November 10, 1851. Wu Ren, Gui Liang and Zhuo Bingtian came to the Bohai Prison Mansion again and told Zeng Guofan a shocking news: Bohai Gong Yixin was actually bedridden, coughing from time to time, and his sputum was mixed with blood. Last winter, he contracted a cold and never recovered. Especially in recent days, as soon as the weather cooled, his condition began to worsen, but the Bohai Mansion has been blocking the news from the outside world. Today, Yi Xin invited Zeng Guofan to come over, so he informed this situation in advance, so that Zeng Guofan could be mentally prepared.

"This is tuberculosis, right?" Zeng Guofan said to himself, "Then we have to let Bohai Gong go to Yingtian as soon as possible to heal, the emperor once invented a drug that can treat tuberculosis when he was in the West, although it is difficult to cure it, but it can curb the deterioration of the condition." Why don't you hit the road next spring? ”

When Yi Xin heard the news, his pale face moved, and he didn't know what kind of expression Lu Dao represented, Zeng Guofan carefully observed this young man, although he was a little emaciated, but he was not too sick. However, he is not a doctor, and it is impossible to tell at a glance whether the other party is sick or not (Zhu Jishi said that he can't see it himself).

"If I die now, I don't know how the ancestors of the Dao Dao will scold me." Yi Xin coughed twice, "After all, I am the king of the Qing Dynasty......"

"Grandpa doesn't have to blame himself so much." Zeng Guofan sat in front of the Yixin collapse and said lightly, "The Great Qing Qi has been exhausted, and Beijing was already dead when it was attacked by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom." ”

"Lord Zeng, do you think there is still a possibility of recovery in the Qing Dynasty?"

"Grandpa must have a good idea in his heart, maybe he can delay for a while, but the price is very heavy."

said. Zeng Guofan sighed. Straight to the point: "Grandpa decided to withdraw the feudal domain?" ”

Yi Xin coughed again: "I'm afraid it's the only way." Now that I am bedridden, can I still lead my troops to compete with Emperor Zhu? He smiled bitterly as if he was self-deprecating, "Even if I'm not sick, I don't have the ability to defeat the emperor, right?" ”

"Grandpa can retreat bravely in the rapids, save hundreds of thousands of people of the Eight Banners and the Aixin Jueluo clan, and avoid the sword soldiers of the northern country, which is already a great achievement. The emperor will definitely treat his grandfather well, maybe it won't be long before. I'm going to call you the king. ”

Zeng Guofan said comforting words, and he was also relieved in his heart, as a Qing minister, he still had feelings for the Manchu Qing, after all, the Manchu Qing gave him the opportunity to be an official. This is different from Zuo Zongtang, Luo Zenan, and even his brother Zeng Guoquan. Born in two lists, he became a governor in less than ten years, and the Manchu Qing Dynasty did not feel sorry for his country. So he really couldn't bear to see the Eight Banners annihilated and Aixin Jueluo annihilated.

"Ah, I don't deserve this prince." Yi Xin replied gloomily. "I've been a prince and an emperor. It's not interesting. ”

"Huh." Zeng Guofan laughed.

"There is no day when you can sleep peacefully, and you can't save the situation even if your body is exhausted."

"Don't think about it so much, let's take care of your body."

"By the way, Lord Zeng came to Mongolia to choose a beautiful woman for the emperor?" Yi Xin looked at Zeng Guofan with some uncertainty.

Zeng Guofan said with a smile: "The emperor is in his prime, and it is the time when he needs beautiful women. ”

"What beauties are there in Khalkha Mongolia? Oh, there's an Oyuntana, the daughter of Tushetu Khan, but she doesn't look like her father at all. ”

"Tushetu Khan has already offered Oyuntana."

Yi Xin nodded: "Then there is none...... However, Horqin Mongolia is rich in beauties, and there are also some gorgeous women among my Eight Banners, so why don't you choose some for the emperor? ”

Zeng Guofan looked at Yi Xin with a sincere face, and said in his heart: "He sincerely wants to offer a beautiful woman to the emperor, so it's not good to interfere with him, right?" However, the beauty pageant will take time, and the heavy snow in Mongolia is coming, and it seems that we will not return until next spring. ”

He smiled and said, "In that case, then I'll stay in Cullen until the beginning of spring next year." But I'll give the emperor a fold first, how about telling the Bohai Domain about its request to withdraw the domain? ”

"It's okay, let's play it together." Yi Xin coughed a few more dryly, "But it does cost some money for the Bohai Kingdom to withdraw its domain...... Thirty or forty million is the lion's big mouth, and three or four million is necessary. In addition, hundreds of thousands of people from the Eight Banners also need to be resettled, and these must be made clear to the emperor in the fold. ”

Zeng Guofan nodded again and again: "That's that, three or four million is a small amount, the emperor must be willing to give it, the banner people are easy to resettle, there is land in the northeast, and Beijing City is also empty, so it can be used to resettle." ”

……

When Zeng Guofan was Mr. Dongguo in Mongolia, Yingtian City was busy with people. Japan's Prince Shukonai has arrived in Oten. In addition to Tokugawa Akiko, she also arrived with the pregnant Yukoto Nokata, Tokugawa Akiko's father, Tokugawa Saiaki, and nearly 5,000 retainers of Prince Shukonai, as well as the family members of several times more retainers. Such a vast number of people have to be well settled, so Zhu Jishi's money has been spent like flowing water.

The first is to prepare for a decent and somewhat excessive concubine ceremony - before this, Zhu Jishi had only held a wedding with Luo Xiangmei once. Even if it's the Imperial Concubine Maria. Clementina didn't get a decent wedding, and now in order to show the marriage between the Ming Empire and the Japanese Empire, Zhu Jishi decided to extravagant.

The second is the construction of the Purple Mountain Imperial Palace, a palace modeled after the Kyoto Imperial Palace, which was dedicated to Prince Shukonai. After Zhu Jishi saw Prince Nei's face in Shanghai, he resolutely decided to let His Royal Highness Prince Nei live in the Purple Mountain Palace for a long time.

In addition, up to 20,000 Japanese-style houses were built near the Purple Mountain Imperial Palace to house Shuzi's retainers, which were of course very small and simple, because Shuzi's retainers were all of the rank of "imperial family", ranging from 60 yuan (one year) to 80 yuan, and no land was allocated until the merit was established. Later, Zhu Jishi prepared to form a samurai corps for operations in Siberia and the Western Regions, and the samurai corps would not follow the path of a large corps, but would be composed of hundreds of elite small troops, similar to the special forces of later generations.

The last was to build a Japanese-style official residence in the Imperial Castle for Yu Qinzhifang, which was also the official residence of her son (daughter), and Zhu Jishi hoped that she would give birth to a healthy boy so that the future ruler of Japan would be educated in the Imperial City Public School.

In addition to these Japan-related affairs, Zhu Jishi's remaining work was to read newspapers and conduct experiments. Although Emperor Zhu also knew that a certain degree of freedom of the press had a negative effect, he knew better that he did not have a management team that served the people wholeheartedly, and that he was now ruling a semi-feudal and semi-bourgeois bureaucracy, not the vanguard of the proletariat. Phenomena such as corruption, deception, and disobedience are commonplace in the Zhu Ming Group! Relying on a very immature parliamentary system alone cannot play too much of a restraining and supervisory role, so in the current bourgeois initial stage, public opinion supervision is still very necessary - otherwise, Emperor Zhu, who has lived in the deep palace for a long time, will be like Daoguang for a long time, and he will not even know how much an egg is.

The experiment is to solve the difficulty of insufficient supply of A oil explosives, and the synthesis of an has not yet appeared, and the anthem is obtained from nitrogen-containing vegetables and animal manure by dry distillation, which is high cost and low yield, and is not suitable for mass production. Therefore, after the use of A oil explosives became more and more popular, the supply of an became more and more tight. As a result, the search for an alternative to the explosive has become a top priority for Jason's lab. Of course, Zhu Jishi has a solution, and he chose X-shaped starch, which is relatively easy to produce, as a new generation of explosives among several explosive chemicals that he knows. This time, however, he does not intend to hand over the patent for the production of X-type starch to Jason-Churchill, but to be shared by Jason-Churchill and Lan Fong, whose business will also be adjusted accordingly, and the rubber plantations and palm plantations in Lan Fong will be set up as a separate Nanyang Rubber Joint Stock Company. Lan Fang Xing, on the other hand, will focus on steel, chemicals and military production. (To be continued......)