I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 1 Enlightenment in Longchang
Daming Dynasty, Huguang, Qizhou City.

In March, the grass is lush and kites are flying inside and outside Qizhou City, and there are many tourists, creating a scene of thriving vitality and flourishing things.

But a palace in the city fell into a dead silence...

More than 20 people dressed as dancers and musicians knelt in one direction, their heads pressed tightly against the ground, looking as silent as a cicada...

In the direction where they were kneeling, a boy of about fourteen or fifteen was sitting high on the throne. The boy was wearing a black dragon robe, had a tall figure and a handsome face, but his brows were furrowed and his expression was dull, as if he was worried about something.

His eyes swept over the fragments of the jade pendant scattered on the ground. He had just been so absorbed in his thoughts that the jade pendant he was playing with accidentally fell to the ground and broke into pieces. As a result, the dancers and musicians in the hall mistook him for being angry...

The young man withdrew his gaze, without any lingering affection for the fine jade pendant in his eyes.

He stood up and looked at the palace maids kneeling on the ground in the hall. He felt helpless and said, "This matter has nothing to do with you." His voice was a little dry.

"Yes!" Everyone in the palace breathed a sigh of relief.

Then the young man looked at everyone in the hall with a dull look, raised his chin slightly and said woodenly:

"Keep playing music, keep dancing!"

...

After a brief period of confusion, the hall became lively again.

A dozen young dancers began to dance vigorously again, their youthful and graceful bodies faintly visible under their pink gauze clothes. The musicians beside them were also concentrating on playing their instruments, and the beautiful music filled the entire hall.

The boy once again collapsed on the throne in the "Ge You lying" posture and continued to fall into deep thought under the influence of music.

He is Zhu Houxun, the fifth King of Jing of the Ming Dynasty. Now is the fourth year of Zhengde of the Ming Dynasty. He was officially canonized as King of Jing two months ago. However, he accidentally fell into the water and lost consciousness the day after being canonized. When he woke up again, a soul from the future had taken over his place.

The first generation of the Jing Wang branch was Zhu Zhanji, the sixth son of Emperor Renzong Zhu Gaochi, and the uncle of Baozong. This was also the most gratifying thing for Zhu Houxuan, after all, the "divine blood" of the Ming Dynasty's god of war did not flow in this body.

However, after he figured out the situation, he was sad to discover that this huge palace city was actually a Tongliao Dragon Field, and he was the number one prisoner in this Tongliao Dragon Field.

The Ming Dynasty's vassal restrictions were the strictest in history, not to mention that he was the prince with the highest title, so he basically could not do anything and had only the options of eating, drinking, having fun, and waiting to die.

However, as a newcomer, he was still very open-minded. It was just a matter of giving up. As a otaku in his later life, why would he be afraid of this?
Open up!
But things were not as simple as he thought. After the initial novelty wore off, he soon found that it was difficult to play badly. He could no longer play music or dance.
Because life is so boring. Material life is relatively rich, but spiritual life is extremely poor.

This comfortable life made him feel suffocated.

In his previous life, there was a otaku who once said that as long as he was given a mobile phone and the internet, he could stay at home forever.

But where can I find mobile phones and internet in Ming Dynasty?

Zhu Houxuan could have endured the "darkness", but he had a soul in his body that had seen the light, which made him even more unable to endure this extremely poor spiritual life.
In the past, the world's top game companies spent hundreds of millions to create games, and hundreds of engineers and designers with annual salaries of millions spent years of hard work, just to make you more excited, but you can buy them on Steam for tens of dollars;

A group of billionaire stars made blockbusters that you can watch at the cinema for just a few dozen yuan, or even watch pirated copies for free;
The wisdom and knowledge of mankind over thousands of years are collected in the library which is open to the public free of charge all year round.
Most museums and art galleries in the world are open to the public free of charge, and the remaining ones have very low ticket prices;
On TikTok, Bilibili and other platforms, there are state banquet masters teaching you cooking, Olympic champions teaching you fitness, and they will teach you Chinese studies, spoken English, skiing, fishing, and excavator driving, all in the hope that you can give them a little red heart.

But now, most of the books he could find were classics and historical documents, which he couldn't read at all.

In addition, there are some storybooks and novels, which should be the ancestors of online literature. However, most of these things are not as interesting to read as ordinary online literature in later generations. Their threshold for excitement has been raised too high by the online literature in previous generations.

After all, he couldn’t even get into the books written by the great online writer in his previous life five years ago, so don’t expect him to be able to read novels written 500 years ago, so it’s no wonder that he is out of books now.

He also tried to find other entertainment activities, but all failed.
He had also thought about going out of the palace for a tour and experiencing the customs and culture of the Ming Dynasty. Leaving the city was certainly out of the question, as as a prince of the Ming Dynasty, he generally only had one chance to leave the city each year.

Even if you want to go out of the city to visit your ancestral tombs and pay homage to your ancestors, you have to submit an application to the emperor in advance, and the emperor may not approve it.

Even if the emperor approved the leaving of the city, one was generally required to return on the same day.

Given the road conditions and travel methods of the Ming Dynasty, people basically rushed to the ancestral tombs, paid homage to their ancestors, and then rushed back to the city. There was not much time for fun during the process. Zhu Houxuan liked to call himself a special soldier for ancestor worship.

If I can't leave the city, then can I just travel around the city and rob a woman by force?
OK! But it doesn't work for Zhu Houxuan.
A month ago, Zhu Houxuan wanted to tour Qizhou city in disguise, but was told that Emperor Hongzhi had banned princes from traveling in disguise, and that if he wanted to go out, he had to bring a full set of ceremonial equipment.

Finally, he couldn't help but go out with a full set of ceremonial items, but he immediately regretted it. Because the full set of ceremonial items of the Prince of Daming actually involved 59 kinds of items, at least three or four hundred people were needed to carry all these things, plus some guards and the like, it would take four or five hundred people to accompany him when he went out.

When I went out, I found that the prefect had ordered the people to clean the streets with water and pave the road with yellow soil.
To be honest, this is not to make the prince show off better, but out of practical considerations.

This was done because most of the roads in Qizhou City were built with loess mixed with sand and gravel and compacted by stone rollers. They lack maintenance and are inevitably bumpy. In addition, the passing of a ceremonial guard of four or five hundred people would raise a lot of dust, so they did this.

Then Zhu Houxuan saw many people kneeling on the roadside, shops on the street were closing one after another, some small vendors in the distance were being driven away and beaten by yamen runners, the things they were selling fell to the ground, and the windows on both sides of the street cast hateful and disgusted eyes at his ceremonial guard.
This scene deeply hurt Zhu Houxuan. The moral sense from the souls of later generations made him feel very ashamed. He did not expect that his momentary impulse would bring such great trouble to the people of Qizhou.

This suddenly made him understand why the princes of the Ming Dynasty had such a bad reputation.

In the end, he did not rob any woman. He did not walk far before returning home in shame, ending his trip out of the house. He never mentioned leaving the house again.

The next month became even more boring for him, and he was tortured by his internal mental exhaustion to become what he is now.

Of course, being a prince of the Ming Dynasty is not without its advantages. The status and wealth are there.

So basically, he is not short of love as a human being, and he is not short of people as an AI.
As long as he wants, he can have a party every day. As long as he doesn't disturb the people, the people will call him a wise king.
There is no way. The people’s expectations of the Ming Dynasty’s vassal kings are so low.

However, the idea of ​​opening a silver party is just in his mind. After all, he is only fifteen years old and his body is not fully developed yet. It is better not to do such a thing of exhausting the pond for fish now. After all, he needs to exhaust the pond for fish sustainably in the future.
Zhu Houxuan quickly pulled his thoughts back from their wandering state. He had been thinking about what to do in the future for some time.

At this time, the Ming Dynasty was slowly declining, and his distant cousin Zhu Houzhao was ambitiously preparing to revive the Ming Dynasty.
Under the management of Dayan Khan, the leader of the Mongolian Restoration, the Mongols had gone from division and conflict to unity and their power had grown greatly.

Wang Shouren had just attained enlightenment in Longchang. The School of Mind he founded was changing the academic world of the Ming Dynasty and profoundly influencing this ancient land.

The Ottoman Empire, the Habsburgs, and the Kingdom of France were competing for supremacy on the European continent;

The fleet of Portugal, the maritime hegemon, had just occupied Malacca and extended its tentacles to Southeast Asia;
The Mayflower would not be built until 100 years later, when the American continent was still a wilderness.

This is not only a golden age for individuals, but also a golden age for the country and nation.

How can he continue to be so bad in this golden age?

After finally traveling through time, am I going to spend the rest of my life playing with the empress beauties?

A hundred years later, the Qing invaders will enter the country, China will be lost, and then the Manchus will lead the entire Chinese civilization to fall.
These are all things he cannot tolerate, so he cannot do nothing!

So how can we make a difference?
This is Zhu Houxuan’s biggest headache.

If he were to travel through time and become the King of Sai in the early Ming Dynasty, with three guard armies under his command, he could also try to compete with Zhu Di and see if he could seize the world.

If he traveled through time and space and became a vassal king in the late Ming Dynasty, he could take advantage of the chaos of the late Ming Dynasty to rise up. After all, chaos is the ladder to rise.

But he happened to travel back to the middle of the Ming Dynasty, when the feudal restrictions had reached their most severe period after being continuously strengthened by seven emperors.
If he traveled to the Prince of Xing's Mansion and became the prince of the Prince of Xing's Mansion, Zhu Houcong, he could still endure it and wait for the throne to fall on his head, but he traveled to the Prince of Jing's Mansion, which was on the edge of the Ming Dynasty royal family.
Moreover, Zhu Houxuan believed that rebellion in the mid-Ming Dynasty had no future, because the Ming Dynasty had not lost the hearts of the people, social contradictions had not yet intensified, and the finances could still be maintained. Ning Wang Zhu Chenhao was completely a delusional clown.

If rebellion isn't an option, then how about taking normal channels to serve the court and make the Ming Dynasty great again?

No, no!
Although the prince had a respected status, he had been sentenced to death in military and political terms under the Ming Dynasty's feudal policy, and he could not even think about touching these rights.

After hundreds of years of tightening, the Ming Dynasty's feudal policy had left the only option for the feudal lords to do whatever they wanted.

Moreover, he does not have any system or golden fingers to help him break the impasse. His understanding of Ming Dynasty history is very broad. He knows the major events, but not the minor ones.

However, he is not completely without the golden finger. After he traveled through time, he felt that his memory became better and better, and he remembered the things of his previous life more and more clearly.

But this did not help his current situation. For a moment, he felt like he had no way out.
However, after thinking about it for a period of time, he figured out one thing - only the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty could decide his fate!

After all, power does not come from your position or your name, but from your distance from the center of power.

Therefore, it will not be wrong to try to get closer to the center of power and get closer to the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty.

But how can we get closer to the emperor?
(End of this chapter)