I was pulling trees in Daming, and Lao Zhu begged me to come out of retirement

Chapter 134 Rumors spread
The appearance of the underworld made Zhu Yuanzhang temporarily suspend his offensive against foreign invaders.
The current productivity of the Ming Empire is sufficient to maintain the healthy operation of the entire government under low taxation, which means that the Ming Empire has no need for external expansion in the early stages of its establishment.

Generally speaking, when a peasant regime is first established, it is extremely imperfect.

The rebel army, without a fixed income from money and grain, will inevitably shift the conflict to the landlord class and the current ruling class.

Therefore, before a political regime was established, they basically fought, robbed, fought, and robbed until the landlords had no surplus food. Then they began to recuperate and manage the land in their hands.

But the regime established by Zhu Yuanzhang was abnormal.

Because of Tianyu's participation, the entire Ming Empire never lacked food. The starting point of their external attacks was not poverty, but faith. The Crusades launched by the Roman Catholic Pope Urban II lasted for nearly 200 years.

The only difference is that the Catholic Church fought in the name of recovering Jerusalem, while Zhu Yuanzhang fought in the name of restoring China.

Therefore, when the troops of the Ming Empire fell silent, Liu Futong and the Yuan Dynasty in the north were all confused.

They were originally planning to pack up and run away, but the other party actually stopped fighting?

You have to know that there is no possibility for the two groups to compete with the Ming Empire.

Especially with Tuotuo's death and Wang Baobao's capture, the imperial court was basically only one step away from collapse, just the name of a Northern Expedition.

As a result, you give up fighting when the time comes.

This inexplicable move made the court and Liu Futong and others even more nervous.

Soon, a large number of spies followed the caravan to Yingtian.
Soon after, the news that the immortals behind Zhu Yuanzhang disappeared and a large number of monsters poured into the human world from the underworld soon reached the ears of Emperor Shun of Yuan Dynasty.

Emperor Shun of Yuan Dynasty was overjoyed when he heard the news, and immediately sent a large number of spies to spread rumors everywhere.

It was said that Zhu Yuanzhang was dissolute and immoral, and was abandoned by the gods. The gods even punished him by sending evil ghosts from the underworld to come and claim his life.

The rumor spread through the streets and alleys at lightning speed.

The people in the territory were in panic, and every day a large number of people went to the place where the Tianyu statue was located to kneel and pray.

Li Shanchang and Liu Bowen were so busy all day that they didn't even have time to go home and spend time with their concubines.

After hearing the rumor, Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes flashed with coldness.
He spoke to the pot-bellied old man at the bottom:
"Minister Shen, contact Liu Futong and tell them that you have a large number of immortal wooden soldiers that are as good as steel for sale. Also, go to the imperial court to buy them in large quantities. There is no upper limit."

Shen Fu, the new Minister of Commerce captured by Zhu Yuanzhang... um... recruited, was the third child in the family and a wealthy man at the time had tens of thousands of households, so he was known as Wansan in the world.

That’s right, the Minister Shen in front of him is the Shen Wansan in many TV dramas.

After becoming rich, Shen Wansan regarded Suzhou as an important business location, so he always supported Zhang Shicheng's Great Zhou regime in Pingjiang (Suzhou). Zhang Shicheng also erected a monument and wrote a biography for Shen Wansan.

After Zhu Yuanzhang captured Zhang Shicheng without bloodshed, Shen Wansan was also captured along with the ministers who had defected to him.

Zhu Yuanzhang, who was well-versed in the classics, naturally knew very well the money-making ability of the richest man in the country.

So he simply waved his hand and appointed him as the Minister of Commerce, as the person in charge of the Ming Empire's commercial policies and state-owned enterprises.

The Ming Dynasty, which set commercial development as the keynote of national policy, also gave Shen Wansan ample room to display his abilities. He had no shortage of money, and he was eager to serve as an official in the court and to carry out capitalist reforms on the feudal system that had lasted for thousands of years.

At this moment, he was stunned when he heard Zhu Yuanzhang's order.
With the birth of the steam turbine and Zhu Yuanzhang's conquest of the entire Jiangnan region,
With the help of some craftsmen recruited with high salaries, some basic industrial-age machines have already taken shape.

Among them, steampunk-style machines with various gears as the core have begun to be used in state-owned enterprises in the Ming Empire, and the earliest developed ones are naturally relatively simple steam spinning machines.

Although it is named after steam, the steam turbine of the redstone system has nothing to do with the steam engine. However, under the guidance of Zhu Yuanzhang, the craftsmen were able to easily make it by using the rotating fan blades to drive the gears and thus drive the operation of the spinning machine.

Humans cannot imagine anything beyond cognition.

However, once the corresponding cognition is acquired, humans can quickly summarize experience and rapidly advance the application of this cognition.

Silver was scarce in ancient China, and the currency of many dynasties was copper coins, raw silk, cloth, and grain.

Now it is a time of war, so food naturally cannot be traded at will, and the income from mining is relatively low, so cloth has become a weapon for Zhu Yuanzhang to open up trade.

In the past few years, Zhu Yuanzhang has been using his advantage of vigorously developing commerce to attract traveling merchants, and in the intervals between recycling various MC rare minerals needed by Tianyu, he has purchased cash crops such as raw silk, wool, and cotton.

Then, the newly developed redstone spinning machine is used to transform these raw materials into hard currency cloth for secondary sale.

This amazing steam turbine makes the cost of this cumbersome cash-in factory almost negligible.

The large-scale purchase of raw materials has caused the price of raw materials for spinning to rise rapidly in recent years. Since the Ming Empire was a government that exercised macro-control over the crops grown by the people, there was no situation where all merchants had to close their businesses.

But the territories of Liu Futong in the north were very different from those of the Yuan Dynasty.
A large number of merchants who had searched in vain began to spontaneously look for landlords, wealthy households, and even Mongolian nobles to purchase these cash crops.

Many landlords and nobles, seeing the huge sums of money, immediately decided to ask their tenants and slaves to give up growing grain and choose to grow cotton, raise silkworms and graze livestock.

The people, who had already been struggling to recover from heavy taxes and natural and man-made disasters, now had an even harder time.

The rate of uprisings and riots in various places is increasing year by year.

These are things that the imperial court and Liu Futong and others could not know, because in this era, people could not accurately control the data.

On the other hand, Zhu Yuanzhang

Since he captured Chen Youliang, he ordered Chen Youliang to go directly to the sea with elite troops and powerful artillery to encircle and suppress the pirate king Fang Guozhen, and at the same time carry a large amount of silk cloth for maritime trade, and by the way lay the foundation for the future British Empire.

Chinese silk, cloth and ceramics were hard currencies internationally, so Zhu Yuanzhang had no worries about not being able to sell them.

At this time, Zhu Yuanzhang asked Shen Wansan to stir up trouble between Liu Futong and the Yuan Dynasty again.

This clearly shows that they are planning to take action against both parties.

The only difference is that this time the action is not taken on the battlefield.

Zhu Yuanzhang was prepared to use the evil means of capitalism to completely disintegrate his last two enemies.

(End of this chapter)