Chapter 94: Patrolling the Border Again
At the beginning of the sixth year of the Yuanguang reign, the emperor's decree to enthronize his younger brother and sister-in-law as princes was finally implemented. Along with this, Han Guilan's written document downgraded the status of vassal princes and enthroned Zhu Jianshen as crown prince. Princes Ji and Li remained in Beijing temporarily, under Zhu Yuhuan's orders. Zhu Qiyu, re-enthroned as Prince of Luo, was finally able to leave the place where he had lived for twenty-five years with his mother, wife, and children.
Although it may seem ridiculous to others, for Zhu Qiyu, his mother staying in the capital as a hostage was the biggest threat to him, just like when he was married, his mother still had to stay in the palace and could not leave to reunite with him.
Zhu Qiyu knew the secret connection between his mother and sister, and naturally understood that his mother was destined to spend her life in the palace. However, he did not expect his sister Zhu Yuhuan to give him such a big surprise, actually allowing his mother Wu Miaosu to go with him to the vassal state for resettlement.
Compared to the ecstatic Zhu Qiyu, Wu Miaosu's mood was much more complicated. After becoming Zhu Zhanji's concubine, she had already considered the worst case scenario: she would stay in the deep palace forever. If she was lucky, she would die alone. If she was unlucky, she would become a ghost in this palace.
In any case, the possibility of leaving the palace with her son never occurred to her.
And now, this most unlikely possibility has come true.
Zhu Qiyu set the departure time as mid-March when the weather was suitable. Before that, Wu Miaosu could leave the palace and temporarily live in the Luowang Mansion in today's capital.
Before leaving the palace, one naturally had to pay a visit to the Empress Dowager and the Emperor.
After Wu Miaosu finished her greeting, Hu Shanxiang had the palace maids around her help her to her feet. She said gently, "Luoyang has a warm climate. By the time you arrive, the peonies will probably be in bloom. Let Yu'er, you, and Yuanzhen go out for a walk more often to relax."
When Wu Miaosu met Hu Shanxiang's relieved eyes, she understood what she meant.
This time, everything is really over.
After Zhu Zhanji's death, the shadow hanging over their heads did not completely dissipate. Instead, it became heavier as Zhu Qizhen grew older.
But the emperor now is Zhu Yuhuan, and she has enough confidence, so naturally she will not be afraid of Wu Miaosu and Zhu Qiyu, mother and son.
"If I leave, I'm afraid it will be boring for Your Majesty to stay in the palace..."
Hu Shanxiang smiled and said, "I still have Concubine Hui and Concubine Yu to accompany me in the palace. On weekdays, the Imperial Concubine has to deal with palace affairs, and Yuan'er and Shen'er are running around and playing among us palaces. How can it be boring? You can rest assured and follow Yu'er to the vassal state to enjoy the good life. It can also be a chance to see the scenery outside for us."
Hearing her say this, Wu Miaosu felt both relieved and sad.
Thirty-two years have passed since she entered the palace in the 19th year of Yongle, and it is now the 6th year of Yuanguang. All the youth of Wu Miaosu's life has been buried deep in the palace. Although she has never regretted sacrificing her life in exchange for the safety of her mother and brother, she still can't help feeling lost.
The two years when she first entered the palace and worked as a palace maid and a female official were actually the most fulfilling two years of her life. Although she always felt sorry for her family members trapped in the Prince of Han's Mansion, at least Wu Miaosu could still realize her own value through labor.
On the contrary, after becoming Zhu Zhanji's concubine, Wu Miaosu no longer had to worry about her food, clothing, housing and transportation, but she only felt empty and boring.
She has lived in such a boring life for so many years, and she doesn't know what the outside world will be like or whether she can adapt to it.
Seeing that Wu Miaosu was absent-minded, Hu Shanxiang waved to the palace servant beside her, and someone brought a wooden box and placed it in front of Wu Miaosu.
Wu Miaosu thought Hu Shanxiang had given her some kind of reward and was about to kneel down to express her gratitude when Hu Shanxiang said, "These are rice seeds cultivated in Wunong Temple. The emperor is busy with his affairs, so he asked me to pass them on to you."
Wu Miaosu was slightly stunned.
"This time, the Wunong Temple will send five people to accompany you to cultivate the fields in Linru and other places, irrigate the fields, and plant rice." Hu Shanxiang looked at Wu Miaosu and said, "The emperor knows you are an expert in this field and is looking forward to the day when you will have a good harvest."
When Wu Miaosu was a palace lady, she was good at growing flowers and plants and had some knowledge in this area.
Wu Miaosu felt a pang of pain in her eyes and said, "I... obey your command."
When Prince Luo left the capital with his mother, wife and children for Luoyang to establish his fiefdom, the capital gradually became quiet, as if nothing had happened.
But this peace was clearly not to last. Shortly after the palace examination in the seventh year of Yuanguang's reign, Zhu Yuhuan officially renamed the Malacca Outer Prefecture the Jinghai Xuanwei Division and appointed Zhang Zhong as the Xuanwei Envoy. Because the Xuanwei Division was far from the Ming mainland and unable to obey the orders of the Three Divisions, it was directly under the emperor's command, demarcating the ocean within the Ming's "territory."
At the same time, Zhu Yuhuan opened another government office in the capital, separating the original Huitongguan and Siyiguan, merging them with the new government office, and named it the Maritime Affairs Office, which was in charge of overseas diplomatic and commercial affairs. The local customs offices were under its jurisdiction, and its rank was aligned with the Six Ministries. The head of the Maritime Affairs Office was a second-rank official, the same as the Shangshu, and was held by Han Guilan.
This was the first government office in the Ming Dynasty where men and women were co-existent. Female officials were no longer confined to the harem, but became members of the official system in broad daylight.
Naturally, there were voices of opposition. With the multitude of maritime affairs these days, the Maritime Affairs Bureau was a highly sought-after government office. The new office brought new positions, but allowing female officials to occupy them reduced the opportunities for others still waiting for vacancies. Furthermore, these female officials were completely different from the officials who had studied hard for years to pass the imperial examinations. Like clerks, they were "special talents" recruited by the emperor, yet they enjoyed the same treatment as officials. It was truly unfair.
Upon hearing this, Zhu Yuhuan immediately waved his hand and asked everyone in the Maritime Bureau to conduct their own inspection. The conclusion was naturally that the professional ability of the female officials was not inferior to that of the male officials, and they were fully capable of handling all kinds of affairs in the Maritime Bureau.
After that, some people still expressed their dissatisfaction as mentioned above. Zhu Yuhuan, "in anger", ordered the seven subjects for examining civil servants to be added to the imperial examination, and the Jinshi subjects to be tested separately for men and women. From then on, everyone would be tested on the same things, except that the difficulty of the policy essays and other topics in the seven subjects for examining civil servants was slightly lower.
This move seemed to be annoyance to the emperor, but in fact the emperor had been prepared for it.
There were some people who understood the situation and thought that this move would lead to "redundant officials" for the central government. Zhu Yuhuan had naturally considered this matter a long time ago and sent many people to Huguang and other places to continue the policy of converting native peoples into officials.
The localities were desperately short of staff, all waiting for vacancies from the central government...how could there be so many good things? Zhu Yuhuan didn't even want to keep the three top-ranked officials in Beijing, thinking of sending them all to the localities for training before returning. However, the compilation of the book still required manpower, so Zhu Yuhuan couldn't afford to send them all away. The censors took the opportunity to expel a few of them. If these people could still stand up and talk without any worries after becoming local officials, Zhu Yuhuan would not mind helping them retire early.
But in this case, how could everyone not see that the current emperor was an extremely practical person, so practical that he didn't even intend to continue acting.
No matter how knowledgeable a person is, if he has no practical use, the emperor will never take a second look at him. Only at this time will she remember the existence of the "ancestral system".
Wang Yue, whom Zhu Yuhuan greatly admired, did not remain in Beijing for a post. Instead, he accompanied Wang Ji on a border patrol, honing his skills on the northwestern frontier. The emperor generously rewarded him with occasional reports of victory, even having officials from the Hanlin Academy compose poems to present. His esteemed position was second only to Shi Heng and others. Another figure, Shi Jing, had trained for a period in Gansu under Liu Yongcheng. After Yang Hong's death, he took over as commander-in-chief of Xuanfu and handled the affairs of Yang Hong's son, Yang Jun, earning him considerable favor.
In the eighth year of the Yuanguang reign (1168-1279), Luoyang, Henan, and other regions experienced a bumper rice harvest. Officials from the Wunong Temple, who had accompanied the Prince of Luo to his fiefdom, returned to Beijing to report on their work. They recorded the key points of rice cultivation in northern China over the past three years and compiled them into a book. Zhu Yuhuan immediately distributed this booklet to officials in northern Zhili, Henan, Shandong, and even Liaodong, allocating funds and grain to these regions for the reclamation of paddy fields and rice cultivation.
Zhu Yuhuan himself even allowed court officials to taste this rare northern rice at a banquet in the ninth year of Yuanguang, and named it "Luo Rice".
At the same time, books such as "Illustrated Guide to Southern Xinjiang Materia Medica" and "Complete Works of Miaoqing" compiled by Xu Wangzhi, "Secrets of Pulse Diagnosis for Women" compiled and edited by students of Xu's Medical Institute, "Female Announcement", a collection of essays by women in the palace, and "Palace Poems of the Six Dynasties", "The Defeat of Tumu" written by Yuan Bin and Ha Bin, and "Essentials of Farming" from Wunong Temple, were printed into books by the Jingchang and distributed to various places after being reviewed and approved by Zhu Yuhuan. Private buyers and sellers were also allowed to buy and sell such books.
After this move, those who had originally written letters to the emperor saying that he was "disrespecting literature" gradually stopped talking.
In September of the ninth year of the Yuanguang reign, Zhu Yuhuan led the imperial heirs, ministers, and nobles on a border patrol, leaving the affairs of the capital to be managed by Prince Ji Zhu Youtong and Prime Minister Zeng Heling. The army marched westward, following a route somewhat similar to Zhu Qizhen's earlier border patrols, except that the northern threat from the Oirat Mongols was now gone.
Zhu Yuhuan was quite leisurely. He introduced the scenery to the Zhu siblings and asked the cabinet ministers and border generals who followed him to give them a refresher on internal affairs and military knowledge. In addition, he summoned the soldiers and civilians on the border to report the local situation in detail.
Zhu Yuhuan had no intention of hiding his life experiences from the two of them. He was just carefully choosing the way to tell them. Zhu Yuhuan was more familiar with the information cocoon than anyone else. Moreover, Zhu Yuhuan's teachings to the two of them were always closer to his own, trying his best to make them have empathy for ordinary people.
Not to mention that the two children's study companions, teachers, and palace maids were all screened by Zhu Yuhuan and Han Guilan before being sent to them. Of course, no one dared to openly say a bad word about the emperor.
In front of these two children, Zhu Yuhuan was even more amiable than his mother Zhou Yingying, who always had a hot temper.
Zhou Yingying and Zhu Yuhuan each took responsibility for the grace of giving birth to and raising their children. Zhu Shuyuan and Zhu Jianshen had never met their biological father Zhu Qizhen, so they had no feelings for each other.
Since patrolling the border, they have followed the army to see the stone tablet of Tumu Fort, heard the gratitude of the families of the fallen officers and soldiers when they met the emperor, and heard the soldiers talk about how tragic the battlefield of the defeat at Tumu was. Compared with missing their father, they have more complicated feelings.
The trauma their biological father brought to the Ming Dynasty overshadowed everything, not to mention that he personally led the Oirat army to knock on the doors of the border in order to survive or even come back to be emperor.
If he really succeeds in coming back alive, how will history judge him?
It’s nothing more than “the winner is the king and the loser is the bandit”, but for them, how should they face these people?
If it weren't for this border patrol, they would certainly never have heard the sufferings of these ordinary people in their lives, and they wouldn't have cared about it.
But they heard it after all and had to consider it.
Zhu Yuhuan could certainly see that the two children had become a little listless in recent days. It was obvious that after learning about Zhu Qizhen's affairs, they realized that they did have an unbreakable blood connection with Zhu Qizhen, and thus looked a little depressed.
"Go, tell my sisters and brothers to come hunting with me."
"yes."
When he was patrolling the border in Datong, Zhu Yuhuan did not force the two children to stay with him. Therefore, when he suddenly summoned them, the two children were obviously not in a good mood. They seemed a little more awkward than when they were with Zhu Yuhuan before, and just followed Zhu Yuhuan on horseback.
The attendants were following not far away. Zhu Yuhuan slightly pulled the reins to slow down, then asked, "You two are too excited to be out. Haven't you slept well these past few days?"
Zhu Shuyuan shook her head, hesitated for a moment, and finally asked, "Mother, this commoner... Zhu Qizhen... is he really the same as what others say?"
Zhu Jianshen looked at his sister in surprise and whispered, "Sister..."
Zhu Yuhuan simply smiled and said, "That's what I heard from the common people, but there are definitely people in this world who have benefited from Zhu Qizhen's kindness. You can ask others after you return to the capital. You two are getting older now, and the palace guards have been replenished. I'll select some from them to serve as your guards. You two should go out of the palace more often when you have nothing to do, and get to know what the outside world is like."
Zhu Shuyuan, however, became even more discouraged and said, "If even the common people say so, what about others..."
She knew that many people actually didn't care who sat on the throne, but if someone could make the people hate him, it was obvious how unpopular he was.
Seeing that Zhu Yuhuan was still relaxed and at ease, Zhu Jianshen couldn't help but ask, "Mother, why didn't you adopt my second uncle's child? Aren't you afraid that we two will turn against you for him being your biological father?"
Now it was Zhu Shuyuan's turn to look surprised. She never thought that her always honest and kind brother would say such a thing. But when she thought about it carefully, it was indeed true. Her second uncle and sister had a closer relationship, and Jianze was definitely more suitable than them who had a "blood feud".
Zhu Yuhuan's eyebrows and eyes showed a smile, and he said, "You two are not stupid. When you were young, you followed Guilan to learn. After you got married, you also listened to lectures on books like "Zizhi Tongjian". You have no father, and I have no children. When you are born into my family, we will be mother and son. This is a good thing that has the best of both worlds."
The two children fell silent upon hearing this.
"Besides... even if you two want to seek revenge on me, you should wait until I'm dead. How can a little bird come back to peck at a female eagle's eyes before it even learns to flap its wings?"
Hearing Zhu Yuhuan "cursing themselves" like this, the brother and sister were very surprised and said, "Mother..."
Zhu Yuhuan gazed at the distant sky and said, "My mother used to work in the glass business. There's a process called 'quenching' where the glass is first heated to an extremely high temperature, then quickly cooled in cold water. The resulting glass is much harder than ordinary glass. Isn't a person's willpower similar to this?"
Zhu Jianshen hesitated for a moment, but still asked, "So, Mother deliberately let us know about... that person?"
"I do have such a plan. You will know it sooner or later. Knowing it sooner is better than being kept in the dark. It will also give you more time." Zhu Yuhuan looked at the two of them and said, "But I have other plans for bringing you here to patrol the border this time."
Zhu Shuyuan didn't want to hear about her biological father, whom she no longer had any memory of, so she asked, "What are your plans, mother?"
Zhu Yuhuan's tone was as gentle as ever, yet hinted at a certain heaviness. He said, "I hope you two can understand that, whether you are the Crown Prince or a vassal prince, every power enjoyed by the royal family comes with corresponding obligations that must be fulfilled."
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