When Wu Sangui was discussing countermeasures in Luoyang, Zhao Ming, the regent of the Ming Dynasty, had already returned to Nanjing and began to deal with his affairs.

Zhao Ming entered Nanjing surrounded by all officials.

Recovering Beijing, quelling the royal rebellion, and defeating the Zhou army that was invading the territory, elevating Zhao Ming's prestige to the top.

However, no matter how high Zhao Ming's prestige is, he is only the regent. After returning to Nanjing, he still has to salute Zhu Youlang and report state affairs to the emperor.

This made the Regent Zhao Ming, who held the power, feel quite uncomfortable.

At present, as long as the emperor is in Nanjing for one day, Zhao Ming is nominally not the controller of Nanjing.

For this reason, shortly after Zhao Ming returned to Nanjing, he immediately hinted that his subordinates wrote a letter and suggested that they return to Beijing.

Since Beijing has been regained, did the Ming Dynasty need to return to its old capital?

After the Nanjing royal rebellion was quelled, many ministers in the court discussed this matter privately.

Zhao Ming originally thought that many people in the government and the country should still object.

After all, it is equivalent to the Ming Dynasty's political center returning to Beijing, Jiangnan will stay away from the political center, and every year it has to provide hundreds of thousands of stones of rice and various materials to maintain the Beijing court.

Ministers and local gentry in the court should oppose the movement of the capital like when Chengzu's dynasty.

However, the result was beyond Zhao Ming's expectations, and most of the voices agreed and remained true.

This made Zhao Ming not quite understand. Later, after being woken up by the staff, he figured out what was going on.

In recent years, the central government has gradually become stronger, and Zhao Ming is also arbitrary in his speech. A strong central government will inevitably have strict control over local areas and will limit the freedom of local wealth.

In the development of business in Jiangnan, many wealthy people emerged. On the one hand, these people hope to influence the court and control the court's policies, but on the other hand, they did not want to be suppressed by the court and were over-managed by the court.

So for them, it is best for the court to move back to Beijing, and they influence the court by subsidizing officials to remotely control them in the south.

In this way, the emperor was far away, and the local government could not suppress them. They were free and easy. When the court made decisions, they could also make decisions that were beneficial to them through the officials they supported.

In addition, the imperial court has been in capital and can carry out the canal transportation. As we all know, the government does not make trouble or engage in projects, so how can officials and merchants make money?

Once the canal transportation is restored, I don’t know how much benefits it can be made.

Zhao Ming understood that the gentry and merchants in Jiangnan still wanted to return to the era of the Donglin Party.

Although the entire Ming Dynasty was in trouble when the Donglin Party controlled the government, the gentry and merchants in Jiangnan were actually extremely comfortable.

Zhao Ming wanted to understand this, so he naturally had to give them a sentence, "I think beautifully."

When did the gentry of the Ming Dynasty lose the feelings of the predecessor saints and become egoists? Zhao Ming felt that he should pay attention to it and strengthen ideological education.

In Zhao Ming's view, there are no strong enemies in the north of the Ming Dynasty, so Beijing is not suitable for being a capital, and in the ocean era, Nanjing is actually more suitable for being a capital.

The reason why Zhao Ming instructed his confidant to write a letter to the capital was actually not that Zhao Ming wanted to go to Beijing, but that he wanted to bring Zhu Youlang to Beijing, while the court stayed in Nanjing.

In this way, the emperor was completely marginalized, and Zhao Ming was the only one in the entire Nanjing city.

In mid-December, Zhao Ming did not allow Zhu Youlang to celebrate the New Year in Nanjing, claiming that the Nanjing palace was not suitable for living after being burned by Zhu Yihai. The Beijing palace was kept intact. He also promised to give Zhu Youlang an additional 200,000 yuan in pocket money every year to choose a concubine for him, so he asked someone to escort Zhu Youlang back to Beijing. Zhao Ming stayed in Nanjing with the Ming Dynasty on the grounds that the court's affairs were complicated.

This result disappointed the person who was originally extremely excited.

I thought that the court could start a life of a wealthy family without any scruples when moving back to Beijing, but I didn't want the emperor to leave, but the regent stayed.

After seeing off Zhu Youlang, Zhao Ming felt relaxed and began to prepare for a good New Year.

As Zhao Ming happily prepared for the New Year of 1661, Dongzhou, thousands of miles away, Xinchengfan ushered in the biggest crisis since landing in Dongzhou.

At the beginning of last year, under the attack of Spain and indigenous people, Xinchengfan had to give up the gold mine and retreat northward.

Zhang Yida led more than 3,000 people and walked north for more than a thousand miles to a bay, and then rebuilt the camp.

This is probably Vancouver, and it is not suitable for survival further north.

The people of Xinchengfan thought that they could temporarily escape the crisis by escaping here and staying away from the Spaniards, but they did not expect that the Spaniards would continue to head north and track their traces.

If they were discovered by the Spaniards again, not only would the Xincheng Vanguard be destroyed, but the Ming Dynasty's plan to expand the East Continent would also suffer a devastating blow. Zhao Ming turned the Pacific Ocean into an inner lake and established a barrier to resist the invasion of Western civilization on the west coast of America, and terror would be miscarried.

At this time, in a forest not far from Xinchengfan Camp, Ruan Jin squatted on the ground and checked the two corpses.

The body was wearing a breastplate, an iron helmet, and a musket beside him, clearly a Spanish soldier.

"You killed?" Ruan Jin looked at the three men beside him and asked in a deep voice.

A man nodded and licked his lips and said, "There is no way. If you don't kill them, they will definitely find the camp again."

Ruan Jin's face was gloomy. They had given up the gold mine and moved north for more than a thousand miles. Unexpectedly, the Spaniards were still chasing them.

Now that the Spanish soldiers searched here, it means that the Spanish may have obtained some traces of them. Once they were discovered, the Spanish would definitely attack in large numbers.

"Cleaning out the body, taking the things, returning to the camp with me, and reporting to the city lord." Ruan Jin ordered in a deep voice.

Several people hurriedly pulled out the Spanish armor and clothes, buried the body, and then disappeared into the jungle with muskets.

Not far away, two Spanish warships were anchored by the bay.

On the beach, Spanish soldiers were lit on fire, cooking food, roasting corn and sweet potatoes.

At this time it was getting dark, and the Spanish soldiers sent out to search returned to the beach one after another, but two of them never came back.

"Your Excellency, Walkerbrey, Baird has not come back yet!" an officer said to the captain.

The captain frowned slightly, took out the map, and asked, "What area are these two idiots looking for?"

"Your Excellency is this area!" the officer pointed to the map and said.

The captain then said to the soldiers next to him: "Fox, go to the woods in the northeast to take a look."

Several Spanish soldiers could only complain and stood up and walked into the woods.

When it was getting dark, a group of people came out of the woods and said to the captain: "Your Excellency, I didn't find them!"

The captain's gloomy face revealed a hint of surprise, "Brig, you come back with the St. Marks, I think I have found the Chinese camp."
Chapter completed!