Emperor Ming Dynasty

Chapter 906 National Highway
Capital, Prince Fu's Mansion.

The sun has disappeared from the roof, leaving only an orange streamer in the sky.

Prince Fu's Mansion is in the capital city. According to regulations, it is still a hundred acres, and it is not too simple to not exceed the rules.

Fu Wang just lay on the bed, his fat body spread out, almost filling the whole bed, his hot face was pale and shivering.

The whole body was covered with quilts, as if they had been stacked into a hill, so towering.

In fact, Zhu Yousong is not very old, only 57 or [-], but he is already terminally ill and hopelessly ill.

Compared with the emperors of the Ming Dynasty, in a sense, he has already lived a long life.

Among the emperors who were forced to withdraw from the throne in the past dynasties, his treatment is considered the best.

The two-year Hongguang regime was abolished, and the identity of the emperor was gone, but it brought him peace. He stayed in the capital for more than ten years.

Over the years, although he has been begging for daughters and concubines, it is a pity that he will not be able to have a healthy body after all. He pursues women too much, not only has no children, but also makes his body weak.

As early as a few years ago, he felt that he was not good enough, so he asked the emperor for an heir, so that no one would sacrifice to him after death, and he would be left as a lonely ghost.

Although Fu Fan was passed down to him, it was only two generations.

Of course, the emperor's seventh son, Zhu Cunmei, was also adopted by him, which settled a concern.

After several years of lingering illness, looking at the sky today, King Fu felt that he was dying.

"Have you notified the imperial court?" King Fu said weakly.

Chang Shi on the side quickly said: "It has been notified that the Seventh Prince will come soon."

"Several princes know, they are on their way."

"That's good—"

Fu Wang was lost in thought.

These years have been immersed in wine and sex, until today he thought about those days in the past.

Once in Luoyang, what a beautiful day it was, carefree and joyful.

But the thieves that the father and king talked about finally broke into Luoyang unavoidably.

Even if the family wealth was exhausted to reward the army, it was still useless. The family was separated, which can be described as miserable.

Everyone in the world is saying that King Fu is stingy, and when the army is about to break the city, he is reluctant to use up his wealth to rely on the army. In fact, what a hateful rumor is this?

In a panic along the way, he fled to Huaiqing, but there was still a Chuangjun, and he fled to Weihui Mansion to join King Lu.

He went to Kaifeng to seek refuge with the King of Zhou. The good guy was flooded again, and the people in the city suffered heavy casualties. They had to go to Huai'an and Gaoyou together with King Zhou and King Lu to live with King Zhou and King Chong who fled south. In the lake mouth boat.

Fortunately, Lu Zhenfei, the Governor of Water Transport, led the army, otherwise he would really starve to death.

At this time, the impression of Lu Zhenfei in Fu Wang's mind became more and more profound.

Unfortunately, after the establishment of the imperial court, he did not reuse this benefactor, but appointed Ma Shiying instead.

"Then there was a military disaster. The Manchus went south and were captured before being rescued."

Fu Wang was thinking like this, and suddenly heard a burst of crying.

He opened his eyes and saw that it was Lu Zhenfei from back then.

"Didn't you retire and return to your hometown?"

"The old minister is in Beijing and hasn't returned home yet." Lu Zhenfei knelt on the ground, his eyes were slightly red: "His Highness is not feeling well, so he came here again."

"Thanks to you for saving me back then, otherwise I would have been inexplicably among the rioters—"

The two were talking like this, and after a while, King Lu came.

As a former member of adversity, although he was a little dirty and fearful when he was enthroned, but with the passage of age, these are nothing.

King Lu is old, with gray temples, he looks very old-fashioned.

"You are here too."

King Fu sighed softly.

Afterwards, all the relatives came.

In the end, it was Zhu Cunmei, the seventh son of the emperor, kneeling on the bedside like a dutiful son, with grief on his face.

"Your Majesty is here—"

With a sharp cry, everyone quickly changed directions.

Soon, the handsome and tall figure of the emperor appeared in front of everyone.

"Your Majesty is waiting to greet you—"

The feudal kings knelt on one knee neatly.

That's right, kneeling on one knee.

Because in Zhu Yuanzhang's regulations, unless it is a big court and a formal meeting, otherwise the vassal kings in private will only need to kneel on one knee to the emperor as long as they are senior and old.

"I'm late—"

The emperor came to the bed earnestly, held Fu Wang's big chubby hand, and was deeply moved.

King Fu became excited for a moment, chattering non-stop.

Zhu Yixi still agrees that people are about to die, and their words are kind.

Sure enough, before his death, the Fu Wang didn't pay much attention to his own affairs, he just emphasized that the emperor should take care of the seventh son of the emperor, and don't let him be wronged.

The emperor naturally agreed.

Not a moment later, King Fu just swallowed his breath.

As for the vassal king's charter, it is natural that the imperial court controls it, and the emperor can only follow it.

But for Prince Fu's Mansion, since there is no owner, or the seventh son of the emperor is young, the emperor directly ordered and demanded:
"If the concubines in the mansion want to go home, they will pay a thousand yuan each. If they want to stay in the mansion, there will naturally be arrangements."

But for those maids, the emperor sent them all out.

Because of King Fu's absurd greed these years, these maids are all coquettish. The emperor was afraid that they would affect his son, so he had to rearrange them.

Afterwards, the emperor sighed and said to himself: "An era is finally over..."

There is a gauze curtain hanging in the Qingliang Hall, and the inside of the gauze curtain is brighter than the outside, because there is a row of carved wooden windows on the west side of the inside, and at this time in the afternoon, the sun just shines on the inside of the palace.

Outside the curtain, there were quite a few women standing there, dressed in plain palace robes, looking quite monotonous.

This is because the imperial concubine advocates Taoism, is simple, and does not like luxury and waste, so the palace can only be like this.

Inside the curtain, it is very quiet. The old red paint on the wood and the purple silk fabric make the room look a little old. The sun shines in, and there are fine dust in the light.

So it seems more and more quiet here.

And the woman sitting next to a table just embellished this simple but gorgeous palace.

The weather is cool, Miaoxian wears soft and thin clothes, her body is very beautiful and attractive, sitting there makes the whole room seem more alive.

The curved buttocks show their protrusions, and the graceful curves burst out with amazing elasticity.

There are not many pieces of this fine silk in the entire Ming Dynasty.

As if feeling the subtlety of the atmosphere, she moved her head and neck lightly, then stood up again, and walked slowly in the spacious palace.

"Has His Majesty gone out?"

Asked lightly, a maid immediately replied: "I heard that King Fu is dying, so I hurried to the capital."

"Oh!"

She rubbed her stomach, feeling a little lost.

Suddenly, there was news, which startled her.

"what happened?"

"My Majesty, Your Majesty is back—"

Her displeasure just now was ignited again, and she felt her heart beating faster.

Soon, the emperor's crisp footsteps came to mind in the long corridor. The speed was very fast, and it was telling the mood of the master.

"My concubine, are you pregnant again?"

The emperor's face was full of smiles.

But in the words, it is quite helpless.

He wrapped his arms around the woman's waist, feeling the delicateness and softness, and with his chin resting on his shoulders, he sighed softly, "It's not suitable!"

It has to be said that after giving birth to one son and two daughters, Miaoxian has passed the age of 36 and has become an advanced maternal age.

In this regard, the emperor has never wanted her to become pregnant because of the risk of advanced age.

But the latter kept begging, and the emperor had no choice but to obey, but he often deliberately misaligned, making his mouth full of delicious food.

The good name is: nourishing yin and nourishing skin.

But the final negligence made her pregnant.

"My concubine likes to bear children for His Majesty."

Miaoxian said tenderly: "Empress has two sons, I only have one, it's not fair..."

Zhu Yixi smiled.

He was speechless.

However, holding the woman, the emperor fell into deep thought:
As soon as King Fu left, Miaoxian sent good news, what a coincidence——

This should not make Zhu Yixi think too much.

He is simply a materialist, and he doesn't think about it.

As for time travel, good guy, this is science fiction, okay?

After comforting the woman, Zhu Yixi returned to work.

The memorandum clearly stated that a national highway from Beijing, passing through Xuanfu, and then to Datong and Suiyuan was finally completed.

This road stretches for more than [-] miles, and the total man-hours have exceeded one million. It took five years of work to be completed one after another.

The Ministry of Industry calculated its total cost to exceed one million yuan, and it was the most expensive road built by the imperial court for so many years.

Official roads are divided into national roads, provincial roads, government roads, and county roads.

As the name suggests, national roads are the most important roads for the imperial court. They are basically built and maintained by the Ministry of Industry, and they are generally key projects of the imperial court.

For example, from Suiyuan to Beijing, or from Beijing to Jilin already connected.

The latter road is relatively simple, because the official road from Shenyang to Jilin has already been repaired, and the imperial court only needs to be responsible for connecting Shenyang and Beijing.

There are many more, such as Nanjing to Songjiang, Hangzhou; Beijing to Jinan; Beijing to Baoding and so on.

The biggest feature is that they are basically centered on the two capitals and built around them.

Provincial roads are the official roads that run through the various prefectures in the province.

In terms of appropriation, the province, government, county, and the imperial court jointly contribute money, which can be regarded as a livelihood project.

But even if the treasury is dry, the provinces still have to make great efforts to build provincial roads,
Without it, benefits.

According to the rules of the imperial court, each government is only allowed to set up checkpoints at the junction to collect taxes, and the roads in the government are not allowed to set up checkpoints.

Moreover, the tax rate shall not exceed one percent.

Who wouldn't want to overcharge in this situation?
It's a bit similar to the Liguan in the Qing Dynasty, but it doesn't have the madness of setting up tax cards for ten miles.

There are many tax cards, but in fact, each prefecture is twice as large as the cities of later generations, and each tax card is separated by an average of two hundred miles.
The prefectural road is the road that runs through the counties within a prefecture; the county road is the road between urban and rural areas.

These two roads belong to the people's livelihood projects, and the local government pays for them at their own expense. They are also part of the evaluation of magistrates and magistrates.

Of course it is impossible to collect taxes.

In the case of interests and official positions, the provinces have set off a trend of large-scale construction over the years. The county roads and government roads have been fully connected, and the provincial roads are also developing well, but the national roads are a bit sloppy.

The reason why the Beijing-Suizhou National Highway takes so long is that apart from the vast land, sparse population, insufficient corvee, and the need to build a large number of corps, the biggest difficulty is the high requirements.

The road must be ten feet wide, and tall trees must be planted on both sides of the road to fix the soil. At the same time, ditches must be dug and sidewalks built, which can be described as extremely troublesome.

In addition, every thirty or fifty miles, a post station must be built to deliver news and receive pedestrians.

As for provincial roads, the requirements are much lower, as long as the width reaches about five feet, there is no need to plant many trees.

The government roads and county roads are only three feet long, so there is no need to build ditches at all, but frequent conscripts are required to build roads.

"The next step, Gansu-Uzbekistan National Highway, will cost 60 yuan?"

Ganzhou, Gansu to Urumqi, Anxi Province.

Zhu Yixi couldn't believe it, it was only a few hundred miles!
Let him change his mind, this road is a desolate desert, or a grassland, with few people, it is difficult to collect corvees.

"The railway track from Songjiang to Nanjing has been repaired to Suzhou?"

The emperor continued to look at it, surprised in his heart, this is too fast.

The rail carriage raised 500 million yuan in Nanjing to build a rail carriage leading to Songjiang Prefecture, and a large number of local gentry participated in it.

Moreover, this driveway is actually two-way, which is even better than that in Beijing City.

"The south is still rich!!"

At this time, Luzon Governor's Mansion.

In the mansion, Jin Bao specially welcomed Gu Yuan, a courtier from King Qi.

What surprised him the most was that it turned out to be a hunchback.

As Qi Wang Situ, Gu Yuan came to Luzon on behalf of the vassal king to manage the affairs of the Qi vassal.

Obviously, in this place of Nanyang, King Qi is still too young to go there in person, so it would be more appropriate for him to do it for him.

Jin Bao expressed his understanding to King Qi, after all, he was only 16 years old, so young, he knew nothing.

Running a vassal state requires capable hands.

Facing his consultation, Jin Bao said sincerely: "Now Qi occupies a large island, only two or three days away from Luzon, and there are many islands connected in series."

"Today, the entire Luzon has only a million people, and I heard that Qi has more than [-] people. Given time, it will not be difficult to surpass Luzon."

Regarding this, Gu Yuan was surprised, how could it develop so fast?

But didn't the king of Qi tell him that the development of Qi country is not good?
In just one and a half years, there are 10 people, which is too exaggerated.

"Thanks to the governor's help, Qi is in such a situation."

Gu Yuan spoke softly, but did not express the doubt in his heart.

When he came to Qi State by boat, he suddenly felt cheated.

In the huge state of Qi, the largest city is only a port, and there are no more than [-] people, men, women and children, and most of them are troops dispatched from Luzon.

The leader held his head up and said, "My lord, Wang Cheng, welcomes the superior."

"Wang Cheng?" Gu Yuan said softly, "Are you from the Governor's Mansion?"

"That's right, you're finally here, and I can go back too." Wang Cheng showed a pleasant smile on his face.

I have been away from home for more than a year, and I don't know what will happen to my wife and son. I really miss it!

ps: sorry for the delay, Kavin
(End of this chapter)