Chapter 1412: My Son, Who Are You Trying to Trap This Time?

"Imperial Father, just look at this business."

Zhu Cilang, dressed in a trim riding jacket and mounted on an Indian fold-eared horse, was riding side by side with the Retired Emperor Chongzhen, who wore the same sort of riding jacket, as they threaded through the forests of Laoshan. Behind the two of them, Ajige, dressed like a mountain village woman, rode along with several matronly palace maids.

This was Emperor Zhu inviting his old man Chongzhen up the mountain for a hunt!

But Chongzhen had no interest at all in this game of playing hunter. He spent all his days fretting over money and his sons, worried until his hair had gone gray. How could he be in the mood for amusement?

As for those two worries of his, they were naturally Zhu Cilang's fault too! What a wise sovereign Chongzhen had originally been — not lustful, not greedy for wealth. Oh, the three added levies and such were not for his own enrichment, but for the state.

Yet such a wise sovereign had been stripped of power by that great filial son Zhu, and had become the Retired Emperor while still in his prime.

After losing real power, Chongzhen, in order to keep a low profile and to make trouble for that unfilial son Zhu Cilang, took a great crowd of consorts and set about producing sons with all his might. Not counting those who died young (because Chongzhen had so many sons that the Ming imperial house now excluded any son who died before the age of five when ranking the princes), he still had one hundred and eighteen sons. The Water Margin had its one hundred and eight heroes; he was Chongzhen of the one hundred and eighteen sons.

He had assumed his only job was to sire them, raise them, and arrange their futures — that was all the unfilial son Zhu Cilang's business.

But who could have guessed that the unfilial son simply refused to take responsibility!

Each younger brother got one house plus three thousand mu of land. Originally it had been five thousand mu, but now he said there were too many sons and he could not afford it, so he cut two thousand more. Did he want people to live comfortably as pigs or not? And the houses were given in ever more remote places, and the three thousand mu of land grew ever more barren — now he was even handing out land in Henan.

How much rent could Henan land even bring in? Three thousand mu yielded only a few hundred taels a year. How was that supposed to maintain a princely establishment?

Were the grand Commandery Princes of the Great Ming to end up living like ordinary commoners?

Actually, thinking about it now, a Commandery Prince living like a wealthy commoner was not necessarily unacceptable. If Chongzhen could choose again, he certainly would not have led his sons into that great pit of building kingdoms overseas!

Truly, colonization has its risks, and founding a kingdom requires caution!

One absolutely must not look at the Tuhao King's New Continent United States or the Jiaqing King's Jiaqing Kingdom making money and then blindly throw oneself into some Luzon Kingdom. A loss! Losses every year, losses every month! Not only money lost, but lives lost too! Of the four sons who went to open up Luzon together back then — Zhu Ciyi, Zhu Cifeng, Zhu Cihun, and Zhu Cideng — half were already dead!

The Retired Emperor's tenth son, the Commandery Prince of Xincai, Zhu Cihun, had contracted malaria two years before and failed to pull through, dying in the army during the campaign against the natives of Luzon Island!

And the Retired Emperor's seventh son, the Commandery Prince of Guangshan, Zhu Cideng, had been wounded while suppressing a native rebellion in his Luzon fief, and subsequently died of wound suppuration — the tropics have not only malaria but also make infection especially easy. A wound that would be of no great consequence in the cold north, if slightly neglected in the tropics, could develop a severe infection and cost a man his life.

Colonizing and opening up the tropics truly meant staking one's life!

Although the Chongzhen Emperor was not particularly fond of these two sons, and had lost sons before, still, the thought that these two pitiful boys had been done to death by their own eldest brother, and had died leaving a pile of debts, made Chongzhen both heartbroken and furious!

But no matter how heartbroken, no matter how furious, it could not change the reality that the Luzon Kingdom had become a bottomless pit burning money. And Chongzhen had no way to get out of it, because the King of Luzon, Zhu Ciyi, and the Chancellor of Luzon, Zhu Cifeng, were still alive — and Zhu Ciyi was the son of Consort Hu, the Retired Emperor Chongzhen's most favored consort.

Moreover, Chongzhen and his son had already sunk three or four million taels of silver into Luzon Island, for settling immigrants, building cities, developing farmland, and suppressing native rebels. Now they had finally opened up a good deal of cultivated land, settled more than twenty thousand households of immigrants, and established two new colonial cities.

If Chongzhen and his son gave up the Luzon Kingdom now, that investment of three or four million taels of silver would be money thrown into the water!

If they did not want to give it up, then they had to keep pouring in more investment. But where was Chongzhen, a powerless Retired Emperor, supposed to find money?

Of course, even when he had held real power, it had been hard to get that much money. So the Retired Emperor Chongzhen could only make the unfilial son Zhu Cilang pay to fill the great pit of the Luzon Kingdom. But was Zhu Cilang ever so easy to talk to? Why would he be willing to spend money setting up a kingdom for his younger brothers? Luzon was no vital place, and it could not run away — let it keep losing money!

So he had been playing tai chi with the Retired Emperor Chongzhen all along. But today, the Retired Emperor Chongzhen had finally gotten a bit of leverage over Zhu Cilang.

Because that "Third Prince Zhu," Zhu Cijiong, had been stirring up trouble in the Western Regions, inciting the forces of Anxi, Hexi, the Khoshut, Galdan, and others to confront the three garrison commands of the Snowy Domain, and civil war was about to break out. So Zhu Cilang wanted the Retired Emperor Chongzhen to step forward and send a son to go with Jin Boguo and Jin Xuanye to the Western Regions to smooth things over.

Of course, not every son of the Retired Emperor in the capital could be sent. Zhu Cilang himself certainly could not go, and the Rent-Collecting King Zhu Cixuan could not go either.

"My son," the Retired Emperor Chongzhen said with a sidelong glance, lowering his voice, "who are you trying to trap this time? They are all your own brothers — why rush to burn the beanstalk to cook the beans!"

At these words Zhu Cilang hurriedly looked back. The lady chronicler was following far behind, and should not have been able to hear the Retired Emperor's words.

Turning back, Zhu Cilang sighed and said to Chongzhen, "Imperial Father, how could your son trap his own blood brothers? As for the matter of the seventh and tenth brothers — that was one king's success built on ten thousand bones! Over the years, the dead in the Southern Seas have numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Opening up new lands is hard!"

Opening up the wilderness is never easy, especially in miasmic, pestilential places like the Southern Seas. It means filling the land with lives — truly, every inch of territory, every drop of blood.

And disease kills without regard for high or low, noble or base. The death rate for the well-off, whose living conditions were better, was perhaps a little lower. For commoners it was fifty to sixty percent; for them it was twenty to thirty percent. This was not the death rate after contracting malaria or some other illness — it was the death rate of the entire immigrant population over a period of time!

"Hmph!" The Retired Emperor Chongzhen gave a cold snort, still looking extremely angry.

Zhu Cilang frowned and continued, "Imperial Father, the third brother is not the seventh or the tenth. He will not act rashly. This time, stirring up waves in the Western Regions must have been carefully considered. Your son does not necessarily want to stop him — he only wants to get in touch with him and feel out his position.

Imperial Father, has the third brother mentioned this matter in any of his letters to you or to Imperial Mother?"

"Do you think he would write about such a thing in a letter?" Chongzhen countered.

"Probably not." Zhu Cilang sighed, thinking to himself: This Third Prince Zhu is deep and calculating, with a very sharp mind — a match for the Tuhao boy!

"Imperial Father," Zhu Cilang paused, "then let the ninth brother make the trip."

The ninth brother was the Commandery Prince of Luoshan, Zhu Cixia — the beloved son of the Retired Emperor Chongzhen and Consort Hu. Although he had been granted a fief in the Jiaqing Kingdom, he had been loafing about in the Xipu princely residence in Nanjing, eating, drinking, and amusing himself.

For Zhu Cilang to want to send him to the Western Regions — was that not touching Chongzhen's very heart?

Seeing the Retired Emperor Chongzhen's face darken as he sat in silence, Zhu Cilang said with a smile, "Imperial Father, if you let the ninth brother bestir himself, your son will present you with one hundred thousand taels of silver."

Only one hundred thousand? The Retired Emperor Chongzhen still said nothing.

"Two hundred thousand taels." Zhu Cilang looked at Chongzhen, and seeing that his face remained set, had no choice but to grit his teeth and say, "Three hundred thousand taels, and not a tael more. If you will not agree, your son will send the Rent-Collecting King instead."

The Rent-Collecting King Zhu Cixuan was the Chancellor of the Jinling Girls' Academy, a man with heavy responsibilities — the second round of admissions at the Jinling Girls' Academy was about to begin! Zhu Cilang planned to use this admissions cycle to select several candidates for the position of Crown Prince side consort. It was not that he was dissatisfied with the Crown Princess Ding Yuying, but he feared that if something happened to Ding Yuying, the fortunate Crown Prince would have no reliable person to support him.

But the Retired Emperor Chongzhen knew nothing of this. As soon as he heard that Zhu Cilang wanted to send the Rent-Collecting King on a long journey, he had no choice but to yield — the Rent-Collecting King held an official post, so Zhu Cilang could order him about. The ninth prince, Zhu Cixia, was a bare commoner with no office, so Emperor Zhu had no way to force an assignment on him.

"Three hundred and fifty thousand!" Chongzhen said. "And you must give the ninth son an office in the Imperial Clan Court."

(End of Chapter)