Take control of Wei Zhongxian at the start and confiscate 100 million from him!

Chapter 23 Without money, everything is just empty talk!

Tanzhe Temple.

Qian Qianyi, Lai Zongdao, and Zhou Yingqiu.

The spiritual leader of the Donglin Party, the second-highest-ranking official in the current cabinet, and the Minister of Personnel who held the power to promote and dismiss all civil officials in the country.

Any one of them could shake the officialdom with a stomp of their foot, but now the three of them have quietly gathered together. What are they going to talk about?
Zhu Youjian didn't need to guess; he knew it all along.

The downfall of Zhu Chunchen shattered the fragile balance between the nobility and the civil officials.

The resurgence of the Imperial Guards reminded them of the suffocating terror of the Tianqi era!
The formation of the new army in the suburbs of Beijing made them feel an unprecedented threat—the emperor was trying to bypass the Ministry of War, which they controlled, and create an army that belonged only to him!

Zhu Youjian's recent actions have been like heavy hammer blows, striking the most sensitive nerve of the civil service group.

They sensed a threat, that this young emperor, whom they believed should be young, impulsive, and easily controlled, was trying to break free from the invisible shackles they had carefully woven, called "ruling the world together with the scholar-officials."

Therefore, they need to unite and fight back.

They wouldn't act like brutes, openly storming into the palace to question him.

Their methods are far more sophisticated and insidious!

Their weapons are public opinion, ancestral laws, and the hundreds and thousands of mouths of the court officials.

They will use the most high-sounding reasons to obstruct his new policies; they will use the most meticulous procedures to delay his budget; they will use the most "for the country and the people" attitude to undermine his authority and portray him as a tyrant who "uses cruel officials and engages in militarism".

……

Zhu Youjian neatly stacked the three reports together again.

He slowly stood up and walked to one side of the study.

Wang Chengen, who had been standing silently in the shadows with his hands at his sides, immediately stepped forward like a shadow without substance. With a gentle pull, he silently unveiled a bright yellow floor-length cloth embroidered with a five-clawed golden dragon.

Under the cloth cover was a map of the Ming Dynasty that almost covered the entire wall.

This map is not one of those exquisitely drawn, landscape-style tributes from the Directorate of Ceremonial, which are riddled with errors.

This was a world map he personally ordered after ascending the throne. He commissioned the secret agents of the Western Depot to combine the most confidential military maps from all the garrisons across the country with a world map that was purchased at a high price from Jesuits in Macau. The map was drawn using the most advanced Western latitude and longitude surveying technology and was then redrawn by the best painters in the palace over a month.

Mountains, rivers, lakes, towns, passes, garrisons... every detail is meticulously crafted. This is no longer a painting, but a strategic tool filled with data and information.

Zhu Youjian's gaze slowly moved across the huge map, his eyes focused and deep, as if his soul had flown out of the warm pavilion, soaring high in the sky, overlooking this vast and troubled land.

His finger gently landed on the center of the map—the point marked by a striking red circle.

"The capital city".

This is the center of his power, the starting point of all his plans, and also a huge cage that imprisons him.

Unlike the emperors of the Ming Dynasty throughout history, his fingers did not glide anxiously towards the northeast, towards that nightmare, towards Liaodong, the land that had drained the Ming Dynasty of its blood and silver.

His fingers moved slowly and steadily westward, defying everyone's conventional thinking.

It crossed the continuous Taihang Mountains and entered a vast area that was painted in ochre on the map.

There, he highlighted several names in bold red ink: Datong, Zhangjiakou, Taiyuan, Pingyang...

Shanxi. A chilling glint flashed in Zhu Youjian's eyes.

In his memory, later historians, when analyzing the chaos at the end of the Ming Dynasty, all mentioned a group that was overlooked by people at the time, yet was of vital importance—the Shanxi merchants.

They were the wealthiest merchants of their time, their banks were spread throughout the country, and their wealth even made the salt merchants of Jiangnan take notice.

But where did their wealth come from?

It wasn't just tea, silk, salt, and iron that were traded; it was smuggling routes paved with money and betrayal that led to the areas beyond the Great Wall.

From the scattered reports from the Western Depot and his own memories from later generations, he clearly understood what an absurd and bloody scene it was:
While the Ming Dynasty's border troops were fighting desperately against the heavily armed Jurchen Eight Banners soldiers on the Liaodong front, hungry and wearing tattered winter clothes, these so-called "Eight Great Imperial Merchants" were sending cart after cart loaded with grain, ironware, cotton cloth, and even prohibited gunpowder and sulfur through secret passes in places like Zhangjiakou to their "trading partner"—Huang Taiji.

They exchanged the countless bones of Ming Dynasty border soldiers for mountains of gold and silver piled up in their own treasuries.

They sacrificed national interests in exchange for the Later Jin's protection of their trade routes.

They even became the most important channel for the Later Jin to obtain internal intelligence about the Ming Dynasty!
This is the deepest, most fatal, and constantly bleeding and festering wound on the Ming Dynasty.

If the rotten flesh in this wound is not completely removed, and the blood vessel supplying nutrients to the enemy is not completely cut off, then no matter how much money and grain he invests in Liaodong, or how many elite troops he sends, it will be no different from supplying more war resources to the Later Jin.

While he was training his troops here, Shanxi merchants sold his troop deployment and weapon specifications to Huang Taiji.

How is this fight going?
Therefore, his strategy was completely different from that of the entire court from the very beginning.

He needed money, a massive amount of money, to arm his new army, to provide relief to the impending wave of refugees, and to repair this empire riddled with problems!

The largest treasury in this era, which brings in money the fastest and least causes any major upheaval, is no longer the Ministry of Revenue's treasury, which has long been emptied by the civil service, nor is it in the hands of the Jiangnan gentry who constantly complain of poverty.

It is in Shanxi.

In the home of those traitors.

He only became rich after he plundered the Shanxi merchants.

Only when the smuggling routes of Shanxi merchants were cut off would Huang Taiji's war machine truly feel the pain for the first time.

Zhu Youjian pressed his finger heavily on the spot "Zhangjiakou," the warmth of his fingertip seeming to imprint the name deeply onto this land, the main valve of that evil blood vessel.

After doing all this, his finger finally traced Xuanfu and Jizhou, crossed the Great Wall that symbolized the dividing line between civilization and barbarism, and finally stopped on the land that had haunted his dreams for two lifetimes—Liaodong.

Zhu Youjian's gaze seemed to pierce through the cold map, through thousands of mountains and rivers, and he saw the Ming soldiers outside Guangning City shivering in the biting cold wind, their faces pale and sickly. He also saw the ambitious man sitting on his Khan's throne in Shenyang City, a man more cunning and patient than his father Nurhaci—Huang Taiji.

He stood before the enormous map, his solitary figure stretched long by the candlelight, cast on the cold, gold-brick floor, appearing somewhat frail, yet incredibly resolute.

The night wind once again squeezed in through the cracks in the window frame, causing the candlelight to leap violently, the light and shadow flickering. The dragon shadow in the entire warm chamber seemed to come alive, roaring silently around him.

He spoke softly to himself, his voice not loud, yet it stirred a clear and heavy echo in the empty, quiet warm chamber.
"The first step is to hold the handle of the knife firmly in your own hand."

"The second step is the money bag. We must take it all back from those traitors, not a single penny less!"

He paused, a cold and resolute glint flashing in his eyes—a glint that belonged not to this era, but to a modern soul who had witnessed the power of capital.

"Without money, everything is just empty talk!"

(End of this chapter)