Chapter 1312: Whose Tycoon Elephant Is This?

Wu Sangui has arrived!

He lay comfortably inside a first-rate nanmu coffin, and came swaggering down from a sailboat draped all over with strips of white cloth — well, he was carried down. His two sons came along too, both holding onto the coffin and wailing loudly. The band on the dock struck up the tunes reserved for funerals, the kind that make people weep just to hear them. Duke Yansheng Kong Yin was already at the dock with a crowd of Confucian scholars, monks, and Daoist priests. The monks chanted sutras, the priests intoned incantations, the scholars loudly recited eulogies, and spirit money was scattered all across the sky — truly solemn to the utmost!

The Wu family servants had also all arrived at the dock, every one of them in deep mourning. When the coffin came down from the ship, everyone burst into tears.

All the high civil and military officials in Wuchang Prefecture had come too, weeping to greet it at the dock. Some wept genuinely, but most were faking it. Zheng Zhilong, for example, was faking it. Although the Zhu Emperor had lately heaped tremendous posthumous honors on Wu Sangui, those honors also showed from another angle that the Northern Party had suffered heavy losses from Wu Sangui's death — so the Emperor still had to work hard to prop them up!

The situation was still greatly to the advantage of the old Zheng family!

The only thing that made old Zheng a little worried was that in his final memorial Wu Sangui had forcibly stuffed his daughter Ake onto the Crown Prince. That way, the future Ming Empress would still be a Wu!

Under the Zhu Emperor's current rules, the Empress's status and power would be greatly elevated! And the present Crown Prince did not seem as forceful as the Zhu Emperor, so Wu Ake's power would rise in the future.

"His Majesty is here, His Majesty is here!" Zheng Sen's voice sounded beside the old man's ear. Old Zheng hastily turned to look and saw the Zhu Emperor, dressed in dragon robes, supporting a tall woman clad all in plain white mourning, stepping out of a carriage.

"Who is that woman? Could it be the Empress?" Zheng Zhilong was getting on in years and his eyesight was poor; he could not make her out at a glance, so he asked casually.

"How could it possibly be the Empress?" Zheng Sen said. "How could the Empress wear such heavy mourning for Prince Pingxi?"

True enough! The Empress was the mother of the nation — how could the mother of the nation wear heavy mourning for Wu Sangui? She had not even worn mourning this heavy when her father Wu Xiang was buried, let alone for her elder brother Wu Sangui.

"Then she is—"

"She is Wu Ake!" The speaker was Zheng Jiangong. His wife was Princess Kunxing, so he had had the chance to secretly go and see the rivals of the Zheng family girls — Wu Ake included, of course.

"What? She is Wu Ake..." Old Zheng did not understand. "Why is His Majesty supporting her? Men and women should not touch hands when giving or receiving!"

"Need you ask?" Zheng Sen said in a low voice. "The Wu family must have offered her to His Majesty."

"This... this... a miscalculation!" Zheng Zhilong's face instantly darkened. He had only thought of sending his granddaughters to the Zhu Emperor's sons, and had completely forgotten that the one now on the throne was Zhu Cilang!

His daughter Zheng Chagu was Imperial Noble Consort, second in the harem. If Empress Wu were gone, she should rise to become Empress. But now Wu Sangui's daughter was about to enter the palace!

Wu Sangui had been posthumously enfeoffed as Prince Pingxi, so Wu Ake was a Commandery Princess. That status was already nobler than Zheng Chagu's, and on top of that she was young and beautiful. Even if she did not become Imperial Noble Consort, she would still be the highest-ranked Noble Consort. Once Wu Sanmei was gone, she would be Empress, and in the future Empress Dowager — and his own daughter Zheng Chagu would not have the slightest chance of being promoted!

The moment he thought of this, Zheng Zhilong truly grew sorrowful. His nose stung, and tears came streaming down!

Zhu Cilang spotted Zheng Zhilong too. Seeing him weep like that — and it did not look like fake weeping — he sighed softly: he had misjudged old Zheng. The man was actually on very good terms with Wu Sangui; otherwise how could he weep like this? It seemed that factional strife in the Great Ming was still a contest among gentlemen, with no ganging up to attack dissenters, and private friendship among ministers remained harmonious. This must be one of those fine phenomena that only appeared under the rule of a sage sovereign!

Thinking this, he nodded to Zheng Zhilong from afar, then supported the soft and delicate Ake as they walked toward the nanmu coffin in which Wu Sangui lay.

Wu Sangui had left again!

Still lying in that fine nanmu coffin, he left exactly as he had come, without once coming out during his days in Wuchang. When he left, he also took Wu Ake, Chen Yuanyuan, and the two great households of the Ning and Rong mansions with him — they were escorting Wu Sangui to Wolong Mountain to be laid to rest. Under the supervision of Minister of Works Zheng Sen, Wu Sangui's tomb was nearly complete.

Of course, after Wu Sangui was buried, Wu Ake would still return to Jinling Women's University to study! Zhu Cilang had issued an edict allowing her to enroll by interview.

Although Wu Ake would not marry any of Zhu Cilang's sons, she still had a certain chance of becoming Empress Dowager, or even serving as Regent, so Zhu Cilang still had to cultivate her carefully.

Besides, he also needed someone to serve as his eyes and ears among the women's university students — to keep an eye on those female students and make sure they put some effort into their studies, instead of only thinking about getting married and having children.

And no sooner had Wu Sangui departed than Wuchang city immediately grew lively, with lanterns and colored decorations everywhere, a scene of pure festivity. At that same Hanyang Gate dock, the black-and-white memorial archways erected to welcome Wu Sangui had all been changed into festive multicolored forms.

On the first day of the fifth month, guard troops and New Army soldiers once again appeared on cordon duty at Hanyang Gate dock and the nearby Hanyang Gate Outer Street. The broad streets had been swept clean in advance, the shops on both sides had hung up colored flags of every hue, and both sides of the streets were once again packed with commoners who had come to watch the excitement.

But the Zhu Emperor did not appear at Hanyang Gate dock, nor were many carriages of high officials to be seen. There was only the ceremonial guard of a Prince, and some carriages flying the recognition flags of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs carriages were quite common in Wuchang, but a Prince's ceremonial guard was a rare sight. Although the Great Ming now had quite a few Princes and Commandery Princes, most of them concentrated in Yingtian and Wuchang Prefectures, they did not much bother with pomp — and even if they wanted pomp, they did not have the spare money for it! The Zhu Emperor had given each Prince only ten thousand mu of land to collect rent from, and not even paddy fields at that. At most it came to a few thousand shi of rice and flour a year, which converted to only a few thousand taels of silver. The income was not low, but supporting a large family and bearing the education expenses of a brood of children was really not very comfortable.

Under such circumstances, where would one find a prince who put on airs? What use was there in keeping so many idle mouths to feed? So the princes of the Great Ming were now all fairly frugal, going out with light carriages and small retinues.

But a Prince's ceremonial guard still existed! After all, Princes sometimes had to carry out public duties — such as going to sweep the imperial tombs at Tianshou Mountain in the north, sweeping the imperial tombs at Fengyang, sweeping the imperial tombs at Chengtian Prefecture, sweeping the Confucian Cemetery in Shandong, going to royal temples and Daoist abbeys around the country to give alms, going to Tibet to give alms to the great lamas, and sometimes even going abroad to roam about — to Joseon, to Japan, to Siam, to Annam. In short, there were quite a lot of public duties.

These public duties all came with subsidies — traveling so far to handle state business, one could not toil for nothing!

In addition, the state had to provide them with ceremonial guards. Princes and Commandery Princes did not need pomp when they had no public duties, but when handling state business, it was no longer their own pomp — it was the face of the Celestial Dynasty.

So the Zhu Emperor had established a special ceremonial unit under the Imperial Guard (the Guard Battalion), using the name Great Banner Guard, with an establishment of roughly a brigade (larger than a regiment, smaller than a division). When the Zhu Emperor needed ceremonial guards, he called on them; when other Princes needed ceremonial guards, they also called on them — to put on appearances for different people, they simply changed into different clothes and carried different banners.

But here in Wuchang, public duties requiring a Prince to appear were really quite rare, because altogether there were only a few Princes who had followed Zhu Cilang from Yingtian to Wuchang.

And the one who had brought several hundred Great Banner Guards today to put on a show was the richest of all the Princes and Commandery Princes living in the two capitals — the man nicknamed the Rent-Collector King, Prince Fu, Zhu Cixuan.

At this moment Zhu Cixuan was standing together with Minister of Foreign Affairs Luo Dagong on Hanyang Gate dock, watching a "tycoon elephant" decked out in glittering gold step from an equally glittering gold ship onto the dock.

Clearly, the guest arriving in Wuchang Prefecture today was someone so rich he could not possibly be richer!

(End of Chapter)