Chapter 508: Imperial Escape: The

There was a butcher carrying a load of meat home. This was the meat supply for the whole village for three days. He hummed a little tune as he walked, when suddenly he saw two wolves behind him.

These two wolves had clearly smelled the meat and had their eyes on the meat in the load, their eyes flashing with fierce light. The butcher was very afraid; these two wolves looked extremely ferocious.

The butcher kept walking, and the two wolves kept following, following for a very, very long way.

When the butcher was afraid, a flash of inspiration suddenly struck him. He looked at the load; there were a few leftover bones without meat on it, which he had originally intended to use to boil bone soup when he got back. He threw the leftover bones out. One wolf began to lower its head to gnaw on the bones, but there was another wolf still following the butcher. The butcher had no choice but to throw the remaining bones, but the wolf that had just finished eating chased after him again.

The butcher was in great distress. Before long, the remaining bones were all thrown away, and the two wolves moved forward together, chasing the butcher, waiting for an opportunity to act.

The butcher knew that these two wolves wanted the meat on the load, which was the meat supply for the whole village for three days. The butcher had no choice but to reveal his butcher's knife, pretending to be imposing, intending to scare away these two wolves. These two wolves were naturally afraid of the knife in the butcher's hand, but as long as the butcher moved, these two wolves would still follow.

Walking to the side of a wheat field, the butcher put down the load and held the knife to confront the wolves. Both sides stared at each other for a long time. The two wolves suddenly began to attack, but the butcher's knife had slaughtered countless livestock. Amidst the flashing of blades and shadows, he stabbed one wolf, and then slashed the throat of this wolf with one stroke. Seeing that this wolf could not survive, the butcher chased the other wolf.

As a result, this wolf was hiding in a wheat stack, exposing its buttocks and shivering. The butcher drew his knife and decapitated the other wolf.

Returning to the load, the butcher found that there was still a wolf coveting the meat on the load, intending to steal a bite while the butcher was away. The butcher, whose eyes were red with killing, did not indulge this wolf at all and decapitated it.

After returning to the village, the butcher did not waste the meat of these three wolves either. As the saying goes, "dog meat rolls three times, and even immortals cannot stand steady." Dog and wolf are no different, and the taste is extremely delicious.

Wang Qian was the butcher in this story, and the tickets for the Suiyuan post road of the Yanxing Building Trading House were the knife. The long-term income of the Suiyuan post road was the meat on the load; it could be said that this was the hope of the whole village. The entire Great Ming relied on mineral development to trigger the large-scale, systematic, and standardized production of industries. Those three wolves were three private trade fairs with extremely high thresholds—that is, the bookmakers.

The two sides launched a round of invisible slaughter around the Suiyuan post road at the Yanxing Building Trading House. This slaughter had begun seven days ago.

At first, Wang Qian saw several streams of funds flowing in from different directions. Wang Qian did not pay attention; people and money flowed in and out of the trading house every day, too many people and too much money. But soon, Wang Qian noticed that these streams of funds were all aimed at the Suiyuan post road, which was very unusual.

With the Emperor on an inspection tour, Wang Qian originally did not intend to do anything excessive, and even threw out a few leftover bones. Wang Qian sold some of the Suiyuan post road tickets in his hands to stabilize the price. As long as they did not go too far, Wang Qian would not do anything to them. With the Emperor on an inspection tour, stability came first. If they wanted to eat meat, the Suiyuan post road had not been built yet, and the meat had not reached the village.

The change in the situation occurred the day before Zhu Yijun's inspection tour. After the Great Ming Emperor confirmed his departure, the tickets for the Suiyuan post road began to fluctuate on a large scale. These streams of funds began to purchase the Suiyuan post road tickets in large quantities, and the price began to soar. The sickle for cutting leeks had begun to swing!

It was very easy to manipulate the Suiyuan post road tickets because the volume was small. A total of three phases were subscribed, with only three million silver. With small volume and small trading volume, the moat was shallow, and the expected return was unclear. This was a lack of confidence. The prospects of the post road tax collection bureau were unclear, and policy fluctuations were great. The policies of the Great Ming Five-Dragon Post Road tax collection bureau were also constantly being adjusted, which was why the fluctuations were relatively large.

The scale of the shipping tickets was extremely large. If one wanted to interfere with the price of shipping tickets, even His Majesty the Emperor would have to exert all his strength. Moreover, the price of shipping tickets was actually influenced by the profits of maritime trade. The merchants of the five major ocean-going firms also had people in the capital watching. As long as the profits of maritime trade remained generous, it was very, very difficult to make an issue of the price of shipping tickets.

And the trading volume of Suiyuan mining was almost zero, because the income of mining was very stable. Womagang, Shengzhou, and the Alkali Lake were all counted, belonging to the kind of good things that did not circulate. The holders were almost all Shanxi merchants, Chu-Chuan merchants, and Zhejiang merchants, all of whom were merchants under the protection of the three major guild halls, aiming for stable and long-term dividends.

On the thirteenth, the day before Zhu Yijun's departure, large amounts of funds began to rapidly drive up Suiyuan mining. On the fourteenth, the day the Emperor left, Wang Qian found the Inner Treasury eunuch Cui Min. Wang Qian had to find a knife; the Suiyuan post road tickets in his own hands were too few.

A tragic slaughter began. The Suiyuan post road tickets in the hands of the Inner Treasury, the State Treasury, and the Shanxi merchants were all concentrated in Wang Qian's hands. At first, Wang Qian followed several bookmakers to drive up the price, but Wang Qian suddenly sold a large amount of Suiyuan post road tickets. The volume of the sell-off was so large that it directly triggered panic and a stampede. The price, which had risen to eight silver per ticket, plummeted to five silver per ticket in a single instant.

These bookmakers were left dizzy by the sell-off. For a full hour, the price of the Suiyuan post road tickets went all the way down.

A rumor spread through the whispers in the Yanxing Building Trading House: something had gone wrong with the construction of the Suiyuan post road, and the Great Ming Emperor's Inner Treasury was going to cash out and run away!

This rumor was very reasonable, because the Great Ming Emperor had indeed run away to Tianjin to look at ships. At this time, whatever happened in the Capital Trading House was not the Emperor's original intention. This rumor was so reasonable that it caused even greater panic.

Panic, panic, and more panic!

The stampede began. The bookmakers thought they had been calculated, whether by the Emperor or by their peers. The plummeting price made the already weak trust between the bookmakers immediately turn into mutual hatred.

Wang Qian understood these bookmakers too well. These bookmakers, one by one, were all calculating each other, all weighing their own gains and losses. Moreover, in a speculative mentality, emotions would be infinitely magnified by the rise and fall of prices!

At this moment, everyone was a gambler. Regardless of how many agreements had been reached under the table, under this terrible panic, once trust had thoroughly turned into hatred, it was absolutely impossible to form a joint force.

In the abyss of human evil, there was too much intrigue. Here, it was full of uncertainty. Only His Majesty's certainty was Wang Qian's greatest reliance.

In the afternoon, when the Suiyuan post road tickets plummeted to three silver per ticket, Wang Qian was certain that the bookmakers had lost everything. He began to buy at a low price, and then a new story appeared.

The improvement and miniaturization process of the sixteen-horsepower iron horses, the price of the Suiyuan post road tickets was highly correlated with the development of steam engines. With the appearance of good news about the sixteen-horsepower iron horses and the injection of large amounts of funds, the price of the Suiyuan post road tickets finally recovered to five silver per ticket.

Zhu Yijun felt that Wang Qian told this story well, so everyone paid for this story. But Wang Qian felt that it was the research and development of the Royal Academy of Sciences that led to this story. No matter how good a storyteller he, Wang Qian, was, without facts, without the small-scale mass production and miniaturization of the sixteen-horsepower iron horses, what would he, Wang Qian, have to tell?

The greatest certainty in this trading house was the improvement of productivity.

The bookmakers drove up the Suiyuan post road, preparing to swing the sickle to cut a big wave, but they bought at a high price and sold at a low price, and were severely harvested by Wang Qian.

Up to this point, it was only a successful defense of the market, and the wolves coveting the meat had not been slaughtered.

On the thirteenth, Wang Qian not only found the Inner Treasury eunuch Cui Min but also found the source of these streams of funds, and secretly ambushed these bookmakers.

In the capital, there were many money shops. To manipulate tickets, one needed large amounts of silver. Wang Qian found several money shops and severely leveraged these bookmakers.

The bookmakers had actually been looking for money shops with low interest rates, but the interest rates of money shops were all very high. And the interest rates of the money shops Wang Qian found were very low, but they required collateral, and the collateral had to be mortgaged to the money shop at a fifty percent discount.

Since they wanted low interest, they had to pay something.

This was Wang Qian's targeted demolition. Without a doubt, the suddenly appearing low-interest money was a trap specifically set by Wang Qian.

If the bookmakers had a little bit of respect, did not make trouble when the Emperor was on an inspection tour, or were not so greedy, and when Wang Qian was seeking stability, they had eaten a little, or had not borrowed this money, they would not have died so miserably.

But the bookmakers' eating manners were too ugly, so Wang Qian carried out a targeted demolition of these bookmakers.

This time, some people jumped into the Yongding River, lost their family fortunes overnight, and were left with nothing. Even their ancestral properties were mortgaged to the money shops because of borrowing money. The bookmakers, who were usually high and mighty, borrowed money everywhere to redeem their ancestral properties, but no one would lend to them.

"Wang Qian said in the memorial that as long as the time they chose was not now, Wang Qian would not have killed them all." Zhu Yijun held Wang Qian's memorial and said with great emotion.

Wang Qian believed in authority, exactly the same as Wang Chonggu's belief in authority. Wang Qian did not want anything to happen. This time, His Majesty going out to play for two days was a rare outing to relax. Because of the temporary itinerary, another day was added. Prince Lu, Zhu Yiliu, said that the Emperor was a donkey in a mill. Wang Qian saw His Majesty's diligence in his eyes. Since His Majesty had finally gone out to relax, if they insisted on making trouble at this time and adding to His Majesty's annoyance, then they could not blame Wang Qian for being ruthless.

"Your Majesty, your subject cannot understand what they were trying to do." Feng Bao asked with some confusion, "If it was for profit, buy low and sell high. If it was for the tickets, they should have bought in large quantities when the price was low."

"Your subject did not understand the bookmakers' purpose. Since they were speculating, if they didn't even have this bit of composure, why enter the market?"

"Composure?" Zhu Yijun smiled. It was truly a case of the bystander being clear, and standing and talking without back pain.

Feng Bao was confused by the bookmakers. Feng Bao understood the whole process, but he could never thoroughly understand the bookmakers' behavior.

Zhu Yijun shook his head and said, "The bookmakers' original plan was to buy at a flat price, sell at a high price, and then harvest by crashing the market, and then buy at a low price. Several private trade fairs must have signed agreements under the table to complete this move, thereby completely controlling the small-scale Suiyuan post road. In fact, the bookmakers and Wang Qian were the same; they were long-term bullish on the Suiyuan post road."

"Throughout the process, as long as one person could not hold on and sold, that was the moment the agreement under the table failed, and the trust between the bookmakers broke. If this kind of trust had not broken, the bookmakers would actually have had the strength to fight."

"During the stampede, buying in large quantities to stabilize the price would have achieved their goal—buy low and sell high. During the stampede, unfortunately, where was there any rationality and composure? Choosing to sell at that time led to a chain reaction of selling, which thoroughly slid into the scene they least wanted to see."

Throughout the process, what Wang Qian utilized was human nature. He knew too well when the panic and trust of the bookmakers would collapse.

Feng Bao said with great emotion, "The Master said, 'If a man has no trust, he cannot stand; if an affair has no trust, it cannot be accomplished; if a business has no trust, it cannot flourish; if a country has no trust, it will decline.' It is indeed so."

"In fact, absolute trust does not exist in the trading house." Zhu Yijun leaned back in his chair. He trusted Zhang Juzheng and Qi Jiguang with absolute trust, and this kind of trust was built on the goal of Great Ming becoming great again, just like when Duke Xiao of Qin trusted Shang Yang. Only with the Great Way in action could there be absolute trust.

In the abyss of human nature being inherently evil, trust was still too luxurious.

"How much was earned this time?" Feng Bao asked curiously.

"This number." Zhu Yijun held up four fingers and said.

Feng Bao tentatively said, "Forty thousand silver?"

When it was time to cooperate with the performance, Feng Bao would not turn a blind eye. Was earning forty thousand silver worth Wang Qian taking action personally?

"Four million silver." Zhu Yijun patted the memorial in his hand and said, "This is the accumulation of several decades of more than seventy powerful families and local gentry from these three private trade fairs, all destroyed in one day."

The trading house was faster than the Embroidered Uniform Guards raiding homes. In less than five days, the accumulated silver was all harvested by Wang Qian.

"The powerful families and local gentry are also quite poor. So many families only have four million silver." Feng Bao said happily upon hearing this.

In fact, there were some backstabbings in this. That is, this private trade fair followed Wang Qian's pace and severely harvested a wave of their own kind. I don't know if these backstabbers sensed that things had changed, or if they were people planted by Wang Qian.

"Wang Qian sent the six books and one account to the Ministry of Revenue for audit. This time, it was achieved by borrowing silver and tickets from the Inner Treasury, so the profits were split fifty-fifty between the State Treasury and the Inner Treasury. Wang Qian actually took back the leftover bones he had thrown out before." Zhu Yijun talked about the profit sharing of this matter.

Did Wang Qian really earn nothing? Naturally not. Wang Qian earned big!

First, he earned holy favor. When His Majesty was away from the capital, he maintained financial stability and held the Suiyuan post road market. This thing was priceless;

Secondly, Wang Qian finished telling the story of the iron horses. The argument that the horsepower and output of steam engines would double in a year and a half to two years had the support of reality.

And then there was the generous reward. That low-interest silver was Wang Qian's targeted demolition of the money shops. Even if Wang Qian was truly very honest, as honest as Hence Hai Rui, and did not seek rent for power, the interest on the fifty percent mortgage all went to the money shops. Were these money shops so ignorant? The Wang family had businesses. They only needed to make things convenient for each other at certain times. The share that should be given would not be a single *li* less for Wang Qian.

The money shops were still counting on Young Master Wang to carry out a few more targeted demolitions. The Emperor eating meat and them following to drink some soup was equivalent to several years of busy work.

Zhu Yijun said with lingering fear, "So this trading house, it is best for ordinary families not to touch it. No wonder the Master wanted to raise the threshold, because in this place, there are no rules. It is completely big fish eating small fish, small fish eating shrimp, and shrimp can only be eaten."

Through Wang Qian's manipulation this time, Zhu Yijun discovered the cruelty of the trading house, where the disorder and cannibalism of absolute freedom were vividly embodied.

The Great Ming Emperor was still reluctant to part with the *Youlong*, but no matter how much he liked it, it was time to return to the capital. He said he would come out to play for two days, but he had already played for the third day. Zhu Yijun sat on the Great Imperial Carriage, looking back every three steps, heading towards the capital. This time, he did not fall into the water, and there was no fire chasing him. Everything was stable and smooth.

Zhu Yijun thought he would have some kind of rollover accident this time, and even installed a roll cage. If nothing happened, would it be worthy of the eunuchs' "prevention before it happens"? But nothing happened.

When the Emperor was still young, Zhang Juzheng told His Majesty that the only people who could threaten the safety of the Great Ming Emperor were the court officials and the Grand Secretaries; others were not qualified and did not have such great energy. Hence Hai Rui felt that the Great Ming court officials were all very strange, but there were no bad people; they were all considered upright officials, at least they could perform their duties when the wind direction had not changed.

Zhu Yijun did not have any slack because of this calm. Night raids always happened at dawn, the moment when one just saw the dawn. At this time, because the long darkness had passed, people were most likely to slack off.

The calm on the surface meant that the crisis was always brewing under the water.

Not to mention that Emperor Wuzong of Ming died without heirs, which was suspicious. Just look at the Jiajing Emperor, who was chased and burned, and that was not the end of it; there was even an assassination by palace maids. Of the eight sons, only one remained. But any Great Ming Emperor who wanted to do something had to do it consistently. As long as there was the slightest slack, he would die very miserably.

Zhu Yijun returned to the capital and began to deal with the memorials. The memorials accumulated for three days were piled up like a mountain before the imperial throne. Zhu Yijun looked at the mountain of memorials and said to Feng Bao with some disbelief, "Am I usually this diligent? Do I have to review so many memorials?"

"Usually, there are more than this. The Wenyuange followed His Majesty to Tianjin Guard. Later, there will be memorials with floating notes from the Master sent over." Feng Bao bowed his head and said.

"As expected of me." Zhu Yijun sat before the imperial desk, picked up the vermilion brush, and began to review the memorials. Because there were many memorials, Zhu Yijun would usually scold the memorials of a hundred words, but after reading them, he drew a cross on all of them.

Some memorials were actually completely unnecessary to read, because the Office of Transmission sorted the memorials by category, the Central Secretariat summarized them, the Grand Secretaries attached floating notes, and the drafting eunuchs of the Directorate of Ceremonial then applied the red seal. By the time they reached Zhu Yijun's hands, he could completely be a ruthless stamping machine, not even needing to look, just stamping directly.

But the diligent Zhu Yijun still read all the memorials one by one, then recorded the content in his memo, and finally fully embodied it in the official book screen.

The official book screen was a gift from Zhang Juzheng to the Emperor, which was visual office work. Every day after dealing with government affairs, Zhu Yijun would draw a stroke on the nameplates of some officials who always talked nonsense and spoke foolishly. When a "Zheng" character was finished, Hence Hai Rui's anti-corruption and the Ministry of Personnel's performance evaluation would often clear them out.

On the entire official book screen, almost no one could escape the "Imperial Escape: The 'Zheng' Character Decapitation Technique." The highest one only lasted until the second "Zheng" character. This represented the Great Ming's error-correction mechanism, which was operating stably.

Whether the Great Ming officialdom, this huge political machine, was operating stably and smoothly, whether it was metabolizing internally, and whether the error correction was perfect, all had a very intuitive embodiment on this official book screen.

"Good stuff." Zhu Yijun held the memo, and after writing a few strokes, he said with emotion, with Zhang Juzheng's assistance, could the Great Ming Emperor not do it with his hands?!

Feng Bao looked left and right and said in a low voice, "Your Majesty, in fact, the six ministries, the provincial governors, and the shipping commissioners also have such a book screen in their hands."

"Oh? Did the Master promote it?" Zhu Yijun asked curiously.

Feng Bao shook his head and said, "That's not it. The Master only gave His Majesty one. It was after the officials knew it was easy to use that they first used it in the six ministries, and then it gradually spread."

"The Master's methods have all been hollowed out by them!" Zhu Yijun said with a smile.

The mother of Yu Qiyuan, the magistrate of Gaoyang County, passed away. Yu Qiyuan submitted a memorial to request mourning leave. The Ministry of Personnel had already approved it, but Zhu Yijun issued an imperial order to retain him in office. Yu Qiyuan was in a key rising period, having just helped the Baoding Provincial Governor, Xin Zixiu, complete the clearing of redundant personnel. If he went into mourning now, he would still be a magistrate when he returned, and whether Xin Zixiu would still favor him was a different matter.

Human relationships in the Great Ming officialdom all had a shelf life, just like the Emperor's holy favor. It was not that you could do whatever you wanted based on your past merits and holy favor. Holy favor would weaken with the passage of time and needed constant reinforcement.

Zhu Yijun gave Yu Qiyuan a three-month vacation to return home to handle family affairs, and the official provided him with post horses.

And the Viceroy of Shanxi and Henan, Ling Yunyi, completed the census of the population in Henan Prefecture and Kaifeng Prefecture. The situation was basically the same as in Shandong, Songjiang, Shuntian Prefecture, and the Southern Yamen: eighty percent were destitute, and ninety-eight percent of the farmers were in a state of bankruptcy or impending bankruptcy. Moreover, because of the issue of the imperial clans, the annexation was also extremely serious.

The same situation occurred in Shanxi and Shaanxi. Judging from the Yellow Registers submitted to the capital, the situation was even worse than Zhu Yijun had imagined.

Zhu Yijun could not help but think of a person: the "Roaming King" Li Zicheng.

Li Zicheng was beaten by Sun Chuanting to the point where only seventeen riders remained in flight. After Sun Chuanting left, the peasant rebel army under Li Zicheng soon recovered to a scale of one million again. Li Zicheng lost to Lu Xiangsheng, lost to Sun Chuanting, and lost to Hong Chengchou, but every time he raised his banner, countless common people would defect to him. When he broke through Kaifeng and distributed grain, millions of people in Henan went there to eat.

The civil unrest in Henan, Shanxi, and Shaanxi at the end of the Ming Dynasty could not be suppressed, nor could it be pacified, because production had been thoroughly ruined.

Ling Yunyi and Shi Huahua submitted that the water conservancy projects in Henan and Shaanxi were basically all in disrepair. The problem of drought was not just a celestial phenomenon, but also the lack of water conservancy projects.

After Li Bing and his son built the Dujiangyan, it had been repaired and mended for thousands of years, and every dynasty had repaired it, so it could be used all along. Water conservancy facilities that were not repaired could only last for twenty years at most as a conscientious project.

The engineering corps of Henan had rolled to a scale of thirty thousand people, and while these people were building official factories, they were also dredging local water conservancy in Henan. Shi Huahua also requested to form an engineering corps. The problems in Shaanxi were highly similar to those in Henan.

Zhu Yijun approved the two memorials, agreed with Shi Huahua's idea of forming an engineering corps, and replied to the two viceroys: "Align with the timing, the pulse of the earth, and the nature of things. The power of the earth has its limits, but human power is enough to overcome heaven!"

This was what Ma Yilong said when Xu Zhenming taught Zhu Yijun agricultural science.

And the Duke of Qian, Mu Changzuo, the Yunnan Provincial Governor, Liu Shiceng, the Sichuan Regional Commander, Liu Ting, the Yunnan Surveillance Censor, Wang Xiyuan, and others reported some progress on the southwest front. The war situation had thoroughly stabilized. The enemy had made more than a dozen attempts but failed to form an effective offensive, and instead was severely beaten by Liu Ting.

At this time, the Tusi of Dongyu, led by Mang Yingli, began to have internal strife, was slow to advance, and was beaten back, suffering heavy losses. When they were defeated, their morale was severely hit. The worse the morale, the harder it was to deal with Great Ming's frequent counterattacks. Liu Ting held a large sword, hacking the Tusi of Dongyu until they were in disarray and doubting life.

The Duke of Qian, Mu Changzuo, submitted that two Tusi were willing to surrender, but the Duke of Qian chose to refuse, refusing very resolutely. Mu Changzuo had lost trust and patience in the raw Miao. The previous defeat made Mu Changzuo reflect that he had been too good to the Tusi and raw Miao in the past, causing them to lose awe. This kind of confrontation between countries, and the act of leading the way for the enemy, made Mu Changzuo unable to forgive them.

That Tusi of Longchuan, the tribal chief Yue Feng and his son Yue Nangwu, had almost fought their way to Dali. Mu Changzuo could not untie this knot in his heart.

Zhu Yijun did not give specific instructions on the front-line matters. He did not know as much about the local situation in Yunnan as the local officials, and letters took several months to arrive. Any instructions would be useless by the time they were transmitted. In terms of communication distance, Yunnan was even more remote than the Java and Jiugang Regional Military Commissions.

Regarding the Southwest War, Zhu Yijun replied: when you are short of money and grain, speak up in advance. Compared to the Great Ming Capital Battalion's expedition to Luchuan and Dongyu, this business of only paying money and grain was too cost-effective.

Zhu Yijun dealt with the memorials until late at night before stretching. The memorials did not stay in the palace overnight; the Great Ming Emperor was as diligent as ever.

"Your Majesty, an urgent report from the South Seas!" A small eunuch ran in in a flurry and handed a report to Feng Bao. Feng Bao put the report away and turned up the lime spray lamp.

Zhu Yijun opened the report. It was from the Viceroy of Jiugang, the Marquis of Yingyang, Zhang Yuanxun. Zhang Yuanxun launched a surprise attack on Dongyu, but failed to achieve success, because Zhang Yuanxun discovered that the Goa Viceroyalty and Dongyu's Mang Yingli had colluded together.

However, the King of the Mughal Empire, Akbar, made the correct choice and attacked the Goa Viceroyalty together with Great Ming. The envoy sent by Akbar to Malacca City said that the Mughal Empire hated the Red-Haired Barbarians deeply, and whoever attacked the Goa Viceroyalty, he would help.

Zhang Yuanxun failed in one strike, returned to rest, and planned to rest a little before making further plans.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 509 =====