"fart!"

Zhao Liben sneered and said with disdain: "Do you have anything to do with Chunjie?"

"Grandpa, is there anyone who says this about his grandson?" Zhao Hao was immediately aggrieved: "In every sense, I am still a child."

"That's just a matter of time." Zhao Liben snorted, "Don't just think about sucking up to someone. The royal family's free food isn't as delicious as you think."

"Oh?" Zhao Hao immediately showed an expression of humility and willingness to learn. After all, in this matter, his grandfather was the real king.

"Alas, I thought you were still young and couldn't get involved in that level, so I didn't mention it to you. I didn't expect you to be so capable of doing so. If I don't explain it to you clearly, I'm afraid it will cause a disaster."

Zhao Liben picked up the teacup, took a sip and said, "Let me have a good chat with you today."

"Yes, grandpa." Zhao Hao immediately sat up straight and listened.

"The Ming Dynasty is no longer the Ming Dynasty of the Second Ancestor's time. The supreme and murderous imperial power in the Second Ancestor's hands has long been wrapped in layers of cocoons."

Then Zhao Liben said expressionlessly: "It is only in the northern provinces that you can still feel the existence of imperial power, because you still rely on the court to defend against border threats. Back in our south, who still takes the one sitting on the dragon throne seriously? In the southeast, let alone the princess, even the imperial edict is sometimes no different from straw paper."

"If I wipe my butt, it will definitely be more comfortable." Zhao Hao complained in his heart and put it on his bucket list.

However, these words coming from the mouth of a double-top Jinshi and former Nanjing Ministry of Revenue Minister are indeed enough to make people's hair stand on end.

"Is it really that exaggerated?" Zhao Hao's voice was a little hoarse. He always thought that this was the Longqing Dynasty, and the situation should be better...

"Haha..." Zhao Liben laughed coldly and said, "What is imperial power? Is it the imperial procession in the Forbidden City? Or is it the emperor's order for his subjects to die and they have to die? Those are just tricks to please the emperor and deceive the people into being obedient."

Zhao Hao was shocked when he heard this, thinking that his grandfather really had alcohol.

"Don't worry, your grandmother's people are already watching outside."

Zhao Liben saw through his worry and said sarcastically, "You dared to slap Lord Xu in the face in public, and you're still afraid of hearing some gossip?"

"My grandson is really not very courageous." Zhao Hao said embarrassedly, "I was careful enough at Lingji Palace that time, but I didn't expect that old man would really get angry."

"Do you think that because Lord Xu has named 'a hundred schools of thought contending', he will allow different voices to be heard on the stage?" Zhao Liben sneered.

"The so-called Lingji Palace lectures are his way of using the royal school of thought to achieve sainthood. As long as all the scholars in the world abandon the theory of reason and believe in the royal school of thought, it doesn't matter whether he, the spiritual leader of the royal school of thought, becomes the prime minister or not. Anyway, his words are the law and no one dares to disobey. It is more effective than an imperial decree."

As he said this, he suddenly kicked Zhao Hao on the left buttocks and said, "How could you come to someone else's place and speak nonsense in front of their boss, saying that psychology should take care of itself and leave the rest to science."

"Oh, so the study of the mind can only improve oneself and the family, but governing the country and the world depends on your science?" Zhao Liben gave his grandson a thumbs up and said, "He is my son, Zhao Liben. He is fierce and crazy!"

"It's just one person's opinion." Zhao Hao now basically understands the old man's temper. He just likes to play big and go off-road. He is so respectful and honest all day long, which does not please the old man.

Is it because he has been frustrated all his life, and always feels suffocated to have to step down and rest before he can really show his talents?

Zhao Hao made a random guess, then smiled and said, "Grandpa, let's talk about what imperial power is."

"Don't interrupt me next time. Don't you know that at my age, I have to keep my sentence to myself?" Zhao Liben scolded with a smile before continuing:

"The imperial power is actually just two words: soldiers and taxes. Without soldiers, nothing can make a sound, and without money, you can't support the army. But collecting taxes requires officials, and transporting grain, building roads, and developing water conservancy require able-bodied men. So to hold on to the throne, you need two more words: officials and men."

"Soldiers, taxes, people, officials." Zhao Hao nodded silently. In this era, it can still be roughly said that taxes are grains, and grains are taxes. With soldiers and grains, you can conquer the world, and with officials and people, you can rule the world. The old man is worthy of being a former deputy ministerial cadre, and he has a level of understanding in looking at problems.

"So the imperial power is not something you think is right. You have to see if you can handle these four words." Zhao Liben took a sip of tea and sighed:

"Taxes cannot be collected; soldiers cannot be deployed; men cannot be recruited; officials cannot be used effectively. Such imperial power is worthless, and no one takes it seriously."

Zhao Hao then applied the old man's trick to Daming, and immediately broke out in a sweat.

Tax.

The southeast region was obviously very rich, with hundreds of millions of taels of silver flowing in from overseas every year just through smuggling. However, the Taicang warehouse was empty and the country fell into a serious financial crisis.

Soldier.

The soldiers in the garrison camp were extremely corrupt, allowing the Tartars to invade without a trace, and the Japanese pirates killed them so hard that they cried for their parents. At that time, more than one hundred Japanese pirates killed their way to the city of Jinling, and the 200,000 or 300,000 defenders actually retreated. Qi Jiguang had to recruit miners to deal with the Japanese pirates.

Man.

In order to escape heavy corvee labor, common people either became slaves in powerful families or left their homes to become refugees. Governments at all levels basically could no longer recruit able-bodied men.

official.

Not to mention that the officials of the Ming Dynasty did not take the emperor seriously at all.

This is unparalleled in all history.

The reason for this, to a large extent, is the imperial examination system.

But the imperial examination system was not a complete failure as later generations commented.

Quite the contrary, it’s because it was so successful.

Although relatively objective examinations, a multi-level selection mechanism, and a strict supervision and marking system cannot completely eliminate cheating, they are sufficient to ensure that the vast majority of selected officials are the best.

But this brings two serious consequences. First, the harsh and lengthy selection process requires candidates to make absolute efforts for many years. After experiencing repeated failures and starting over again and again, they will only be grateful for their own personal efforts and the examiners who selected them.

Although they keep saying that the emperor's grace is great, they simply don't admit that their success is a gift from the emperor.

Second, the overall quality of the government was getting higher and higher, which enabled civil officials to make governance more refined, legal and complicated, making the threshold for government decision-making higher and higher, so high that the emperor, eunuchs and military officers were daunted.

This is the so-called "professional knowledge leads to industry monopoly". Today, the Ming Dynasty can only rely on the civil service group to govern the country. These "technical bureaucrats" form a strict system and are responsible for maintaining the operation of the state machinery.

In the absence of foreign invasion, the emperor became redundant.

In fact, there is another consequence, which is caused by the designated textbook for the imperial examination - Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism. This is a doctrine that seems to protect the emperor's power everywhere, but in fact isolates the emperor from specific government affairs.

It was actually a defense, compromise and restraint of the reason for the existence of imperial power by the gentry group when they had gained a clear advantage in the struggle with imperial power but had no intention of replacing it.

After all, Emperor Taizu had read too little. Although he was able to depose the prime minister, he was still ambushed by the scholars - he chose Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism as the designated textbook for the scholars.

We all know that textbooks are the tools that shape the three views of the educated group.

Therefore, respecting the imperial power on the surface while restricting and undermining it behind the scenes became the collective unconsciousness of successive generations of civil servants.

Even many officials restricted the emperor for their entire lives, but still firmly believed that this was a manifestation of their loyalty to the emperor and their patriotism...

Of course, there are also people like Zhao Liben who have thoroughly understood and seen through it, and naturally they will be like the old man and have no respect for the imperial power.

PS. I suggest you read this chapter carefully. It is a new gain from my study of history in recent years. After reading it, many of your confusions about the Ming Dynasty will be resolved.