Meishan Su family, Su Yun is the most virtuous

Chapter 332: Su Juzheng’s plans for the country are very far-reaching!

When Zhu Guangting heard that Yang Guobao was so arrogant and ignorant, he was speechless for a moment.

Yang Guobao thought he had blocked Zhu Guangting's mouth, and said with a smug smile: "Mr. Zhu, don't taint Luoxue with the smell of money!

Have you forgotten what Master Cheng said, "Starving to death is a small matter, but losing one's chastity is a big matter"? Haha, you, Zhu Gongfan, are greedy for wealth and fame, I won't stop you, but if you want to destroy my moral integrity, I will not forgive you!"

He was relatively mild at the beginning, but later on, Yang Guobao became very stern.

Zhu Guangting had already reacted by now. After hearing Yang Guobao's righteous words, he couldn't help laughing and said, "Starving to death is a small matter, but losing one's chastity is a big matter? Hahaha! What a joke! What a joke!"

Yang Guobao stared at Zhu Guangting with a gloomy expression and said, "Tell me, why is this a joke?"

Zhu Guangting's expression also turned gloomy, staring at Yang Guobao and said: "As soon as Master Cheng became the imperial lecturer, the Mingzhou Port Maritime Customs Office used 70% of the three-year tax revenue to repair the Songyang Academy.

Hahaha, back then I heard Master Cheng say "starving to death is a small matter" in Yique, but now you need the money from the foreign merchants in the Maritime Customs Office to support your orthodoxy?"

Yang Guobao's face turned very ugly.

Zhu Guangting laughed and said, "Do you know where Master Cheng got the money to publish Yichuan Yichuan last time?"

Yang Guobao stopped talking.

Zhu Guangting laughed and said, "Why, you don't know or you are too embarrassed to say it?"

Yang Guobao snorted and said, "To preach, you always have to compromise."

Zhu Guangting laughed and said, "What a compromise! It seems that you have really mastered Master Cheng's teaching on interpreting the Book of Changes. What a good saying 'When you are in trouble, you must change; when you change, you will succeed'. Hahaha, interesting, interesting!"

Zhu Guangting took out Wang Yansou's memorial impeaching Cheng Yi from his bosom, threw it on the table, and said with a laugh, "Take a look.

Wang Yansou impeached Master Cheng. It is up to you to judge whether Master Cheng can hold on this time.

Among Minister Fan, Minister Lu, and Prime Minister Lu, who has a good impression of Master Cheng, and who will speak for Master Cheng?

Haha, you said you are not afraid of Su Yun, but you don’t know that Su Yun has completed the revitalization of the Ministry of Works with a Qingming Shanghe Garden. Now the Ministry of Works has regained control of functions such as construction, water conservancy, and military farming. He has become a de facto minister of six ministries!
Moreover, Prime Minister Lu, Vice Minister Lu, Shangshu Fan and others all showed goodwill towards him, and his letter "Memorial on Water Conservancy and Defense in Hebei" had completely won the recognition of the Shuo Party.

He remained silent on the new law, which had already earned the trust of Empress Gao. Haha, now he has the support of the Imperial Academy and the Secretariat, the help of the ruling officials, and the support of the Empress Dowager and the government. You say you are not afraid of him? The ignorant are truly fearless!"

Yang Guobao's face suddenly turned pale. If Cheng Yi was exiled, the Luo Party would lose its core. Now Zhu Guangting was about to betray the party and leave. And judging from the way he was lobbying him, he might have already lobbying other people. In this way, the Luo Party might be facing the situation of disintegration.

Zhu Guangting still did not give up. He took out another memorial from his sleeve and said, "Let's take a look at this one. Wang Yansou impeached your uncle Yang Wei for "communicating with Cai Que" and colluding with the New Party. Guess whether your uncle can escape this disaster?"

Yang Guobao fell down on the cushion, looking frightened.

He was not a person who was isolated from information, so he naturally knew that Cai Que had been impeached recently. Cai Que was demoted to a local area and wrote poems in a place called Chegaiting. He was then impeached by Wu Chuhou for satirizing the government.

This kind of thing can be big or small. Cai Que is the leader of the new law ministers. Now is the time when the old party is trying to wipe out the new party. Cai Que... is in trouble!

And if he were involved in such a thing, his uncle Yang Wei might not be in good shape. If he was deliberately retaliated against, even the entire Yang family would be implicated!
Yang Guobao suddenly grabbed Zhu Guangting's official robe and asked anxiously, "Can Minister Fan really protect the entire Yang family?"

The sound of the drum pierces the wind and rain.

Zhu Guangting helped Yang Guobao up and said in a gentle voice, "Baochen, he who knows the current situation is a hero. With your change of direction, the Yang family will prosper! Tomorrow, come with me to the Ministry of Personnel to pay a visit to Minister Fan, and everything will be answered."

After saying this, Zhu Guangting stood up, put on his straw raincoat, and strode into the wind and rain.

Yang Guobao sat in a daze under the dying candle. Outside the window came the sound of a patrol soldier's clapperboard: "It's midnight, beware of fire..."

Yang Guobao rolled his eyes, stood up, took the share document in his hand, and looked at it for a long time under the lamp. After a long time, he let out a long sigh.

……

Su Yun was not surprised to learn from Fan Zhengmin about the result of Zhu Guangting's lobbying of Jia Yi and Yang Guobao. Jia Yi lost his father at a young age and came from a humble background. Children who grew up in such adversity usually have extremely tough personalities, are highly defensive, and show an inflexible stubbornness.

Moreover, the Neo-Confucian education he inherited from his teacher Cheng Yi emphasized "preserving the principles of heaven and eliminating human desires." Strict training in moral standards may strengthen his principles, but it can also easily form a black-and-white way of thinking.

Such people are usually difficult to convince.

Zhu Guangting and Yang Guobao came from relatively large families, and their elders were officials. They had a family background in learning and would not be deeply influenced by Neo-Confucianism. Therefore, when they needed to make adjustments, they only needed to increase their efforts.

As for people like Jia Yi, just give up on trying to win him over and find a reason to demote him to a local position. You don't even have to do it yourself, the Shuo Party will naturally do it for you.

Su Yun has been making frequent moves recently. He first used the Ministry of Works to build various water conservancy projects in the north, strengthen defense projects, etc. in order to befriend the Shuo Party, in exchange for the Shuo Party stopping its attacks on the Shu Party.

Afterwards, he used the shares of Qingming Shanghe Garden to make friends with the prominent families in Bianliang, including the Han family (Han Zhen), the Lu family (Lü Dafang), and the Fan family (Fan Chunren).

The final step is to split the Luo Party.

Su Yun started with Zhu Guangting, and then Zhu Guangting took the initiative to volunteer to instigate Yang Guobao to rebel. Two of the three current generals of the Luo Party had already been instigated, leaving only Jia Yi.

However, Jia Yi probably won't be able to hold on for much longer. Wang Yansou has already begun organizing the Shuo Party to target Cheng Yi. Once Jia Yi is involved, he will certainly be banished from the court!
With these actions, Su Yun fought and kicked, and finally gained a foothold in this new court!

On the one hand, not only did he become the powerful minister in the court, but on the other hand, he had already killed the clear enemy in advance!
Although the Shuo Party, Fan Chunren, Lu Gongzhu, Lu Dafang, Han Zhen and others may not be able to stay together forever, that is a matter for the future. At least now Su Yun has gotten rid of the influence of the New Law Party. Although Su Yun's move was mostly for his own gaining a foothold in this new court, it unexpectedly brought a new situation to the court.

In October, Sima Guang finally could not hold on any longer. With his death, the most diehard anti-New Law minister in the court was gone.

At the same time, Cheng Yi was also attacked by the Shuo Party, and was subsequently dismissed from his position as imperial tutor and banished from the capital.

Afterwards, Jia Yi was also banished from Bian Jing by the Shuo Party and went to serve as an official in an unknown prefecture or county.

Sima Guang and Cheng Yi were both extreme conservatives, while Fan Chunren, Lu Dafang, Lu Gongzhu and others were moderate conservatives, especially Liu Zhi and others from the Shuo Party who were pragmatists.

The death of Sima Guang and the demotion of Cheng Yi actually improved the atmosphere in the court a lot.

Of course, it was mainly because Su Yun often went to Su Shi's house, constantly dissuading him from making radical remarks and not provoking the Shuo Party, thus creating a world where only the Luo Party was hurt.

Su Yun's efforts were naturally noticed by everyone.

Lü Gongzhu, Han Zhen, Fan Chunren, Lü Dafang, and even Liu Zhi, Wang Yansou and others all praised in unison that "Su Juzheng's plans for the country are far-reaching"!
Su Yun's efforts to stabilize the government, amid praise from the ministers, naturally reached the ears of Empress Dowager Gao, who lowered her guard a little.

At this time, Su Yun also planned to start doing some things carefully.

The Qingming Riverside Park is still a long way from completion. For such a large project, although Su Yun is afraid that the construction period will be too long, so he divides the construction into multiple phases, but even so, the first phase of the project will not be completed until at least the beginning of next year, and the overall construction scale is only one-tenth of the planned scale.

However, the funds Su Yun raised in this way have reached tens of millions of strings of cash.

Part of the source of this money is relatively clear. First of all, salt merchants, silk merchants, etc. contributed part, and some big families in Bian Jing contributed part. More importantly, the Ministry of Works quietly hyped up the valuation and then kept selling shares, thus raising tens of millions of strings of funds.

Su Yun was extremely cunning at this time. It seemed that he gave the shares to the Han, Lu, Fan and other families for free, but he secretly spread the word to the market, saying that several major families had spent a lot of money to buy these shares, and also asked people to drive up the price. Up to now, the estimated value of each share of Qingming Shanghe Garden has reached 50,000 strings of cash!

Hey, don't think it's too much, and don't question whether the shares of Qingming Riverside Garden are worth 50,000 guan. When it comes to stock trading, would you ask whether Tencent is worth that much money? Would you ask whether Country Garden is worth that much money?

Anyway, the price is this high now and it may continue to rise. Many wealthy people are looking forward to buying it, and those who already have shares are holding on to it tightly and are not selling at all!

Of course, there are still a small number of shares being sold on the market, and they are sold by unknown people. It doesn’t matter who they are. Anyway, if you can buy them at this time, you will make a profit!
Naturally, they didn't know that this was Su Yun's way of making money.

At this moment, Su Yun was listening to Cai Fenghui's report.

"…The shares given away account for about 20%. The Gao family, the Fan family, the two Lu families, the Han family and other big families either gave them away directly or sold them at a low price. This part accounts for about 20%.

The amount of money collected was relatively small, only about one million strings of cash.

Those sold at high prices were mainly sold to wealthy merchants, who accounted for about 20% of the shares, and this part brought in about 5 million strings of cash.

As for the remaining four million strings of cash, less than 10% of the funds were sold and the four million strings of cash were collected back. This was the real profit.

Next, I will strictly control the sale of shares and try to push the stock price up slowly. This will not only increase the capital scale of the Ministry of Industry, but also maintain the stock price.

Of course, my suggestion is that if there is no need, you don’t have to sell. The stock price will go up and up. It is more appropriate to just hold on to it and sell it when the price is right.”

Su Yun listened to Ah Hui's report and nodded, "Keep selling. You control the scale. Also, inject the construction funds for Qingming Riverside Park all at once and isolate the funds. What I'm going to do next will cost a lot of money, so I have to set aside the money first, so as to avoid letting Qingming Riverside Park become an unfinished project, which would be a disaster."

Ah Hui nodded and said, "The construction cost and operation cost of Qingming Riverside Park should be around one million guan. Once it is put into operation, it will naturally generate profits and continue to operate."

Su Yun nodded and said, "With a fund of eight or nine million guan, we can probably do something."

Ah Hui was a little curious when he heard this and asked, "Eight or nine million strings of cash, how are we going to spend such a huge sum of money? Can we spend it all?"

Su Yun laughed when he heard this and said, "This money may seem like a lot, but when you use it, it may not be enough.

Apart from anything else, most of this money will be used to control the Yellow River. I plan to carry out a large-scale Yellow River control project.

The Yellow River had been stable for hundreds of years since Wang Jing's river management in the Han Dynasty. But during the Ming Dynasty, the Yellow River became restless again.

Since the founding of the country, the course has been changed and the dikes have burst countless times, which has consumed an incalculable amount of the court's national strength. This time, I plan to govern it properly!
Secondly, I plan to set up a research institute dedicated to the transformation of various tools, such as the improvement of the turning wheel, the drum wheel, the textile machine, the movable type printing, etc.

In addition, "craftsman schools" should be established in the Imperial College or local areas to train engineering talents, and books recording engineering and technical experience should be promoted. The compilation of the "Ministry of Industry Regulations" should be organized to systematically organize construction, water conservancy, manufacturing standards, etc.

When you are in office, you must try your best to do something. The Ministry of Works has been abandoned for too long and some established practices have been lost. I must spend more effort to get the Ministry of Works back on track.

And each of these things costs a lot of money, and this money may not be enough to waste.”

Ah Hui heard this and said with a smile: "It's okay. Most of the shares of Qingming Riverside Park have not been sold yet. If you need money, just tell me. Anyway, I have to supply it."

Su Yun smiled and said nothing more when he heard this.

He really needs to do these things with all his heart, even though these things may not be of much benefit to the national strength of the Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty has too many problems, and it is still a luxury to improve the national strength just by doing these things well. However, under the current circumstances, not much can be done.

Although after Su Yun's beatings and kicks, there are no extremists in the court for the time being, but the conservative inertia is still there, and the system is definitely unable to move at all. Only some technical improvements can be made. Well, at least let's lay some foundations for the future!

(End of this chapter)