maids and eunuchs were changing the square lamps used for lighting under the eaves!

If all of them were changed, there would be more than two hundred lamps, and just the lamp oil would cost thousands of catties a year.

"Teacher is still too frugal." Zhu Yijun saw Zhang Juzheng refuse so seriously and was helpless. He let the palace maids stop and sent the lime brilliance lamps into the warehouse for storage. Since he brought them to reward, naturally there was no reason to take them back.

Zhu Yijun had been to see them. Most of the things he rewarded, Zhang Juzheng did not use. Just the things in the warehouse, if he tidied them up, could at least sell for seventy or eighty thousand taels of silver.

Zhang Juzheng had been a first-rank official for eleven years, and his family property was no more than 100,000 silver. In the "Stele Forest of Fast Life" outside the Chaoyang Gate, there were more than a dozen people who had been county magistrates for three years and had embezzled 100,000. ===== CHAPTER 400 =====

Zhu Yijun had gone to see; most of the things he bestowed, Zhang Juzheng had not used. Just the items in the storeroom, if sorted out, could sell for at least seventy or eighty thousand taels of silver.

Zhang Juzheng served as a Grand Secretary for eleven years, and his family assets were no more than one hundred thousand silver. In the Huohuo Stele Forest outside Zhaoyang Gate, there are steles of all sizes; if one were to serve as a county magistrate, one could embezzle one hundred thousand in three years, and there are over a dozen such people.