The Moon in the Qin Dynasty

Chapter 741: Bai Li Chou's Eastern Tour

However, as soon as Ying Zheng issued these marriage decrees, undercurrents suddenly arose inside and outside the court.

The arranged marriage between the two princesses was relatively easy to discuss. Political factors could be basically ignored. Everyone knew that the most important thing was that the two princesses liked each other.

But the marriages of these three princes are really worth pondering. They are not free love! The marriages of princes are never pure.

What is even more surprising is that the third prince has not been granted marriage yet. The reason behind this is really intriguing.

The eldest prince was originally from the Chu camp, but now he has married into the Feng family, an old aristocratic family of the Qin Dynasty. You should know that the Feng family is the maiden family of the fourth prince's mother.

As a result, the Fourth Prince married into the Cai family. It’s not that the Cai family is a bad family, but the subtle relationship between them is really hard to understand.

There was also the Second Prince, who was obviously favored by His Majesty. The most precious youngest daughter of Duke Zhaowen was assigned to the Second Prince.

After learning about this, Lu Buwei felt as if a bottle of five flavors had been overturned in his heart, with all kinds of feelings mixed together.

To be fair, he originally wanted to marry his daughter to Tianming.

Now Ying Zheng's arrangement of marriage made him dizzy and he was not sure what Ying Zheng was thinking.

Was he trying to get the Lu family to participate in the fight for the throne, or was he trying to get the Lu family to give up the fight? Was he trying to use the Lu family to defend the position of the heir, or was he trying to suppress the Lu family's power?

He really couldn't figure out what Ying Zheng was thinking. He had lost track of what Ying Zheng was thinking a long time ago.

Finally, I decided to let it go and not get involved! Whoever is the emperor is loyal to him!
On the surface, Ying Zheng's decree of marriage did not seem to cause any huge waves or create any sensational effect, but secretly, the various forces in the court had already been undercurrents, and all forces began to secretly calculate and plan.

As for Ying Zheng himself, after throwing the stones, he just watched the show.

At this time, two people were heartbroken.

One is Meng Yi, and the other is Mr. Zifang who does not want to reveal his name.

Fortunately, Meng Yi adjusted his mood quickly. He was open-minded, gentle, and always open-minded, so he adjusted his mood quickly.

As for Mr. Zifang, who did not want to reveal his name, he felt heartbroken for the first time in his life. He did not feel this bad even when he followed Han Fei in Korea and was beaten by Ji Wuye and Bai Yifei.

He regretted not expressing his feelings in advance, and regretted even more that he did not pursue happiness more attentively and proactively.

He no longer has a chance with that good girl who was brave, enthusiastic, kind, and gentle to the core.

Mr. Zifang, who did not want to reveal his real name, took several days of sick leave and secretly drank to drown his sorrows at home.

As for Liu Ji, he has no time to care about his frustrated good friend, as he is now in high spirits.

After all, the imperial decree granting the marriage has already been accepted.

But.
He is really worried now and is counting the betrothal gifts on his fingers at home.

Marrying a princess is a good thing, but it is not that easy. It is related to the dignity of the royal family and must be extremely grand and spectacular.

The whole process includes accepting marriage proposals, asking for the bride's name, accepting the marriage proposal, accepting the bride's betrothal gifts, asking for the date of marriage, and welcoming the bride. Depending on the status of the bride, the whole process may take several months or two years. The royal family is the slowest, and the whole process takes two years.

The first step is to propose marriage, which is to send a matchmaker to the girl's family to propose marriage and give gifts.

For this step, if it is an ordinary family, sending wild geese will be enough.

But as an official or noble, the gifts should not be less than thirty, otherwise it would be embarrassing.

What's more, it's a royal family, so ninety-nine gifts are needed to show that he is marrying the noble lady of the supreme heavenly family.

However, this first step is not bad, as it just has more types, and it is not required that all items must be precious. The main thing is to take the advantages and virtues of each item to inspire and encourage the couple, and to collect ninety-nine items with good symbolic meanings.

The main step is the fourth step, Na Zheng, also known as Na Cheng, which literally means paying the betrothal money first and then completing the marriage, indicating that the engagement is completed.

At this step, the betrothal gift must be presented.

This is what Liu Ji is counting on his fingers now.

Many gifts take time to create and are not readily available.

To marry a princess, one must have six kinds of jade articles: bi, cong, gui, zhang, huang, and hu, as well as various bronze ritual articles. This alone was already a considerable expense.

The skins of tigers, leopards, bears, minks, cattle, sheep, deer and horses are also necessary, but this is not a big problem.

Black and purple silk, this, isn't ten pieces too little? Liu Ji gritted his teeth and decided to increase it to fifty pieces each. Forget it, a hundred pieces each.

I heard that General Longwu is going to prepare 500 horses each. It's not as good as his, but it can't be much worse. Damn it! It's so much worse!

There are also cattle, sheep, horses and grains, which are also indispensable. Of course, it is not just symbolic one or two, one or two pounds.

There must be at least a hundred cattle, sheep, and horses, and if the grains are to be decent, they must be of a thousand pounds each.

Damn it! I heard that General Longwu prepared a thousand cattle, sheep and horses, and tens of thousands of kilograms of grain! How come you are so rich?
Liu Ji had no idea that although Wei Zhuang looked aloof, he was actually a man who cared about his reputation.

Moreover, the one he married was the eldest princess Ying Yi, the beloved daughter of Duke Wen of Ciji. Others did not know, but he knew that, not to mention the wealth, the position of Duke was reserved for his own child. Even if it was just wealth, the eldest princess's treasury was an astronomical amount.

And although he didn't say it, he actually wanted to do his best to be good to Ying Yi. Liu Ji didn't want Ying Jing to lose face, and Wei Zhuang didn't want it even more. He had already secretly asked his uncle and brother to borrow money, and even his friends in the army had quietly borrowed money from him. Although Wei Zhuang's mansion seemed to be calm, it was actually selling everything it had.

He had been a high-ranking official for more than ten years, did not like to have fun, did not spend much on a daily basis, and had made outstanding contributions, so he received generous rewards. Logically, he should have been quite wealthy, but in fact, he did not save much money.

Because he spent very little money, he treated the soldiers well in the army and gave many rewards to the soldiers, especially pensions, which he also gave in addition to those given by the court.

How can a wise general not treat his soldiers well? Unless he can lead them to achieve great things, but the two are not contradictory.

Gai Nie is also such a person, which has led to Wei Zhuang now relying on borrowing money from Wei Liao. Although his master Fan Sui is not dead yet, he doesn't have much money after faking his death and escaping.

Fortunately, he still has his uncle.

Liu Ji continued to calculate the bill. There were also various kinds of silk, at least two hundred rolls, right? Never mind, five hundred rolls.

Then there were the jewelry, which would require at least a hundred pieces. And they had to be exquisite and luxurious, made of gold, silver, pearls, jade, and various gemstones, and crafted by skilled craftsmen. When Liu Ji thought of the cost of all these jewelry, he felt dizzy.

Then there are gold and copper coins, which would cost at least thousands or tens of millions of gold.

Liu Ji had almost finished his calculations and was already sweating profusely. He wiped the sweat off his face while shivering, and complained in his heart.

My God, everyone envies marrying a princess, but who would have known that it costs so much!

However, Liu Ji was not in a hurry. According to the rules of that time, under normal circumstances, the woman's dowry was at least equal to the betrothal gift. In a more respectable family, the dowry given by the woman's parents would be more than the betrothal gift.

The more respectable ones will usually return double the dowry, and the most respectable ones will return triple the dowry. Of course, there are some special cases, such as the woman's family values ​​the man, but the man's family is poor, so they want to support him, then the dowry given is unpredictable, and it may be dozens of times.

Just like Zhang Er, the dowry his wife brought was extremely large, and his wife also made great contributions to his life journey.

So Liu Ji was not panicked at all. As a princess, no matter whether she was favored or not, the dowry prepared by His Majesty would definitely be enough for him to pay off his debts, and there would be more left. Moreover, the third princess was so favored that she was not afraid at all.

He is now desperately borrowing money to prepare the betrothal gifts, not for the extra dowry from the royal family, but simply because he doesn't want Ying Jing to lose face.

The fact that Ying Jing chose him has been gossiped about. After all, his family background and status are not worthy of the third princess of the empire.

His own face is worthless, and he doesn't care much about it. He is not that narrow-minded.

But he wouldn't allow Ying Jing to lose face!

Liu Ji was deeply moved by Ying Jing's appreciation and persistence for him. Even if not for himself, for the princess, he had to make the princess look decent!
After the marriage was arranged, Ying Jing knew that Liu Ji came from a poor family, so she sent her trusted maid to secretly deliver a letter to Liu Ji. The letter was extremely covert, and the content of the letter was also extremely obscure and implicit.

He was worried that Liu Ji would lose face, so he wanted to give his private money to Liu Ji first.

Liu Ji was not an ungrateful person. Ying Jing acted so secretly just for his face, and asked for his opinion in an implicit way just for his face.

But Liu Ji still flatly replied and refused.

Liu Ji also wanted to let Ying Jing know that he had something worth looking up to! Although his family had long been in decline and his official rank was not high now.

But Liu Ji has relied on himself to get to where he is now. Liu Ji has many friends!

If she has no money, she can rely on his face and his reputation, and she can lend him enough money to let Ying Jing get married in a decent manner!

In order to prove that he was not trying to take advantage of the royal family, Liu Ji borrowed money from his friends in a big way before granting the marriage, to prove that he borrowed the money by relying on his own face, not the royal family's face.

People earn their own face!

After many twists and turns, it was the third year of Qin Shihuang's reign, and the marriage process of his children was not yet complete.

It's still early. How could a royal wedding be rushed under normal circumstances unless there was something urgent?

And now, the Eastern Tour, which has been prepared for more than half a year, is ready.

In order to demonstrate their majesty, the three imperial armies selected three thousand elite cavalry and twelve thousand elite Qin soldiers.

There were more than 3,000 officials, eunuchs, and palace maids, and more than 2,000 imperial guards and processions.

This does not include the local garrisons along the way to protect the emperor, the officials who received him, and their entourage.

The route was to start from the capital, pass through Luoyang, enter Bianliang, go straight into Qi, perform Fengshan at Mount Tai, go to the easternmost Jiaodong County, and then go south into Yingtian.

Starting from Yingtian, he traveled from east to west, inspected the Chu area in the south, passed Jiujiang County, entered Nan County, and then entered Nanyang County, and returned to Guanzhong from Wugu Pass.

This eastern tour was intended to demonstrate authority, show kindness to the people, inspect the military, rectify the administration of officials, and actually examine whether the empire's systems and policies needed improvement.

It was necessary to stabilize the Central Plains and Eastern Qi as well as to intimidate Chu, which had been under the control of Qin for the shortest time after all.

The altar for offering sacrifices to the heaven on Mount Tai was already under construction last year and has been completed.

There is also the Temple of the Five Emperors, which has been under construction since the first year of Emperor Qin Shihuang's reign and has now been completed.

Besides this, there are some other important things.

(End of this chapter)