Chapter 388

Forbidden City, Wenyuan Pavilion.

Second floor.

Zhu Yijing knelt outside the door with his head bowed, making no movement, as if he had already lost his soul, staring blankly at the ground in front of him.

Inside the door, Li Miao sat in front of Zhu Zai, holding that Zhu Bi with two fingers, shaking it non-stop, even turning out the sound of wind.

Zhu Zai sat in the main seat, but had no mind to care about the Zhu Bi, just rubbing his eyebrows non-stop. After a long while, he let out a long sigh.

"You've worked hard."

Li Miao raised an eyebrow.

"Heh~ what kind of scene is this, really fresh, hey, it's been twenty years, the first time I've seen ivory, hey."

"Get lost."

Zhu Zai scolded weakly, but didn't throw things over like in the past, just shook his head and sighed non-stop.

Li Miao turned the brush in his hand and said absent-mindedly.

"If you really feel sorry, why not just let me kill happily in Shuntian, and then give me a long vacation of two or three years. Save me from having incidents every three days, I can't even rest in peace."

Zhu Zai pinched his eyebrows.

"It's this time, don't joke."

"I'm not joking."

Li Miao threw the Zhu Bi on the table casually.

"You shouldn't have stopped me at the beginning of this year."

Zhu Zai sighed again.

"It's not that I didn't want to, it's really that I can't afford to toss."

He reached out and pulled a few from the stack of memorials several feet high on the table and handed them to Li Miao.

"Before, I only cared about criminal matters, and didn't feel how critical it was. Since I really took over the world, I realized that I was already stepping on the edge of a cliff."

Li Miao took the memorial and glanced at it, and also frowned.

"So rotten?"

"This is still after the local officials whitewashed it. If it were according to the actual situation, it would be at least another 30% lower."

Zhu Zai shook his head and sighed.

"The impact of the Ming Sect incident last year ultimately couldn't be eliminated so simply. At the Songshan Moon-Viewing Banquet, you suppressed those big sects, but in the final analysis, they still gave birth to different thoughts in their hearts."

"If it weren't for the rules of receiving rewards, they wouldn't have surrendered so simply. But the reward silver sent out in the past half year is getting more and more, and the national treasury, which was already stretched, has already bottomed out."

Li Miao frowned.

"Less reward silver, more secret manuals?"

Zhu Zai shook his head.

"It can top it off, but this is equivalent to issuing weapons and armor to them. It can't be seen for a while, but as long as it reaches a limit... it will explode."

"The local guard stations are already rotten beyond recognition. Once people's hearts move, no matter how much you kill, it will be difficult to save."

"The clan has been suppressed for many years and cannot become a climate for a while. Killing people cannot fill the gap. If those civil officials incite again, the local area will be chaotic, taking the Jianghu with it, and this Great Ming will not be able to be kept."

"Not to mention the Tatars in the north and the Japanese pirates in the south."

Zhu Zai lay back and leaned against the back of the chair.

"Time... if there were five or ten years, water-grinding work to beat civil officials bit by bit, cultivate the clan, and reorganize the army, it would always be possible to settle the world."

"But at the moment, the opposite side can't wait."

"Judging from the news you brought back from Nanjing, civil officials, military generals, eunuchs, and that Yingzhou have completely colluded and are preparing to make trouble... at the latest, they will start by the end of the year."

"The cards in our hands are still too few... this general trend, people's hearts, ultimately you can't kill them all."

After Zhu Zai finished speaking, he rubbed his eyebrows and fell silent.

The room was quiet for a while, Li Miao twisted his fingers and pondered for a moment, then said.

"Either—" "If you want to go, you go, I can't go."

Without finishing, Zhu Zai already knew Li Miao's meaning.

"I am ultimately a descendant of the Zhu family, the bloodline of the Taizu. This world matter was done by the Zhu family, so I have to carry it for the ancestors. If I just walk away, I will have no face to see the ancestors in the underworld."

"Instead, it's you. If you want to go, I will preside over the marriage, marry that Princess Gongyi to you, and you take your lovers to Songshan to build a stronghold. With your strength, I guess no one dares to find your trouble."

Li Miao waved his hand.

"Not to that extent, not yet."

He twisted his fingers and pondered for a while, but suddenly shifted the topic to a person.

"Speaking of which, it's almost a year, have you trained that person well?"

Zhu Zai knew he was talking about the Emperor.

The matter is of great importance, and it is in the Wenyuan Pavilion, so it is not easy to make it clear. Anyway, there is no way to solve the current problem, so Zhu Zai stood up and walked toward the door.

"Take you to see."

Pushing the door open, Zhu Zai stopped.

Zhu Yijing was kneeling outside the door. Seeing a pair of familiar boots stepping in front of him, he slowly raised his head like a lost soul, his eyes full of bloodshot, looking at Zhu Zai.

"Father..."

Zhu Zai raised his hand.

Zhu Yijing only felt that Zhu Zai would hit him like in the past. Although he was desperate at the moment, he instinctively raised his hand to block, shrank his body back, closed his eyes, and waited for the slap to fall.

After a long while, he heard a long sigh.

Zhu Zai's big hand touched the top of his head and rubbed it slowly.

"Sigh..."

"Jing'er, get up. Haven't you had breakfast yet? Go find your mother to make you some calming soup and have a good sleep."

Having said that, Zhu Zai withdrew his hand and walked away.

There was no scolding like in the past, and no beating, but Zhu Yijing felt that his heart was suddenly empty.

He would rather be beaten until his head was broken and bleeding by Zhu Zai than let Zhu Zai let him go so lightly.

Because he knew that in the future, Zhu Zai might not scold or beat him again.

"Father..."

He spoke hoarsely, turned his head to find Zhu Zai's back, but saw that Zhu Zai had already gone downstairs and didn't look at him again.

Li Miao walked out and patted him on the shoulder.

"Wake up, come to my house for dinner."

Also left together.

Only Zhu Yijing was left, suddenly losing his strength, sitting on the ground, unable to say another word.

Zhu Zai and Li Miao walked for a while, passing through several palace walls. Along the way, no one checked the tooth plates or verified their identities. Occasionally, when they met a few little eunuchs, they respectfully stepped aside, not daring to look directly at the two.

Li Miao's gaze swept over those eunuchs, squinting his eyes.

He didn't forget that in Nanjing, that officer of the Brave Cavalry Right Guard had searched out an imperial edict without a seal.

The Great Seal is with Zhu Zai, but the imperial edict is in the palace, with the Emperor.

That is to say, Liu Jin's group of eunuchs had already inserted people in the palace and had already touched the Emperor's side.

Just looking along the way, Li Miao didn't find any clues, so he put this matter aside first and walked into the Emperor's residence—the Qianqing Palace—with Zhu Zai.

As soon as he entered, Li Miao saw the figure sitting on the dragon chair in the middle of the hall at a glance.

The Emperor.

(End of chapter)