Zhu Youxiao could understand that going out with a first-tier star and taking a third-tier star out would naturally attract a lot of attention.
Ignoring the gazes of these people, Zhu Youxiao walked directly into the Royal Academy with a smile on his face.
Although the scene before him was not what Zhu Youxiao wanted, nor what he wanted to see, it didn't matter. He had to keep a happy mood since he came here today.
The matter will be dealt with soon.
Although Zhu Youxiao did not look at these people, they were all looking at him. Some of them even began to look around, wanting to know who this person was.
But no one knew Zhu Youxiao, and for a while no one knew who Zhu Youxiao was.
In this situation, the other party's identity was unknown, and they looked quite grand and unusual, so naturally no one came up to cause trouble.
Zhu Youxiao was also happy and relaxed, taking his people for a stroll in the Royal Academy in Yangzhou.
Speaking of which, the environment of the Royal Academy in Yangzhou is very good, and it must have cost a lot of money to build it.
But this is reasonable, after all, it was built by salt merchants from Yangzhou. Who was the richest person in the Ming Dynasty?
That is, these salt merchants. And this is the place they use to win people's hearts, so naturally they are willing to spend money. Although it is now under the control of the imperial court, the land and buildings are still theirs.
As he walked forward, Zhu Youxiao looked at Wei Changsheng beside him and asked, "Did anything happen when the academy was reformed here? Are they so willing to hand it over?"
"Your Majesty, they are very cooperative." Wei Changsheng said quickly.
Although Wei Changsheng didn't know why, he knew what His Majesty meant by asking this, so he directly told him the result.
However, Wei Changsheng really had no say in this matter. At that time, he had just arrived in Yangzhou and was not aware of many things in Yangzhou.
Let alone the things at the top, Wei Changsheng still hadn't figured out the things below. The things at the top were simply not something he could find out about. He only knew a little bit of the basic situation.
At that time, after the court officials arrived, the salt merchants in Yangzhou agreed very readily and directly donated the academy.
In fact, they were very cooperative, and during the reform process, they would help no matter what difficulties there were; even when there were no difficulties, they would take the initiative to find something to do to make the reform of the academy go very smoothly.
Wei Changsheng didn't feel anything at that time. After all, it was not his place to interfere in other people's affairs.
But things were different now. After such a long period of training, and having spent so much time in Yangzhou, and knowing the ups and downs of Yangzhou well enough, Wei Changsheng had already sensed something unusual. There must be something he didn't know about.
Zhu Youxiao nodded and asked, "Then do you know who is in charge of this?"
Wei Changsheng knew what the emperor wanted to ask. To put it bluntly, he wanted to know who had the final say among these salt merchants.
Wei Changsheng said, "Your Majesty, in Yangzhou, there are three largest salt merchants. One is the Wang family from Shanxi, whose ancestors were in the salt business."
Zhu Youxiao was well aware that the Shanxi Wang family was actually the family of Wang Chonggu, the former governor of Sanbian. Their family had several brothers, many of whom held official positions, and controlled the entire Sanbian region's market.
You know, when the Ming Dynasty was founded, the garrisons in those places had to transport food. The court itself suffered from high losses and low efficiency, so it handed it over to merchants.
There was a very good policy at that time. Merchants sent grain to the garrison and exchanged it for salt permits. The merchants took the salt permits back to the local salt fields to buy salt and then sold it.
During this process, the imperial court received taxes, the soldiers at the border received food, and the salt merchants received salt permits and made money. It was a win-win situation for all three parties. This was the policy formulated by Zhu Yuanzhang at the time.
But people are greedy, and the salt merchants didn't want to do that. Transporting grain was too tiring. So they came up with a second solution: they bought a large piece of land at the border, hired people to farm there, and harvested the grain every year and sent it directly to the soldiers at the border. Then the merchants would use the salt permits to buy salt.
This action led to a significant increase in the population of the border areas and the development of land. This was the commercial settlement at that time, and it was very effective.
But the salt merchants were still not satisfied. This was too time-consuming and the profit was too small. So they did another thing and encouraged officials and the court to let them buy salt directly with silver.
To put it bluntly, we will no longer care about the soldiers at the border, and we will no longer provide food to the border, but will directly give silver and money to the court.
These salt merchants directly converted their original nature of serving the imperial court into commercial nature, and they completely sucked blood from the country, becoming a group of parasites and making no contribution at all.
In order to achieve this goal, they bribed court officials, nobles and relatives of the emperor heavily to make them agree to this condition.
The person who agreed to this matter was the famous Emperor Hongzhi, the father of Emperor Zhengde, the emperor known as a benevolent monarch.
In addition, these salt merchants also encouraged the emperor, saying that using silver to buy salt could increase taxes for the court, but in fact this money was deducted from the soldiers at the border. The salt merchants took the lion's share and gave a small portion to the court.
In addition, the nobles and relatives of the emperor were seriously occupied. They took the salt permits into their own hands and then resold them to salt merchants. They did nothing but took a lot of money.
The nobles and relatives went to incite the emperor, cried poor, and asked for salt permits, and then turned around and sold them. It was from that time that the border was abandoned, the salt merchants were crazy and sucked blood, the nobles and relatives exploited them wantonly, and the national finances became even more inadequate.
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