Zhu Qiyu asked for opinions and the result was that no one had any opinions.
Now the civil servants in the DPRK are polarized. The cabinet bachelors and six ministers who were sitting in Beijing and holding great power were all determined to follow the emperor; then the middle and lower-level civil servants, as well as local officials, including the important ministers in Nanjing, all had their hearts set on the emperor.
However, with the support of the great righteousness, although there were many officials who were close to the emperor, they were unable to do anything against Zhu Qiyu.
No matter how dissatisfied he is, the emperor is still the emperor. As long as Zhu Qiyu refuses to abdicate voluntarily, it will be impossible for the ministers to resist the decree and rebel.
The only way was to burn incense at home every day and pray that Zhu Qiyu would not give birth to a son.
It's a pity that Zhu Qiyu has a total of fifteen favored concubines. As long as he can give birth to five or six adult princes, it will basically be difficult for the emperor's faction to make a comeback.
So now the emperor's faction and the emperor's faction are fighting wolves with a straw, and both sides are afraid. The emperor's party was scratching their heads at the inability of people's hearts to fall in love with them, while the emperor's party was in despair at the inevitable arrival of the emperor's heir.
Especially now, the entire Yuquan Mountain is tightly surrounded. Except for the emperor, fifteen beloved concubines, and four little maids who can occasionally enter to deliver messages, the rest will be killed if they trespass.
Zhu Qiyu directly delegated the power to act expediently to his personal guards. Anyone who breaks into Yuquan Mountain without authorization will be executed on the spot without asking for instructions.
Therefore, it is a bit difficult to manipulate the emperor's fertility.
First of all, the emperor would not poison himself.
Secondly, concubines will not poison themselves.
As for the four little maids, they can only stay in the concierge at ordinary times. When there are urgent military and political matters, they can enter Yuquan Mountain to deliver messages. After delivering the letter, he could not stay and had to leave immediately.
Zhu Qiyu's strange operation of returning to the garden and living in the fields really disgusted the entire Emperor's Sect.
If the emperor lives in the Forbidden City, the Shanghuang Faction has at least one hundred and twenty-one ways to make the emperor infertile.
But now, the emperor is in a leisurely mood and is even preparing to grow vegetables and rice himself.
It's really disappointing. The die-hard loyalists of the Shanghuang faction have begun to blame Xuanzong and Empress Dowager Sun in their hearts. Originally, Xuanzong only had two sons, so it would be fine if they were all well raised in the Forbidden City.
As a result, under the control of Empress Dowager Sun, Xuanzong lived to be thirty-seven years old and had only two sons in total.
Forget it, the key is that the other one is still raised outside the palace. Well now, I don’t want to enter the palace at all, and I even hate the Forbidden City extremely. This is in sharp contrast to the two emperors Zhengtong and Xuande who loved the Forbidden City to death.
Therefore, the cabinet bachelors and the six ministers, who were quite familiar with the cruelty of court struggle, found it a bit funny. The 'young and illiterate' emperor was not trapped in the Forbidden City. Instead, the Empress Dowager Sun, who had decades of experience in palace struggles, was burned by the fire and had no fixed place to live, and was forced to squeeze in the small Yinghua Palace to survive.
Now she can no longer even keep her title as Holy Queen Mother.
Regarding Wang Wen's crazy proposal, after a brief moment of astonishment, everyone present quickly started to agree with him.
Among this group of important ministers, Chen Xun, Zhou Chen, and Yu Shiyue were the three with relatively moderate political stances, but after Zhu Qiyu's beating just now, they did not dare to say anything more.
Wang Wen, Jiang Yuan, He Wenyuan, Luo Tong, He Yi, and Huang Pu are all hard-liners who advocate doing one thing and two things without stopping.
Hu Hui, Wang Ao, Yu Qian, Shang Ren and Peng Shi were all driven to Nanjing.
After listening to everyone's opinions, Zhu Qiyu, who was already confident of winning, smiled and said to everyone: "Which of you will be responsible for paying homage to the Empress Dowager and conveying condolences to the Empress Dowager and Queen Yisheng on my behalf?"
Chen Xun replied: "Your Majesty, I think that all of us cabinet scholars and six ministers should go together to pay homage to the empress dowager, so that it will be grand."
Zhu Qiyu nodded and smiled secretly in his heart: Chen Xun means that if there is something that offends someone, everyone should do it together, and no one can escape.
After talking about the matter, Zhu Qiyu was ready to stand up and go home to soak in the hot springs with his beloved concubines.
At this time, Zhou Chen suddenly replied: "Your Majesty, I think that since the Queen Mother wants to cancel the title of 'Shangsheng', the Queen Mother should also cancel the title of 'Yisheng'."
Zhu Qiyu asked curiously: "The two are both Supreme Queens, so how can we tell them apart?"
Zhou Chen replied: "You can distinguish them by the palace they live in. For example, one is called the Supreme Queen of the North Palace, and the other is called the Supreme Queen of the South Palace."
"Nangong, haven't I decided to live with the Crown Prince?"
Zhou Chen replied: "It is better to move Queen Qian to Nangong instead. After the Emperor returns, he can live in Nangong with Queen Qian. In this way, Qianqing Palace does not have to be rebuilt in a hurry."
Zhu Qiyu nodded: "How can I bear to drive the Supreme Emperor to live in Nangong? Let's let Queen Qian and Queen Zhou discuss it themselves.
Anyway, the Forbidden City is such a big place, so I don’t mind it, no matter what they do. "
Although he didn't want to deal with this mess in the Supreme Emperor's royal family, Zhu Qiyu still gave him great praise for Zhou Chen's ability to quickly recover from his mistakes and actively express his loyalty.
Zhu Qiyu agreed to allocate a quarter of the proceeds from house confiscation in Shanxi to the Ministry of Industry for the construction of the outer city of Beijing. It also approved the Baoyuan Bureau of the Ministry of Industry to take the lead in setting up a new factory in the outer city and go all out to cast Jingtai Tongbao.
The tax exemption and corvee exemption for the first three years really put a lot of pressure on the court. Now that we have the right to mint coins, as long as there are copper mines, there will be a steady stream of financial resources.
Although the down-to-earth casting of copper coins is not as refreshing as the previous emperors who directly printed treasure banknotes and plundered people's wealth, it is a benevolent monarch and a wise ruler who can win-win for both the government and the opposition.
Zhu Qiyu drew a few more big cakes for everyone before leaving the court and going home.
When the important ministers returned to the capital, they immediately submitted a petition requesting an audience with the Empress Dowager.
Empress Dowager Sun didn't think much about it, thinking that after such a big thing happened, the important ministers were just paying their respects on a routine basis.
The next day came, early in the morning on the 19th of the first lunar month.
Chen Xun, Wang Wen and others came to listen to the announcement outside Qianqing Gate.
Wang Jin, Wang Cheng, Shu Liang, and Zhang Yong, a total of four chief ceremonial officials, came out together to pick up the important ministers and headed to Yinghua Hall together.
There are currently seven chief ceremonial officials in Beijing, Bingbi. Chen Mian and Ruan An were punished by the emperor because of fires in the Qianqing Palace and Cining Palace in charge of them, and have lost power.
Nowadays, the Chief of Ceremonies is very powerful, and the oldest person with qualifications is Wang Jin. Together with the four eunuchs who followed Zhu Qiyu since childhood, there are a total of five people with real power.
This time, four of them were dispatched to pay homage to the Empress Dowager.
By the time everyone entered the Yinghua Hall, Queen Mother Sun had already managed to get up, braced herself, and went to the main hall to accept the worship.
People's hearts were already in disarray, so Empress Dowager Sun did not dare to behave in a sickly manner, lest she deepen her image of weakness in the minds of outsiders.
After everyone bowed, Queen Mother Sun glanced around and felt a little chilled in her heart: There were more than a dozen eunuchs and ministers in total, but none of them were from the Emperor's faction.
(End of chapter)
