In the slightly shaking carriage, Zhao Hao was looking at a telegram from the Special Operations Department.
'The inventory has been cleared out, and all the shopkeepers have immigrated overseas for development, don't worry.'
Although the report was in coded language, Zhao Hao could understand what that person meant. It said that all the black materials related to the group and the Jiangnan Gang had been destroyed, and Xu Jue had also been secretly transferred overseas...
The person who was burned to death in the East Factory's Jiage Warehouse was actually a substitute that Xu Jue found for himself. In this era when human life is as cheap as grass, as the actual controller of the East Factory, it is not too easy to find a scapegoat.
However, how can everything be perfect? The captain of the Northern Pacification Division who inspected the fire scene found that many of the dead were tied to chairs and burned to death...
But no one dared to say anything, and everyone pretended not to have seen anything, for fear of bringing trouble upon themselves.
With Xu Jue's death, many things could no longer be proven, and everyone felt relieved.
Emperor Wanli was naturally furious, but he could only hold back and not rashly launch a major prison campaign...
"Alas..." Zhao Hao burned the secret report on the copper furnace. Looking at the blue flames jumping and the black ashes waving like devils, he couldn't help but sigh.
What spies do always makes people unhappy. No wonder Zhou Gong once said that we must never conduct espionage activities against our comrades.
But at this turbulent time, huge losses may occur if we are not careful. We can only comfort ourselves by saying that we have the power to act according to our own wishes and should not be too rigid.
Blowing away the ashes that fell on his sleeves, Zhao Hao picked up the coffee cup and took a sip. This was the first batch of coffee introduced in Borneo, and it tasted good.
The rich and bitter aroma of coffee lifted his spirits and made him forget the afternoon's fatigue and negative emotions.
Zhao Hao continued to read the telegrams from the capital...
Speaking of which, it has been a full month since Prime Minister Zhao officially took office on the tenth day of August.
However, what made Zhao Shouzheng feel a little embarrassed was that after he thanked the emperor and took office, Emperor Wanli never summoned him once...
On the other hand, the three actions that Zhao Shouzheng took upon himself to take office - "Please forgive the accumulated debts to ensure the people's livelihood", "Please be lenient in the pursuit of debts" and "Please reopen the academy for lectures" - were all successfully approved by Emperor Wanli.
The first memorial made the people very happy, the second memorial made the officials celebrate, and the third memorial made the scholars extremely happy. For a time, the whole world praised Prime Minister Zhao, saying that the new prime minister brought a new atmosphere!
The officials were even more happy to discuss privately that they had finally gotten over the strict father and welcomed the loving mother, and good days were coming for everyone...
At the same time, Emperor Wanli was not idle either. He skipped the cabinet several times and issued direct decrees to reinstate Zou Yuanbiao, Yu Maoxue, Qiu Yu and a large number of others who had been dismissed from office for offending Zhang Juzheng or opposing reforms.
Wanli was obviously not satisfied with his failure to purge Zhang Juzheng's party by taking down Feng Bao. During the long years of waiting, he had already thought of various countermeasures and accumulated enough patience and stubbornness to implement them one by one.
He thought it was a brilliant move to reinstate those who were removed by Zhang Juzheng. These officials would definitely oppose Zhang, and thus they were his natural allies!
But because there were too many people who were dismissed by Zhang Juzheng, there were not enough positions to be restored all at once, so Wanli could only bring them in batches.
The first people he reinstated were the officials who had been blamed in the storm of love affairs. These people had long been famous for their righteousness, and anyone who opposed their reinstatement was considered a politically incorrect traitor.
Moreover, these people dared to stand up against Zhang Juzheng when he was in power. Now that he is dead, how can they not have the courage to fire at Zhang's party?
He must be able to fight especially well!
In this regard, Wang Guoguang accepted almost all of it before leaving office. Doing more favors before retirement is the best way.
The successor, the Minister of Personnel Zhao Jin, followed Zhao Hao's instructions and did not stop him. Therefore, Wanli had already reinstated many officials in the past month. When these people arrived in Beijing one after another, there would definitely be more fun to watch.
But Zhao Hao didn't care. These opposition parties who only knew how to talk big could actually cause far less harm than the jealous party. He had already taken down the jealous party, so he let them accompany the emperor to toss and turn...
Moreover, it was not all bad that Wanli reinstated a large number of officials. For example, Wang Xijue, who had forced Zhang Xianggong to almost commit suicide, was reinstated as the Right Vice Minister of the Ministry of Rites.
In fact, Wanli still wanted to recall Zhang Han, who took the lead in opposing the seizure of love, but Zhang Tianguan was almost eighty years old and was determined not to join in the fun, so the emperor had no choice but to give up...
In addition, Wanli was also preparing to reinstate an old man, that is Hai Rui...
Zhang Juzheng did not like Hai Rui. During his tenure in office, he kept this Ming Dynasty magic sword that could behead corrupt emperors and treacherous ministers in Nanjing, and refused to summon Hai Rui to Beijing or let him govern the local areas.
In a fit of anger, Hai Rui resigned from his post and returned to his hometown in Qiongzhou to take care of his mother. After his mother passed away at the age of 95 in the tenth year of the Wanli reign, he still refused to take up an official post after the mourning period was over.
But Hai Rui has not been idle in these years. After he resigned from his official position, he accepted Zhao Hao's invitation and helped Zhao Shouye to reorganize the non-existent Inspection and Supervision Committee as a guest official, which improved the group's internal control and auditing capabilities by several levels.
Later, he helped Zhang Xiaojing set up an anti-corruption investigation foundation and trained a large number of highly qualified independent investigators!
The fact that Jiangnan Group is so clean and efficient is absolutely inseparable from Hai Rui's behind-the-scenes work over the past decade.
Although Hai Rui did not immediately accept the emperor's appointment, he was dissatisfied with his reinstatement as Nanjing's Left Censor-in-Chief and bluntly said that he would not go to Nanjing again, but he did not say it firmly...
To be fair, Zhao Hao was reluctant to let Hai Rui go. But Hai Rui was free, and he had to respect his old comrade...
Speaking of Hai Rui, Zhao Hao also has a good comrade who shares the same ideals as him, that is Lin Run.
However, last winter, Lin Run's father passed away, so he had to return to his hometown in Fujian to mourn. Moreover, Lin Run was Gao Gong's favorite general and Zhang Juzheng's reformer, so Wanli might not like him...
~~
After reading the telegram from the capital, Zhao Hao sighed to Zhang Xiaojing who came to his side and said, "I didn't expect that our Emperor Wanli is such an ungrateful person."
"How did my father offend him? Why did he deliberately plan to deal with his deceased teacher?" Zhang Xiaojing said with red eyes and infinite grief and indignation.
Her political talent was very similar to her father's, far superior to her six brothers. She naturally knew that the emperor was obviously accumulating anti-Zhang power by reinstating so many officials who were overthrown by her father.
The next step is to launch a counterattack against Grand Tutor Zhang.
"Because when my father-in-law was alive, he didn't have the courage." Zhao Hao patted Zhang Xiaojing's back and comforted her, "Don't worry, I won't let him do whatever he wants."
"No, you have to let him do whatever he wants!" Zhang Xiaojing shook her head with a frosty face and said, "The emperor will be embarrassed, not the Zhang family! We have to see who will be willing to work hard for the Zhu family until their death!"
Zhang Xiaojing became so ruthless that she even spared her own family members:
"It will also teach my brothers a lesson and let them know what it means to have good fortune and bad luck!"
"There's no need for that. Your nephew is still young, and grandma is so old..." Zhao Hao advised.
"The dead are gone. Could he still confiscate the family's property and exterminate the clan, open the coffin and mutilate the body?!" Zhang Xiaojing snorted.
"This..." Zhao Hao thought to himself, he can really do it.
Zhang Xiaojing had already used her utmost malice to speculate about Emperor Wanli. However, she still did not expect that Zhu Yijun could be so greedy and ruthless that it was beyond the imagination of ordinary people...
"It will never come to that!" Zhao Hao couldn't bear to describe to her the miserable future of the Zhang family. He held his wife's hand, diverted her attention and said, "By the way, there is one more thing I want to hear your opinion on."
"What's the matter?" Zhang Xiaojing asked.
"It's about the negotiations with Spain. Haven't you been to Europe and dealt with the red-haired devils? Can you help me with some advice?" Zhao Hao took out a call from Suzhou and handed it to Zhang Xiaojing.
Zhang Xiaojing took a look and saw that it was Tang Baolu, CEO of the West Africa region and the plenipotentiary negotiator, reporting on the progress of the negotiations.
Don Paul was in Lisbon, so of course he had no access to telegraphs. But with the help of clipper ships and carrier pigeons, it took only eighty days to get the letter to Suzhou, which was a miracle.
~~
This spring, the once-mighty Spaniards finally collapsed under the continuous attacks of the Ming, Portuguese and French coalition forces.
Also, because the blood transfusion from the American colonies was cut off, a rare famine broke out in Spain.
Queen Elizabeth of England took the opportunity to execute the Queen of Scots in the Catholic camp, and formed a Protestant alliance with the Netherlands, expressing her full support for the latter's independence.
The situation of being surrounded by enemies on all sides made the arrogant Philip II calm down completely. He realized that if he continued to act recklessly, Spain would completely collapse under the siege of various countries.
Although he had not studied the Art of War, he knew the principle of making friends with distant countries and attacking nearby ones. Anyone with a little bit of brains could see that the Ming people, who were tens of thousands of miles away, were the party with the least conflict of interest with Spain. Moreover, both sides had strong trade needs for each other, so it was entirely possible to negotiate peace.
Once peace was reached with the Ming, the weak Portuguese had no choice but to cease fire with Spain, even if they were extremely reluctant. In this way, two of the five enemies were gone.
And more importantly, without the Ming fleet blocking it, Spain would be able to restore its ties with its colonies. Once the treasure fleet brought the treasures of America back to Spain, he would be able to stabilize the domestic situation and restore the empire's most important military strength.
Then concentrate your efforts on attacking the audacious sister-in-law!
So Philip II sent envoys to Lisbon to request a truce.
The Jiangnan Group had long wanted to end this protracted war, so the two sides hit it off and temporarily stopped fighting in April this year, while launching arduous ceasefire negotiations.
As the party seeking peace, Spain must of course pay a sufficient price to the victor.
However, Philip II had been doing well for half his life, and the Spanish Empire had been the best in the world for too many years. He was unable to adjust his mentality for a while and did not want to suffer any loss at all.
Don Paul reported to Zhao Hao that after several rounds of difficult negotiations, the Spaniards were only willing to recognize that Luzon belonged to the Ming Dynasty and resume the galleon trade, and the maximum compensation was one million pesos.
As for Don Paul's proposal to transfer western North America to the Jiangnan Group and Guyana to Portugal as war compensation, the Spaniards simply ignored it!