amaotonovel Chapter 1022 How did the local gentry achieve such tacit understanding?
Chapter 1022 How did the local gentry achieve such tacit understanding?
In response to Li Shanchang's question, Emperor Zhu simply chuckled and said, "How could he not look familiar? He was taught by the same teacher as Zhou Jingxin. What kind of good person could this Zhou Liangyu be?"
After a slight pause, Emperor Zhu added, "Not a single one of them from Ningyang County is any good!"
They've all been corrupted by some damn bastard!
Look at those officials, they're all so infuriating when they write their memorials, always complaining about being poor or miserable. When they get really angry, they even dare to lead their yamen runners to the prefectural city to rob the people who have been relocated there.
Of the more than a thousand county magistrates in the entire Ming Dynasty, only those twenty-five scoundrels treated the county magistrate like a bandit.
Oh, no, it should be twenty-four.
There's another one who's even more audacious; he's no longer a county magistrate but has become a Krupp, infiltrating the ranks of military officers.
And the people of Ningyang County.
When we first went to Ningyang County, some people dared to threaten us openly and secretly.
They're even more thuggish than bandits!
Emperor Zhu was inwardly cursing, but Li Shanchang smiled nonchalantly and tentatively asked, "May I ask, Your Majesty, what request did Magistrate Zhou make?"
Emperor Zhu snorted coldly and said, "This Magistrate Zhou has made a good request—nothing else, he just wants us to give his Luanxian blackboard and Luanxian chalk their proper names, so that they won't be taken away again and turned into something like Ningyang blackboard and Ningyang chalk."
As Emperor Zhu finished speaking, Li Shanchang was stunned at first, and then burst into laughter.
That’s right!
You, Yang, are mad and you've been grabbing this and that. You've even turned our Huaiyou mutton noodles into Ningyang beef noodles. What do you say now?
You deserve it!
Li Shanchang became happier the more he thought about it, and couldn't help but shake his head with a smile, saying, "Up in rank, this Magistrate Zhou is quite a clever man, he knows who to be wary of."
Emperor Zhu snorted again and said, "There is more than one remarkable person, Zhou Liangyu."
“Take another look at Zhou Jingxin, who has just been appointed as the executive deputy prefect of Dengzhou Prefecture.”
"That bastard helped Xu Jingyu snatch people from Huai'an Prefecture not long ago."
"Now that he's the executive deputy prefect of Dengzhou, he's immediately asking us for the name of Dengzhou taro chips."
As Emperor Zhu finished speaking, both Li Shanchang and Liu Bowen were stunned.
Dengzhou dried taro?
Li Shanchang couldn't help but angrily say, "Like father, like son! It's hard to learn good things, but they all learn bad things in one go!"
"Taro isn't something unique to Dengzhou, so why should it be called Dengzhou dried taro?"
"I'd also like to get some dried taro from Fengyang!"
Liu Bowen chimed in, "The taro from eastern Zhejiang isn't bad either."
Emperor Zhu ignored Li Shanchang and Liu Bowen, and instead pulled out a memorial from the table and had Chen Zhong give it to Li Shanchang.
"Look at this again."
"This is even worse."
"If it weren't for the report from the Embroidered Uniform Guard, we wouldn't have believed our eyes!"
While Li Shanchang was reviewing the memorials, Emperor Zhu muttered to himself, "He's a monk, a monk, damn it, he's utterly disgraced Buddhism!"
Li Shanchang, expressionless, handed the memorial back to Liu Bowen.
Who the hell could have imagined that Shih-Hang, that bald monk, would combine the Joyful Zen and the White Lotus Sect's Wusheng Laomu and Zhenkong Homeland theories in Japan to form a new school of thought?
The key issue is that those short, ugly Japanese actually believed in Shih Hang's bald monk's nonsense.
While muttering to himself, Emperor Zhu pulled out another memorial and said, "There's another one here."
"I didn't intend to give it any special name or label."
"But he had his heart set on the people of Jiangnan."
Li Shanchang took the memorial and glanced at it. Then, with a dark face, he said, "Your Majesty need not pay attention to him. When Your Highness, the Prince Consort, and I returned to Dengzhou Prefecture from Liaodong, we had already told Hu Weiyong in advance that we would not relocate a large number of people to Liaodong in the short term, and the matter of laborers should be handled slowly."
"He failed to gain any advantage over His Highness and me, so he's now trying to use memorials to deceive his way to the top."
"She also learned bad habits from the prince consort."
Where in the Ming Dynasty can people migrate to Liaodong?
The Tibetans are preparing to relocate 500,000 households.
Five hundred thousand households will also need to be relocated from Dali.
The entire Ming Dynasty had only a little over ten million, less than twenty million, households.
The two places together have a total of one million households, which already accounts for one-tenth of the total population of the Ming Dynasty.
But Hu Weiyong, on the other hand, immediately said that Liaodong still needed at least one million households, claiming that he wanted to vigorously develop Liaodong's land, mines, forests and other resources.
So, you think Liaodong alone has land, mines, and forest farms?
Luanxian has coal mines, and Luoluosi Pacification Commissioner's Office has iron mines. How can all the good things come to Liaodong first?
Yes, the situation in Liaodong is special, but the situation in Dali is not special.
Hu Weiyong, that dog, only cares about his small territory in Liaodong and has no regard for the fate of the imperial court!
Li Shanchang cursed Hu Weiyong in his heart, but Emperor Zhu smiled indifferently and said, "Hu Weiyong knows how to consider Liaodong. He is fulfilling his duties as the Liaodong Provincial Governor, so there is nothing wrong with that."
"However, we really don't have any more people to move to Liaodong."
"We can only wait and see how much trouble those gentry can stir up this time."
"If the gentry and gentlemen stir up a big storm, we'll send more laborers to Liaodong."
"If the gentry can't stir up any trouble, then we can only let Hu Weiyong wait a little longer."
Both Li Shanchang and Liu Bowen felt a chill run down their spines and unconsciously pricked up their ears to listen attentively.
The characters Zhou Liangyu and Shihang the Bald Monk mentioned earlier are like appetizers before the main course.
The gentry and gentlemen of Jiangnan are the real deal.
The key point is that no one can say for sure how much trouble these gentry and gentlemen can stir up.
Just as Li Shanchang and Liu Bowen were pondering this, Emperor Zhu suddenly said inexplicably, "Mr. Shanchang, Mr. Qingtian, don't you feel that something is amiss?"
Li Shanchang was slightly taken aback and asked, "What does 'taking the throne' mean?"
Emperor Zhu curled his fingers and tapped the table lightly. “From the plow case at the beginning, to the blank seal case, the ironware outflow case, the missing child case, the illegal coal mine case, and up to the textbook case some time ago, all these cases have been investigated far too easily.”
"We're not saying there's anything wrong with the investigation of these cases."
"But these cases all seem to have a sense of starting strong but ending weakly."
“Each case involves a significant number of people.”
"But none of these cases have a final source—any one of them is the result of a momentary greed of an official or a momentary foolishness of a local gentry."
"Including this time, someone inexplicably dared to submit a memorial requesting that a concubine be established for the Crown Prince."
"And all sorts of rumors started spreading out of nowhere."
"A large group of local gentry began hoarding medicines and grains—how could these gentry be so coordinated if no one was plotting behind the scenes?"