Ming Jiajing: Starting from Immortality

Chapter 65: Prince Jing enters the capital, disaster for the royal family!
When the cabinet was lamenting the disaster of corruption because it had seized silver equivalent to two years' tax revenue of the Ming Dynasty from corrupt officials in the two capitals.

Ok Hee Palace.

The most powerful method of controlling ministers used by the emperors of the Ming Dynasty was to send out secret spies everywhere to monitor the movements of powerful ministers at all times.

The royal heir is also under investigation by the Embroidered Uniform Guard.

Especially during the Jiajing Dynasty, the emperor had only two princes, and their names were discovered in great detail.

The Prince Yu's Mansion in Beijing was one-way transparent to the Embroidered Uniform Guards, and every move of Prince Yu Zhu Zaihou was under their control.

As for the Jinyiwei, the Jingwang Mansion in De'an, Huguang, was also one-way transparent, and every move of Jingwang Zhu Zaizhen was also under their control.

On the imperial desk.

There was a letter from King Jing from his vassal state, "I am ill, please pray to Mount Xuan to ward off evil and save the world."

The meaning was simple. After hearing about the commotion in the capital, King Jing felt that the emperor was unhappy, so he prepared to go to Mount Wudang to pray for his father.

There is also a fortune stick obtained from praying at Wudang Mountain as an attachment.

"A single yin cannot last long!"

Since ancient times, the emperor has been praised as the Great Sun, corresponding to the "Du Yang".

However, "Yang alone cannot produce life", and it needs to be supplemented by "Yin". Since the Emperor of China, all things in the world are "Yin".

With yin and yang in harmony, Fang Chaogang was excited and all the horses neighed in unison.

Combined with Prince Jing's memorial and the movements in the capital, the "Guyin" mentioned by Prince Jing at this time refers to Prince Yu's Palace.

Since Gu Yin is not able to stay in the capital, King Jing's real thoughts are self-evident.

King Jing wants to go to the capital!
In the name of God's warning.

But next to King Jing's letter was a record by the Embroidered Uniform Guard of what King Jing had done in the short six months since he left the capital to become a fiefdom last year.

"In October of the 39th year of Jiajing, King Jing entered the vassal state and requested 20,000 hectares of farmland. Since there was not enough fertile land in Huguang, he took the fertile land in Zhongzhou and Jiangxi to make up for it."

One hectare is equal to one hundred mu of land.

Twenty thousand hectares is equivalent to two million acres of land.

Zhu Houcong thought that the real purpose of Yan Song's cabinet in changing rice to mulberry was to annex land in the south of the Yangtze River.

However, considering the appetite of Yan Song, Xu Jie, and Yan Shifan, a huge civil service group, the amount of land they wanted to annex was only a few hundred thousand acres in the south of the Yangtze River.

When King Jing was a vassal, he hollowed out the fertile land of Huguang, but what was still not enough was made up by sending Henan and Jiangxi provinces to make up for it.

Zhu Houcong's eyes gradually turned cold. The powerful ministers Yan Song and Xu Jie only took a bite of the Ming Dynasty, but the royal family was the one that swallowed up the entire Ming Dynasty.

In both of his lives, Zhu Houcong had no brothers or sisters, or rather, all of his brothers and sisters died while growing up.

Apart from the two sons, Prince Yu and Prince Jing, other relatives to be found include the son of Emperor Chenghua, his collateral ancestors, uncles and brothers.

He hadn't seen his own son for decades, let alone his collateral relatives. Zhu Houcong kept thinking about the names of the princes of the Ming Dynasty, but he felt no emotion at all.

Before the coldness in his eyes completely transformed into murderous intent, Zhu Houcong continued to look down.

"In November of the 39th year of Jiajing, King Jing sent people from the palace to Jingzhou to collect 200,000 taels of silver in rent from the Liao Palace."

"In December of the 39th year of Jiajing, King Jing sent people from the palace to Hanyang to collect 300,000 taels of silver in firewood tax from the Chu Palace."

Jingzhou was the vassal state of the Liao king. The current Liao palace has been passed down for eight generations, and the king's name is Zhu Xian.

With the character "Xian" as his name, he is of the same generation as Zhu Houcong. According to the royal family, Zhu Houcong should call the current King of Liao his imperial brother.

Zhu Houcong had an impression of the King of Liao, who also worshipped Taoism and magic, but was a romantic person by nature, and was the best among all the vassal states in terms of palaces, gardens, music, entertainment, dogs and horses.

He is an extremely absurd prince.

Unexpectedly, King Jing went to Jingzhou and collected land rent for the Liao Palace.

As for the King of Chu.

Zhu Houcong felt an infinite disgust at the mere sight of this title. The "Chu Palace Rebellion" in the 24th year of Jiajing was a stain that the Ming Dynasty royal family could never erase.

The Crown Prince of Chu, Zhu Yingyao, actually launched a coup in the Chu Palace for a geisha, and killed his father, Zhu Xianrong, the King of Chu Min.

According to the ancestral system of Emperor Taizu Gao, even if a prince or a prince's son committed the crime of treason, he would only be imprisoned within the high walls of Fengyang, Zhongdu, and could not even be imprisoned.

But Zhu Yingyao was eventually escorted to the capital, beheaded and his body burned, which shows Zhu Houcong's determination to punish him.

The current King of Chu is Zhu Ying, the second son of King Min of Chu, Zhu Xianrong. However, in recent years, the fighting among the Chu royal family has intensified, alarming the capital several times.

However, King Jing imposed a firewood tax on the vassal states of King Chu.

It can be seen that King Jing, who went to be a fief, was not a peaceful person. In such a short time, he established connections with the two old princes.

Zhu Houcong noticed that King Jing's collection of rent and taxes was not just about collecting rent and taxes from the people of Jingzhou and Hanyang who had never paid rent and taxes. Instead, King Jing would collect rent and taxes from the people of Jingzhou and Hanyang regardless of whether they had paid rent and taxes before.

Zhu Houcong could no longer hold back and cursed: "Beast!"

King Jing.

King of Liao and King of Chu.

They are three-headed beasts, or rather, they are worse than beasts.

The imperial court has shown enough favor to the princes, yet they still covet the meager property of the common people. Good! Very good!

Zhu Houcong, with a hint of anger in his eyes, continued to look down.

"In the first month of the 40th year of Jiajing, the Prince Jing's mansion was flooded. The Prince Jing's mansion requested an imperial decree to rebuild it. In February and March, the cost was 2.8 million taels of silver, which was ten times the cost of an ordinary prince's mansion. Its scale was slightly smaller than that of the Forbidden City. The original cause of the flood in the Prince Jing's mansion remains a mystery."

Two million eight hundred thousand taels of silver.

Ten times the normal palace regulations.

Zhu Houcong's face turned pale. King Jing had just been relocated to his fiefdom half a year ago. Where did he get so much silver?
He was so bold that he dared to rebuild it based on the Forbidden City.

Doesn't it mean that he had the intention of entering the Forbidden City before he became a fief?

Zhu Houcong walked back to the futon and sat down, saying with murderous intent: "Let him come!"

"Let King Jing come!"

Since you want to go back to Beijing, then go back, but if you want to leave again, it won’t be that easy.

"I obey your order." Huang Jin hurriedly went to convey the order.

Prince Jing wrote a letter to the emperor, which was a secret letter from the Embroidered Uniform Guard. The current Imperial Household Department had no power to view it, so Huang Jin didn't know what had happened or why the emperor was so angry. All he could do was pass on the emperor's order.

But Huang Jin was keenly aware of one thing: the emperor, in his rage, might not have thought about the other possible impacts of Prince Jing's return to the capital.

You know, Prince Yu has just been ordered to recuperate.

The so-called imperial edict is generally called the will by the ministers, but it has many regulations.

When the emperor was in a good mood about trivial matters, he would send the relevant eunuchs to convey it to the parties involved, which was called oral instructions.

Decisions concerning the court's national policies, military deployments, promotion and demotion of officials, and even instructions on a certain case had to be announced using a specially made bright yellow brocade script with a seal. The imperial edict usually referred to is this type of written edict.

Written imperial edicts are divided into explicit edicts and special edicts.

Imperial edicts were usually handed over to the Cabinet for public release to various government offices, and in the Ming Dynasty they were sometimes announced to the world through "Dibao".

A special edict is issued to a specific person, and only when that person reads it to the person concerned can the holy seal be opened and the will be read out.

The prince's return to the capital is a major national event, so of course an imperial edict must be issued.

When Zhang Juzheng's cabinet learned of the imperial edict, Li Chunfang and Chen Yiqin seemed to be petrified.

Your Majesty, have you ordered Prince Jing to return to the capital? Are you going to deprive Prince Yu of his throne?

(End of this chapter)