"Sell newspapers, sell newspapers, and sell newspapers. The headlines of the Times, General Zhu, the general of the conquering enemy, has left Lushun and will enter Beijing from Tianjin soon! Sell newspapers, sell newspapers, and two bronze coins are in hand. We will know the story of the Duke of Chu's war to fight against Liao."

The crisp voice of children shouted along the streets of the capital and spread from afar.∷,

Zhou Yanru sat in the carriage, heard the shouting, and said to the curtain, "Go and buy a Times!"

"Yes." The servant outside responded, and soon bought a Times and put it into the car respectfully.

Two pieces of copper coins are worth one piece, and now one silver coins is worth two hundred pieces of copper coins. At this time, these two pieces of copper coins are equivalent to half a share of silver. If you were in the countryside, you could cut half a pound of pork. However, in the capital, half a share of silver is really worth it. Not only are there many officials in the capital, there are also many scholars, and there are even many people who can read. Many servants in the capital, even maids and maids, and even shopkeepers in the shops, they are all literate.

The Times was a new thing in the Ming Dynasty when it was first founded, but now the Times is not new in the capital. Although the Times Head Office is in Hubei, several other branches are around Hubei, and there are no branches in the capital. However, every five days, the Dengzhou branch closest to the capital will print the current newspapers, and will use a fast sailboat to arrive in Tianjin by sea, and then quickly transport it to the capital by carriage.

The price of Times is not expensive. As long as the people in the capital are willing to buy it, most people can afford it. Moreover, there are many people who read and read in the capital. After more than a year, the sales volume of Times in each issue in the capital has exceeded 5,000 copies. Now, the large-scale officials and merchants in the capital have almost every household have booked the Times, and even various restaurants, teahouses, and brothels and music shops have also booked the Times.

Many teahouses and restaurants not only subscribe to Times, but even specially invite newspaper readers to read newspapers. This is like a storytelling, which is also a means of attracting customers. The effect is better than storytelling. After all, the storytelling always has a few paragraphs, but the timetable is an issue every five days. The content is rich, including current affairs and news, various new affairs from all over the world, etc.

Everyone drinks and tea, listens to the news, and savors current affairs, talks about the past and present, and talks about prices, geography and other places, which are very good.

Zhou Yanru knew that the Times was run by Liu Jun. The Zhou family also ordered Times, and even the Times were delivered to the big and small yamen in the capital for free, but today is not the day when the Times was issued.

Zhou Yanru took the newspaper and looked at it. It was not the old newspaper in the past, but the newly issued one. Two words were added next to the header and supplementary.

The newspaper also exudes the fragrance of ink, and the front page headlines are the news that Liu Jun is about to enter Beijing.

Under the bold official script title, there is also a picture. Liu Jun, dressed in military uniform, was leaving the dock and boarding a large sailboat parked at the port.

The Times has a very rich content, with four out of thirty-two pages, and a newspaper is equivalent to the content of a small book. It has many pages and rich content. It is also rich in pictures and texts. The front page generally publishes recent major news. Since its inception, the front page has not published the imperial decrees and regulations of the court. Basically, each issue publishes reports of Liu Jun leading the Chu army to fight. It is some of the planning contents led by Liu Jun.

The first to eighth edition are the news edition, the ninth edition is the sixteenth edition, and the current affairs edition is the seventeenth edition. The seventeenth to twenty-fourth edition is the economic edition, and the twenty-five to thirty-twoth edition is the people's livelihood edition.

The slogan of the Times is to gather important policy news from the court and local governments, pay attention to emergencies, and understand real-time information on people's livelihood to provide the people of the Ming Dynasty with the most timely and close to life.

Although this newspaper was run by Liu Jun, Zhou Yanru must read almost every issue. He even liked this newspaper very much. Many times, the news in the newspaper can understand the world's dynamics faster and more accurately from the official position than the official assistant. I have to say that this is a satirical phenomenon.

Moreover, although this newspaper was funded by Liu Jun, it is very fair and serious, and the content is real. Although it publishes news and current affairs, it has an objective and fair attitude and rarely discusses current affairs with personal tendencies. They just report news and current affairs, but do not make comments.

Although Zhou Yanru also realized that as an unofficial newspaper, the current affairs content they chose to report was already an attitude. However, this approach is always much better than public comments and discussions on politics. In fact, since the Times was officially launched and became popular, the Ming Dynasty has opened many newspapers in the past year.

But more than a year has passed. Except for the prosperous Times, each issue can exceed 10,000, with the highest sales volume exceeding 50,000 copies. The other newspapers have not exceeded 10,000 copies. The average sales volume cannot even break 3,000. Most of the actual sales volume is around 1,000 copies, or even less than 1,000 copies.

Why? Because most of those newspapers are run by members of the Fu Club, the most important thing they run is to discuss current affairs. There are very few other contents, and some of them are often untrue. How many people are really willing to read such newspapers?

There are also newspapers run by merchants, but the sales volume is not high because they lack sufficient authoritative news and rich content.

There are several newspapers that can be like the Times, every five days, every thirty-two editions, and sometimes at the beginning of the month there are large editions of forty-eight and sixty-four, all of which are very real.

Zhou Yanru was not interested in those newspapers, and he was not even interested in the news and current affairs section of the Times. As the chief minister of the Ming Dynasty, he read too many important news about the world every day.

He read the Times and prefers to read the section on economics and people's livelihood, especially the literature section, which contains selected poems, operas, and sketches. Of course, what he likes to read the most is the serialization of long-form novels. Generally, after reading the novel, he will go to the section on economics and people's livelihood.

But today he has been staring at the front page and has not flipped back for a long time.

The portrait of Liu Jun on the front page is like the ubiquitous advertisements in the Times. The advertising layout of the Times is also very unique, with many forms for merchants to choose from. There are column advertisements, semi-column advertisements, quarter-page advertisements, vertical quarter-page advertisements, horizontal third-page advertisements, vertical third-page advertisements, small half-page advertisements, horizontal half-page advertisements, vertical half-page advertisements, full-page advertisements, cross-page advertisements, full-page advertisements, cross-page advertisements, full-page advertisements, cross-page advertisements, newspaper advertisements, newspaper advertisements. The lower island newspaper flowers are placed, the middle island newspaper flowers are placed, the guide newspaper flowers and column flowers are introduced, the middle advertisements, classified advertisements, page advertisements and soft article advertisements, etc.

Snippets, if you really count them carefully, there must be hundreds of advertisements for these thirty-two editions of the Times.

It is said that the Times can not only make the newspaper's costs back every issue with these advertisements, but also make a lot of money.

Only Liu Jun is the only one who can write a newspaper for himself and make money by trying to make money in different ways.

Now, Liu Jun is about to enter the court.

In the palace.

Chongzhen was also watching this new issue of the Times. In fact, after the Times was released in Beijing, Chongzhen learned about it from the East Factory, so he asked the East Factory to send each issue of the Times into the palace as soon as possible. Later, several newspapers were released. Chongzhen also asked the East Factory to send all the Times into each issue.

Chongzhen is also a senior reader of the Times.

In fact, officials had already submitted a memorial saying that the Times would be banned. Chongzhen knew it very well. Although the Times did not discuss current affairs, the impact was getting bigger and bigger. Even if they did not discuss politics publicly, they would still make the world's affairs unhappy, which still made the superior officials unhappy.

In some ways, the emergence of the Times is equivalent to the addition of civil public opinion supervision officials. Chongzhen thought that this was actually a good thing, but on the other hand, not all newspapers are as fair as the Times. Just like the other newspapers, they are a little unscrupulous, saying everything and everyone dares to comment. Their comments are indeed very influential to the prestige of the court.

But in general, Chongzhen still likes the Times. Not only is the news of the world reported in it very quickly and realistic, but many things that officials conceal, such as local disasters, will report them in time.

On the other hand, Chongzhen lived in the palace and relied on the reports of the outside world to the people below to understand the real scenes of the people. The many people's livelihood economy in the Times have many things about people's livelihood. Even the advertisements on the edges of the cracks and corners also contain the rental prices of many houses and shops, the transaction prices of bulk goods, and the information about recruiting workers is very clear, which is recruiting various craftsmen and the salary of workers, which gives him a clear impression of the current living conditions of the people.

And these are often unclear things that officials rarely tell him and report more.

"Your Majesty is reading the newspaper again. Is there a new newspaper published in the capital?" Empress Zhou came slowly and asked when she saw the emperor reading the newspaper.

Chongzhen raised the newspaper, "It's the Times, today's supplement." At the end, he added, "The Duke of Chu finally left Liaodong and set foot on the ship back to Beijing."

"Your Majesty, you have fought for the country and made great contributions. Don't let him down."

"What does the queen mean?" Chongzhen looked at Zhou Hou in surprise.

Queen Zhou hesitated for a while, and finally said it, "I have also heard some rumors recently, bad rumors."

"What rumors?"

"I heard that now the capital is circulating a saying, "The cunning rabbit dies, good dogs cook; the tall birds are gone, good bows are hidden; the enemy country is destroyed, and the advisers are destroyed. Liaodong has been settled, and Duke Chu should cook."

"Who made a rumor?" Chongzhen said angrily with a dark face, "Isn't I the kind of person who hides all the birds across the river and breaks the bridge?"

The queen asked again, "I heard that Your Majesty wants to be king for Jiye!"

Chongzhen nodded, not hiding from Zhou Hou.

"I do have this plan. I will make unparalleled achievements for the Ming Dynasty. Of course, I will be rewarded with great rewards. Not being able to be named a king is not enough to repay his achievements."

Of course, this is a superficial statement. In fact, Chongzhen's real intention was to completely deprive Liu Jun of his military power by taking advantage of the opportunity of being the king. During this period, he had been thinking about how to treat Liu Jun who had made unparalleled achievements.

He never thought about killing Liu Jun. Liu Jun had always expressed loyalty, especially Liu Jun also had a group of subordinates who were also loyal to Geng Geng personally. If Liu Jun was killed, he would force him to rebel against his subordinates. When he arrested Yuan Chonghuan, Zu Dashou immediately led his troops to evacuate the capital, captured Shanhaiguan and retreated to western Liaoning.

Such things must not be done again.

But Chongzhen also had no confidence in letting Liu Jun continue to take charge of the troops. The news just passed from Hubei was that the trespass Li Zicheng led tens of thousands of bandits to attack Yunyang, Hubei. As a result, Liu Jun's confidant general Zhang Shan, who was recuperating in his hometown in Hubei, gathered troops from various prefectures and prefectures in Hubei to fight with Li Zicheng in Yunyang, defeated the thieves and beheaded thousands of levels.

After hearing this news, Chongzhen found it difficult to calm down.

Not only Liu Jun can fight, but Liu Jun's subordinates can fight so well. In just a few years, Liu Jun now has more than 100,000 elite Chu troops under him. Although he tried to divide these troops into two lakes, the Navy and Liaodong, he also transferred Liu Jun to Beijing.

But Chongzhen still couldn't rest assured. The court suffered heavy losses in Song Jin's defeat, but Liu Jun's subordinates did not suffer any losses. After Liu Jun incorporated the rebels such as Kong Youde and surrendered, his strength increased significantly.

Chongzhen didn't want to kill Liu Jun, so he couldn't kill him. Even if he wanted Liu Jun to be the governor of Zhili, Chongzhen was very worried. In the end, Chongzhen planned to simply pick up Liu Jun, and he was named Liu Jun a king, and then he could lift him up from now on.

In the past, there were no kings of the opposite sex in the Ming Dynasty, and Xu Da and others were granted the title of kings only after their death. Even if the royal family of the Ming Dynasty was granted the title of kings, the queen had to leave the capital and stay in the fiefdom for the rest of her life and wait for death.

Chongzhen planned to grant Liu Jun a county prince, and then let him stay in the capital for the rest of his life and serve as a idle county prince, and go to court every day. He could not take the troops, so let him be responsible for financial planning in the capital in the future. Chongzhen planned to take the Sihai Bank into the court, and then let Liu Jun take charge of the money for the court.

"I know that throughout the ages, ministers who have made great contributions will inevitably be suspicious of the king, and they often end up not having a good end. I am very grateful to Jiye for all this for me and the Ming Dynasty. I do not want us to end up with that result. I want to be king of Jiye and create a good story of knowing each other."

Chongzhen summoned officials of the Ministry of Rites later that day and told them to prepare the greatest welcome ceremony for Liu Jun, who was about to enter the capital. At that time, officials of all sizes, including the Grand Secretary of the Cabinet and the Nine Ministers of the Six Ministry and the Nine Ministers of the Ministry, would all go out of the city to welcome him.

At the same time, Chongzhen also formally told the officials of the Ministry of Rites that he wanted to enthrone Liu Jun as king, and asked the Ministry of Rites to start planning the enthronement of the king.

But in the afternoon of the next day, he rode a fast horse into Beijing.

The fast horse sent back an amazing news. The Duke of Chu arrived at Tianjin Port that morning, and countless people on the dock that day were waiting for greeting.

Just when Liu Jun got off the boat and boarded the dock and was warmly welcomed by countless people, someone suddenly assassinated the Duke of Chu. The assassin mixed in the greeting crowd and took the opportunity to shoot the Duke of Chu with his hand crossbow.

Hearing this news, Chongzhen jumped up in shock, "What is the situation of Duke of Chu?"
Chapter completed!