Smuggling Daming

In the middle of the night, someone sent such a letter with no beginning and no end, and also pointed out that Zhou Zhong should watch it in person. He was also taken aback, and at the same time, he had a bad feeling, especially at the critical moment when Zhengde was making a fuss about going on tour. , Zhou Zhong felt that the contents of this letter would definitely surprise him.

When Zhou Zhong took the letter, he turned around and opened it to read it. After reading it, Zhou Zhong took a long breath, put the letter back in the envelope, and put it in his arms. Turned into the original smiling appearance.

After resting with Jinxuan for a night, Zhou Zhong rushed to the palace just after dawn the next day. As expected, Zhengde got up early and was playing badminton with Jiang Bin and others. The things were originally dedicated to Zhengde by Zhou Zhong, but unfortunately Zhou Zhong's skills are too poor, and he is far from being an opponent of Zhengde. However, warriors like Jiang Bin are in good physical condition, and after learning it, they can fight Zhengde for a few rounds.

Usually, if Zhou Zhong sees people like Yi Zhengde mixing with Jiang Bin, he will not step forward to dissuade them, because he knows that Zhengde is a playful person, and he can dissuade him once, but it is impossible to dissuade him every time. If there are too many times, it may also hurt the feelings between brothers.

But today he has an urgent matter to find Zhengde, so he strode forward and said to the sweaty Zhengde: "Brother Huang, I have something important to report, so I invite you to enter the palace." Let's talk!"

Zhengde was also surprised that Zhou Zhong would look for him at this time, but when he saw the solemn expression on Zhou Zhong's face, he was also surprised, and immediately put down his racket and went to the side hall with Zhou Zhong.While wiping off his sweat, he asked, "Why. What's the matter that made you come here in such a hurry, second brother?"

Zhou Zhong was not in a hurry to answer Zhengde's words.Instead, he took out the letter he received last night from his bosom and handed it to him, "Brother Huang, you will know after reading this."

Zhengde took the letter and opened it for a look, but his behavior was very strange, he was not as furious as Zhou Zhong imagined, but showed an incomprehensible smile, after a while, Zhengde tore up the letter Said: "These people are really courageous enough. Before I left Beijing, people have already begun to show their loyalty to you, second brother. It's just that they are still not courageous enough. They didn't even dare to write a signature. It seems that I want to test your second brother's reaction."

The letter Zhou Zhong received had no beginning or end, but the content of the letter was full of embarrassment. It probably meant that when Zhengde left the capital, they would follow Zhou Zhong's lead in everything. Even if Zhou Zhong launched a coup, they would I am also willing to stand on Zhou Zhong's side. It can be said that this letter is a letter of loyalty, but the person who wrote the letter is very courageous.But I dare not write my name on it, and even the handwriting of this letter looks awkward.It is likely that the letter writer deliberately wrote the font in this way so as not to be recognized from the handwriting.

With Zhou Zhong's current sensitive status, it can be said that receiving such a letter with ulterior motives is very bad. If he doesn't handle it well, he might be killed.However, after Zhou Zhong thought about it for a while last night, he immediately made a decision, that is, to hand over the letter directly to Zhengde. After all, the two brothers have deep feelings for each other.

"Brother Huang, let's not speculate on the intention of the person who wrote this letter, but we can also see from this letter that if Brother Huang leaves the capital, it will definitely make people's hearts unstable, and even make some people have different ideas." , so Brother Huang must not leave the capital!" This is the first time that Zhou Zhong has directly dissuaded Zhengde from going to Xuanfu, after all, once Zhengde left, the entire Ming Dynasty would be crushed on him.

However, Zhengde laughed loudly and said: "Second brother, the matter of going out to the Xuanxuan Mansion has not yet been settled, and the court has been arguing all the time. I am upset because I listen to it every day, so you should stop talking about it. Brother, I heard that there is a rugby match at the military academy today, and it will be the finals of the infantry and cavalry divisions, it must be very exciting, and naturally our brothers cannot miss it!"

After Zhengde finished speaking, he immediately asked someone to prepare breakfast, and then asked Zhou Zhong to accompany him to have a casual breakfast, and dragged him to the military academy.Although Zhou Zhong wanted to persuade him again, but seeing Zhengde's appearance, he also knew that no matter how much he tried to persuade him, it might not be effective, so he could only let out a long sigh and watch the game with Zhengde all day.

A letter with no beginning and no end, although the content of the letter is outrageous, it still can't shake Zhou Zhong's position. Maybe it is really like what Zhengde said, he wants someone to show his loyalty in this way, but the other party's courage Not old enough, so I dare not write my name, but it is also possible that someone wants to frame Zhou Zhong, or there are other possibilities, but these are not important anymore, at least for Zhou Zhong, this letter is just a part of his life. A ripple, quickly restored calm.

However, although Zhou Zhong's life has returned to its previous calm, there are still quarrels in the court about Zhengde's tour. Zhengde sat on the dragon chair and dragged the sidelines. The two sides quarreled so much that they even delayed the serious government affairs.

After a lot of hard work in the past few years, the grain output of Daming has exploded every year, and the economy has also developed extremely rapidly. For the people of Daming, as long as they have grain in their hands, they will not have other ideas. The development made Ming's treasury very sufficient, and he was very generous in spending money in all aspects, especially in the frontier army, he was very willing to spend money. The little Tatar prince led troops south several times, but was defeated by Ming's frontier army , not only failed to grab any supplies and population, but also suffered unspeakable losses.

It is precisely because of this that although there was a lot of quarrel in the court of Daming, and even delayed the handling of government affairs, it did not cause too much impact on Daming. The domestic people are stable, and no enemies abroad dare to provoke Daming at this time It is estimated that Zhengde also thought the same way, so he not only favored Wang Qiong's side, but even fanned the flames, making the quarrel between the two factions more lively.

However, when the court was arguing about Zhengde's tour, there was a sudden bad news. After many days of lingering illness, the chief assistant of the Ming Dynasty, Li Dongyang, finally passed away last night at the age of 70.

Li Dongyang is not only the chief assistant of the cabinet, but also the Minister of Gu Ming appointed by the late emperor. He entered the court as an official at the age of 20 and worked hard for the Ming Dynasty for 50 years. Later, he became a cabinet scholar and assisted Xiaozong and Zhengde in the two dynasties The emperor can be said to have made great achievements through hard work, so his death was called "the 50th year of the dynasty and the [-]th year of the country".

In addition, Li Dongyang is still the backbone of the southern official group. As long as he is there, the southern official group will not be chaotic, and neither will the cabinet.But now that Li Dongyang's death has caused a huge shock to the Ming government and the public, especially for officials from the southern faction, they feel helpless. After all, they have long been accustomed to having Li Dongyang, the chief assistant of the cabinet from the southern faction, in the imperial court. Sitting in the town, now that Li Dongyang is dead, most people feel uncomfortable.

Regarding the death of Li Dongyang, although Yang Tinghe and others in the cabinet were shocked, they were already psychologically prepared, and they also knew that at this critical moment of debating whether Zhengde would go on tour, Li Dongyang's death would definitely have a serious impact on their morale. A big blow may even result in defeat by Wang Qiong and others, which will lead to Zhengde's smooth travel. Therefore, in order to deal with this problem, Yang Tinghe and others immediately proposed to Zhengde to suspend the discussion on the inspection tour. The most important thing now is to deal with For Li Dongyang's funeral, after all, the other party is the chief minister of the cabinet and the Minister of Gu Ming, so naturally there should be no omissions in his funeral.

Although Zhengde is messing around, he still respects Li Dongyang very much, and he also knows that even if he takes advantage of Li Dongyang's death to settle the tour now, it will cause strong backlash from Yang Tinghe and others in the future, so it is better to deal with Li Dongyang now. Funeral, and then take advantage of Yang Tinghe's unstable sentiments to settle the tour in one fell swoop.

Li Dongyang died in the position of chief assistant of the cabinet, it can be said that he dedicated himself, coupled with his special status, so regarding Li Dongyang's aftermath, the Ming Dynasty quickly reached an agreement, and Li Dongyang was bestowed with the posthumous posthumous title of Wenzheng.

As for Li Dongyang's funeral, it was also organized by the Ministry of Rites under the special instruction of Zhengde, and all the flowers were paid out of his inner treasury, and Li Dongyang's son was also rewarded. It can be said that the treatment was extremely generous, but it was only because Li Dongyang died Asked to be buried in his hometown Chaling, so the real funeral will be held in Chaling.

Regarding Li Dongyang's funeral, although Yang Tinghe and others tried their best to delay it, they hoped that they could use this time to regroup the hearts of the people and revive the morale of southern officials.But Wang Qiong and those people didn't give them a chance at all. They actively arranged for Li Dongyang's funeral, and even gave Li Dongyang the extremely noble posthumous title of "Wen Zheng", so it took only one month to make Li Dongyang's funeral Finished.

After the funeral had been dealt with, Wang Qiong immediately mobilized his side's strength and brought up the matter of Zhengde's tour to the court again. As a result, Yang Tinghe and others naturally opposed it with all their strength. Unfortunately, after the blow of Li Dongyang's death, the hearts of their side were a little unbalanced, especially It was Zhengde who promoted several people from Wang Qiong's side to important positions, which greatly increased their right to speak. Even if Yang Ting and those cabinet scholars all opposed it, they were no match for Wang Qiong and the others in the end. siege.

Three months after Li Dongyang's death, Zhengde finally won the battle for the tour, and he was finally able to leave the capital where he was imprisoned openly, and venture out into the outside world. (To be continued..)