My father is Jiajing

Chapter 304 How Should This King Be Cautious
There are not many secrets in the capital that can be kept secret. Yan Shifan arrived at the cabinet early in the morning and passionately demanded justice for the workers and laborers who froze to death. The news that he impeached Shuntian Prefecture Yi Wang Youzhao and the project supervisor Hai Rui spread throughout the capital in an instant.

After hearing the news, Zhao Zhenji and Li Chunfang did not sit still for a moment. They hurriedly put down their work and came to Prince Yu's mansion in a hurry, wanting to give Prince Yu advice and clarify the relationship with this matter.

After all, Hai Rui was the chief judge of Prince Yu's Palace, and he was also the person appointed by Prince Yu to supervise the progress of the outer city construction project on behalf of Prince Yu's Palace. Now it was said that people had frozen to death in the work shed dormitory outside Chongwenmen, and it was also said that Hai Rui covered up the matter and said that it was sheep that had frozen to death.

It would be disastrous if Hai Rui could no longer cover up this matter and thought that Prince Yu's Mansion was his support and implicated Prince Yu as well.

Therefore, with the intention of being loyal to their master, the two men hurried to the palace, hoping to come up with a plan for Zhu Zaigui and clear the Prince Yu's Palace of responsibility first.

"Your Majesty, this matter is very important. You must not be involved in any problem."

Zhao Zhenji looked at Zhu Zaigui who was not in a hurry at all, and couldn't help but said anxiously with worry.

How much he wanted Zhu Zaigui to understand the seriousness of the matter. Once the scandal of people freezing to death was involved in Prince Yu's Mansion, although there would be no actual harm to Prince Yu himself, it would be unbearable to withstand the gossip of the public.

If someone likes to secretly spread the rumor that Hai Rui's order to "use people as sheep" was instructed by Zhu Zaigui, then it would be no joke.

When the news spreads all over the city, wouldn't that be equivalent to a moral stain?
How can a person with a moral stain earn savings?
Even if he succeeds to the throne, it will deal a severe blow to his prestige. People who don't know the truth will think that Prince Yu is a ruler without virtue. Even if he inherits the throne in the future, the people will still remember this incident, causing Prince Yu's future dignity and prestige to suffer varying degrees of impact.

Such an impact will also directly affect the future credibility of the court.

How can an emperor and a court with flawed credibility implement new policies and decrees to govern the world?
Therefore, no matter what, Prince Yu must not be involved in this matter, and any problem that may affect Prince Yu's reputation must be eliminated invisibly.

Zhu Zaigui looked up at Zhao Zhenji who looked anxious, and Li Chunfang who also looked anxious.

Zhu Zaigui said: "I know the situation well, so you can rest assured."

Although Zhu Zaigui said so, how could Zhao Zhenji and Li Chunfang feel at ease?
Although both of them acknowledged that Zhu Zaigui had extraordinary wisdom, it takes time to slowly see through and comprehend human nature.

Therefore, the two of them are most afraid of the confidence and indifference that Zhu Zaigui is now showing.

The two were very worried that Zhu Zaigui, who was young and full of vigor, would not take such a trivial matter seriously and thought that only a few people died.

Although the fact is just the life and death of a few people, the problem is the attitude.

Even if you don't care, you can't let people know that you don't care.

If ordinary people think that the future prince and the future emperor are so indifferent to human life and do not take the lives of the people seriously, it will be a big scandal.

So sometimes, even if you have to pretend, you have to pretend to be very sad and care about the people very much.

Don't take it lightly.

Zhao Zhenji said anxiously, "Your Majesty, I know you trust Hai to judge the case, but the nature of this matter is very unusual. Since the young minister has already caught hold of this matter, he will definitely not let it go. Now I have heard that the three judicial departments (the Ministry of Justice, the Censorate, and the Dali Temple) are all involved. This shows that the impact of this matter has surpassed the matter itself."

"These dozen or so workers who froze to death are no longer ordinary people who froze to death in previous years. Their death may become a bloodless knife that kills people. What if Hai Shen said something wrong and implicated you? What should I do?"

"Therefore, I ask Your Majesty to be cautious about this matter and not to take the lives of these people lightly. You must come up with a proper way to distance yourself from the palace and not to be involved in any way."

Zhu Zaigui listened to Zhao Zhenji's long speech and looked up at him again with some dissatisfaction.

Zhu Zaigui said: "How cautious should I be? Should I push Hai Rui out and declare that I am just a nominal prince and know nothing about the outside projects? If this is really the case, if there are problems with your book revision in the future, should I also push you out and declare that I am just a nominal prince?" Zhu Zaigui's words made Zhao Zhenji and Li Chunfang blush, but at the same time, they couldn't help but feel moved by Zhu Zaigui's protection and responsibility for his subjects.

The two of them helped Zhu Zaigui to think of the most appropriate method to keep his reputation spotless.

But this method can only be achieved at the expense of others.

Now we can just cut ties and abandon Hai Rui, but what if something happens in the future? Do we still have to use this method?

If this method is used more often, will there be anyone who will work for Zhu Zaigui as diligently as they do now?
Therefore, the issue we need to think about now is not how to avoid the problem, nor how to sacrifice Hai Rui, but to use this opportunity to show off to these people and let them see what kind of person their master is.

Zhao Zhenji replied to Zhu Zaigui in shame: "That is not what I meant. I am worried about your reputation."

Zhu Zaigui waved his hand and said, "Alright, alright. I know you are doing this for my own good, but I have my own plan for this matter. I will not make any demands on you now, nor will I let you get involved in this matter. You just need to take care of the affairs of Hongwenguan and Daming Bookstore."

"Recently, I have consulted many printing and bookmaking craftsmen for you, and also found some people who like to delve into technology from the Shunyi Industrial Park to help you make new printing equipment."

"I have also seen the printing quality of previous books. They are indeed not as clear and distinct as handwritten books. To be honest, I am very dissatisfied. You know, it has been hundreds of years since Bi Sheng invented movable type printing. How can the technology still remain at the stage of the Song Dynasty?"

"Have the craftsmen and technicians in the past few hundred years just been sitting there doing nothing? Don't they think of ways to delve deeper and work harder to improve printing technology?"

"Look at the printed sample books. They are either crooked or blurry. The ink has either overflowed too much, blurring the words. Or the ink is too light, and you can't tell what it is. It's not comfortable enough for normal reading."

"Can something like this support the heavy responsibility and duty set by Hongwenguan? What I want now is for you to make good use of the time and opportunity now to make a qualitative leap in printing technology for me, so that the new books printed can be straight and the handwriting can be clear, while reducing costs at the same time."

"Otherwise, if a book costs one or two taels of silver, how can I expect you to do a good job in Hongwenguan and Daming Bookstore? You should know that many scholars are very poor.

"They are not from a scholarly family like you, with countless books to read at any time. They are also not like the nouveau riche who can afford black tea, green tea, Yiran sugar and Bingxin sugar, and can easily spend a few taels of silver for entertainment."

"They can only afford a price of around ten to a hundred coins. If the price exceeds this, they would rather copy it by hand than spend money to buy it. Wouldn't that mean that what we are trying to do will fail?"

"So, in a nutshell, we need to improve printing technology and reduce the cost of books. Only by doing these two things can Hongwenguan and Daming Bookstore have a bright future, and your future will be extremely bright."

"Oh, and the punctuation problem that I mentioned, you should also pay attention to it and make good use of it to reduce the difficulty of reading, so that more people who know how to read can read and understand the content of an article or a book smoothly based on the punctuation."

Zhu Zaigui then shifted the problem to Hongwenguan and Daming Bookstore. Now Zhao Zhenji and Li Chunfang were both very motivated, but the problems they encountered were also very realistic.

That is, the backwardness of printing technology made the books printed in large quantities worse than any pirated books Zhu Zaigui had ever seen. So, in order to solve this problem, Zhu Zaigui spared no expense to arrange people and materials for the two of them to help them overcome the difficulties.

If we can push the current shabby printing technology forward a big step, at least the printed books will have clear handwriting and neat layout.

Zhu Zaigui didn't dare to ask for too much other requests for the time being.

After all, the current technology and productivity are there, and it is unrealistic to want to achieve everything in one go.

Therefore, Zhu Zaigui's current request was to let Zhao Zhenji and Li Chunfang arrange the preliminary preparations for Hongwenguan and Daming Book Bureau as soon as possible, and set up the equipment for printing books. They could not stand still as before, but had to have some subjective initiative.

(End of this chapter)