From the beginning of the second year of Chongzhen to the period after the autumn harvest, Wu Shigong seemed to have been blessed by the goddess of luck, and everything seemed to come true.

First of all, of course, his three pregnant wives gave birth to two daughters, one boy and three children. First, Zhu Yun gave birth to Wu Shigong's eldest daughter, and then Zhao Ruya gave birth to a second daughter. Zuihou is Li Xinsheng's second son.

However, for the surnames of these children, everyone, including the mothers of these children, was silent, waiting for Wu Shigong's decision. Wu Shigong showed his strength at this time, and he did not hesitate to decide that these children were surnamed Wu.

No one dared to raise objections to Wu Shigong's decision, and no one was uninteresting. On the contrary, Li Xin, who gave birth to a son, was very happy, and when she was alone with Wu Shigong, she was very close to Wu Shigong.

And Xiuzhu is finally pregnant looking forward to the stars and the moon. Now in the whole inner house, although there is the sound of children crying, it seems to be very lively. Wu Shigong also never gets tired of teasing these children.

However, Wu Shigong still often thinks of his eldest son Xue Chenglin, who is now in the capital. Sometimes I still take out Xue Chenglin's small footprints to take a look. I haven't seen that sleepy kid for more than two years.

Due to the abundant manpower, the construction of the fortress of Qianhusuo was finally completed according to Wu Shigong's idea. And because these manpower basically did not need to pay labor costs, the cost of building a thousand fortresses was also greatly saved.

And Yang Goudan's blacksmith workshop finally made a three-pound cannon after two failures. However, it cost Wu Shigong more than 1,300 taels of silver to make this artillery. However, after careful calculation, it will only cost seven hundred taels of silver to manufacture the same type of artillery in the future.

However, although the artillery was manufactured, according to Yang Goudan's introduction, the range and power of this artillery were not satisfactory, but the manufacturing cost was still too expensive. Don't talk about finding a Francophone man in Macao to buy the same type of artillery, it only costs more than 400 taels of silver, even if you make the same type of artillery in a workshop in Tianjin, it only costs more than 500 taels of silver.

In this regard, Wu Shigong is also very helpless. There are still too few skilled blacksmiths in their own possession. But this kind of thing can't be rushed, so take your time. At least I was able to make it myself. A little more expensive, a little more expensive. Wu Shigong arranged for Yang Goudan to make another one, no matter how much, the current Wu Shigong has no extra financial resources to make it.

In addition, Yang Goudan's blacksmith workshop also produced a large number of firecrackers. Now Wu Shigong already has one hundred and fifty medium-sized firecrackers and two hundred and fifty heavy-duty firearms.

After the manufacture of these firecrackers is completed, these firecrackers will basically meet Wu Shigong's current needs. So, Wu Shigong asked Yang Goudan to slow down the manufacturing speed of the firecracker.

At this moment, there were more people in the blacksmith's workshop. Through the relationship between Yao Yuanwai and Lu Yunhuan and other local gentry, the blacksmith workshop received a large number of jobs for the manufacture of civilian ironware, which also increased the income generated a lot.

And all of Wu Shigong's businesses have also entered an upward trajectory. In particular, the sale of salt goods in the mountainous areas in the northern part of Runing Province has led to an explosive increase in Wu Shigong's income. And now Wu Shigong has not only reached a break-even, but also made a profit of five hundred taels of silver every month.

What's even more gratifying is that this year can be called smooth, whether it is the land bought by Wu Shigong or the land of thousands of military households, they have all obtained a bumper harvest.

The only fly in the ointment is that the bumper harvest has caused the price of grain to plummet, and Wu Shigong's food stamps are no longer necessary to issue them for the time being.

And after Wu Shigong laid down Li Harrier's cottage, he never recruited a hundred bandits in other villages controlled by Lei Ying. Therefore, these 300 bandits who were recruited could not be given food stamps, but could only be paid half a stone of grain every month as military salaries.

However, after last year's drought, especially after the drought, the grain played a tremendous role in the collection and extermination of those bandits, Wu Shigong's sense of crisis became even stronger. Taking advantage of the current collapse in grain prices, Wu Shigong spent a large sum of silver to buy grain. For Wu Shigong's behavior, everyone was not surprised.

But everyone didn't expect that Wu Shigong's somewhat morbid move would play a huge role later. Because from the third year of Chongzhen, Henan will suffer four consecutive years of drought.

Although life seemed to be going well, Wu Shigong did not relax his training of soldiers at all. It has even strengthened a lot on the basis of the original.

The current Wu Shigong, in addition to the 300 bandits' vassal army and the 300 militia led by Zhou Xun, he himself has 500 cavalry (the current cavalry has been expanded to 100 cavalry per squadron) and 1,000 infantry. Plus fifty or so people in the artillery team.

Wu Shigong no longer has the financial and material resources to expand the army. But even if he had financial and material resources, he would not dare to expand the army. After all, Wu Shigong is only an acting Qianhu, and his current strength is already greater than the quota of 1,000 soldiers he should have.

Since it is not possible to expand the army, the only way to do so is to strengthen training and improve the combat capability of our soldiers. But even so, on the ground nearby, the strength of Wu Shigong's army is second to none.

Unlike Wu Shigong's smooth sailing, in the court, there was a sudden turmoil. Because they thought that the external environment was calm, because of the inferior nature of the officials of the Ming Dynasty, these officials soon became happy.

The first is Emperor Chongzhen's thorough finalization of the Wei Party. As expected, Emperor Chongzhen's action to eliminate the remnants of the Wei Party was indeed expanded. Because of the principle that I will oppose what the Emperor of the Apocalypse is in favor of, and what the Emperor of the Apocalypse is against, Emperor Chongzhen quickly replaced the vast majority of the bachelors.

At this moment, the Donglin Party, which was most suppressed by the Wei Party, turned over. And now the scholars in the cabinet are all Donglin Party members or sympathetic to Donglin Party. As soon as these scholars turned over, they also carried out a counterattack against the Wei Party as a matter of course.

In the political pattern of the late Ming Dynasty, the Donglin Party was the most powerful political group. The quality of the Donglin Party and the history of the rise and fall of the Donglin Party will not be discussed here for the time being, because this is a research topic for history majors. Suffice it to say here that the biggest feature of the Donglin Party is that when the Donglin Party gained power, the Donglin Party controlled the appointment and dismissal of officials and appointed some key official positions in the Ming Dynasty to the Donglin Party.

From this characteristic, it can be seen that this practice of the Donglin Party not only harmed the interests of non-Donglin Party officials, but also greatly threatened the power of the emperor. Therefore, from the later period of the Wanli Emperor's reign, the emperor attacked the Donglin Party members either openly or covertly.

Therefore, it can be said that in the matter of cracking down on Donglin Party officials, Emperor Tianqi and Wei Zhongxian are completely on the same position. In order to eliminate the threat of the Donglin Party, Wei Zhongxian even did not hesitate to use the unspoken rule of the edict to arrest the Donglin Party officials in the edict prison and physically eliminate them.

Of course, Wei Zhongxian's approach also crossed the red line in the political struggle, so that when he arrived in Zuihou, Wei Zhongxian also lost his life. But in any case, the Shili of the Donglin Party can be seen.

And since Emperor Chongzhen was not the crown prince, he had not received any training in the prince's governance, so at this time, he did not realize the threat of this characteristic of the Donglin Party to his throne.

Now it's time to talk about the composition of the Wei party. With the exception of a few sycophants who flattered Wei Zhongxian, the backgrounds of the other members of the Wei party were complicated. Some of them were squeezed out by the Donglin Party and defected to Wei Zhongxian, and some were like Xue Lian, they were just loyal to the emperor, because Wei Zhongxian was very loyal to the Emperor of the Apocalypse, so they listened to Wei Zhongxian's words, which was equivalent to listening to the words of the Emperor of the Apocalypse. Of course, many Wei Party members even have the above situations.

And now Emperor Chongzhen wants to sweep away these ministers, which raises the problem that a large number of experienced civil officials have been dismissed. Emperor Chongzhen lacked some support in the arm of civil officials. As a result, Emperor Chongzhen later had a strange phenomenon that no one was available.

In addition, because of Wei Zhongxian's official position as the governor of the East Factory, such a removal made the spy organizations of the factory guard completely paralyzed. You must know that although the reputation of the factory guard is not good, it plays a huge role in understanding the dynamics of officials and the local situation. Even any civilized country in modern times has its own secret service. And in this way, Emperor Chongzhen blocked his ears and eyes again.

What is even more regrettable is that in Liaodong and Northwest, a large number of civilian officials who led troops were removed from their official positions because of the status of the Wei Party. To tell the truth, because they wanted to get military salaries from Wei Zhongxian, who was in full swing at that time, those civilian officials who led the troops did not want to be the Wei Party, but also wanted to be the Wei Party. There is simply no second option.

But now that these civil officials were dismissed, it immediately provoked a fierce backlash from their soldiers. Of course, these soldiers don't know, and they don't care about the struggle in the court, they are worried about such a thing: After these civilian officials are dismissed, the military salaries that have been delayed will not be paid in the future!

So during this period of time, there were many large-scale mutinies in the entire eastern and northwest Liaodong. The density of the number of mutinies in these begging for wages is even far greater than the density of mutinies after the imperial court was completely bankrupt in the last years of Chongzhen, and no military salaries were paid.

In Liaodong, because of the timely arrival of Yuan Chonghuan after being summoned by the platform, with his prestige, the mutiny was quickly quelled. Of course, after the mutiny subsided, Yuan Chonghuan also dismissed several officials who were not military attachés. Among these dismissed military attachés, there is one who should pay special attention, and he is Zuo Liangyu.

In the northwest, the situation got out of control, and there were many incidents in which soldiers killed Shangguan and defected to the peasant rebel army. There is one person to pay special attention to here, and that is Li Zicheng.