My father is Jiajing

Time flies, and in the blink of an eye it is the hottest month of July.

Zhu Zaigui was holding a copy of the Book of Songs in his hand and happened to see the chapter "July".

Feeling the slight coolness of July, Zhu Zaigui said with emotion: "The heat is scorching in July, and clothes are given out in September. The wind is blowing."

Meng Chong, who was standing next to Zhu Zaigui, listened to what Zhu Zaigui said and also glanced at the scorching sun outside. He asked in confusion: "Your Highness, where is the wind? It's so hot today."

Zhu Zaigui chuckled and said, "That's because you looked too closely. You only saw the scorching sun in front of you, but didn't notice that the wind had already started to blow on the Arctic ice field thousands of miles away."

Meng Chong didn't understand some of it, but he did know everything. As a "top student" from the inner study, Meng Chong's knowledge was not inferior to that of ordinary juren and jinshi.

But his identity was a "slave", so he lacked the nobleness and heroism of a scholar, and was much more careful and cautious.

Meng Chong said: "No wonder the great Tang Dynasty poet wrote: 'Snow flies in the eighth month of the year in the northern sky'. It turns out that it is because of the wind blowing in the Arctic ice field that Your Majesty mentioned. If I can think of this, I will understand what Your Majesty meant by 'the wind is blowing'."

Zhu Zaigui turned his head and looked at Meng Chong again, "Not bad, not bad, you can reason and think now. Since ancient times, people have known that the north is bitterly cold, but few have explored the reason behind it. They just make judgments based on their life experience. But I don't like this. I need more assistance with logical evidence, rather than just relying on experience."

Meng Chong bowed and said, "Your Majesty is wise. I don't understand it that way."

Zhu Zaigui laughed again and said, "Go and get the secret report sent by Mr. Gao. I want to give him a four-word reply."

The secret memorial that Zhu Zaigui mentioned was the one that was urgently delivered to the capital at dawn last night. The incident mentioned in this secret memorial was that three days ago, someone carried a corpse to the Governor-General's Office to sue Hai Rui for forcing someone to death.

Although this matter was exposed by Hai Rui on the spot, some things are exposed, but it does not mean that the facts of the matter are facts that everyone can believe.

Human beings are strange creatures. Many times, they only choose to believe the facts they believe.

Even if this fact has been disproven, there are still people who firmly believe in it.

It’s not that these people are stupid or stubborn, but because this is how their lives are. They need to live in lies and need to see things that are worse than what they do in order to feel exciting and thrilling.

Therefore, although Hai Rui could prove his innocence to a certain extent by exposing the false accusations, if he could not persist and prove it repeatedly, the vast majority of ordinary people who did not know the truth would still think that Hai Rui had forced people to death after hearing about this incident.

When these ordinary people believed and spread these rumors, their thoughts were very simple and realistic.

They will think that officials of higher status than themselves are bad people who would do such appalling evil things.

And their awareness of these evil things also stems from their simple understanding of life.

After all, in their life experience, those who have a little power will bully them.

What’s more, Hai Rui was such a high-ranking official?

So when these ordinary people heard the story of Hai Rui forcing innocent people to death, they subconsciously did not believe that Hai Rui was innocent at all, and even thought that forcing a person to death was no big deal.
To be able to hold such a high position, God knows how many people he has killed!

And this is human nature!
Therefore, Zhu Zaigui could not let this matter end peacefully.

He had to support Hai Rui and provide backstage support so that Hai Rui could continue his unfinished business in Jiangnan.

Only by carrying these things forward, even if we are misunderstood, slandered and cursed at times, at least we can have no fear.

Otherwise, not only did he not accomplish anything, but he was also slandered for no reason. Zhu Zaigui would not be able to swallow such humiliation.

At the same time, Zhu Zaigui also believed that Hai Rui would never be able to swallow it!
Otherwise he would not be Hai Rui.

Moreover, as a time traveler, Zhu Zaigui knew too well the nature of the gentry in the south of the Yangtze River.

If history had not changed and had developed according to the original historical trend, then the Jiangnan region would not only have become more open-minded, but would also have tested the emperor's obedience under the banners of loyalty, filial piety, and justice.

The most obvious one is to talk about the affairs of Emperor Jianwen.

During the more than 200 years of the Ming Dynasty, literati and ministers had always used the fact that Emperor Jianwen had once been an emperor to make a point, and step by step demanded that successive Ming emperors recognize the legitimacy of Emperor Jianwen as the emperor.

Although the fact that Emperor Jianwen was the legitimate emperor is also an indisputable historical fact.

But everything has to follow the law of cause and effect, right?

How Zhu Di's lineage came to power, and how they asserted their legitimacy after taking power, are political taboos that cannot be touched by Zhu Di's descendants.

Once the legitimacy of Jianwen was acknowledged, wouldn't Zhu Di be a traitor who came to power through rebellion?
Our ancestors became traitors, so aren’t the emperors of later generations also descendants of traitors?
Isn't there a flaw in the succession of legal power?

Therefore, any successor emperor with a normal mind and sufficient political sensitivity would never recognize Jianwen's legitimacy.

But unfortunately, although the succession to the throne in ancient times was also political, it was more based on blood politics.

The fact that emperors inherited the throne through bloodline politics does not mean that they naturally understand the importance of political legitimacy.

Therefore, in the tests of generation after generation, Jianwen, a person and topic that was originally a taboo, was forcibly brought out by this group of ministers, and they also asked him to recognize the throne and restore the title of emperor.

Those successors who were willing to relax and acknowledge Jianwen gradually, whether out of a need for personal reputation or out of "sympathy", actually restored Jianwen's status as emperor little by little.

In Zhu Zaigui's view, this situation was a test of the emperor's obedience!
And according to the historical facts that Zhu Zaigui knew, these things seemed to be confirmed.

For example, in the original historical records, during the Wanli period, when a minister once again mentioned the status of Emperor Jianwen, the Wanli Emperor at the time, for some unknown political consideration, actually acknowledged Emperor Jianwen's identity as emperor, thus embarrassing his ancestor Zhu Di.

The result is obvious. In the 27th year of Wanli, when Emperor Wanli sent eunuchs to Jiangnan to collect taxes, the gentry in Jiangnan had become so inflated that they no longer took the eunuchs who collected taxes on behalf of the emperor seriously.

They even took the initiative to provoke the tax-collecting eunuchs at the time to attack them, and then they took advantage of the public indignation and directly beat the tax-collecting eunuch who represented the emperor to death in Jiangnan.

From this incident, we can see that these people have already felt the way to test the bottom line of the Ming emperor and are no longer afraid of the imperial power. Even during this period, many literary works and folk paintings that discredited the Ming dynasty appeared.

Among them, the most famous one is "Nanjing Taichang Temple Records", which contains records questioning Zhu Di's biological mother, and the records are written with details, as if they had been witnessed.

But the problem is that this so-called "Nanjing Taichang Temple Records" was written two hundred years after the time when Zhu Di lived.

It is easy to imagine how serious a problem is that a person who lives 200 years ago, out of some unknown mentality or a story he heard from somewhere, dares to write something slanderous about the ancestor emperor of the current dynasty.

Moreover, this is not an isolated case.

At the same time as rumors were spread about who Zhu Di's biological mother was, the portrait of Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the dynasty, began to be uglier among the people. His originally square face, which was awe-inspiring without even showing anger, became a strange-looking shoe-horn face in folk paintings in the late Ming Dynasty, and people were even deceived into saying that he had a "strange appearance"!
Is this just to fool fools?

If there really are extraordinary people with different appearances, then wouldn't those people who are ugly and deformed in real life all have the appearance of emperors?

So this kind of statement is really misleading and is simply treating people as fools.

But what’s even more amazing is that after the fool heard it, he actually thought it made sense. It’s incredible!

Even if what these scammers said really made sense, then in the decades from the late Qing Dynasty to the early Republic of China and then to the founding of New China, why weren't there the "strange people and phenomena" that these scammers say, these great pioneers who led countless people with lofty ideals to seek change and self-improvement and whose achievements were no less than those of the founding emperors of all dynasties?
Could it be that the way of heaven has changed?
Obviously, no matter how good the excuses they find are, they cannot conceal the sinister intentions of these people when their purpose is to vilify others!
So Zhu Zaigui would never let them go easily!

Moreover, history has proven that they will only be obedient and stop complaining endlessly if they are treated cruelly by others.

Otherwise, they would always think that they were extremely smart, so smart that neither the court nor the emperor could control them.

At a certain stage, they even began to ignore the rules of the hierarchy and wore clothes made of bright yellow fabrics and walked around the city, thinking that this was also their freedom.

Indeed, it is true that you have freedom to wear whatever you want!

However, it must also be viewed in the context of specific historical conditions in order to truly judge whether this kind of freedom is truly free, whether it is truly non-offensive, and whether it does not lead to bad morals.

If, under certain historical conditions, their freedom violated the taboos of the time and corrupted the social customs of the time, then this freedom would be sinful and unforgivable.

If it cannot be stopped, in the long run it will inevitably lead to the disruption of hierarchy and the degradation of morality!

Moreover, facts have proved that at the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the Manchu Jurchens who came from outside the Great Wall were not so pampered to them.

When these barbaric people no longer listen to the reasoning of these so-called smart people and start to speak with knives, these Jiangnan gentry who once boasted and took advantage of the Ming Dynasty can also honestly change their clothes, betray their ancestors, shave their heads to become obedient citizens, and pay the taxes owed to the court without a single cent less.

Zhu Zaigui withdrew his thoughts and looked at the secret report of Gao Gong that Meng Chong handed to him respectfully.

Zhu Zaigui opened the secret report and read it carefully again.

Then he picked up the red brush beside him, dipped it in the cinnabar ink in the inkstone in front of him, and wrote four vigorous and powerful words full of solemnity in the blank space of the secret report!

"Everything is lonely!"

These four words represent Zhu Zaigui's attitude. He will be a solid backing for Gao Gong, Zhang Juzheng and Hai Rui. As long as they can handle the affairs in Jiangnan well, Zhu Zaigui will cover up all the problems and criticisms for them so that they can focus on doing their work in Jiangnan without distraction.

Moreover, this time Zhu Zaigui would not make the slightest compromise, nor would he worry about the situation escalating and affecting stability.

The Ming Dynasty had been peaceful for more than two hundred years, so peaceful that these people had forgotten what the Beacon Blade was.

Therefore, this time Zhu Zaigui was also prepared to help them recover their memories, so that they could clearly realize how serious the consequences of secretly disobeying the emperor's orders, slandering the court, oppressing the good, and attempting to use public opinion to incite the people to cause chaos were!

Zhu Zaigui closed the secret report and handed it to Meng Chong, "Send it to Nanjing at an expedited rate of 800 miles, to Mr. Gao, and tell him to just do it, I will take care of everything."

Meng Chong bowed quickly and said, "I obey your order."

Just as Meng Chong was about to turn around, Zhu Zaigui asked again, "Where are Wang Zhi and Yu Huatian now?"

Hearing this question, Meng Chong desperately searched for information about these two people in his mind.

Meng Chong replied: "General Wang and Eunuch Yu are recuperating at the Japanese Navy's base in Taiwan."

Zhu Zaigui hummed, thought for a while, and continued, "Give them an imperial decree to send two thousand elite soldiers to the Longjiang Shipyard in Nanjing to check the construction progress of the second new treasure ship. At the same time, inform them that if necessary, they can cooperate with Hai Rui's investigation needs and capture some stubborn criminals on the spot."

When Meng Chong heard this, he was startled. He understood what Zhu Zaigui meant.

Zhu Zaigui was ready to use external forces to solve internal problems.

It seems that the problems in Jiangnan are more serious than imagined.

Otherwise, why would Wang Zhi, an old killer who came from a pirate family, and Yu Huatian, a ruthless character who came out of the imperial prison, lead their troops to Nanjing at this time?
This is obviously an attempt to come up with a final solution to the problems in Jiangnan!

For a moment, Meng Chong seemed to see the scene of a bloody storm about to break out in Jiangnan!

Moreover, this scene is more than ten times more intense than the one created by Chen Hong in the capital city now!
You know, you have to know that Chen Hong has now almost reached the point where he is "the wrath of God and the hatred of the people". Many people who have been arrested and those who have not been arrested by Chen Hong are already gnashing their teeth at Chen Hong.

Every day, their memorials impeaching Chen Hong floated like snowflakes to the cabinet and to the Wenhua Hall where Zhu Zaiqi was. . .

He has the spirit and courage to die together with Chen Hong!

------

Ask for monthly ticket~~~(End of this chapter)