The sword came out of its sheath with a clatter, and a cold light appeared.
The old man was so angry that he slashed Prince Ning's neck with his sword.
Although the lion is old, he is still the king of beasts.
In an instant, Prince Ning Zhu Quan could almost see his horrified reflection on the sharp blade.
In the midst of lightning and flint, Pu Bucheng shouted at the door of the palace, "Seventeenth Master, accept the small stick, but run away with the big stick!"
Prince Ning reacted immediately, and the moment the old man's blade fell, he ducked sideways in embarrassment.
"Father, please forgive me!" He cried and begged for mercy, and ran directly outside.
With a clang, the old man's sword struck the gold bricks of the main hall, causing little sparks to appear.
At this moment, the old man was really murderous!
"Why did I give birth to these heartless bastards? Are they all so angry at me?"
At this time, the old man's accumulated dissatisfaction with all the feudal princes, as well as the dilemma of being a father and trying his best to protect them even though he knew they were wrong, burst out and intertwined, and he could no longer bear it.
. .
"Dare you run?" the old man said angrily.
Immediately, he picked it up and followed quickly.
"Father! Father, spare me!"
Ning Wang Zhu Quan's mind went blank. He had never seen such an angry emperor since he was a child. So much so that he temporarily forgot that this loving father was the master of hundreds of battles who was killed in a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
Only then did he realize that the bravery he was proud of was nothing in front of his father. The only thing he could do now was to beg for mercy.
He ran outside in panic and couldn't help but look back. Seeing that the old man was still chasing after him, he couldn't help but be horrified.
"Where to run?"
"Run to the East Palace!"
When things get to this point, the only one who can help me is Donggong!
However, just as he thought of this, he suddenly stumbled. In a panic, he stumbled on the threshold of the hall and fell directly from the door.
"You bastard!" The old man roared, right behind him, and Prince Ning seemed to feel the coldness of the blade coming from his heart.
"Father, spare me!"
Prince Ning shouted and turned over on the ground.
The old man had already raised his sword, and all the palace servants and guards around him knelt down at this moment, and no one dared to look.
Prince Ning looked at the tip of the knife and the furious emperor, with two lines of tears falling from the corners of his eyes.
In his mouth, he suddenly shouted like a child.
"father!"
The knife stopped in mid-air!
"Dad!" Prince Ning cried with a trembling voice, "I was wrong, dad!"
The old man was holding a knife, with complicated eyes. His tall body shook twice, and finally he sighed bitterly.
He threw away the knife in his hand, leaned against the doorframe, and slowly sat on the threshold.
"Pu Bu Cheng!" the old man whispered.
The latter, kneeling on the ground, crawled over on his hands and feet, "My slave is here!"
"Go tell them!" The old man said in the direction of the palace guards, "If even a word of what happened just now is revealed, none of them will have to live!"
"My slave obeys the order!"
"Get out of here!" The old man waved his hand.
In an instant, all the palace guards around the main hall were gone. Only the Zhu family, father and son, were left.
"Son!" the old man said slowly, hating how iron can't make steel, "Why can't you grow up?"
Prince Ning knelt on the ground, tears streaming down his face, "My son is wrong!"
"Where did you go wrong?"
"My sons and daughters should not buy those contraband items privately. Shouldn't I buy and sell war horses, cloth, and tea in private with your royal brothers?"
The old man put his hands in his sleeves, looked up at the sky, and suddenly interrupted the other party, "You are wrong, stupid!"
"Do you think that if you bring your brothers together to make a fortune, they will be able to say good things about you?"
"Do you think others will say that you, Prince Ning, are righteous? People will say that you are stupid. Others do bad things secretly, but you are the only one who is afraid that others will not know that you do bad things!"
"My son is as stupid as a dog!" King Ning kowtowed.
"Not only are you stupid, but you are also bad!" the old man said slowly, "When you pull them away, you are actually leading them to a dead end!"
There was something that the old man didn't say, but kept it in his heart.
"You call us daddy today. A tiger's poison cannot eat its seeds. I'll spare you! In the future, when our daddy is gone, who will you call us? Who will spare you? Who will spare your brothers?"
"Go forward! Go forward!" the old man continued.
Prince Ning knelt and crawled forward with some fear, until he reached the old man's feet.
The old man slowly took off his cloth shoes and gently tapped Prince Ning on the shoulder, "Tell me, who gave you the idea to buy salt from Li Jinglong? There are so many places in the world where you can buy salt, why do you have to do it here?
Where can I buy it?”
King Ning remembered what his previous staff had said and did not dare to hide anything. He said in detail, "After Li Jinglong took those salt farms, I didn't want to buy them from him at first. But I bought them from other places."
, Firstly, there is not such a large quantity. Secondly, it cannot be transported!"
"Start from Jiaodong and go to Datong, Hebei"
The old man's face gradually became ferocious again.
From Prince Ning's description, a route appeared in the old man's mind, a route that was all guarded by his sons.
The King of Qi in Tangshan, Hebei Province, the Dai King in Datong, and the King of Gu in Xuanfu
According to the confessions of those businessmen, countless salt, tea, cloth, candies and other products are transported along this road every year, and the 50,000 kilograms of salt in Jiaodong is just a drop in the ocean.
"You have a lot of face!" The old man sneered, "Who came up with this idea in the first place?"
"It was the twenty-fifth year when the kings left the fortress."
The enfeoffment of the nine border fortress kings of the Ming Dynasty was not for defense but for offense.
The King of Qin was the longest among the kings. Every year, he gathered the nine frontier fortress kings and went out to Mobei, sifting through the Northern Yuan people on the grassland like a net over and over again.
"At that time, my son heard a few words from the fourth brother and became interested in it."
"Did he tell you on purpose? Or did he say it in front of everyone?" The old man suddenly interjected and asked.
"I didn't say it to my son deliberately, nor did I say it in front of everyone!" Prince Ning thought about it and said, "At the end of the Northern Expedition, the fourth brother, the seventh brother, the thirteenth brother, the fourteenth brother, the sixteenth brother
Brother and his sons went hunting. That time, Brother Sixteen had just become a vassal and said something about the poverty of the fiefdom!" After that, he looked at the old man and said fearfully, "Tell me, the salary given by the father and the property of the fiefdom are...
The income is simply not enough to support the men under my command!"
"Then, the fourth brother said this!" (Qi, Dai, Zhuang, Qing, the four Sai kings)
"What on earth did he say?" the old man said angrily.
"That's right." King Ning was horrified. "At that time, the fourth brother said that the name of the vassal king sounds nice, but who knows it? The borderland is bitter and cold, and it is far inferior to the prosperous big cities inland. They are eating, drinking and having fun in Wuchang or Chengdu.
, let’s eat sand at the border!”
"Our subordinates are either convicts and consigned to the army, or they are Han and Hu hybrids. We are all unruly and difficult to control. We have no money or food, let alone recruiting tribes outside the wall!"
"The Governor's Office of the Fifth Army, the Ministry of Household Affairs, and the Ministry of War are also keeping a close eye on us. There are some things that we can only make up our own minds about. My father also said that we kings of Sai have the right to adapt to changes! Then let's be more flexible and don't be like that.
Pedantic!”
"Although the frontier fortress is poor, there are plenty of good horses, cattle, sheep, leather, alluvial gold, medicinal materials, etc. These things are not valuable here, but when transported to the inland, they are worth a lot of money!"
"Cloth, tea, and fine salt can be found everywhere in the Central Plains, but in the frontier fortress, three good war horses can be exchanged for an iron pot!"
After saying that, Prince Ning looked at the old man again and carefully climbed back two steps, "So, my son has thoughts that he shouldn't have!"
He was afraid that the old man would hit him, but unexpectedly, after hearing this, the old man sat there motionless.
"What else did he say?" The old man's voice suddenly became hoarse for some reason.
Ning Wang said, "I won't say anything more! Oh, by the way, the fourth brother also said that the brothers are all brothers of the same family. Although we are far apart, we can't stop contacting each other. We always write letters to each other if we need anything!"
Suddenly, the old man laughed silently.
"Are you not the only one doing this?" the old man asked again.
Prince Ning lowered his head and hesitated again and again, "Father, in fact, brothers have their own ways of making money. Even the second and third brothers do not do these things."
The old man slowly stood up holding on to the door frame, stepped across the threshold, and asked, "You said it was the time when Hongwu went out to the fortress in the 25th year of his reign. Was your elder brother still there that time?"
"Yes, eldest brother was still there at that time!" King Ning said.
This chapter has been completed!