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Chapter 927 Another Governor of Three Provinces
In the winter of the 1623th year of Emperor Jingyang’s reign (), three months after Emperor Jingyang returned victorious from his personal expedition against the Yarkand Khanate, the Governor of Yunnan, Chen Yongbin, died of illness while in office. A few days before his death, he sent a memorial to the court, expressing his deep concern about the struggle between the chieftains in the south and Myanmar.

The emperor felt deeply guilty about the death of this old minister who had spent most of his life guarding the frontier and devoted himself to the country. He specially convened a grand court meeting, read out his achievements in public, posthumously awarded him the title of Taifu, posthumously named him Wenxiang, granted him a 100-acre cinchona plantation in Xiaoliuqiu, and summoned his grandson to attend university.

On the same day, the Emperor appointed Chief of General Staff Yuan Keli as Governor-General of the Southwest and Left Governor of Yunnan. He also urgently transferred more than 30 county magistrates and chief clerks from Guangdong, Fujian, Shandong, Zhili, Henan, Shanxi and Shaanxi to take up the post.

The death of a governor and the posthumous honors were not a big deal, but the fact that the emperor suddenly appointed Yuan Keli as the governor of the southwest and sent a large group of local officials to assist him was very intriguing.

Who is Yuan Keli? Together with the Minister of Rites Yuan Yingtai, they are known as the two Yuans. One is civil and the other is military. They firmly control the court and the army, and are the right-hand men of Emperor Jingyang. Now he is suddenly sent to a local post, and it is in the three remote southwestern provinces. Did he offend the emperor and be exiled?
Looking at the more than 30 local officials who followed him, the answer is quite obvious. All of them are young but have rich resumes, and all of them come from the same place, Haihusi.

When Guangdong and Fujian implemented the New Deal, Li Zhi and Yuan Yingtai did take great risks to break many official bad habits, but most of the specific work was done by these unknown petty officials.

When the new policy was implemented in Zhili and Shandong, it was these young people who were at the forefront again. However, some of them had been promoted from minor clerks to minor officials, and they had more political experience and stronger fighting capacity.

Then they followed Zhou Daodeng to Henan, Shaanxi, and Shanxi to continue promoting the new policy in the three provinces. At this time, not only did they become official officials with ranks, but there were also many provincial governors among them, and their number had increased several times.

Zhou Daodeng was a well-known sly person, but every one of his officials was a ruthless character. They would kill anyone who stood in their way, whether it was a local official, a powerful person, or a royal family member. Their methods were extremely vicious and cruel, and they often fought in groups, causing wailing in the officialdom wherever they went.

Now dozens of them are to be selected to follow Yuan Keli to Yunnan to take up his post. The most obvious answer is that the emperor is going to take action in Yunnan, most likely to implement a new policy.

But if you think about it carefully, it doesn't seem right. Yunnan is different from Guangdong, Fujian, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Henan. The reason why other provinces are called to promote the new policy is to compare it with the policies implemented before.

Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi and parts of Sichuan have always implemented the local official system, with each place having its own customs and habits, and are not subject to the unified restrictions of the imperial court's policies. How can we talk about new policies when we don't even have the old ones?
How foolish must the emperor be to go to Yunnan to promote the new policy? How flattering must Yuan Keli be to ignore his advice and allow the emperor to act recklessly?
Obviously, neither the emperor nor Yuan Keli were such people, so it is highly likely that Yuan Keli did not go to Yunnan to promote the new policy, but had other purposes.

What it is, it's hard to guess, let's wait and see. Anyway, Yunnan is not a foreign land, there are post roads connecting it, if there is any big move, the news will spread within two months.

In ancient China, there were three main roads from the Central Plains to Yunnan, corresponding to three directions. The northernmost one was Qingxi Road, also known as Wuchi Road before the Tang Dynasty. It started from Chengdu and went south through Yazhou (Ya'an), Jianchang, Dongchuan, and arrived in Kunming.

The southernmost one is called Yongzhou Road, which is the road from Nanning, Guangxi to Yunnan. It originated in the Tang Dynasty, but flourished in the Southern Song Dynasty. It was mainly used to exchange horses from Dali, so it is also called the War Horse Road.

However, these two roads were difficult to travel as they crossed mountains and ridges and could only be used by packhorses in many places. In order to better rule Yunnan, the Yuan Dynasty built a new road called the Dian-Guizhou Road.

It starts from Changde, Huguang, and goes along the Huanjiang River to Huaihua, where it enters the Wuyang River and reaches Zhenyuanwei in southeast Guizhou. It then goes ashore and changes to land route, entering Yunnan via Guiyang and Pu'an Prefecture, and then westwards through Qujing to Kunming. In the early Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang sent generals Fu Youde, Lan Yu, and Mu Ying to attack the Yuan army entrenched in Yunnan. They first entered Guizhou along the Huanjiang River, and then went straight to Kunming along the post road.

If the Yunnan-Guizhou Road had not been built during the Yuan Dynasty, it would not have been possible to conquer Yunnan relying solely on the above two ancient roads, but it would probably have taken some more time.

But Yuan Keli had been away from Beijing for nearly a month, and no trace of him had been found in the prefectures along the Yunnan-Guizhou Road, Qingxi Road, and Yongzhou Road, let alone Yunnan-Guizhou Road. The governor-general of the southwest of the Ming Empire and his guards had just disappeared from everyone's sight.

What is even more puzzling is that the emperor did not care about this matter, as if he had never sent out the governor of the southwest, and he did what he was supposed to do every day. This forced the court officials who wanted to ask questions to keep their mouths shut, and they suppressed their curiosity and spent the New Year's Day of Jingyang for twenty years as if they were carrying several little rabbits.

Before the end of the first month of the lunar year, an urgent report from Mengzi County, Yunnan, was delivered to the Ministry of Public Security at the fastest speed through an express delivery shop. It soon appeared on the emperor's desk and was deliberately placed at the top by Cao Huachun, the seal holder of the Imperial Household Department.

But the emperor never opened the wax seal of the report for two full days. Suddenly, he summoned all the military officials to attend a meeting in front of the emperor, and then asked Wang Chengen to read the contents aloud in front of everyone, which immediately made the important officials of the court present gasp.

One cannot help but sigh inwardly that the emperor was really brave, his ideas were genuine, and his methods were really cunning. He once again raised his machete against the ancestral system, chopped it down without hesitation, and hid it from everyone.

Yuan Keli and his party did not disappear, but took the fourth route into Yunnan. If it must be named, it should be called Dian'an Road, or An-Dian Road, which connects Thang Long Prefecture in Annan and Kunming in Yunnan.

The reason why no one knew where Yuan Keli went, but the emperor was not in a hurry, was because after Yuan Keli boarded the Shanghai ship from Dagukou, he did not change to a river boat at Songjiang Port to go upstream to Changde Prefecture, but went to Thang Long Prefecture in one breath.

Who is Yuan Keli? He is one of the founders of the navy. As long as the emperor nods, no one in the navy will disobey, and naturally no one will leak any news.

After arriving in Thang Long Prefecture, the Annan Dusi of the Army must have known about it, but the report was also sent to the General Staff Headquarters, and similarly no one except the emperor would reveal it.

It was not until he traveled all the way north to Mengzi County that the local county magistrate had the opportunity to pass the news of the Southwest Governor's arrival back to the court through formal channels.

The emperor didn't read it because he knew what Yuan Keli was doing. This memorial was a trap deliberately set for those with ulterior motives.

(End of this chapter)