Ming Dynasty: Ask Zhu Yuanzhang to abdicate at the beginning

Chapter 275 The whole story, the hidden power crisis...

The atmosphere in the carriage suddenly turned cold.

It is now the coldest time of the year.

Although the sun was shining outside, it was still exceptionally cold.

The howling cold wind raged past.

However, the carriage that Zhu Yunhuan rode in was specially made by the Manufacturing Bureau.

Not only is it airtight, so the cold air can't get in at all, but all four sides are covered with felt made of the finest animal fur. Not only is it extremely comfortable to touch, it feels great and is also warm.

In addition, the space under the seat of the carriage was cleverly utilized to create a place to place the charcoal brazier.

In this way, the heat from the charcoal fire can be transferred into the carriage through the seats.

But the oxygen consumed by the burning charcoal has nothing to do with the oxygen in the car.

The exhaust gas emitted after combustion was also discharged outside and could not enter the carriage.

It is precisely because of its many ingenious designs that this carriage produced by the manufacturing bureau is sought after by princes and nobles.

No matter how cold the weather is outside, it is still warm like spring inside and the air is fresh.

However, when Zhu Yunhuan became angry, even the warmest place instantly turned into a cold kiln.

Having been in a high position for a long time, without realizing it, his words and actions have gradually become more authoritative.

"Your Highness, please forgive me. We are helpless and have to resort to this measure. This is for the sake of your Highness's position and the sake of the Ming Dynasty's eternal prosperity."

Yang Rong's kneeling body trembled slightly.

Since I've been following His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, I've never seen him so angry.

This was the first time I felt it, and I felt as if my body was being stared at by a tiger and a dragon, and a chilling fear rose from the depths of my soul.

His Royal Highness the Crown Prince's words were clearly just calm, but they were like thunder from the sky, suddenly falling.

Zhu Yunhuan stared at him with a sharp gaze and asked, "This was the idea of the evil monk Yao Guangxiao, right?"

This is definitely not something that Yang Rong can do alone.

The evil monk is best at doing this kind of thing.

Therefore, Zhu Yunhuan thought of him first.

Yang Rong kowtowed and said, "Your Highness, the Crown Prince, please understand. This was indeed Master Daoyan's idea."

After being discovered by Zhu Yunhuan, he dared not hide anything anymore.

"Master Daoyan and Mr. Yang feel that His Royal Highness the Crown Prince is already old enough to get married."

"Only after you marry a wife and have children, your Majesty can rest assured and entrust the Ming Dynasty to you."

"Master Daoyan and Mr. Yang have mentioned this matter several times before His Royal Highness the Crown Prince."

"But His Royal Highness the Crown Prince avoided all of them with words. It seems that His Royal Highness intends to avoid talking about this matter."

Zhu Yunxun frowned and thought.

Yang Shiqi and Yao Guangxiao had indeed mentioned marriage in front of him.

However, Zhu Yunhuan felt that he was not old enough to get married.

Therefore, whenever they brought it up, Zhu Yunhuan would interrupt them with words or forcibly change the subject.

Naturally, they couldn't continue talking.

"Master Daoyan, Mr. Yang and others are all very anxious about this matter."

"After discussing it together, we all felt that since His Royal Highness is still young and full of vigor, it is normal for young people to admire Ai."

"Your Highness, the Crown Prince, occasionally teases the maids in the East Palace, but has no intention of harassing the male servants, which shows that Your Highness does not want to do so."

When Zhu Yunhuan heard his words, he suddenly felt a headache.

Good guy.

Even the jokes I usually have with the palace maids were investigated so clearly?
Are you still secretly observing whether I am gay?

Is it that the sexual orientation is abnormal?
Is that a bit much?

But, on second thought, he understood the reason.

As time went by, Zhu Yunhuan learned more and more about the operation of the court.

In the Ming Dynasty and even in previous dynasties, it was not beyond the rules for the ministers to pay attention to the king's women and daily private affairs. They felt it was natural.

People of this era don't have much concept of privacy.

He also believed that there was no private affairs in heaven.

To put it bluntly, although the emperor will not let all the ministers in the court know tomorrow which woman he favored tonight, the close ministers around the emperor will know as long as they want to know.

This is also for the emperor's safety.

After all, according to regulations, everything the emperor did and said every day had to be recorded.

Although in reality, modifications and beautification will be done.

But the task of revision and beautification itself is often given to ministers.

It would be inappropriate for the emperor to do it himself as it would cause criticism.

The censors will use this as an excuse to advise the emperor, causing turmoil in the court.

Although the emperor’s power seemed supreme in feudal society, he was actually subject to many constraints.

Power must always be constrained by family ties and public opinion.

As for completely abandoning all family ties and public opinion, in fact, except for a very small number of perverts, it is impossible for normal humans to do so.

It is just like people in later societies who always live in society and are restricted by all aspects of society.

The emperor is no exception.

If people in later society must sever ties with their family and all relatives and friends, that is not impossible.

The emperor holds great power, and he can turn his back on everyone if he wants.

But after all, how many people in the world can have the heart to sever ties with all relatives and friends, even parents, wife and children?

Everyone says that they don't care what others say, but those who can be completely shameless and completely ignore public opinion, and continue to do their own thing even if they are socially dead, are always one in a billion.

Normal people are afraid of social death.

The same is true for the emperor.

The everlasting reputation of the people has been the greatest constraint on the imperial power since ancient times.

It is also the sharpest "weapon" in the hands of scholars.

After all, there are very few perverted and weird emperors recorded in history books, and there are many who are deliberately slandered by outsiders.

Especially the perverted king who lost his country.

Much of their records are not true.

Rather, it was the later generations who overthrew his rule and deliberately threw dirty water on the previous emperor in order to legitimize their own actions.

Since the ministers wanted to modify and beautify the emperor's daily records, they would know the true situation.

Although Zhu Yunhuan is not the emperor yet, it actually doesn’t make much difference.

His private affairs were naturally also public affairs, and important matters of the court. In the worldview of Yao Guangxiao and Yang Shiqi, Zhu Yunhuan had no women and no descendants, which was a huge potential crisis.

As trusted subordinates, they must help solve this problem.

It was their duty as trusted ministers to select beautiful women with clean backgrounds to present to Zhu Yunhuan, and to encourage them to get married as soon as possible and give birth to children.

As for the invasion of privacy and the like, I'm sorry, they have no such concept at all.

Letting the girl act was just to create an encounter beforehand, and there was no real intention to keep it a secret from Zhu Yunhuan.

Therefore, they did not strive to perform this scene perfectly.

This scheme was actually very crude and could be easily discovered.

They only wanted to deceive him temporarily for a while and let Zhu Yunhuan accept the matter naturally.

If Zhu Yunhuan took a fancy to Gu Panjun and favored her.

Afterwards, they told Zhu Yunhuan the truth and told him that Gu Panjun was a beauty they had selected and specially presented to Zhu Yunhuan.

There is no need to hide it forever, and there is no need to worry about being exposed by others.

Normally, the superior would not get angry about this.

There are countless such things throughout the dynasties.

It was perfectly normal for ministers to present women to the emperor and arrange opportunities and create situations for the emperor to meet them.

Some lustful emperors would even be so delighted that they would reward their ministers generously for presenting beautiful women to them.

Just like the corrupt officials in later generations, many of them were happy to accept the bribes that set up beauty traps for them and voluntarily jumped into the "trap".

Not to mention, as a person in a high position, he had far fewer scruples than corrupt officials in later generations.

What reason is there not to like the beauties presented to you by your subordinates?
However, in Zhu Yunhuan's opinion, they had gone a bit too far in this matter.

Moreover, this practice is actually very harmful to the imperial power.

It’s just that Zhu Yunhuan had never paid attention to this aspect before, which led to what happened today.

The key to this matter lies in one thing, namely, whether the emperor should maintain his personal privacy in front of his close ministers.

Because in the traditional power structure of feudal society, emperors had no personal privacy at all.

The court officials, especially those close to the emperor, know everything about the emperor.

What really needs to be kept secret is the handling of certain important court affairs and important personnel arrangements in the court, and definitely not private matters such as the emperor's favoritism to a certain woman.

On the contrary, becoming an emperor means one has to get used to having no privacy. Even when making love with a woman in bed, there is always someone serving him, and it all has to be recorded.

This has been the rule in all dynasties, and the Ming Dynasty was no exception.

Zhu Yunhuan was mentally prepared for this and was not completely unacceptable.

But as a time traveler, he was still a little uncomfortable.

More importantly, Zhu Yunhuan was very sensitive to the fact that behind all these rationalizations, there was actually a certain power crisis hidden...

Yang Rong continued, "After everyone discussed it, they felt that the reason why His Royal Highness the Crown Prince never looked for a woman was because His Royal Highness the Crown Prince was a genius that had never been seen before in the history of the world. No one in the world could match him. He was too proud and looked down on ordinary, vulgar women."

"If you want to make His Royal Highness the Crown Prince fall in love, you must find the most beautiful woman in the world."

"Therefore, Master Daoyan ordered the people from the Investigation Department to secretly visit and investigate."

"Hard work pays off. Finally, I found this beautiful Miss Gu in a village near Yingtian Prefecture."

He told the whole story.

"Miss Gu grew up in a small mountain village. She has a clean background. She is not only beautiful enough to make fish sink to the bottom of the water, geese fall to the ground, and the moon hide in shame, but also three times more beautiful than Xi Shi."

"She has been studying since she was young, and she is very smart and clever, far beyond the reach of ordinary women."

"With the love of his parents, he developed an innocent, carefree and unrestrained personality since childhood."

"Master Daoyan said that His Royal Highness is young and steady, but not as unrestrained as his peers. However, His Royal Highness is very bold and is a freedom-loving person at heart."

"His Royal Highness will definitely like Miss Gu's personality."

"After personally inspecting her, I felt that this girl was good, so I brought her to the capital and trained her secretly."

"I just hope to find the right opportunity to let her meet His Royal Highness the Crown Prince and present her to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince."

"Later, I saw the Emperor's correspondence with His Royal Highness, who used the pseudonym Zhu Sun, in which he mentioned that he was worried about his grandson's life-long affairs, and I felt that this was an opportunity."

"We discussed it and felt that the time was ripe, so we asked Miss Gu to go to the West Market to sell jewelry, and secretly fanned the flames, causing the people of Jinling City to discuss Miss Gu."

"Just wait for His Majesty the Emperor to return from Shencheng, and you can take advantage of the opportunity to introduce Miss Gu to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince."

That's really thoughtful.

He actually took into consideration from the very beginning that Zhu Yuanzhang would return to Nanjing and that Zhu Yunhu would be unable to report for pretending to be Zhu's grandson.

However, the people who thought of the layout were Yao Guangxiao, Yang Shiqi and others.

It is only natural for them to have such a plan.

Even if they don't care much about being discovered, it is impossible for them to leave so many loopholes in their plans, and it is even more impossible for them not to consider how to get in.

Zhu Yunhuan still didn't say anything because Yang Rong still hadn't told him about Xu Miaojin.

Although Zhu Yunhuan had some guesses in his mind, he did not intend to say them out loud.

To be exact, it is nothing more than showing off in front of subordinates and showing off one's ability, which does not have much significance.

If what you say is somewhat different from the facts, it is equivalent to exposing your own "stupidity and ability" in front of outsiders, making others dare to deceive again next time.

At this time, the wisest choice is to pretend to be mysterious, keep silent, and let the other party confess on their own initiative.

In later TV dramas, the protagonist analyzes and tells the "case" first without waiting for others to explain. This is just to show off in front of the audience and to show how awesome the protagonist is.

In fact, no one is a god and cannot predict the future.

Even if the analysis is almost correct, even the wisest man can make mistakes.

Once a mistake is made, the result will be more trouble than gain.

There is really no need to do this.

"Ms. Xu's joining us was both within our plan and unexpected."

Yang Rong quickly began to explain the matter of Xu Miaojin.

"Because of Ms. Xu's special status, we cannot contact her privately and train her. Therefore, she does not know our plan."

After all, Xu Miaojing was the daughter of Xu Da, King of Zhongshan, and had a noble status.

The plans of Yang Rong, Yao Guangxiao, Yang Shiqi and others were carried out in secret, so of course it was impossible for them to let the Xu family cooperate with them.

Given the Xu family's status and position, even if they really wanted to marry Xu Miaojing to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, they could directly find an opportunity to make their suggestion to the Emperor.

Whether Mr. Zhu agrees or not, a result can be obtained quickly.

There's no need to take so many detours, which will only end up in bad circumstances.

"Master Daoyan believes that Xu Miaojin comes from a family of meritorious service, is beautiful, and is both civil and martial. She is very talented and is a perfect match for His Royal Highness the Crown Prince. Maybe His Royal Highness the Crown Prince will like her."

"All we need to do is create an opportunity for her to meet His Royal Highness the Crown Prince."

……

(End of this chapter)