People in Zongwu: Starting with the Yin Gui Sect

Chapter 219

In the sixth year of Tianqi, on the sixth day of the fifth month, at the time of Si in the morning.

The whole city of Beijing was as lively as ever, and the dignitaries still lived a luxurious life. They enjoyed food and wine in their luxurious mansions and talked about national affairs and personal interests.

Ordinary people were busy with their livelihoods, working hard to support their families. The streets were filled with various sounds, vendors were hawking their goods, children were playing in the streets, and soldiers on the city walls were patrolling vigilantly to ensure the safety of the city.

In the palace, Emperor Zhu Youxiao was eating breakfast while listening to the eunuchs around him reading the backlog of memorials in the past six months.

When someone gathered to rebel again in Shaanxi, he couldn't help but sigh in his heart, obviously he was no longer surprised by such things.

If he remembered correctly, this was the third incident this year. Although it was small in scale and was quickly pacified, it was far from feasible to just suppress such incidents. If he did not find a way to solve the problem of disaster relief, I am afraid that the next time it would not be a matter of hundreds or thousands of people, but tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands.

But when he thought of the civil and military officials in the court and the faces of those civil servants, Zhu Youxiao could not help but get angry. He knew that it was impossible to rely on those so-called saints to provide disaster relief.

Zhu Youxiao, who had been in this position for several years, knew the nature of those civil servants. He was afraid that after the money and grain allocated by the court arrived at the local area, those who were really used for disaster relief would be left with a layer of money, which meant that those people had a conscience.

Although he had used Wei Zhongxian to kill many of these corrupt officials in recent years, he could not help but kill them all. As soon as he killed the predecessor, the next one continued to be corrupt, and even became more corrupt.

In addition to various snowstorms, droughts, frontier troops demanding salaries, various wealthy families in Jiangnan forming cliques and factions, and various taxes that were not collected for a long time, Zhu Youxiao felt a headache for a while, and even wanted to quit his job.

But when he thought that this was the country that the Zhu family had worked hard to build, he had to put his mood back on and continue listening.

West of the city, Wanggongchang.

Worker Lao Li, as usual, took his food and came to the place where the gunpowder depot was stored on weekdays, and began his work day after day and year after year, checking whether the stored gunpowder was safe, whether it was damp or leaked.

Because the Ministry of Industry was going to experiment with new weapons during this period, the requirements for gunpowder were very strict, and even a little problem would cause very serious consequences.

If something went wrong, it would be fine if he was just beaten, but if he was fined or kicked out of the military bureau, he would not accept it.

In this period of famine, it was difficult to fill his stomach. If his wages were deducted or he was driven out directly, his parents, wife and children would starve to death. Therefore, he had to check again and again, fearing that any mistake would make him and his family lose their jobs.

"Old Li, how is the inspection going?"

While he was checking, Xu Qianshu, the person in charge of the gunpowder storage point.

"Mr. Qianshu, the inspection has been completed, everything is fine!"

Old Li was very respectful.

Although Xu Qianshu was just a low-ranking eunuch, he was already a great official for craftsmen like them.

As the saying goes, the county magistrate does not allow the current management. If they really offended Xu Qianshu, I am afraid that their whole family would starve.

"Well, not bad, we are still assured that you, Old Li, can do things."

Xu Qianshu was very satisfied with Old Li's attitude.

Suddenly he seemed to remember something and said, "By the way, go and inform Old Liu next door that we have something to tell him."

"I obey your command."

Old Liu is called Liu Er, a fellow villager of Old Li and also his colleague who jointly looks after gunpowder in Wanggongchang. When he heard Xu Qianshu asking him to call for help, Old Li dared not disobey and hurried to call for help next door.

Looking at Old Li's back as he left, Xu Qianshu, who was still smiling, immediately turned cold.

He looked around first, and after finding that there were indeed no people, he quickly took out an iron hammer from his sleeve.

According to the regulations, no open flames could be carried in and out of Wanggongchang. After all, there were dangerous goods stored everywhere here. Once a fire broke out, the consequences would be unimaginable, so even Xu Qianshu, one of the managers, could not do so.

But not being able to bring open flames doesn't mean you can't bring other things, such as the iron hammer in his hand. After all, this is an arsenal, so it's normal to bring a hammer, so he didn't encounter any obstacles and brought it in easily.

First, he pried open an iron can filled with black gunpowder and carefully poured out the gunpowder inside.Then he turned around again and looked behind him. When he found that Old Li had not come back yet, Xu Qianshu raised the hammer in his hand high.

There was a trace of struggle in his eyes, because he knew the consequences of this hammer, but when he thought of his parents who had starved to death due to famine, and that he had entered the palace as a eunuch for a bite of food, and the promise of that adult, Xu Qianshu finally gritted his teeth and hit the hammer hard.

In the Qianqing Palace, Zhu Youxiao, who had heard half of the memorial, finally couldn't listen anymore. He quickly ordered the eunuch to stop, and then lay on his back on the dragon chair and rubbed his eyebrows hard.

Suddenly, a dazzling light crossed the sky, shrouding the entire Beijing city in a strange glow.

The people on the street only felt a dazzling light that made them unable to open their eyes. After their vision was finally restored, they saw a huge mushroom cloud rising in the southwest direction.

The mushroom cloud, accompanied by a high temperature that was enough to melt everything, instantly vaporized everything in the center, and the shock wave generated by the explosion destroyed all the houses around.

For a time, smoke filled the air, dust flew, and vision became blurred. Only flames gushed out from everywhere, spreading rapidly and engulfing everything around.

The mushroom cloud in the sky was still expanding, and the storm swept everywhere, rushing into the crowd with scorching breath and sharp fragments.

In an instant, the whole city of Beijing was in chaos, with all kinds of screams and alarms. Countless people were blown away by this huge shock wave, and many people's clothes were directly turned into debris and scattered with the wind.

Even a stone lion weighing thousands of pounds on Fuma Street hundreds of meters away was blown away outside Shuncheng Gate.

After an unknown period of time, the thick smoke finally dissipated, and the sun shone on the earth again. When people saw the surrounding situation again, they suddenly found that the original southwest city with Wanggongchang as the center, within a radius of five miles, had turned into ruins.