The Ming Dynasty began from Sarhu

Chapter 563: Ten Thousand People Bow Their Necks, One Person Soars to Heaven

Emperor Wuding had not killed anyone for a long time. The killing here refers to killing for the sake of killing, not killing for the sake of war like in Korea and Sakhalin Island.

For a long time, Liu Xingzuo and Zhang Dong no longer arrested rebels, and the Suoyi Guards no longer put the rebels in the imperial prison. The imperial prison is now empty.

Rather than saying that this is a manifestation of the benevolent rule of the retired emperor, it is better to say that the imperial spies' reign of terror is gradually collapsing.

Like ordinary people, time travelers will also experience birth, old age, sickness, and death, and will age and lose their judgment.

As he grew older, Emperor Wuding's preferences kept changing. In the past, he was a murderer, but this year he suddenly put down his butcher knife and recited the Great Compassion Mantra.

Killing is not the goal, but only a means. Now, he is going to take action against his elder brother-in-law. This is a brand new beginning for the empire. If you have no desires, you will be strong. As a ruler, you can only kill everyone in the world by killing those around you.

Tianxin City, which was in the midst of a storm, finally fell apart after five years of construction.

Neither the government nor the silver shop cared about it, so Jin Guojiu handed the mess over to the imperial court and asked his brother-in-law to take over.

"They didn't think of me when they were making money, but now they're making me take the blame for the mess. They're forcing the people to rebel and shaking the foundation of the country. They deserve to be killed! Kill them!"

But can the eldest brother-in-law be killed? He is Jin Yuji's brother, a royal relative, and a person in the same boat with the emperor.

If he is also corrupt, then can we say that the entire empire is beyond redemption?
When Liu Zhaosun was thinking, he would stroke the wooden model of Tianxin City placed in his bedroom.

The model is only the size of a washbasin. Three years ago, when Lei Jiangtou handed it over to the retired emperor, Liu Zhaosunji had been carrying it with him.

After so many years of playing with it, the wood has become patinated and exudes a woman's color and touch.

The retired emperor could assemble and disassemble the model with his eyes closed, his movements done in one go. From the pillars to the rear hall, from the Temple of Heaven to the Temple of Earth, from the arsenal to the museum, all the memories of Tianxin City were transformed into pieces of wood and assembled and rebuilt in front of the retired emperor.

I looked at this model day and night, imagining the grandeur of the capital when it was completed.

However, it was not until today that he realized that what he finally waited for was an unfinished building, and the wood made for him by the craftsmen was just a toy.

The empire is like this thing, good looking but useless.

Everything became empty.

Liu Zhaosun did not accept his fate.

He placed his hopes on his children. To be more precise, he placed his hopes on Emperor Taichu, Liu Kan.

Since he has spent his entire life trying to escape the law of cycles, his successors should continue to work hard. During Liu Kan's lifetime, the Great Qi Dynasty may be revitalized.

The children pretended to obey the emperor's orders, but neither Liu Yufei nor Liu Kan had any interest in Tianxin City.

Take the eldest princess as an example. Liu Yufei's appearance changed drastically after she had smallpox, and her originally pretty face was covered with pockmarks.

Fortunately, the eldest princess does not need to worry about her marriage. As long as the emperor gives an order, countless young men from the two families who are as handsome as Pan An will compete to be the prince consort and become the princess's dream lover.

The eldest princess was thirteen years old this year, already of marriageable age. The emperor was still hesitant, wondering whether to use Liu Yufei as a political tool and arrange a marriage with a European prince, even if that prince was much older than the princess.

However, the eldest princess has no interest in politics. She is just a foodie.

~～～～

After Pei Dahu left, Emperor Wu Ding sent someone to call the high priest's friend, a Portuguese named João Frederico Ludovice, who was a talented architect and was said to have made great achievements in the construction of the royal palace.

The Emperor said straight to the point, "A project I was so proud of has now been abandoned. The funds allocated by the Empire have vanished without a trace, and millions of taels of silver are nowhere to be found. In your opinion, should we continue construction of Tianxin City, or start over somewhere else?"

The Portuguese were told by the high priest that they could never say "no" to the Eastern kings, and that even a glance must show extreme obedience.

The retired emperor had just been betrayed by his close associates and was furious.

Ludovese was called Ludovizzi when he lived in Italy, and later, after arriving in Portugal, he twice dropped his family name Ludovigo.

"Your Majesty, if you want to achieve your grand goals, you must be able to reconcile with the past."

Frederico said to himself.

The tyrant standing before him, who called himself the "King of Kings," had no idea what he wanted to do. He was a bigot, a fool, and a madman.

He thought that as long as he relied on his imperial will, he could organize hundreds of thousands of people and build an unprecedented and world-renowned magnificent building in a wild land far away from the plains, a building more magnificent than the Louvre, the Pyramids, the Great Wall, the Mayan temples, and Notre Dame de Paris.

The emperor only needs to say to me, Ludwig or Ludwig, or as he said to the Portuguese, Ludvig, I want Tianxin City, and Tianxin City will appear all of a sudden?

dream!

"Your Majesty, life is short. The Tianxin City you desire will cost a hundred years of labor and wealth, far more than the ten years Song Yingxing and the others have said."

Liu Zhaosun was shocked. How could it become a hundred years?

"Judging from the models you've assembled and unloaded, this is a city far larger than Chang'an of the Tang Empire and ancient Roman Athens. The scale of the project is immense, unprecedented and unparalleled! Perhaps even a hundred years won't be enough, for by then, Your Majesty will be gone. Your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren will all be gone. I ask with great respect, is it really worth building a capital city that will take hundreds of years to complete?"

Out of the emperor's tolerance, Liu Zhaosun controlled his emotions and let the Portuguese continue speaking.

"What I want to build is the center of the Eastern Hemisphere. Of course it's worth it! Tianxin City is greater than all the capitals in ancient and modern times!"

"Your Majesty, even if you are still alive a hundred years from now, compared to the endless river of history, the Tianxin City you built is just a grain of sand on the beach... In short, the project is long, but life is short."

The time traveler didn't like to listen to boasting, but when he thought about the fact that Tianxin City had not been completed when Liu Kan passed away, he fell into endless sorrow.

"Go redesign it! The scale can only be bigger, not smaller!"

João Frederico Ludovese paid his respects and left to revise the design drawings and start building a new capital.

The order to re-conscript the labor force was issued.

The people are coming.

Some people come voluntarily, some are tempted by the promise of high salaries, some because they like adventure, and some to escape emotional entanglements, but almost all of them are forced to come.

Notices were posted in the streets and alleys of Liaodong, Korea, and the interior of the country. Because the number of volunteers was too small, the instructors led the pacification soldiers to the streets, broke into every household, pushed open the backyard gates, and went to the fields to see where those stubborn guys who refused to leave were hiding.

By autumn, they had gathered 10000, 20000, and 30000 men, all able-bodied men.

They were tied up with ropes just like convicts or slaves. The methods of tying them varied. Sometimes they were tied around their waists with ropes, sometimes with makeshift collars, and sometimes they were tied at the ankles. The same scene could be seen everywhere.

According to His Majesty's order, you should go to the construction site of Tianxin City inside the pass to work;

If the instructors were faithful to their duties (and most were), no one was spared, young and strong, or frail, even men barely past the age of childhood (over fifteen years old). Initially, only prisoners of war, foreign vassals, Mongols, Jurchens, Koreans, and Japanese were subjected to forced labor. Later, the pacification troops began to forcibly recruit Han Chinese from Liaodong.

The people first refused and tried to evade the offer, offering excuses such as their wives were about to give birth, their elderly mothers, a large family with children (they had an eighty-year-old mother and a three-year-old child), the wall was half-built, they had no food at home, and the fallow land needed to be cultivated.
If you state these reasons, the pacification soldiers will attack you before you can finish speaking. Anyone who dares to resist will be beaten. Many people were covered in blood as they were taken on the road.

The women were running and crying; the children were howling loudly.

The laborers were concentrated on the north bank of the Yangtze River, on Wudang Mountain, on the Han River or Danjiang River, and in unknown villages along the coast of the empire.

Or, gather around the execution platform.

Once tyranny begins, it will only get worse.

In Jingxiang, in Junzhou, in Wendeng, in the Liaodong land, on the Mongolian grasslands, in the mountains and plains, wherever Emperor Wuding's power reached, the people of Da Qi were tied to chariots and rolled forward.

Note that the binding here is not a metaphor, but a real binding.

The ties were only loosened when they became so tight that they tripped over each other; and everywhere women and children were seen begging the instructors, trying to bribe them with eggs or a hen, but the poor creatures were of no use at all.

The empire needed people to perform corvée labor, and it needed to ruthlessly expropriate gold, emeralds, diamonds, pepper, and cinnamon from remote areas. It needed to build Tianxin City, to march eastward to Korea, to conquer Japan, to maintain oppression against the Southern Ming, and to confront Zhang Zicheng... The empire needed a large number of cheap laborers.

Moscow doesn't believe in tears, and neither does Junzhou.

The soldiers walked from one place to another through fields, rivers, and hills. The post roads were reserved for the imperial soldiers, so they could only take small paths.

Millions of people are walking on the path worn out by their feet.

Overhead, the weather is unpredictable.

The daunting scorching sun and the torrential rain, everything turned into a curse on Da Qi and the emperor, and turned into the coolies' shouts and cries that resounded through the sky.

"The Emperor of Qi dies and the land is divided!
Heyhoo!

Heyhoo!

Hey!

Heyhoo!

Heyhoo!

Hey!

Transporting stones to Nanshan!

A heavy burden on your shoulders!

Thousands of people bowed their heads!

One person goes to heaven!
Transporting stones to Nanshan!

A heavy burden on your shoulders!

Tens of thousands of people are hanging their heads!

One person goes to heaven!
One person goes to heaven!"

But Liu Zhaosun did not ascend to heaven. If things continued at this pace, he would soon be buried in peace.

~~~~~
"Will the Emperor, after all, be rid of his wealth, or will he feed the tiger with his flesh?"

"The corvée labor of the people in the Jingxiang area has been extended back to the thirty years of Taichu. For the next few decades, the energy and financial resources of millions of people will be spent on that pile of wood and cement in Tianxin City. They are like prisoners, and the struggle will continue until they die. Don't you know that?"

Wu Xiao had been in the north for a long time and was indeed unaware of the tragedy that had occurred in Huguang. The oppression of the people by local officials had reached an outrageous level.

The Tianxin City under construction is just a large-scale Ningguta. Xie Yang has explained how the empire's tax and corvée system was tampered with by prefecture, county and city officials, and how it gradually turned into tyranny and evil governance.

He couldn't help but feel horrified. Half of the officials in Huguang were deceiving the court. They took the opportunity of building Tianxin City to embezzle materials and misappropriate money. After eating and drinking their fill, the corrupt officials just turned around and fled to the Southern Ming Dynasty and abroad. They got some official positions from Emperor Hongguang and continued to maintain their extravagant lives.

"We must extradite these parasites back here and chop them into pieces!"

The Great Qi Empire, created by the retired emperor, had serious flaws in its power design.

For example, too much power was given to middle-level officials, and the head of the empire was on the front line of the war for a long time, with a group of civil servants following the emperor around.

The long-term deformed political system has allowed a large number of willful parasites to breed in the upper and middle classes of the empire. They use relatives, friends, disciples, and fellow soldiers as bonds, and are intertwined in local chambers of commerce, schools, workshops, and even the military, sharing weal and woe, and clinging to the body of the Great Qi like leeches.

Liu Zhaosun was determined to cure the disease by scraping the bone (otherwise he would not have sent Pei Dahu to arrest the king's uncle), but the new direct forces had not yet been established, and suddenly attacking these tiger and fly opponents would have disastrous consequences.

If left unchecked, corruption and chaos would spread like a virus, from the remote corners of the empire to the imperial palace where Liu Zhaosun was located.

It was originally thought that by dealing with Kang Yingqian, Qiao Yiqi and others, the power would be firmly in the hands of the retired emperor. However, it only bred more parasites. The time traveler suddenly realized that the reason why Emperor Jiajing did not kill Yan Song and his son was that perhaps all emperors needed a white glove, a Yan Song-like figure to take the lead.

Sun Chuanting could not be like Yan Song, and neither could Ma Shiying. The two of them hindered each other and were at loggerheads with each other, neither giving in at all. The efficiency of the emperor's many new policies and national strategies was greatly reduced because of the open and secret struggles between the two.

Compared with Yan Song, Kang Yingqian had a close relationship with the retired emperor. When Kang was doing things in Da Qi, he would always keep a bottom line, which was to fight but not break. He would not delay important matters because of party disputes.

The knowledgeable people in the empire began to miss the old man whose ancestors sold aphrodisiacs and the old pervert who always carried Vajra Powder with him.

Only Lao Kang can take charge of the overall situation and reconcile all parties.

They hesitated whether to recall Kang Yingqian back to Da Qi to help deal with this mess.

It would be best if Qiao Yiqi came back too.

When Pei Dahu, Lin Yu and Wu Xiao were still a hundred miles away from Junzhou, they were greeted by an envoy sent by the king's uncle, and the three were greatly surprised.

Even someone as slow-witted as Lin Yu knew that the itinerary had been leaked long ago.

In other words, there are still Jin Dajiu's people in Liaodong and Shenyang.

Deafening laborer chants rang out on both sides of the post road, saying things like "Ten thousand people will be tied around the neck, and one person will ascend to heaven."

Isn't this a rebellion?
Perhaps, they and the Great Qi they are loyal to are not far from death.

(End of this chapter)