General Constitution of Ming Dynasty

Chapter 203 Nirvana
Ning Jue casually threw away the porcelain in his hand, and Lu Bing rushed forward to separate Zhu Zaixun from Ning Jue.

Because if there is a big mess, it doesn't matter what Zhu Zaiyan said today, Ning Jue must die.

After a long time, Zhu Zaishun finally opened his mouth.

"Is it possible to go to sea to find food?"

"Your Highness, not to mention whether Japan and North Korea can squeeze out so much grain, the largest lucky boat in my Ming Dynasty can only carry 2000 shi, and it takes [-] big lucky boats without firearms and armored soldiers to transport the [-] million shi grain back. Daming..."

"How much can Wang Zhi transport?"

"Wang Zhi reported 20 shi, and I estimate that it will not exceed 25 shi."

"Zou Wang said that he could go to Huguang and Shuzhong to buy grain, and within half a year he could raise 400 million shi of rice grain."

"Then after the merchants in Huguang and Shuzhong are also mobilized, what will the people of those two provinces do?"

"I don't know."

It wasn't until Ning Jue was taken away by Lu Bing that Zhu Zaiyu said firmly: "Eunuch Mai, don't leave alone, can you understand?"

Mai Fu knelt on the ground, bowed his head and remained silent.
-
Under Fengtian's sect, Bayi danced in the court again.

This time Jiajing did not show up, but sent an order to the cabinet, and Yan Song and Xu Jie chose one to calculate taxes on behalf of the emperor.

The three monarchs and ministers all knew that the current Daming was just crossing the single-plank bridge, and if he was a little careless, there would be an abyss beneath his feet.

The imperial court can only seek stability.

Every decision made by the cabinet becomes a rope that binds the cabinet members to the boat of Daming.

This old big ship finally chose to crash into the iceberg in front of it.

Everyone can only pray that there will be less ice under the water so that the boat will be more stable.

The waves of rice are slightly yellow, and the elders in the countryside are holding three-eyed firecrackers filled with gunpowder.

"Bang!" "Bang!" "Bang!"

Three gunshots resounded across the field.

"Open the scythe!"

Just like the plowing ceremony in previous years, a cart of rice was sent to be threshed.

The autumn harvest is coming as promised.

It's just that the people who just entered the city were not happy.

There are fewer fields for growing grain.

The number of people who eat food has not decreased.

All the grain merchants are aware of this business opportunity. From the day of the autumn harvest, the grain price in the entire Jiangnan began to rise, and the grain price in the south of the Yangtze River will eventually affect the grain price in the entire Ming Dynasty, but the other provinces are not as many as in the south of the Yangtze River. The tenant farmers moved to the city to make a living, so the situation is slightly better.

Farmers will not sell their own rations, and the high food price reduces the burden on farmers.

The merchants and the "upstarts" brought about by the new law also had enough money to buy grain.

Only tenant farmers who had just entered the city became victims of this change.

Overnight, there were many children living in no fixed place on the streets of Jinling.

You don’t have to rent a mansion, you have to work during the day anyway, and you can go to the Temple of the City God at night to squeeze in a crowd. If you don’t eat food, you will starve to death.

An old man took care of a group of children who were waiting to be fed, and just squatted in the Chenghuang Temple.

Such things had happened before in Da Ming, but there had never been a day as many as today.

There are so many scholars who only know the books of sages and sages on weekdays that they can no longer pretend to be blind.

Because these people are crowding right outside their windows.

This is a scene that has never been seen in the entire Ming Dynasty.

More and more scholars put down the books in their hands and walked out of the house.

"There is nothing to support the old, nothing to support the young... Isn't the country's affairs flourishing? How did Jinling become like this?"

There are also big households in the city giving alms.

It's just that these old people and children squatting on the street are like a bottomless pit that can't be filled.

It is not enough to empty out the food stored in the homes of those big households.

And this is just a Jinling.

The eight prefectures in the south of the Yangtze River are like this in every city and every prefecture.

Since the beginning of the autumn harvest, Zhu Xizhong, Xu Pengju and others have been guarding outside the palace gate day and night in full clothes.

The nerves of the sergeants of the Nanjing battalions were also tense to the extreme.

Everyone knows that any quarrel between the DPRK and China may cause a huge riot.
-
In Cuihe Hall, He Xinyin, whose bruises had faded away, stood on the podium.

It's just that He Xinyin was also absent-minded during the lecture.

After the autumn harvest, countless tenant farmers wanted to come to the academy to "listen to lectures", so He Xinyin could only close the door of the academy.

But even if the tenant farmers stopped coming, the number of scholars who came to the academy to attend classes every day was still decreasing.

until this day.

A scholar with a Huaixi accent stood up and looked at He Xinyin with a confused face.

"Sir, the people in the city are hanging upside down, can the saint have a way to break the situation?"

"Cultivating conscience can save the people? Can the unity of knowledge and action save the people?"

He Xinyin, who was always chattering, didn't answer the students' questions this time.

They don't even know what they need to "know", so where does the "conscience" come from, and how can "knowledge" and action be integrated.

"Sir, Xu Ge's old hometown in Huating is far bigger than Jinling, is there a way to break the situation?"

"No."

The ruler in He Xinyin's hand suddenly dropped.

What psychology, what philosophy.

All were overshadowed by hunger.

Because they cannot solve the problems faced by the people.

Even under such circumstances, some people still hide in small buildings and study hard day and night, but more and more scholars choose to go out of their homes.

They wonder what the people are going through now.
-
The Jiangnan Gongyuan, which used to have the most scholars, is now crowded with young and old working as tenant farmers in the city.

Many of the students from the Eight Governments who rushed to Nanjing to take the government examination stopped outside the examination room.

Along the way, they saw sights they would never forget.

"Brothers, I, I won't take the exam. The state affairs are like this. Even if a saint is alive, he will not sit idly by. I'm going to Songjiang to have a look. I want to know where the imperial court's ills lie."

"Brother...let's go together."

"..."

It takes courage to take this step.

Every scholar who can walk outside the examination room means that they have received too much support from their families.

The light of the sages is thus dazzling.

These ignorant scholars have a puzzle in their hearts that they can't figure out.

Since ancient times, the world has not been chaotic, but agriculture has suffered first.

Today, the farmers outside the city are still calm, but once they enter the city, the world seems to have changed.

More and more scholars gave up the scientific examination outside the examination room, threw away the pile of "old papers" and walked towards Jiangnan.

Even if they only account for a small part of the world's scholars.

But as this reform originated in the south of the Yangtze River deepens, this team is destined to grow bigger and bigger.

This time it wasn't because of some cock crowing conference, and it wasn't some well-established Confucianism who was traveling.

This is something that has never been recorded in ancient books.

They are like scholars who stop the bus, but also like Decembrists who resolutely go east.

More like the philosophers in the Spring and Autumn Period 2000 years ago.

With doubts in their hearts, countless "scholars" started their journeys around the world, just to find the answer.

The Four Books and Five Classics were discarded on the street again.

If it had been earlier, the person who lost the book would have been scolded head-on and even expelled.

Only now, everyone acquiesced to this scene.

Even scholars who are still studying hard to prepare for the exam know it.

The sacred teachings, at least King Cheng Zhulu, the great Confucians of the Song Dynasty, are no longer as sacred as they were back then.

Until the first academy took off the plaque at the entrance and replaced it with a plaque with the four characters "Not into the old paper".

Some people angrily denounced that "Song Confucianism is more harmful than Qin Huo." Then they turned around and devoted themselves to the study of Han and Tang Dynasties, and the first "Sinology" that was tit-for-tat with Song Learning was born.

The "Sinology" classics previously calibrated by Yang Shen gradually spread, and the trend of textual research gradually became popular. The biggest difference from the "Qianjia School" was the Ming Dynasty's Sinology, which was destined to be short-lived.

Because more people know it just by looking at it.

Even during the Han Dynasty, they did not encounter these problems in today's Ming Dynasty.

More scholars learned from Zhu Xi back then, and started their own annotations under the name of Confucius and Mencius.

The practical study of the world was born.

It is foreseeable that practical learning will become the mainstream of Confucianism, but Confucianism will no longer be the only one in Ming Dynasty, because businessmen in Ming Dynasty are becoming more and more greedy, especially after they have tasted the sweetness of flying shuttles and water spinning wheels.

This time, the scholars of Daming will not stop there.

There are still many poor people on the streets of Jinling, and every day or even every hour, corpses are found by the soldiers and horses of the five cities.

Even the soldiers and horses of the five cities need to send troops out of the city alone to bury the corpses of starving dead.

It's just that the "major event" that the Garrison Office is most vigilant about has not happened for a long time.
-
In Qingning Palace, Mai Fu and Lu Bing listened to Ti Wei's report, their faces were full of astonishment.

Although the imperial court is doing disaster relief.

But they know better than anyone else that the food is just a drop in the bucket.

Their cognition cannot explain such a thing. They have all supervised the army to suppress civil unrest. According to their experience, it has already reached this point, and civil unrest should have happened long ago.

It's just that the more so, the more fear in their hearts.

They don't believe that no one wants to fight to the death, so only "deep hiding" can explain this matter.

"There are no signs of retaliation... inside and outside the city, neither."

"The new army trained in Yangzhou should be faster."

"..."

Mai Fu and Lu Bing kept sending people out to investigate, even Ning Jue who was thrown into the prison and Yang Shen who was giving lectures at home were brought up again for discussion.

It wasn't until Yang Shen couldn't stand it that he opened his mouth and said, "Captain Lu, Eunuch Mai, don't bother to investigate."

"The farmers are in chaos, and they can't survive."

"Although the people in the city are hungry, they are far from being unable to survive."

"Liujiagang is recruiting workers day and night, and the weaving farms in various places... Although the people are living in poverty, they will eventually have a glimmer of livelihood. They will not rebel until they reach a dead end."

Just like the wandering tenant farmers during the enclosure movement, the same thing happened in Daming, and Li Zicheng rose up early, because small farmers only had land.

The tenant farmers who lost their land did not think that they had reached the point of no return, at least the young and strong who had the strength to rebel.

Even if parents and children can only live in the Temple of the City God, the young and strong still have work, can buy some food, and have space to use their strength, and most of the people who starve to death in the city are the old, weak and hungry.

There was a dead silence in Qingning Palace.

Ning Jue was also stunned in place, and hadn't recovered for a long time.

Only then did Yang Shen come back to his senses, and turned to Ning Jue and said, "Jiajing's new law is no less than rebuilding the country, everyone in the East Palace is amazing."

"It's the people who are amazing."

"The people have always been amazing."

This is the time Ning Jue most hopes to have an omnipotent god to solve the people's problems.

It is a pity that God did not come.

There is no god in the world.

Or, the people are that god.

The chaos in the south of the Yangtze River gave birth to a result that no one expected.

A salt merchant with a northwest accent appeared in Jiangnan.

The salt merchant brought a water boat with a load of only [-] shi. This water boat brought a plant that the people in the south of the Yangtze River had never seen before. Now the price of food is high, and this thing has a high yield and can be used as rations. A pair of invisible hands, cooperating with the yamen of various prefectures, are pushing this crop called Xitian wheat away in the south of the Yangtze River.

Fanmai, also known as Xitianmai, is like a pagoda, as big as tung seeds, growing between the nodes, with red flowers hanging down at the end of the pagoda. ——"Pingliang Mansion Chronicles Fangwu Chapter"

Daming is in nirvana.

(End of this chapter)