Take control of Wei Zhongxian at the start and confiscate 100 million from him!

Chapter 141 What I want to do is send you to see them!

Standing beside Zhu Youjian, Li Ruolian was the person closest to the sound.

The moment those words struck him like a cold stone thrown into the lake of his heart, this commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, whose will had long been tempered to the point of being as hard as iron, found his body trembling slightly involuntarily.

Throughout his life, he obeyed countless orders, from the Eastern Palace to the Golden Hall, from secret edicts to imperial decrees. He had long been accustomed to any voice emanating from the imperial power, whether majestic or urgent, weary or gloomy.

But he had never heard such a voice before. It was as if all human emotions had been stripped away, leaving only the syllables of absolute will.

A pale white lightning bolt seemed to flash through Li Ruolian's mind.

The Emperor...is going to take action personally?!
This thought horrified him even more than the nearly one hundred heads that had fallen from the Qin King's personal guards.

Since the founding of the nation by Emperor Taizu, the emperor has resided in the imperial court, holding the vermilion brush and the jade seal, wielding the power to look down upon all living beings, rather than a weapon stained with the blood of sinners!
The hand of the monarch symbolizes the stability and dignity of the state. To personally execute a vassal king, even one who has committed heinous crimes, undermines the tacit understanding and royal dignity that have been passed down for over two hundred years and are deeply ingrained in the court.

This is a declaration to the world that all the rules of the past can be broken under the new emperor!
However, the shock only lingered in Li Ruolian's eyes for less than a moment.

When the emperor's will has become an undeniable fact, all he needs to do is become the sharpest and most reliable extension of that will!
Li Ruolian gripped the ebony scabbard tightly with her left hand and held the gold-threaded hilt loosely in her right. She bent down and respectfully presented the sword to Zhu Youjian with both hands.

……

At this moment, Zhu Youjian's world consisted of only three things: himself, the cold sword, and the granary gate that resembled the maw of a giant beast.

He reached out and grasped the cold hilt of the sword, his fingers slowly closing together.

"Zheng——"

The longsword was slowly drawn out.

The gleaming sword blade drew a stark white arc in the bleak afternoon sunlight, and Zhu Youjian's own cold eyes were clearly reflected on the smooth, mirror-like surface of the blade.

The emperor was not wearing armor; he was still dressed in his everyday clothes, which were slightly dusty from his long journey.

But when he took his first step toward the granary, sword in hand, tip pointing diagonally toward the ground, the light and shadow of the entire world seemed to be distorted in the eyes of all the soldiers present.

The young emperor seemed to be one with some grand and transcendent being.

Under the watchful eyes of everyone, Zhu Youjian walked step by step toward the dark granary.

His steps were not fast, but they carried an unshakeable rhythm, each step like an invisible giant drum striking heavily on everyone's heart.

one more time.

It's so overwhelming that people can't breathe.

Those soldiers who had just been fighting bravely and fearlessly were now staring wide-eyed, many even forgetting to breathe, their weapons drooping unconsciously.

The visual and psychological impact of this scene is a thousand times stronger than the massacre of a thousand people just now!
The massacre was the general's order, the cooperation of his comrades, and the violence of the collective.

At this moment, it is a war fought by the emperor alone!
That tall, imposing figure stretched longer and longer in everyone's eyes, as if transforming into a mountain range stretching across the heavens and earth, majestic and austere, silently walking into the darkness that symbolized endless wealth and heinous sins...

The moment Zhu Youjian stepped into the granary, his mind was surprisingly calm.

He didn't consider the kind of upheaval this move would cause in the government and among the public.

My thoughts drifted to even more distant places.

I was reminded of the Wenhua Hall in the capital, where those learned ministers always talked about the ancestral laws, as if those four words were a panacea.

I thought of the ancestral tablets of the Ming Dynasty enshrined in the Imperial Ancestral Temple, high above, enjoying the incense offerings for ten thousand generations, but it seems that they have long forgotten how the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang went from a poor cowherd to driving out the Mongols and unifying China with a three-foot sword.

Whose world was the Ming Dynasty truly?
Is the world ruled by these princes and nobles surnamed Zhu, or by all the people of the world?

Zhu Youjian would never have hesitated on this issue before, nor was he bound by any so-called kinship or ancestral face.

When he witnessed firsthand the hell on earth in Shaanxi, saw the lavish feasts and stench of the wealthy in the Qin Prince's mansion, and smelled the rich, intoxicating aroma of grain in the granary, all the confusion in his heart vanished.

My empire should belong to the people.

And the ancestors of the Zhu family should be recognized by the people of the world!

This thought, like a refined golden light, took shape completely in his mind.

At this point, my mind is at peace, and I have no more worries!
……

Outside the granary, Sun Chuanting, the powerful regional official, stood frozen in place as if he had been struck by a spell. His lips parted slightly, as if he wanted to say something, but he found that his throat was so dry that he could not utter a sound.

His shock was different from Li Ruolian's.

The emperor's next move was enough to cause a huge uproar in the court! Censors and officials would swarm in like sharks smelling blood, using all the Confucian classics they had learned to criticize this action mercilessly.

The imperial family members will feel even more insecure, as they will believe that this is the emperor sending a dangerous signal to all descendants of the Zhu family!

Stability is the cornerstone that keeps this vast empire running.

At this moment, however, the emperor was about to personally carve a shocking hole in this foundation stone!

but……

Since being ordered to oversee the troops in Shaanxi, the human tragedies he had witnessed had far exceeded the limits that any report or document could describe.

He thought he was fully prepared, but when he saw with his own eyes that "exchanging children to eat" was no longer just four cold words in the history books, when he saw the white bones stretching for miles along both sides of the official road, when he saw people fighting to the death for a moldy steamed bun, his heart, which had long been hardened to the point of iron, was still deeply hurt.

It was a deep-seated sense of powerlessness.

He knew where the problem lay; he knew that the magnificent Qin Prince's mansion held enough grain to sustain countless people.

But he was a subject, a patcher of the empire. All he could do was to carefully maneuver, negotiate, and even beg from those corrupt members of the royal family, gentry, and officials who were rotten to the core within the framework of ancestral laws!
He was like a master doctor facing a patient with a terminal illness whose internal organs were covered in malignant sores. He knew that the only way to save the patient was to use the sharpest of techniques to scrape away the rotten flesh and bones without mercy!

But he dared not, and could not.

Because those rotten pieces of flesh happen to have the surname Zhu!

Until the emperor himself arrived.

Until this excessively young emperor overturned the chessboard, giving him an answer he had longed for but dared not even imagine.

Sun Chuanting's heart clenched suddenly.

The pent-up frustration and sense of defeat that had been building up for so long finally found an outlet at this moment!

Perhaps... this empire, already riddled with holes and rotten to the core, needs precisely such a crack that the monarch himself has carved open!
Only by releasing the pus and blood that have accumulated for over two hundred years in the most extreme and bloody way can we gain a sliver of... a chance for new life!

The moment this thought crossed his mind, Sun Chuanting shuddered. He was horrified to discover that, far from the instinctive resistance a subject should have for the emperor's transgressions, a long-suppressed, almost violent pleasure was rising within him!

He finally saw it clearly, understood it, and was shocked like never before!
This sword can only be wielded by one person in the world, and only one person dares to wield it.

But in the past two hundred years, which emperor has ever dared to truly turn his sword against his own clan?
They might rebuke them or strip them of their titles, but these were merely minor punishments to serve as a warning.

To personally execute a vassal king with a weapon stained with blood?
This is something that no emperor of the Ming Dynasty had ever done, or even dared to think of!

But the emperor before him not only thought about it, but also did it. He did it so naturally, so calmly, as if he were just doing a trivial matter of course.

Sun Chuanting closed his eyes, forcibly suppressing the turmoil in his heart. When he opened them again, all the hesitation, shock, and scholar-official reserve in his eyes had faded, leaving only an unprecedentedly resolute awareness.

He straightened his clothes and slowly bowed deeply to the emperor's retreating figure as he walked into the darkness.

……

The granary was not as dark as one might imagine.

Rows of windows, sealed off by wooden fences, opened on the sloping walls of the warehouse roof. The dim afternoon sunlight pierced through years of dust and cobwebs, transforming into visible golden beams that slanted down, casting countless swirling dust particles into the air.

This place is like an ancient temple that has been forgotten for hundreds of years.

The temple does not enshrine gods or Buddhas, but rather "mountains"!
One after another, mountains of grain were formed by countless bulging sacks!
Millet, white rice, wheat, and even the finest beans... sacks and stacks were neatly arranged, almost touching the towering top of the granary. Between each granary, there was a narrow passageway that could only accommodate three people.

The beams of sunlight shone on these grain mountains, making the round burlap sacks gleam like dragon scales.

This is the wealth accumulated by generations of the Qin Prince's Mansion through the exploitation of the people; it is the lifeblood that allows the people of the entire Xi'an Prefecture to safely weather this desperate and famine-stricken year.

It is also a mountain of evidence against Zhu Cunshu.

At the foot of this "mountain" composed of countless riches and sins, a fat figure is huddled in the darkest corner, like a fat field mouse trembling in its hole, cornered by a hunting dog.

Prince Zhu Cunshu of Qin.

He leaned against the cold, hard wall, trembling like a leaf in the wind. The wet patch on his crotch was spreading rapidly, and the strong, pungent stench mixed with the sour smell of fear diluted the rich aroma of the grain.

Zhu Cunshu ran into this place out of the instinct for survival that drives animals.

This was the place he knew best and felt most at ease in; it was the symbol of his wealth and the cornerstone of his power. He naively believed that as long as he hid in the fortress he had built with gold, silver, and grain, he could gain a pitiful sense of security.

However, when the footsteps sounded unhurriedly from the dark entrance, all his fantasies were ruthlessly crushed.

"Ta...ta...ta..."

The sound of footsteps was amplified countless times in the empty and silent granary, creating an echo.

Each strike was like the gavel of a judge in the underworld, striking Zhu Cunshu's heart heavily.

Zhu Cunshu looked up in alarm and saw a tall figure holding a long sword walking slowly toward him through beams of golden light at the boundary between light and darkness.

The sunlight outlined the figure with a majestic golden silhouette, but it did nothing to illuminate his cold, iron-like face.

The longsword, pointing diagonally at the ground, had its gleaming blade reflecting the faint light filtering through the skylight, flashing intermittently.

In Zhu Cunxu's vision, which was completely distorted and dominated by fear, what walked out was not the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, but a Yama who crawled out of a mountain of corpses and a sea of ​​blood!

"No...don't come any closer...don't come any closer..."

Zhu Cunshu let out a hoarse moan, desperately trying to move backward with his hands and feet, attempting to squeeze himself deeper into the gap between the corner of the wall and the grain mountain, as if that would make him disappear from the world.

Zhu Youjian ignored his dying wails and continued walking.

His gaze swept over the golden "mountains," his eyes calm, as calm as a lake frozen for a thousand years.

But beneath this extreme calm lies a fury powerful enough to scorch the heavens and boil the seas.

At least some of this grain should have been turned into bowls of steaming hot porridge and delivered to the mouths of those people who were eating clay, exchanging children for food, and ultimately dying in ditches six months or even a year ago, or at least after his frequent communication and negotiation with the Prince of Qin's mansion in the past few months. It should have been the foundation of the court's disaster relief and the stabilizing force for the situation in Shaanxi!

Now they lie here quietly, like the most vicious irony, becoming burial goods for the Qin Prince's carefree, extravagant, and decadent lifestyle.

Zhu Youjian finally stopped in front of Zhu Cunshu.

"Your Majesty... Your Majesty!"

The shadow of death loomed over him as if it were a tangible reality, utterly crushing Zhu Cunxu's last shred of nerves. He howled and crawled over like a dog, stretching out his greasy hands to try and grab the emperor's legs.

However, before his hand could even touch the hem of his casual clothes, it was blocked by a long sword placed in front of him.

The sharp tip of the sword gently pressed against his throat.

The icy, bone-chilling touch seemed to freeze Zhu Cunxu's soul. His whole body stiffened, all his movements stopped, and only his obese body continued to tremble violently uncontrollably.

"Your Majesty, I confess my guilt! I deserve to die ten thousand times! Your Majesty, I truly confess my guilt!"

Zhu Cunshu knelt on the ground, giving up all struggle, and began to kowtow frantically, banging his head against the ground with a loud "thump thump," completely ignoring the fact that his forehead was already rubbed raw and bloody from the rough ground, looking like a madman.

"Your Majesty, I beg for forgiveness! I apologize to the people of Shaanxi! I am willing to serve Your Majesty like a beast of burden, even unto death, begging only for Your Majesty's mercy and forgiveness!" He cried and wailed, making incoherent promises.

"This...this grain! All the grain in the manor, I, your nephew, offer it all! No! I will give it all to the disaster victims! I, your nephew, will personally distribute the porridge, and I...I, your nephew, will kowtow to each and every one of the disaster victims to apologize! I beg you! Your Majesty! For the sake of our shared bloodline as Emperor Taizu Gao, please forgive me!"

Zhu Cunshu, in tears and displaying his utterly disgraceful behavior, completely shattered the last shred of dignity a Ming dynasty prince possessed.

Looking at his disgusting appearance, Zhu Youjian slowly raised the long sword in his hand and gently slashed the sharp tip of the sword at a small mountain of grain stacks beside him.

"Thorn-"

A soft yet clear sound of tearing silk rang out.

The sturdy burlap sack was as fragile as a piece of paper under the sharp edge, and a long gash was easily torn open.

The next moment, a golden waterfall cascaded down from the breach.

"Hua la la la la..."

That was the sound of countless grains of rice colliding, rubbing against each other, and rolling down. In this silent granary, the sound was so crisp and melodious, yet it also carried a heart-wrenching and desolate sorrow. It was as if countless hungry souls were making a silent cry!
Zhu Youjian's voice was very soft and slow, yet it traveled to Zhu Cunshu's ears word by word, as if carved on a sword.

"Apologizing is your business."

Those words were like a bucket of ice water poured over his head, abruptly stopping Zhu Cunxu's frantic kowtowing. He looked up in astonishment, his blood-stained face filled with confusion and bewilderment.

Zhu Youjian paused, his gaze slowly shifting from the golden grain mountain to the thick wooden beams of the granary roof, and then to the gray sky above Xi'an. He seemed to see countless wronged souls lying dead on the roadside in Shaanxi, their eyes wide open in disbelief!
The emperor's voice carried an echoing quality, as if it were a historical judgment.

"Whether or not I forgive you is a matter for Emperor Taizu Gaozu and the millions of Shaanxi people who died because of you!"

Zhu Cunshu knelt there blankly, his mouth agape, making "ho ho" sounds but unable to utter a single complete word. At this moment, his mind, which had long been emptied by wine, women, wealth, and power, finally understood as if by divine inspiration.

What he faced was never a matter of internal royal punishment or family affairs concerning the relationship between uncle and nephew.

It was a national trial with the glorious Ming Dynasty as the courtroom, the common people as the plaintiffs, and the spirit of the late Emperor Taizu as the supervisor!

In the face of this trial, his laughable blood ties and his status as a vassal king were so insignificant that they didn't even amount to a speck of dust.

Finally, the emperor raised his long sword and slowly uttered the last words Zhu Cunxu would ever hear in this world—

"What I need to do is send you to see them!"

(End of this chapter)