The rain was pouring down and showed no sign of letting up.
The Forbidden City is low-lying, the moat is overflowing, and there are signs of water accumulation on the roads in the palace.
The palace people wore raincoats and carried sandbags to build a temporary isolation belt beside the road to prevent the water from the culvert from pouring back onto the road.
The Jing army carried the imperial chariot and trudged forward on the road that was flooded to their shins.
Inside the slightly swaying carriage, the emperor and the prince could not care less about the danger outside, because there was a more dangerous situation waiting for them ahead.
"Actually, if the Fourth can't do this, there will be big trouble in the morning tomorrow morning." Zhu Yuanzhang was so worried that he gnashed his teeth.
"Yes, I heard that hundreds of officials will jointly submit a petition to ask my father to severely punish the fourth son and issue an edict to permanently ban such acts, otherwise they will resign collectively." The prince's good relationship with the civil servants allowed him to get the results as soon as possible.
latest news.
"Of course, it's also very possible that they deliberately leaked it to my son and put pressure on us in this way."
"Pressure?" Zhu Yuanzhang sneered, with murderous intent. "We think they have lost their minds. How many people have we replaced in the court? Are we still short of them?"
"But Father, this time is quite difficult." The prince said helplessly: "After all, we are the first to take the blame this time. What if there is a real stalemate and no one is willing to become an official?"
"Impossible, it's hard to find a three-legged toad, and two-legged people are everywhere." Zhu Yuanzhang shook his head and said: "The worst thing is that the Guozi students will graduate early and take office en masse!"
"Isn't that a mess? They are still students and don't know anything about governing the country." The prince smiled bitterly and said, "The imperial court must be paralyzed."
"It's not that serious. The scholars have not been able to rebel for ten years. We have many ways to force those civil servants to submit - at the worst, we can put shackles on them and let them work. If they can't complete their tasks, they won't be given food. If they do something wrong, they will be cut off.
With one finger, they will be sure to obey."
"So we are not too worried if the civil servants are making trouble." Zhu Yuanzhang sighed: "Well, what we are actually worried about is that this time, the group of military generals will also follow suit - now it seems that not only Zhongshu Province, but also
The Governor's Mansion also has the potential to lose its strength."
"Alas..." The prince also sighed. In the past, either the civil servants or the generals would make trouble. The two groups were incompatible with each other and would even try to undermine each other.
The biggest difference between this time and before is that the military commanders took the lead, while the civil servants played the drums, and the civil and military forces cooperated. That's why my father was so worried.
"It would be great if Uncle Deng was here." The prince sighed again.
"Yes." Zhu Yuanzhang nodded, pulled open his collar irritably and said: "It would be great if Deng Yu was here. He is the purest soldier. He only knows how to enforce orders and prohibitions. Then Feng Sheng's mind is much more complicated. Even if he becomes our
My in-laws haven’t completely broken off from there either.”
"There's nothing we can do about it," the prince said softly. His father was too forceful.
"Yes, he was born in Huaixi. He relied on the support of a group of old brothers to get where he is today. How could he die in Huaixi? But even your cousin..." Zhu Yuanzhang felt frustrated for a while.
"There is no need to doubt my cousin's loyalty." The prince said in shock. His father's suspicion must be too serious. Why is he even worried about his cousin?
"Yes, of course there is no need to doubt it." Zhu Yuanzhang said with a flash of disappointment in his eyes: "But Bao'er is also fiercely opposed to the surveillance minister. Originally, we wanted him to do it. He is more experienced than the old four.
If there are too many, people will definitely not be able to overturn the old foundation.
"But he actually refused, and we even slapped the table with him and refused to do anything." Zhu Yuanzhang said depressedly: "There is no way, so we asked the fourth child to take the responsibility, and the result was like this..."
"That's it." The prince then understood that his father was worried that his cousin would side with the minister, which would have a huge impact on his father's prestige. "My cousin will also come to the banquet later, and I will talk to him alone.
Let’s talk and stop him from being taken advantage of.”
"Well, let's talk about it. Let's talk about it." Zhu Yuanzhang closed his eyes tiredly and said slowly: "Son, you see, right? It's harder to start a business than to maintain it. This is absolutely true."
"Yes, when starting a business, everyone thinks in the same place and works hard in the same place." The prince experienced it personally and said with emotion: "When running a business, everyone wants different things and naturally has different ideas."
"Yes, we have different ideas, so we can only act separately." Zhu Yuanzhang said calmly: "In the end, either they split our heads, or we split theirs..."
"Dad..." The prince almost choked on his saliva and said speechlessly: "So this is what you meant by splitting up."
"Then what do you think it means?" Zhu Yuanzhang said calmly: "But the southwest has not yet calmed down, and I don't know what difficulties we will encounter when recovering Yunnan. It's not time to go on a killing spree..."
"They just saw this opportunity and knew that we couldn't do anything to them at this time." Zhu Yuanzhang punched the car wall angrily and said:
"We can only kill the chicken first to scare the monkeys, so that they can be honest for a while!"
"Then let's not attack Yunnan first, and completely resolve the internal problems first. Anyway, the southwest has been delayed for so many years, and it would not be wrong to delay it for two years." The prince said softly.
In fact, he also wanted to say that the arrogance and wantonness of Hu Weiyong's party today is inseparable from his father's connivance towards the Hu party, especially Hu Weiyong.
But since my father has already made up his mind to change, there is no need to add any more obstacles to him.
"Wrong. Yunnan is still to be fought, and preparations must be made with great fanfare, offering the highest reward - the title of Duke to those who recover Yunnan!" Zhu Yuanzhang shook his head decisively, and said in a deep voice:
"You still don't understand those uncles and uncles of yours? There is no such thing as war for them. They just have nothing to do all day long, so they follow Hu Weiyong and his gang to fool around. Once there is a big war, they will fight like dogs.
Like bones, he ran over after smelling the smell, fearing that he would not be part of it."
"What Dad said is really... rough and unreasonable." The prince couldn't help but smile bitterly.
Neither father nor son said who the chicken was, but they both knew who the bird was.
Only that bird didn't know it was a chicken...
~~
The royal chariot landed steadily in front of Kunning Palace.
"Give me a hand." Zhu Yuanzhang stood up and then stopped. "The old habit happened again."
On rainy days, his knee arthritis gets worse.
The prince quickly stepped forward to help his father.
Zhu Yuanzhang put his hand on the prince's shoulder and stood up, sighing: "You are right, dad is old."
"Dad, you know what I mean..." the prince said softly.
"Understood." Zhu Yuanzhang nodded and said: "But it is true that time is not forgiving. Dad must do everything we should do while we are still alive, and we cannot leave the trouble to our children and grandchildren."
"Yes, if some problems are not solved now, they will have to pay ten times or a hundred times the price to solve them in the future, or they may even never be solved." The prince nodded.
"It's just that the burden on your shoulders is too heavy. Can you bear it?" Zhu Yuanzhang looked at his eldest son with pity.
"Yes." The prince nodded seriously. "I can't support myself alone, but fortunately I still have good brothers."
"Yes, 'brothers fighting tigers, father and son going into battle', that's what we are talking about." Zhu Yuanzhang smiled happily and said: "Get out of the car, eat early and go back early to see those two grudges."
"Hey." The prince responded and helped his father get out of the chariot.
