The Ming Dynasty: Starting with the Carpenter Prince!

The thick oiled paper envelope that Sun Chengzong brought back was kept sealed in a hidden lock for a whole night.

The next day at dawn, Zhu Youxiao finally got up to unpack the documents. It took him the entire morning to transcribe and organize the complicated numbers and compile a three-column comparison list.

The Ministry of War's roster listed three thousand soldiers, but only one thousand two hundred actually arrived.

Only a mere three hundred remain capable of fighting.

Next to each shocking number was the date signed by the trainees of the training institute, meticulously marked and verified, leaving no room for ambiguity. After completing this, the crown prince added a side note, devoid of any commentary, simply stating the facts in a cold and detached manner.

More than half of the people wear cotton-padded jackets filled with reeds, but their monthly salary is less than three coins. The kitchen provides two meals of thin porridge a day, and dry rice is only served on the 1st and 5th of each month.

After writing the last sentence, Zhu Youxiao threw down his pen and stared at the line "the actual amount paid was less than three coins" for a long time.

The nominal weight is 1.5 taels, but the actual weight delivered is less than 3 taels.

Where exactly did that one tael and two mace go?

The poor folks of Puhe were unaware of this, and Commander He dared not ask.

Xiong Tingbi asked the question, but none of the officials in the court answered!

In the afternoon, this list, along with the Liaodong petitions that had been reviewed recently, was neatly gathered together and quietly sent into the warm pavilion.

Emperor Taichang reviewed this register late at night.

Zhu Youxiao was initially unaware of this, but Wang An revealed it to him privately the next day.

According to Wang An, the emperor was actually in relatively good spirits last night, and managed to finish reviewing the backlog of memorials until 9 PM. He glanced at the other memorials, but when he turned to the list of memorials from Puhe, he suddenly put down his brush and sat there for the time it takes for two incense sticks to burn in the deep palace night.

After two incense sticks had burned, the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty picked up his vermilion brush again and wrote five words heavily in the blank space of the register.

"The Ming Dynasty has lost out on these soldiers."

It wasn't the overused "I understand" from the Cabinet and the Directorate of Ceremonial Affairs, nor was it some grand-sounding "the relevant authorities shall deliberate and handle it."

Instead, it was a plain and unrefined statement, devoid of any imperial majesty.

At this point, Wang An paused slightly, as if considering whether he should continue. Seeing that Zhu Youxiao was waiting quietly, he lowered his voice and continued, "After writing that sentence, Master reviewed the old Liaodong documents that I had attached. However, when he turned to the fourth volume, he suddenly paused for a moment, picked up his pen, and made some changes... This old servant was too far away to see clearly. After making the changes, Master continued to annotate the next volume until midnight."

Zhu Youxiao nodded slightly and did not ask any more questions.

That afternoon, Zhu Youxiao, as usual, went to the warm pavilion to attend to his ailing father.

Emperor Taichang's complexion on the couch grew increasingly ashen, the bluish-gray tinge under his eyes appearing even more pronounced, clearly indicating he had stayed up all night. Zhu Youxiao quietly sat down beside the couch and, as usual, skillfully gathered the scattered documents on the emperor's desk.

As he flipped through the pages, the Puhe register suddenly came into view. The five characters, written in vibrant red ink, seemed to penetrate the paper with remarkable force. His gaze lingered there for only a moment, without uttering a word, before he placed it back into the stack of already approved documents and continued flipping through the pages.

The second book is an old file from the Ministry of Revenue regarding the conversion of grain into silver, and the third book is a report from the Ministry of War regarding the Liaodong Canal.

When he got to the fourth book, Zhu Youxiao suddenly stopped.

That was a copy of Zhang Quan's old report on the defense of the Puhe River. The day before yesterday, he found the old Liaodong archives too complicated, so he casually mixed them into the recent memorial, and even wrote "September of the first year of Taichang" in tiny characters on the corner of the page.

However, at this moment, that tiny mark has been smoothly crossed out with a stroke of vermilion.

Next to it, four neat red characters were added: Wanli Forty-Seven.

Further to the right, there is another tiny red circle.

Smaller than a mung bean, drawn so casually that it is almost negligible unless examined closely.

Zhu Youxiao's finger hovered above the red circle, as if frozen in mid-air.

In a flash, he realized what was happening.

Zhang Quan's document was indeed an old file from the 47th year of the Wanli reign (1594), but he had carelessly mislabeled the year when categorizing it. This oversight was originally insignificant; among the vast number of documents reviewed daily, it was a trivial matter.

But unfortunately, Emperor Taichang caught him red-handed.

What's even more critical is the timing.

Wang An said, "He paused for a moment when he turned to the fourth book." In other words, after reading about the tragic state of Puhe, Emperor Taichang suppressed his anger and wrote those five characters before turning to the page where the successor had mislabeled the year!

Any emperor who was in a state of confusion would probably have just flipped through the page and let it go.

But Emperor Taichang did not.

He stopped, crossed out the wrong ones, wrote down the correct ones, and finally drew a circle there.

He didn't utter a single word of reprimand to his face.

He did not put on airs and offer any advice such as "Your Highness needs to be more careful in your work" when he paid his respects the next day.

He did not summon Wang An privately to give him any instructions or advice.

They did not, like those lecturers at imperial lectures, adopt any air of authority or prestige to publicly admonish others.

He just drew a circle.

A father who had served as a son in the Eastern Palace for thirty years with trepidation was probably not even very skilled at wielding imperial authority or instructing his heir. For the past fifteen years, all he could offer his son were a few wooden horses he had carved himself and a bowl of warm medicinal food. Now that the father and son could finally sit together at the same table to review the imperial examinations, this clumsy method was all he could use.

Draw a circle, quietly, so you can see it yourself.

Zhu Youxiao slowly closed the book of questions, pressing his fingertips firmly on the cover for a long time.

Three steps away, on a soft couch, Emperor Taichang was dozing with his eyes closed, his breathing shallow and uneven.

The Crown Prince of the Ming Dynasty never looked back.

He was afraid that if he turned his head, some things on his face would no longer be able to be hidden.

After leaving the warm pavilion, Zhu Youxiao did not even return to the Eastern Palace, but went straight to the Imperial Hospital.

Last time I looked up the formula for Yishen Guben Wan (益肾固本丸).

Today he's not checking the prescription, he's checking the dispensing process!

It must be understood that while the so-called medicine verification system effectively blocked the prescription process, there was still a crucial step between the prescription and the bowl of medicine the emperor actually drank—the imperial pharmacy's dispensing process. The prescription had one set of numbers, but were the dispensed medicines made from the same set?

Today, let's test it out.

At this moment, Judge Liu was waiting obediently in his duty room. Upon seeing the Crown Prince arrive in person, he hurriedly stepped forward to pay his respects. Ever since the terrifying encounter late at night, the amount of Yuanzhi had been reduced to the minimum as instructed by the Crown Prince. This Judge Liu had been living in constant fear and trepidation.

"I've come today not for a prescription." Zhu Youxiao took his seat in the guest room with an air of authority, his gaze as cold as a knife. "What exactly was the dosage of Polygala tenuifolia in the original prescription last time?"

Judge Liu's heart skipped a beat. He hurriedly pulled out the original copy of the prescription and pointed tremblingly to a line: "Your Highness, the original prescription notes five parts of Polygala tenuifolia."

"Five parts." Zhu Youxiao carefully considered these two words. "Then how much of the dose that was given to His Majesty was actually used?"

Imperial Physician Liu's face immediately turned deathly pale, and his hands trembled as he flipped through the medicine preparation files handed over by the Imperial Pharmacy. After seeing the ink stains on them, his Adam's apple bobbed up and down with difficulty.

"...Two coins."

Five cents became two coins! That's a fourfold increase!

The duty room fell into a deathly silence.