Chapter 130: Dare not stretch my legs at night, for fear of piercing through the mountains and rivers of the realm!

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Liaodong.

An endless wilderness stretched before them.

Zhu Yuanzhang wore a vermilion dragon robe. On his left walked the old Zhu Di, whose hair and beard had turned completely white; on his right was the Fourth Zhu in the prime of his life.

The three of them led the procession.

Behind them came the two portly men of Yongle and Hongxi, the two Little Zhus, and the uncle-and-nephew pair—the Jingtai Emperor and his nephew—who possessed no say whatsoever and were chatting with the Chenghua Emperor, Zhu Jianshen.

At the very rear, Zhu Youjian held Zhu Xiongying by the hand.

A bitter wind swept across the plain.

The emperors’ robes snapped in the wind, and smiles appeared unconsciously on their faces. As they walked alone across the vast earth, their spirits seemed to soar without limit.

If one poem could capture the emperors’ present mood, it would certainly be the Founding Ancestor’s “Sleeping in the Wild.”

Heaven is my curtain, earth my mat;
The sun, moon, and stars sleep beside me.
At night I dare not stretch out my feet,
For fear of treading through the mountains and rivers of the realm.

Zhu Yuanzhang walked with his hands clasped behind his back, his expression detached yet filled with emotion.

“I remember seeing a scene like this in the south. Back then, I was still very thin, and the common people were even thinner. White bones lay exposed in the wilderness, and for a thousand miles not a single cock crowed. ‘Miserable’ hardly begins to describe it.”

“If one day the people of Great Ming can all eat their fill and keep warm, then my heart will finally be at ease.”

Old Zhu Di nodded earnestly.

“Father, rest assured. I’ll urge the eldest grandson to work harder and do his best to make sure the people are all fed as soon as possible.”

Hmm.

Hmm?

Zhu Youjian blinked. How had this somehow become his responsibility?

The wilderness wind lifted his hair and beard, leaving him no choice but to smile.

“That day is not far off. Not far at all.”

Yet inwardly he muttered, With sixteen dynasties to choose from, surely at least one of them will produce grain as prolific as a sow.

“By my estimate, the Jurchen settlement should be thirty miles ahead,” the Chenghua Emperor, Zhu Jianshen, added.

The settlements of these Jurchen savages were scattered unevenly. If the army revealed itself from too far away, the enemy might send word and flee. Old Zhu had therefore decided that they would approach on foot.

“Mm.”

Zhu Yuanzhang nodded and strode onward.

At the very back, Zhu Youjian picked up the exhausted Zhu Xiongying, who was panting like a worn-out hound, and let him rest.

When had the Jianzhou Jurchens risen to become such a grave threat?

In truth, it had happened only toward the end of the Ming.

During the Wanli era, when Li Chengliang was stationed in Liaodong, the Jurchens were still little more than fledgling opponents. Li Chengliang had earned his title of Earl of Ningyuan by repeatedly defeating them and advancing through the ranks.

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But by the end of the Ming, military commanders stationed in Liaodong had been replaced by civil officials. Liaodong had changed from a battlefield into a marketplace. Anyone who searched through the official history of the Ming would discover that, at this time, the Jurchens had suddenly become impossible to defeat.

First, warfare in Liaodong allowed the Grand Secretariat to obtain a substantial additional military budget from the court, entirely within the law.

When the cannons thundered, ten thousand ounces of gold flowed in.

For the sake of this steady income, the Jurchens could not be wiped out.

It was like Western medicine: when your blood sugar rose, they lowered your blood sugar; when your blood pressure rose, they lowered your blood pressure. But if they actually cured you, who would they sell their medicine to?

Second, because the Ming imposed a grain blockade on Liaodong, the price of grain among the Jurchens reached an astonishing eight ounces of silver per dou—equivalent to eighty ounces of silver for a shi of grain!

In Shandong and other places, a shi of grain cost less than one ounce of silver, requiring only seven or eight tenths of an ounce.

Selling grain to the Jurchens could bring a hundredfold profit. Would civil officials engaged in business willingly kill their customers? Especially when the profits were high enough to make people trample every law beneath their feet?

Third, whoever controlled Liaodong controlled the trade routes leading to Korea. During the Chongzhen era, Liaodong included both the Shandong Peninsula and the Liaodong Peninsula.

Yuan Keli, the governor of Dengzhou and Laizhou who controlled the Shandong Peninsula, was forced out by the Grand Secretariat itself. Mao Wenlong, commander of the Dongjiang forces who controlled the Liaodong Peninsula, was to be eliminated with the Jurchens’ help.

In the end, Mao Wenlong’s Ming army was stranded overseas without even a single source of reinforcements, yet the Jurchens still could not defeat him. Their true strength could be judged from that alone.

They were merely ordinary soldiers—perhaps even worse than ordinary. A single Ming cavalryman, wielding a horse spear, could charge through and take down a whole string of Bannermen. They were simply no match for the Ming army.

The Jurchens had grown fat entirely because civil officials had been doing business with them.

The Grand Secretariat had only three objectives: to deceive Zhu Youjian into releasing military funds, to sell grain to the Later Jin at exorbitant prices, and to eliminate Mao Wenlong, the governor-general of Dongjiang, thereby taking control of the Liaodong sea routes.

All of it was accomplished through one man.

Yuan Chonghuan, Grand Commander of Liaodong!

When one examined the history of the late Ming, one discovered that Yuan Chonghuan’s role in the founding of the Qing was far greater than that of the boar-skinned Nurhaci.

Therefore—

Yuan Chonghuan ought to have been honored as the Founding Ancestor of the Qing.

He deserved a place in the Qing imperial ancestral temple.

This was the true reason Great Ming had been sold off by its civil officials. The process was not complicated in the slightest. It meant exactly what the words suggested:

They had sold it through business dealings.

As Zhu Youjian carried Zhu Xiongying, he consoled himself.

“When other people get angry, I won’t. If anger makes me ill, who will suffer in my place? Back then, during the Chongzhen era, I certainly had the satisfaction of killing people—but it lasted only that one brief moment… No need to rush. There’s still the Tianqi timeline.”

“When the time comes, I’ll let that entire group of worthy and loyal ministers enjoy themselves properly!”

“Enjoy themselves? How?” Zhu Xiongying looked up at him, eyes shining with curiosity.

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Holding him in his arms, Zhu Youjian answered solemnly.

“Grand-Uncle, suppose there were a group of people who, for the sake of making money, deliberately nurtured a foreign race, only to lose control in the end and allow that foreign race to destroy our Great Ming. Do you think we should be furious? Should the countless millions of people of Great Ming be furious?”

“We should!”

Zhu Xiongying nodded without hesitation, then continued.

“But perhaps we should not be furious either. If the emperor of that generation had noticed something was wrong early enough and stopped it, none of this would have happened.”

Hmm?

“What if the government was in chaos, and the assembled ministers did everything they could to obstruct and conceal matters, preventing the emperor from learning the truth?”

Zhu Youjian blinked.

Zhu Xiongying replied as though it were obvious.

“Then he should have learned from the Great Chenghua Emperor. His relationship with his ministers was poor as well, yet he appointed several thousand ceremonial officials and set aside the Grand Secretariat’s authority. He placed his maternal relatives in command of the capital garrison, and established the Western Depot to control the armies!”

“You cannot place your trust only in civil officials. Grandfather Emperor once said that the balance between civil and military authority must be carefully maintained. If you favor military commanders too much, you will end up with the regional warlords of the late Tang.”

“But if you favor civil officials too much, you will see the spectacle of Song officials selling off their own dynasty. That emperor you mentioned—didn’t he study at all?”

Pfft!

“Stop, stop. My corpse is feeling a little unwell…”

Zhu Youjian licked his dry lips. He felt as though he had been stabbed, and hurriedly let out two awkward laughs.

Then he pondered the matter in silence and eventually reached a conclusion:

What did a little brat know?

Have me put Zhou Kui in control of the capital garrison?

If I dared hand it over to him today, by tomorrow he would dare change the name on the capital’s property deeds to that of Hong Taiji.

They were fifteen miles from the Jurchen tribes.

“Let’s rest for a while. Come on, let’s rest…”

The two portly men were already finished. They were breathing in less than they breathed out, huffing and puffing as sweat poured down their bodies. They looked ready to collapse at any moment.

“Gao Chi, this won’t do. Your build is far too excessive. When you can walk fifteen miles without losing your breath like me, then you can say you’ve recovered your health.”

Zhu Yuanzhang scolded him with dissatisfaction.

The portly Yongle Emperor and the portly Hongxi Emperor wore miserable expressions upon hearing this. Neither managed to utter a word for quite some time.

Grandfather Emperor, you swallow alchemical pills like sunflower seeds. If you would only let me have a few, I wouldn’t be out of breath either!

…

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