Rule the Ming Dynasty Alone

The sandalwood in the imperial study room has been lit, and a world map is hung on the east wall. Right above it is still the words "Empty talk will harm the country, but hard work will prosper the country."

Song Cheng has returned from Shandong, but there is no trace of fatigue on his face.

In Shandong, he not only handled the case of the previous Yan Shenggong, but after careful investigation, the crimes of the entire Kong family were simply too numerous to describe.

The people who followed him back to Beijing this time also included Kong Hongchu, Kong Wenshi and other children of the Confucius family who committed serious crimes. These people will not be able to escape the law and need to pay the price for the crimes they committed.

"Students meet the teacher!" Yan Song, who had followed in for special reasons this time, had already noticed his teacher and took the opportunity to come forward and greet him.

Although the examiners of the current examinations no longer accept discipleship posts from new scholars, and no longer foster the teacher-student relationship established by an examination, these candidates usually still regard themselves as students.

Song Cheng had a bad impression of Yan Song, and said very coldly: "Although the gifts you gave me a few days ago are all specialties from the Americas, the quality is so good. I will send someone to get them back later!"

"Teacher, the student knows that you have been honest all your life, so the gifts you give are all not very valuable specialties. The student just picks some good ones. This is the only thing the student can do!" Yan Song knew Song Cheng's intentions. Incorruptible, seems very aggrieved and honest.

Song Cheng knew that a thousand-mile dam broke in an ant nest, and the real value of the things this student gave was not low: "Do it!"

"Students must obey the teacher's orders!" Yan Song, a smart man who knows how to advance and retreat, immediately expressed his stance.

Song Cheng's face softened, and he warned seriously: "Your Majesty, please speak louder when you explain later, and don't be overly nervous! The matter of building an overseas granary in America has been finalized. You just need to state it truthfully." Can."

"Thank you for your teachings!" Yan Song said, appearing to accept the teachings humbly.

All the important ministers have arrived at the imperial study. Three years is not a long time, but it is not a short time either. Some new faces have come here, but some old faces have also left.

Liu Xuan, Minister of the Ministry of War, was originally from Jiangxi. He served in Beizhili because of his military status. He was orphaned at an early age and served in Lulong on behalf of his father. He studied day and night in the stable.

In the first year of Jingtai, he passed the Shuntianfu Township Examination and passed the exam.

In the second year of Jingtai's reign, he passed the imperial examination and was selected as a scholar from the Hanlin Academy to be taught editing and editing.

During the Hongzhi period, he was favored by the emperor and was first appointed governor of Liaodong, and later became Minister of War for his meritorious service.

During his years as Minister of War, although Liu Xuan did not achieve any outstanding military exploits, he vigorously developed Jingwei martial arts and trained countless outstanding generals for the Ming Dynasty.

The Minister of War who walked out of the stable made great contributions to the Ming Dynasty, but unfortunately he could not escape from old age, illness and death. Although he had decided to resign and return home due to illness, he died of illness on the road.

The person who now takes over as Minister of War is Zhang Jin, Governor of Liaodong. During his tenure, Zhang Jin not only brought peace to the entire Northeast region, but also continued to expand his territory, so that Ming Dynasty's territory was bordered by the Sea of ​​Japan to the east.

In addition to the Secretary of the Ministry of War, the changes in the Six Ministers are naturally even greater.

The outstanding ministers of the Six Ministries were sent to other places to serve as governors, such as Qian Sen, the minister of household affairs, and Yu Ming, the minister of the Ministry of Industry, who have been sent to other places, and their positions are also filled by new forces.

"I pay homage to Your Majesty, long live my emperor!" Chief Assistant Yin Tai and other important ministers saw the emperor appearing and immediately knelt down and said in a dignified manner.

Although Yan Song was prepared in his heart, when he faced Emperor Hongzhi striding in from the outside, he fell to the ground.

Back then, he was able to stand out from many candidates and be selected as the top 12 among the top twelve talents, all thanks to the gift of the emperor in front of him.

Now that I see this talented and strategic emperor again, I feel loyal from the bottom of my heart. I only hope that I can have the opportunity to join the cabinet and worship the prime minister in the future and become the emperor's favorite.

Zhu Youtang, who was wearing a dragon robe, had already entered the youth stage from the seventeenth year old. Although his pampered life made him fair-skinned and with delicate facial features, he was still a young emperor, but the imperial power exuded by him was not as good as that of a young emperor. Emperor Taizong was weak at that time.

Scenes like this in the royal study room have long been common. He climbed up the stairs to the attic as usual, and then let the group of important ministers discuss government affairs below.

What concerns him most now is maritime hegemony, and the granary that supports the Ming Dynasty in controlling territory around the world. One of the important issues today is the granary of America.

Zhu Youtang came to his fixed tea table and saw that the tea was ready, so he waved gently.

Liu Jin, who was wearing a bullfight uniform and holding a fly whisk, stood in front of the guardrail of the attic: "My lords, please start the discussion!"

Yin Tai, the chief assistant of the cabinet, is the head of the civil and military officials. He also presided over the meeting this time, and the first item was related to the Confucian family in Shandong.

Song Cheng, the Minister of Punishment, has been presiding over the overall situation in Shandong during this period. He knows the situation of the Kong family best, so he will publicize all the investigation results here: "Although the Kong family is a descendant of a saint, it has been passed down for thousands of years, but it is only a powerful place. The people were so insulted that they dared to be angry but did not dare to speak out. The Kong family's children ran rampant in the streets, robbed property, and even humiliated people's wives and daughters without any scruples. The people were in dire straits and complained, and people and gods were outraged by Kong's evil..."

Facing the important ministers present, he did not protect Kong's face, but put his own opinions and investigation results in front of everyone.

"Kong Hongchu actually dares to disregard human life?"

"Poisoning one's own father is truly unheard of!"

"Using your own wives and concubines to seduce your own nephew is truly the behavior of a beast!"

"Not only the direct line of the Kong family is like this, the evil deeds done by those collateral branches are equally outrageous!"

...

After the important officials present learned of the various evil deeds of the Kong family, although they had long known that the Kong family's children had oppressed the good people in Shandong, they could not hide their indignation and criticized them at this moment.

However, simply criticizing was not the purpose of this supreme meeting. They had to come up with a real solution.

After half an incense stick of discussion, the cabinet chief Yin Zhi stated the conclusion of the discussion: "Your Majesty, we believe that the lineage of the saint is immoral, and there are also acts of rebellion by resisting the emperor's order and beating the emperor's personal guards. Therefore, we believe that the Duke of Yansheng should be stripped of his title, and the relevant people should be severely punished!"

As soon as the voice fell, Wang Yue and other important officials immediately expressed their opinions: "We second the motion!"

This...

Yan Song was not a participant in the highest meeting, but now seeing that all the important officials in the court had seconded the motion to strip the Duke of Yansheng of his title, he could not help but swallow his saliva secretly.

Although he knew about the evil deeds of the lineage of the Duke of Yansheng in his early years, those people were descendants of the saint after all, and they had the blood of the saint flowing in their bodies, so he did not dare to criticize them too much.

It was just that he did not expect that the important officials in the court did not back down because of this, but were able to insist on justice and dared to propose a plan to abolish the title.

However, at this moment, he clearly felt that the current Ming Dynasty was indeed different. At least the important officials present had a heart that dared to do practical things.

"Approved!" Zhu Youtang seemed very satisfied with the resolution of the Supreme Conference and nodded happily.

The cabinet chief Yin Zhi and other important officials bowed again solemnly: "Your Majesty is wise!"

With the end of the first topic, the next topic was the American granary, which would be a big step for the Ming Dynasty to move towards the world. After all, Chinese history has proved that the rule relying on the Central Plains grain transportation model is not long-lasting.

Now that the Ming Dynasty is determined to unify the four oceans, it needs to ensure food security, and America across the Pacific Ocean needs a large granary comparable to the Northeast.

After several years of investigation, the Governor-General's Office of America has roughly figured out the situation along the coast of America and repeatedly demonstrated the plan to build a large granary in America.

Although China has always been proud of the Central Plains and its vast land, with continuous exploration overseas, it has also realized that the conditions of some overseas lands are actually not bad.

Let’s not talk about anything else, just talking about gold and silver, China, which was originally short of gold and silver, ended up with gold mines in Luzon in the South Sea, silver mines in Iwami in Japan, and a vast amount of gold and silver in America across the Pacific Ocean.

Yin Zhi, the chief minister of the cabinet, had a good impression of Yan Song, and smiled and said: "Yan Song, next you will explain the situation of the Golden Basin, don’t be nervous!"

Yan Song was a 20-year-old Jinshi. Although four years have passed, he is only 24 years old, and he has a sense of being a chicken standing out among the ministers.

It’s just that as a historical celebrity, his psychological quality is often stronger than that of ordinary people.

Yan Song bowed and responded in a proper manner, then walked to a map of America and began to explain.

It was his first appearance here, and he was inevitably a little nervous. Although he couldn’t see the emperor in the attic here, as long as the emperor was here, he would not let go easily.

However, although he was nervous, when he really started to explain, he quickly played the role of a commentator.

North America has a very advantageous geographical location, with most areas in the subtropical and temperate monsoon climate, which is actually very conducive to the development of agriculture.

Originally, the most favorable area was the eastern part of North America, where there are vast plains, and several places have been found, but in the end the situation ushered in a big reversal.

Although they found gold mines in the west, the western region is basically a vast desert Gobi, salt marsh, and volcanic lava area, and even in this area, there is often a foehn phenomenon, which can make the local temperature rise by 30 to 40 degrees, or even more than 50 degrees, for several hours or even a day.

This climate makes the already rainless west even drier and worse, but there are always oases in the desert, and the central and western parts of North America are no exception.

In the process of mining gold, they found a valley in the western part of the central part of North America. The land is flat and the average altitude is less than 100 meters. The east is the coastal mountain of about 700 meters, and the west is the Nevada Mountains of nearly 1,500 meters. There is only a small 400-meter-high volcano in the middle of the basin, and the only narrow exit is the gold mine in the middle.

Since this basin is at the entrance of the gold mine, they also named it the "Golden Basin".

The Golden Basin is extremely rich in products and has a large area. It not only has sufficient water sources, but also fertile land, equivalent to half of Zhejiang Province, enough to accommodate tens of millions of people.

However, such a large basin has not been reasonably utilized by the local indigenous people.

Compared with farming, they seem to prefer hunting, and they do not understand water conservancy construction, so there are not many indigenous people in this Golden Basin.

After discovering this place, the Ming Fleet immediately set it as the base camp of the Governor's Office of America.

On the one hand, they started to mine gold, and on the other hand, they carried out agricultural development in this Golden Basin, turning it into a granary for the entire Daming City in America.

However, this valley is really too large, half of Zhejiang, and it is all plains. It is too wasteful to just build a granary for Daming City, so Zheng Yong proposed the idea of ​​immigrants to build a granary in America in the early years.

Zheng Yong participated in the recovery of Jianzhou and once led troops to station in the Northeast to ensure the court's development of the Northeast, so he also hoped that the court would apply the immigration policy of the year to America.

That's why the first advocate of the American Granary Plan was Zheng Yong, the Governor of America.

The Governor's Office of America initially mobilized only a thousand people, but found that the land opened up by these people was less than one ten-thousandth of the Golden Basin, and at least thousands of times the population was needed to reclaim the entire valley.

Of course, if the Ming Dynasty wanted to build the Golden Basin into the American Granary, it would need to invest a lot of money in water conservancy infrastructure construction like the Northeast did back then.

"Yan Song, what is the situation of the rivers in the Golden Basin?" Chen Shen, the Minister of Industry, listened very carefully, and then asked the most concerned issue of water sources.

Yan Song had already entered the role, and immediately pointed to the two red lines and said: "The Golden Basin has two major river systems, namely the Dongliujiang River in the north and the Golden River in the south. Both rivers flow from east to west into the East China Sea. If water conservancy construction is carried out, it can fully meet the agricultural irrigation here!"

"There is no problem with the soil! Our Ministry of Agriculture has conducted two field surveys, and the soil conditions there are no worse than those in the Northeast!" Liu Zhong, the Minister of Agriculture, also participated in this major plan and stated the results of his own investigation.

After a fierce discussion for half an incense stick, the conclusion of the discussion was stated by Yin Zhi, the chief minister of the cabinet: "Your Majesty, I think that the upper limit of the two million immigrants should be adopted!"

When the bankruptcy bill was promulgated, the plan for the American grain had been finalized, but there was a disagreement on whether to immigrate 20,000 people or 2 million people. Now is the time to resolve the disagreement.

"Approved!" Although Zhu Youtang could make a decision with one word, he would usually adopt the resolution of the Supreme Council, and this time the Supreme Council chose the highest standard of two million immigrants, so there was naturally no reason to veto it.

However, with a population of two million, a larger official system is needed. After all, this number is already larger than that of remote provinces.

After some discussion, the American province was officially established, and the Ming Dynasty officially became the two capitals and fourteen provinces.

"Other adults can leave, but Yan Song, the co-governor of the American Governor's Office, stay!" Liu Jin also conveyed the emperor's order at the end of the Supreme Conference. (End of this chapter)