Chapter 823: Fulin, Breach the Yellow River While You Still Can! (Happy National Day)

The construction of Old Mountain Palace dragged on for several years, and at present it can only be said to have taken initial shape — it is still far from complete!

Unlike the slapdash attitude taken toward the palace buildings inside Nanjing, Zhu Cilang poured real money and real thought into Old Mountain Palace.

Start with the money: just from the area the Old Mountain palace complex occupies, one can see how enormous the Zhu Emperor's investment was!

The Old Mountain palace complex is roughly the territory between Old Mountain and the Chu River, Old Mountain included. This tract is about thirty-six li long and nearly twenty li wide — roughly 180 square kilometers! Mountains account for more than half of it, while the flatland amounts to as much as eighty square kilometers, which is 120,000 mu! The land alone is worth more than three million taels!

These 120,000 mu are divided into four parts. The first is the horse pasture, occupying about 80,000 mu, located in the central and eastern (northeastern) part of the flatland area of Old Mountain Palace.

The second is the palace complex itself, located in the southwestern part of the flatland area of Old Mountain Palace, covering more than 5,000 mu — comparable to the historical Yuanmingyuan in Beijing. It is not so extravagant, however; construction cost less than three million taels, all contracted out through the Royal Trading Company — indeed, the entire construction cost of Old Mountain Palace came from the Royal Trading Company.

The third is the market town, also in the southwestern part of the flatland area of Old Mountain Palace, covering 15,000 mu. It has not only markets but also a great number of official residences, government offices, and schools — in fact, this is the new administrative center of the Great Ming Empire!

Once the Old Mountain palace complex is fully built, the Zhu Emperor and the Ming court will reside permanently at Old Mountain while they are in Nanjing.

The fourth part of the flatland area of the Old Mountain palace complex is the Old Mountain Great Camp! The camp covers 20,000 mu and includes a fortress, several barracks, warehouses, and a military mule and horse yard.

And the fifth part of the Old Mountain palace complex is Old Mountain itself. The mountain, not particularly tall, has now been enclosed with wooden fencing and turned into a hunting ground.

Of course, he is not afraid of that now! Whoever dares to revolt, he will be the first to take that man's life!

The question is whether Zhu Hexing will be able to keep it suppressed in the future. That truly is worrying.

The Zhu Emperor had just emerged from Tangquan Palace, where he and Wu Sanmei lived, riding a fold-eared horse and accompanied by a retinue of palace maids, eunuchs, and guards, moving through the spacious and tranquil grounds of Old Mountain Palace, when he again thought of yesterday's outing to Old Mountain to hunt with a band of child soldiers.

The so-called "child soldiers" were the students of the Old Mountain Middle School boys' academy and the boy scouts of the Old Mountain Great Camp's youth battalion.

The former were mostly sons of the nobility, and the remainder were sons of the "Great Ming's good creditors" who had bought large amounts of the first bond issue of the sixth year of Hongxing.

The latter were youths selected from the eight border garrisons — that is, Pingxi, Shuofang, Huaibei, Xuhai, Nanyang, Chuandong, Chuanxi, and Liaodong. Because the war with the Yarkent Khanate was still ongoing, the road through Beiting was not open, so no Beiting youths came to the Old Mountain Great Camp.

The boy scouts were mostly sons of military households, though some were of commoner origin. By and large they were poor and hard-pressed. Although the boy scouts were a "ladder to heaven," the conditions were extremely harsh! Entering the boy scouts meant being "sold to the royal house," and before formal enlistment (that is, completing full scout training and passing the examination), they were not permitted to correspond with their families!

And after enlistment, unless they passed into the Military Academy and formally left the "Youth Army" establishment, they were forbidden to marry and start a family until they retired at the age of thirty-six.

In other words, as long as one remained in the boy scouts, one could not marry or have children.

But once one entered a military academy (which required a recommendation based on military merit) and gained one's own career path, one no longer belonged to the boy scouts — and officers of boy-scout origin were forbidden for life from returning to serve in the boy scouts!

That is to say, the officers who would command the boy scouts in the future would mostly be students of the Old Mountain Middle School boys' academy.

Now the two groups of youths had come together, riding horses and hunting — and hunting with flintlock guns at that — a truly lively scene. Yet after bustling about for half the day, they had bagged only a few small animals. The small animals the Zhu Emperor had paid for were now mostly living happily in the woods of Old Mountain.

It seems this Old Mountain hunting activity needs to be held more often. The "sons of a thousand gold" must train more with the young boy scouts; in the future the Great Ming will depend on them to hold it up together!

"Imperial Lord, Yanshan Palace is ahead." Huang Xiaobao's voice sounded beside Zhu Cilang's ear.

The Zhu Emperor raised his head and looked forward, and saw a brick-and-timber palace in a half-Chinese, half-Western style standing on a slope ahead.

This was the Zhu Emperor's residence within Old Mountain Palace, Yanshan Palace. The name "Yanshan" was chosen to show that he had not forgotten the recovery of the Yan and Yun lands.

Yanshan Palace was not far from Tangquan Palace — a little over four li — and the hill it stood on was not high, just an earthen mound, a height on the edge of the northern foothills of Old Mountain. Beyond this hill there was a small valley, and in it a courtyard had been built, called Jinzhu Residence. It was the dwelling of the Lady Dong'e — now named Jin Dongzhu — a candidate lady-in-waiting.

In order to "select" Jin Dongzhu into the palace, the Zhu Emperor had specially held a consort selection. It was not conducted nationwide, only in Jiangnan and Jiangbei. It was done up quite grandly, but in the end only two were chosen. One was Jin Dongzhu; the other was named Xu Erlin, the grandniece of Xu Guangqi? She was not especially beautiful — just a gentle, graceful woman of the water country, with a trace of charm but extraordinary talent. She had disguised herself as a man to take the Imperial Academy entrance examination in the fifth year of Hongxing. She had not been able to enter the examination hall, but with the chief examiner's approval, she completed the examination paper outside the hall.

The paper eventually reached the Zhu Emperor's hands, and she had actually done remarkably well, which gave Zhu Cilang an interest in this talented woman. So when this consort selection was held, he wrote a personal letter inviting her to take part.

After receiving the letter, she actually came to Nanjing.

So Zhu Cilang now had six wives and concubines, and Princess Jianning, about to enter the palace, would be his seventh. Truly corrupt!

When the ever-more-corrupt emperor entered Yanshan Palace, Sun Fugui, Hou Fangyu, and Bumbursan were already waiting there for an audience.

"Has Princess Jianning arrived?" Zhu Cilang had not expected Shunzhi to actually grant Ajige the title of Gurun Princess Jianning, and he did not know whether she was the one who in history married Wu Yingxiong. So he was somewhat curious, and asked as soon as he saw Hou Fangyu and the others.

"She has arrived," answered Tian Shuchen, who was now the steward of Old Mountain Palace. "She is dressing and will change into the attire of our Han women."

"Good!" Zhu Cilang nodded. "Then we will see her in a while. You are called Bumbursan?" He looked at the escort envoy and asked with a smile, "Are you of the Aisin Gioro clan?"

"I am a grandson of the Great Qing's founding emperor," Bumbursan replied.

"When you return, will you be able to see Fulin?"

"Yes," Bumbursan said. "I am the Great Qing's chamberlain of the Imperial Bodyguard."

"Good. When you return, tell Fulin this: if he wants to breach the Yellow River, he had better do it soon!" Zhu Cilang said with a smile. "Once the weather turns cold this deep autumn, there will not be much water left in the Yellow River, and breaching it then will be pointless!"

"Why does Your Majesty say such a thing?" Cold sweat broke out on Bumbursan's forehead.

The Zhu Emperor still wore a cheerful, carefree look. "Those great camps you are building on both banks of the Yellow River — are they not for the convenience of breaching the river mouth? This has been done who knows how many times. Would We not know?"

Bumbursan was dumbstruck. In truth, he had only just heard of this matter. He knew about the construction of the Yellow River north and south camps, but he truly did not know of any plan to breach the Yellow River dikes.

Just as he was at a loss for how to explain, a eunuch's announcing voice rang out: "Gurun Princess Jianning arrives."

Ajige was already dressed and came in shyly and bashfully, yet not at all awkwardly. Following an older palace maid in, she knelt before the Zhu Emperor, kowtowed several times, then sat back on her heels and raised her small face to look at Zhu Cilang.

(End of Chapter)