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

Chapter 202 New Business Brought in by Zhu Houzhao

His special identity makes him a spiritual leader among contemporary craftsmen, and even an object of worship.

Therefore, Zhu Houxun's name was quite appealing among the craftsmen, which was why they were so excited.

"Have the people who went to the Ministry of War's arsenal to investigate returned?" Zhu Houzhao asked.

"Your Majesty, I have just been to the armory of the Ministry of War and found the record of the entry of this batch of weapons. I have also arrested the person in charge of the armory who is responsible for this matter. He is now being tried in the Dali Temple prison." A man dressed as a Jinyiwei hurriedly stepped out and answered.

"Okay! Interrogate them all thoroughly. I want to know the results tomorrow!" Zhu Houzhao had a sneer on his face.

Then he looked around at everyone in the tent, taking in their expressions, and said firmly: "War is a major issue for a country, a matter of life and death, a matter of survival and destruction, and it must be carefully considered. And military preparation is the most important of all. I will definitely get to the bottom of what happened today!"

After saying this, he flicked his sleeves and left the tent, and the others quickly followed.

Zhu Houxuan fell back a few steps and whispered a few words to Zhang Yong, asking him to treat the craftsmen who were captured today well.

The Minister of Works Li and the Minister of War Lu Wan bowed to Zhu Houzhao and took their leave. They walked out of the parade ground gate together without any communication.

Before leaving, the Minister of Works Li glared at the Minister of War Lu Wan fiercely, snorted coldly, then got on the carriage and left.

Minister of War Lu Wan sighed, looked at the brightly lit military camp, and got on a carriage to drive towards the city.
In a secret room in the capital, a fierce debate has begun.
"What's going on? Why did the Ministry of War send that batch of swords to the border troops?" someone asked impatiently.

"There's no reason, it just happened to happen." Another person said softly.

"Just in time? Such a big thing, involving so many people, can be explained by such a light sentence?" One person's voice became sharp because of excitement.

"Alas, this batch of weapons was originally intended for the Beijing Camp, but the person managing the arsenal made a mistake and gave this batch of weapons to the Border Army. What we didn't expect was that the problem with this batch of weapons was exposed directly during the large-scale exercise."

"If it hadn't been exposed during the big exercise, this matter would have been easy to handle. The border army commanders would have cooperated well if they were paid a little money, and things wouldn't have gotten to this point."

"Stop talking nonsense. It's already like this. Judging from your Majesty's performance today, you must investigate further. What should we do now?"

The cause of the incident was actually very simple. It was because the Beijing Army had fallen into decline. After the decline, the Beijing Army was being fed up with empty salaries, and the soldiers on the payroll were treated as slaves by the nobles, civil officials and eunuchs and used at will.
This resulted in the Beijing Camp becoming a cash machine for various forces, from which all parties could gain benefits.

But they were not satisfied and set their sights on the weapons of the Beijing Camp. After all, the Beijing Camp had not been to war for a long time. Even if they fought, it would not be as fierce as Liu Liu and Liu Qi, and they would not send out all of them. Therefore, the Beijing Camp did not need such good weapons at all.

Under the backward artisan household system, the raw materials distributed by the government to weapon craftsmen were exploited by officials of all ranks, and by the time they reached the hands of the lowest-level craftsmen, there was little left. However, the government purchased weapons at extremely low prices, leaving the craftsmen unable to earn even their hard-earned money. Therefore, weapon craftsmen often handed over the worst quality weapons to the government to deal with the officials, and sold the high-quality weapons to merchants.

The country's resources for weapons manufacturing thus flowed into private pockets.

The officials also knew that the weapons handed in were of poor quality, but such poor quality weapons would not be put into actual use at all. They would be distributed to a certain unit of the Beijing Camp for internal consumption. Anyway, the Beijing Camp would not go out to fight, so they would just report the damage after a while.
Such a complicated operation process cannot be handled by a single government office. It requires the cooperation of multiple government offices to reap the benefits, such as the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Works, and the Five Military Governors' Office.
However, the Ming Dynasty's Ministry of Works has not completely rotten. The weapons made by the Ministry of Works are not all inferior products. There are also some weapons of qualified quality to decorate the facade. The weapons originally intended to be allocated to the border troops are those of qualified quality. As a result, the Ministry of War made a mistake in operation and directly issued some inferior weapons to the border troops, which exposed the problem directly.
"Since His Majesty wants a result, we can only give him a reasonable result."

Everyone in the secret room fell into silence.
On the other side, Zhu Houxuan was still staying in the military camp in the western suburbs with Zhu Houzhao. At this time, the camp had already started to make fire and cook, and the aroma of fish was floating everywhere in the air.
"You always bring me surprises." Zhu Houzhao looked at the ferocious head and sharp teeth of the sea fish on the plate with interest.

"His Royal Highness Prince Jing's moves are extraordinary. He took out 100,000 kilograms of dried salted fish in one go!" Zhu Houzhao gave a thumbs up and joked.

Zhu Houzhao no longer had the gloomy look he had just shown in front of everyone, but had returned to his usual self.

"This thing will be one of the group's flagship products. The shipyard in Jinzhouwei has begun mass-producing medium-sized fishing boats, and this kind of dried fish will become more and more." Zhu Houxuan introduced.

"That's even better. Please give me more in the future," Zhu Houzhao said happily.

Zhu Houxuan did not respond to this, but asked: "Brother, why did you perform such a scene today?"

"How did I perform?" Zhu Houzhao asked excitedly.

"That's good. I almost believed it at first."

"Hahaha!" Zhu Houzhao burst into laughter.

After he stopped laughing, he said seriously, "Today's incident was actually beyond my expectations. I have always known that the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Industry have some interests connected in this regard, but they have never revealed any flaws. I didn't expect that such a big flaw would be revealed today. It's a good opportunity for me to take advantage of this topic to make some comments."

"Then how are you going to use this as an excuse?" Zhu Houxuan smiled and looked at Zhu Houzhao.
"Didn't you ask me to help bring more business to the group? What do you think of the military weapons manufacturing business? Is it worth a Red Dragon Medal?" Zhu Houzhao said to Zhu Houxuan with a sharp gaze.

Zhu Houxuan's hand holding the chopsticks paused for a moment, but soon returned to normal. "Not very good. Qizhou previously made high-end cold weapons, but only produced a small number of weapons. Large-scale manufacturing of weapons has not yet been involved. I'm afraid it's due to lack of experience. Besides, it's a bit too frivolous for my brother to hand over such a big thing as weapon manufacturing to the group."

(End of this chapter)