A Journey Through the Worlds of Film and Television

The emperor said that since you have come to Liaodong, you can settle down here with peace of mind. You don't have to worry about party disputes or the Jinyiwei coming to invite you for tea. In Liaodong, your talents will be fully displayed. Whether you are good at water conservancy, education supervision, or mediation of disputes among the people, as long as you have a skill, you can use it to benefit the people. The people of the entire southern Liaoning need you, the knowledgeable and talented people, to come and govern. I welcome your arrival." He met with these frightened officials, gave a simple impromptu speech, calmed their hearts, and arranged a temporary residence for them. Afterwards, the officials in charge of Haizhouwei inspected these officials to understand their original positions and areas of expertise, and then assigned them to appropriate positions.

In fact, among these officials who came from the capital, there were not many who were truly capable of doing practical work. Many of them were low-ranking censors who were best at talking nonsense and finding faults.

Of course, there is a shortage of talents everywhere in southern Liaoning now. Even those who can only talk nonsense are at least scholars and cultural people, and it is always okay to be a teacher.

These people have been exiled from the capital to Liaodong, and there is no other way to retreat. Naturally, they can only obey Lu Cheng's arrangements.

For those who are unwilling to cooperate, Lu Cheng will not tolerate them and directly send them to farm. After they figure it out, they will be sent to the school and start as teachers.

Lu Cheng learned about the situation of several officials who came here, and naturally learned about Zhou Wencheng, the head of the Ministry of Works of the sixth rank.

This Zhou Zhushi is a capable person, but he is good at garden construction and painting.

Of course, this talent does not play a big role in the large-scale construction work in southern Liaoning.

After all, Lu Cheng himself has no time to build any gardens, let alone other generals at all levels.

Therefore, Zhou Zhushi was directly arranged to assist in the construction of fortifications.

Lu Cheng did not treat him preferentially because he had two beautiful daughters.

Although there is a lack of talents in southern Liaoning, there is no idleness.

The Ming Dynasty survived the uprising crisis in the second year of Tianqi in the storm and entered the third year of Tianqi.

In the past year, although the Ming Dynasty solved the rebellions in various places on the surface, the strong oppression of the government also laid the seeds for a larger-scale peasant uprising.

In Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and other places, the chieftains of various tribes could not stand the exploitation of the government and began to rebel against the Ming Dynasty.

The troops of various tribes gathered together and launched a long-term tug-of-war with the Ming army. Both sides suffered losses and the war never stopped.

Because of this, the troops of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan provinces were all used to suppress local rebellions, and they were unable to send any food and troops to the court.

At the same time, Wei Zhongxian in the court had already achieved real power monopoly.

The carpenter emperor Zhu Youxiao was busy with his carpentry work every day and didn't care about anything else. Wei Zhongxian always interrupted Zhu Youxiao when he was doing his carpentry work most seriously and sent the courtiers' letters to Zhu Youxiao. Every time this happened, Zhu Youxiao would be annoyed and directly hand everything over to Wei Zhongxian to deal with.

Because of this, Wei Zhongxian completely controlled the outer court and was called "Nine Thousand Years Old".

After monopolizing power, Wei Zhongxian became even more aggressive. On the one hand, he further excluded dissidents and suppressed the Donglin Party. On the other hand, he colluded with Keshi and controlled the entire harem.

Although Zhu Youxiao was busy with carpentry work every day, he was not unfavorable to women. There were many favored concubines in the harem.

Whenever a concubine was pregnant with a dragon seed, Keshi would secretly persecute her, either by poisoning her directly or creating various accidents, so that all the pregnant concubines would miscarry. Even the pregnant queen was forced to have an abortion.

Afterwards, Keshi and Wei Zhongxian selected some beautiful women to send to the harem and presented them to the emperor, completely controlling everything about Emperor Tianqi.

Emperor Tianqi did not care about these. Keshi and Wei Zhongxian, one was the wet nurse who raised him, and the other was the loyal eunuch who grew up with him since childhood. Zhu Youxiao completely trusted the two.

Anyway, as long as there was carpentry work to do, Zhu Youxiao would not care whether the court was in chaos.

The spies in the capital also reported that Zhu Youxiao gave the furniture he made to the young eunuch and asked the young eunuch to take it outside to sell. He heard that he

The furniture he made sold for a lot of silver outside, and Zhu Youxiao was very happy.

It must be said that this carpenter emperor was indeed very talented in carpentry. No matter what kind of furniture it was, as long as he had seen it, he could imitate it after a few glances.

And some of the wood carvings carved by Zhu Youxiao were also top-notch crafts.

If he had not been born in the royal family and became an emperor, this carpenter emperor might have really become a top carpenter.

In fact, after Wei Zhongxian came to power, while suppressing the Donglin Party, he also scraped a lot of silver from the Donglin Party. Although some of the silver fell into his own pocket, some was handed over to the court.

This also made the treasury of the Ming Dynasty, which could run horses, no longer as empty as before, and even the military pay that the Liaodong soldiers had owed for a long time was supplemented.

Apart from anything else, at least in terms of making money, Wei Zhongxian was still very capable.

Under the oppression of Wei Zhongxian, the civil and military officials in the court had no choice but to obey, and many officials even had to build a shrine for Wei Zhongxian.

Even the generals of various routes far away in Liaodong sometimes had to give Wei Zhongxian some silver.

However, these were just small matters and did not affect Lu Cheng's development.

After two years of technological innovation, the newly established chemical workshop under Lu Cheng can already mass-produce nitric acid and sulfuric acid, and then use nitric acid, sulfuric acid and cotton to make smokeless gunpowder.

After producing more than a thousand muzzle-loading guns, the firearms workshop also began to produce breech-loading rifles and produced a batch of revolvers.

Now, only a metal fixed bullet is needed to achieve further leapfrog development of rifles.

Moreover, after two years of training, the total number of soldiers and horses in the entire southern Liaoning region has reached nearly 50,000.

Although most of these 50,000 soldiers and horses are only city defense soldiers, their combat capabilities are slightly inferior to those of the field army. But if they could all be equipped with rifles, these tens of thousands of soldiers would be enough to do a lot of things.

Not only were the rifles being updated, but the production of mortar shells in the firearms workshop was also becoming more and more mature.

After stockpiling enough soldiers and weapons, Lu Cheng finally decided to take the initiative to send troops, allowing some infantry to carry guns and go south with the pirate group to occupy the Bay Province, attack Manila in the Philippines, and snatch the fertile land in Southeast Asia from the Western colonists to use as their own reserve food base and production base.

For this expedition, Lu Cheng has been preparing for a long time, and the pirate group has also looted enough ships from various places. Some pirates have already arrived at some islands in the south and established outposts in advance.

In the spring of the third year of Tianqi, Lu Cheng sent 3,000 infantry in batches, carrying new muskets and mortars, and went south with the 3,000-man pirate group, heading towards the Bay Province.

In this battle, Lu Cheng also sent 50 special forces to Ding Tai to ensure the victory of this expedition.

If he hadn't been stationed in Liaodong, Lu Cheng would have wanted to personally participate in this expedition.

The distance from the Northeast to Wan Province was too far, and it would probably take several months for the news of the expeditionary army's victory to come back.