Without money, what is the point of being a traitor?

Chapter 639 Anger Rises in My Heart

Zhu Houzhao even considered another terrifying possibility: they might not even bother targeting Yunnan, but instead make large-scale purchases in Southeast Asian countries.

A large portion of the imperial court's revenue now depends on tributary trade with various countries.

If goods from Southeast Asia were purchased in such large quantities at such low prices, the imperial court's finances, which relied on tribute trade subsidies, would face annihilation.

Compared to this, what does the death of a few eunuchs matter?

Fortunately, the system of officials in charge of recording daily life was abolished during the Hongwu era and has not been reinstated yet; otherwise, Zhu Houzhao would have had to find a way to resolve the problem of officials in charge of recording daily life.

Lu Yin gave the eunuchs who were still in the Qianqing Palace a fierce look, and they immediately came out from their positions, trembling, and obediently walked out of the palace gate.

Some of them were rotated out after nightfall and were unaware of what happened in the afternoon.

They weren't worried about their own lives, but they knew they might end up at the bottom of the social hierarchy in this orderly imperial city.

Seeing Lu Yin arresting people for investigation and allocating manpower, Zhu Houzhao couldn't calm down for a while.

He put down the memorial in his hand, walked out of the Qianqing Palace with his hands behind his back, looking worried.

A quick glance to the side revealed the Hongde Hall right next to it.

Zhu Houzhao had no one to consult, so he strolled over, hoping to squeeze something more out of Pei Yuan.

After all, the "Island Barbarian Records" had been stored away for two hundred years without anyone noticing this treasure. Pei Yuan's ability to make such a discovery was certainly extraordinary.

When Zhu Houzhao arrived at Hongde Hall, before he even pushed open the door, he heard loud snoring coming from inside.

Pei Yuan spent a lot of time and effort on Jiao Yan'er during the day, and when he got home at night, he put all his energy into it.

He had just fallen asleep from exhaustion when he was woken up and taken to the palace.

After all that back and forth, Pei Yuan fell asleep almost as soon as Lu Yin left.

Zhu Houzhao stayed up until midnight, and he was so sleepy he could barely keep his eyes open.

Especially the data I just reviewed from the document room made me dizzy and my eyes were spinning.

I was just worried and couldn't figure it out, which is why I couldn't sleep.

Seeing Pei Yuan sleeping so soundly, Zhu Houzhao flew into a rage and said, "Pei Yuan! Didn't I tell you to reflect on your actions? How can you sleep like that?!"

Pei Yuan woke up with a start, feeling somewhat dazed, unsure of where he was.

After a while, by the faint moonlight, they finally saw Zhu Houzhao standing angrily at the palace gate.

Pei Yuan really wanted to give Zhu Houzhao's mother a good scolding.

Pei Yuan didn't dare to argue at this point. He had clearly been told to go to sleep, so he reluctantly got up and said, "Your subject is reflecting on my actions."

Zhu Houzhao also recalled what had happened before.

It seems... I'm in the wrong.

So Zhu Houzhao said with his hands behind his back, "It's good that you know how to reflect on your mistakes."

After saying that, he strolled back to the Qianqing Palace.

In the Qianqing Palace, Lu Yin had already replaced a group of people for the emperor, and his clever adopted sons and grandsons had also temporarily filled in to deal with the emergency.

Zhu Houzhao went out for a while to relax, and when he looked at the files again, he was able to calm down and read them.

It contains data on the issuance of paper money throughout history, as well as the exchange rates set by the imperial court for paper money in recent years. In addition, it also includes the amount of silver collected from various regions.

Zhu Houzhao had an excellent memory. Looking at a record document of Yinkeng in Guizhou, he recalled that there seemed to have been an earthquake there last year.

He then sent people to find the memorial from the then provincial governor requesting a reduction in the amount of money and grain allocated for disaster relief.

Once this was confirmed, the two were compared.

Looking at the stable silver production, Zhu Houzhao felt even more certain of Zhang Yu's claims.

Perhaps some mines do produce silver, but some mines don't actually mine silver from the mountains; they mine privately.

It was much easier for these mining supervisors to extort an ounce of silver from the common people and laborers than to mine an ounce of silver themselves.

However, the consequences of this were ultimately borne by the imperial court.

Compared to gold and silver, which are difficult to mine, copper mining and minting present other challenges.

If a copper coin was of even slightly good quality, it would be melted down and cast into bronze ware, thus increasing its value many times over.

If the quality of copper coins is even slightly poor, it will cause stagnation, leading to a serious breakdown in the currency system and preventing its circulation.

In addition, there were not only a large number of privately minted coins of varying quality, coins minted by princes, but even the imperial court's own coins showed huge differences.

Good coins (7 copper coins) could be exchanged for one fen of silver, while inferior coins (60 or 70 copper coins) could only be exchanged for one fen of silver.

The lack of a unified currency value made copper coins almost a transitional concept for exchanging silver.

In some ways, copper coins were even inferior to paper money, because no matter how low the value of paper money was, at the same time, there was no difference between one string of paper money and another.

However, there could be a tenfold difference in valuation between two copper coins.

This made it almost impossible to price many goods using copper coins.

Moreover, even excluding all the above interferences, with a stable output of silver and copper, the enormous mining costs would still inevitably be distributed among everyone who uses these currencies.

After much deliberation, Zhu Houzhao felt that revitalizing the Ming Dynasty's paper money was perhaps the only right path forward.

First, the right to print paper money was in his hands, so there was no difficulty in obtaining it, and the imperial court could also save manpower from mining these metals.

Even if these gold, silver, and copper are still mined in the future, they can simply be used to make gold, silver, and copper utensils or decorations.

In this way, these valuable metals would not have to bear the responsibility of circulating currency, and there would be no need to deliberately suppress their value. The imperial court would also not have to worry that the people would take these painstakingly made copper coins and silver ingots to melt down and cast into objects.

The reasonable appreciation of precious metals can also make mining a highly profitable business.

Secondly, the printing cost of the paper money was very low, and people no longer needed to pay extra for the high mining costs when using it for transactions.

Thinking about it this way, it seems that the easily printed banknotes and the silver and copper coins that need to be mined, smelted, and cast to circulate should not be of equal value.

Because this offsets too much of the cost and profit.

How then should such precious paper be linked to its value?

Zhu Houzhao had this idea in a daze, but when he came to his senses, he found himself covered in a fine sweat.

Perhaps because he finally had a clear idea, Zhu Houzhao felt much better.

Seeing that it was late at night outside the palace, Zhu Houzhao asked a serving eunuch, "What time is it now?"

The eunuch replied, "It's just past midnight."

Zhu Houzhao frowned upon hearing this. According to the previous system, people had to get up at 5 a.m. to prepare for court.

I just sweated a lot and I need to take a shower later, so how can I have the energy to get up early?

Zhu Houzhao said directly, "Tell Lu Yin to skip tomorrow's morning court session."

After saying that, he asked someone to prepare hot water so he could take a bath and rest.

Zhu Houzhao usually lived in the Qianqing Palace, which had a special warm pavilion in the back hall for the emperor to rest in.

In such grand palaces, it was a tradition to build separate heated pavilions. These served to keep the interior warm in winter and to dispel the summer heat with ice in advance.

The Qianqing Palace, built by Zhu Houzhao, suffered a major fire in the ninth year of the Zhengde reign, and its layout is no longer verifiable.

When the Emperor Wanshou lived there, the inner pavilion was divided into two floors, with a total of nine rooms. Each room had three beds with curtains, and the emperor would choose any one of these twenty-seven beds to sleep in each night.

This practice may seem absurd, but it actually has reliable historical records.

This is recorded in "Zhou Zai" by Zhang He, a senior official in the Ministry of Justice.

As for why Zhang He, an outsider, knew so much about the emperor's bedchamber affairs, it was because he was the one who went into the palace to handle the "Renyin Palace Incident" in which the emperor attempted to strangle him.

This means they witnessed the crime scene firsthand.

Some might wonder, if the emperor was hidden so well, what happened when the concubines came to sleep with him? Did they play hide-and-seek together?

The answer is that in the Ming Dynasty, concubines could only be engaged to, not slept with.

Afterwards, the concubines must be taken away to avoid a situation where "the emperor spends a warm night in the boudoir and then neglects his morning court."

Even taking into account the separation of wet and dry areas, an additional Hall of Union was built next to the Palace of Heavenly Purity.

It can be said that in order to prevent his descendants from becoming addicted to women, Old Zhu set up a complete anti-addiction system.

As a result, his descendants became less interested in women, to the point that his bloodline nearly died out on several occasions.

Many of the eunuchs knew about the emperor's hobbies, and since they had heard that he had just returned from the Leopard Chamber that evening, no one asked if he needed any concubines to attend to him in bed.

It's already early October, and the weather is noticeably cooler, so hot water is necessary for bathing.

It's late at night now, so I'll have to spend some time preparing a hot water bucket.

So, when the eunuchs were preparing hot water, Zhu Houzhao couldn't help but think of Pei Ayuan next door.

Pei Yuan is just a martial artist with some knowledge; how could he possibly have the same broad vision as me?

It's understandable that they weren't aware of these dangers.

He must be feeling extremely anxious and fearful right now, pitifully offering up the treasure only to be treated this way.

Zhu Houzhao couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy.

So he walked toward the Hongde Hall.

Because Zhu Houzhao was still awake, many eunuchs and palace guards were stationed around the Qianqing Palace. Even in front of the Hongde Hall, there seemed to be some eunuchs on guard.

When Zhu Houzhao arrived at the entrance of Hongde Hall, he heard a familiar snoring sound.

His guilt vanished instantly.

Fortunately, Zhu Houzhao had recovered from his heartache and could finally wash up and go to sleep. He wasn't so angry anymore.

Just as he was about to leave, a mischievous thought suddenly struck him, and he shouted loudly into the Hongde Hall, "Pei Yuan! Are you really going to reflect on your actions?"

The snoring in the hall stopped abruptly, followed by Pei Yuan's somewhat broken voice, "Your Majesty, I am reflecting on my actions."

Zhu Houzhao was in a great mood, chuckled, and strode back to the Qianqing Palace.

Before today, Zhu Houzhao was happily pushing forward with the "First Army, Great Ming" plan, but today he was brought under the control of the nightmare brought by Pei Yuan.

Now that Zhu Houzhao has found a solution to this monetary bomb, he can finally sleep. I wonder if Minister Pei can still sleep?

……

Pei Yuan couldn't sleep at this moment; instead, he felt a surge of anger and malice rising within him.

After tossing and turning several times without feeling sleepy, Pei Yuan picked up the prayer mat and threw it forward with all his might, making a loud bang on the palace door.

After a moment, a somewhat familiar voice came from outside, "This old servant, Li Zhang, is here. Does the commander have any orders?"

Li Zhang?

Upon hearing this, Pei Yuan immediately sat up.

Previously, in order to win over Empress Xia as an ally, Pei Yuan used Empress Dowager Zhang's suppression to obtain something deadly from Xia Ru.

When Jiao Yan'er was re-copying the document, she split the original in two, separating the crucial content and the content related to her identity into two parts.

Previously, Pei Yuan had already instructed Li Zhang to send the materials related to the rumors about Zhu Houzhao's birth to Empress Xia.

Empress Xia was clearly a smart woman.

Although she knew that someone was deliberately plotting against her, that half of the material was too sensitive. If even a little bit was leaked, it would surely enrage Zhu Houzhao.

This will cause her, already relegated to the sidelines, to completely lose her last support.

Already facing suppression from the Empress Dowager, losing the Emperor's support meant certain death awaited her.

Therefore, although Empress Xia realized that trouble was coming, she remained patient and did not respond at all.

However, no matter how hard this clever and patient woman tried to guard against external threats, she could not resist internal troubles.

Pei Yuan had already used the pressure from Marquis Shouning Zhang Heling's desire to exterminate the Xia family to drag them into the mess.

Pei Yuan thought for a moment, then got up and opened the palace door.

Then, Li Zhang was seen waiting respectfully outside.

Pei Yuanxian glanced at the Qianqing Palace next door and saw that the candles inside had been extinguished, with only a few eunuchs guarding the outside.

So he asked Li Zhang, "Has the Emperor Zhu already gone to sleep?"

Li Zhang replied, "I heard from the people who were off duty that the Emperor was extremely tired. After returning home, he quickly washed up and went to rest in the warm pavilion."

Pei Yuan cursed inwardly.

You're about to go to sleep, and you're still torturing yourself.

This was the third time tonight that Pei Yuan had been woken up by Zhu Houzhao's affairs after falling asleep.

Even the most mild-mannered person would be provoked, let alone a lawless madman like Pei Yuan.

Pei Yuan noticed that the eunuchs Li Zhang had brought were all far away, so he called them closer.

To prevent anyone from eavesdropping, he simply stood in front of the palace gate and whispered to him, "Has Empress Xia been in contact with you these past few days?"

Li Zhang knew that what he was about to say was very serious, so he leaned closer and whispered, "We've always been in contact."

"These past few days, as the commander instructed, I've been sending unfamiliar eunuchs to appear in that courtyard from time to time. It's quite effective in making people wary of ghosts."

Although Empress Xia pretended to be calm, one could still detect her panic in many subtle ways.

"Moreover, those people are unaware of the situation. Even if the Empress were to turn against them and arrest them, they wouldn't be able to confess anything."

Pei Yuan was not surprised by this.

No matter how clever she is, Empress Xia is still just a young woman not yet twenty.

Faced with the overwhelming power of Empress Dowager Zhang and the scheming plots lurking in the shadows, the isolated and helpless Empress Xia must have been filled with fear.

(End of this chapter)