Chapter 1457 The Queen’s Resentment!

An Miaoyi, who had just inspected the construction of Furen Palace, returned to her palace and sat on the sofa with a frown, recalling the report from the supervisor of the Ministry of Works who was in charge of the renovation of Furen Palace.

Because this winter is exceptionally cold, and there has been some rain and snow in recent days, the construction site is particularly slippery. The construction schedule of Furen Palace is very tight, and sometimes construction even has to start at night. As a result, seven workers have fallen from the scaffolding in recent days!
Five of the seven people were lucky enough that their falls were not serious. They only had broken bones and needed to stay in bed for a while. However, the other two were not so lucky. One died on the spot, and the second one suffered from hemiplegia. In order not to burden his family, he chose to commit suicide.

Because of these engineering accidents, the workers currently building Fu Ren Palace are not very motivated. Some workers even don’t want to do it anymore. They plan to go back to their hometown to celebrate the New Year, and then come back after the spring to continue building Fu Ren Palace!
When An Miaoyi learned about this situation, she was also very angry. The progress of Furen Palace is not very fast now. According to the current progress, it can be completed in July next year, which is before Ye Cui's birthday. But if it stagnates now, it is hard to say whether it can be completed before July next year!

Because of this, An Miaoyi's idea was that, in view of the cold winters in the north of Yijing, in order to avoid a large number of people freezing to death or frostbite during certain periods of time and to prevent herself from being impeached by the censors of the Metropolitan Censorate, An Miaoyi also allowed the suspension of work in December and January...
However, An Miaoyi's plan is to continue to speed up the construction in November to ensure that Furen Palace will be completed before July next year.
So when An Miaoyi heard what Li Ke, the deputy director of the Ministry of Works, said, she flatly refused!
She asked Li Ke to supervise the workers to come to work on time every day in November and not allow any worker to leave the Fu Ren Palace construction site before November. If any problems arise, she will hold you, Li Ke, accountable!
Faced with An Miaoyi's request, Li Ke had no choice but to tell the whole story. It turned out that the reason why he reported the situation to An Miaoyi was actually out of helplessness. It turned out that at the beginning of the matter, their Ministry of Works wanted to strictly manage and did not allow any workers to leave the construction site!

But if you don't let me go, I can run away secretly. More than a dozen workers have already run away secretly in the past few days, and the rest are also ready to make a move, so the situation tends to escalate. Their Ministry of Industry has no soldiers, so although they can stop a few people, it is difficult to save the overall situation!

So when they saw that the matter could no longer be concealed, they reported it to An Miaoyi!

An Miaoyi was also furious when she heard this. She felt that these workers were really ungrateful!
Because of that work method, I not only have to pay you wages and overtime pay, but I also have to pay for the medical expenses of your work-related injuries. As for the two people who fell to death, I even paid for the aftermath!
All these things have cost more than 100,000 taels of silver, but now you are just giving up?

An Miaoyi immediately felt that these workers really needed a lesson...

This is only the case in Daqian. If it had been in Dazhou a few years earlier, forget about wages, overtime pay, and medical expenses. This is all part of the labor and your obligation as a citizen of Dazhou. If you are not given a penny, you will have to pay for your own food!
An Miaoyi, who was already dissatisfied with the working method, now felt that it was too troublesome!

So the extremely angry An Miaoyi directly ordered Li Ke to catch the escaped workers and then make an example of them to scare the monkeys and see if anyone else dared to run away!

Li Ke was helpless in the face of An Miaoyi's order. After all, he was only a member of the Ministry of Works, and he had only a few minor clerks in charge of technology and management, and no soldiers at all.

So he was powerless at the moment and unable to carry out An Miaoyi's orders. Seeing this, An Miaoyi was angry, but also realized why he came to Furen Palace for inspection today, the Minister of Works Chen Fu, and the two assistant ministers all found excuses to hide away, and then sent a deputy minister to fool him!

Thinking of this, An Miaoyi silently made a note of Chen Fu and the others in her heart, and then she did not make things difficult for Li Ke, a small official. After all, this was indeed beyond Li Ke's ability!
However, Li Ke also gave his suggestions on how to solve this problem!
Li Ke's suggestions can be simply summarized into two points.

The first option is to use force. Your Majesty, please ask His Majesty to dispatch some imperial guards to station at the construction site, and then issue a wanted notice for the workers who escaped before. In this way, killing the chicken to scare the monkeys, these workers who have seen blood will have no choice but to honestly build the Furen Palace here...
The second is to increase the salary. As the saying goes, money makes the world go round and big rewards will always bring brave men. As long as the overtime pay is doubled, Li Ke believes that these workers will be willing to stay and continue to build the Furen Palace in the cold winter!
And these two suggestions are what An Miaoyi is thinking about now as she sits on the sofa!

In fact, if possible, An Miaoyi would not think about it at all. She would directly choose to mobilize the Imperial Guards to enter the construction site. She felt that the reason why those workers were dishonest was that Ye Mingsheng was too good to them and gave them too much, which made these people become arrogant!

Before, when we were in the Great Zhou Dynasty, we didn't even give you a tael of silver, and we asked you to bring your own food, but you were working very hard too, didn't you dare to say no?

Therefore, An Miaoyi simply believed that as long as the Imperial Guards were dispatched to let these poor people get beaten and bleed, they would work honestly, would not dare to escape, and would not make so many demands.
But unfortunately, Ye Mingsheng was very sensitive about military power. Without Ye Mingsheng's order, even if An Miaoyi was the queen, she could not mobilize a single soldier of the Imperial Guard.

And if she told Ye Mingsheng about this, An Miaoyi felt that with Ye Mingsheng's hypocritical character, he would definitely not agree with her idea of ​​mobilizing troops to suppress it!
Actually, there is no An Miaoyi. I really think Ye Mingsheng is too hypocritical and pretentious. You killed so many people when you were fighting for the world, and now you pretend to love the people like your own children, but the people don't buy your account at all. Now there are still so many people calling you a thief who stole the country············

This is simply a thankless task. If I were the emperor, the whole world would have to praise me for my great achievements. Not to mention scolding me, even if there are any dissenting voices, I would arrest them all and execute them!
When the time comes, we’ll see how many heads of these guys are worth chopping off. An Miaoyi doesn’t believe that she can’t kill all these bastards!

Although she was very dissatisfied with Ye Mingsheng's soft-heartedness, An Miaoyi had to accept this reality. After all, Ye Mingsheng was the emperor now, and she was just the queen. Even if she had her own ideas, she had to keep them hidden!

Although the Royal Guards cannot be mobilized, An Miaoyi will not accept the option of paying those workers more!

The original cost of Furen Palace was 200,000 taels of silver, accounting for two-thirds of the total amount of the palace expansion and renovation plan. Later, due to some other things, An Miaoyi had to add another 20,000 to 30,000 taels of silver, which caused Furen Palace to become the biggest burden on the treasury! And now if additional investment is made and the overtime pay for the workers is doubled, the total cost of Furen Palace will exceed 250,000 taels of silver, which will continue to increase the financial burden of the treasury and reduce the working capital of the treasury!

The financial situation of the treasury was already difficult, and it had been messed up by Murong Qingwu before. An Miaoyi had to find a group of scapegoats and made a self-criticism in front of Ye Mingsheng before she could barely get through.

However, Ye Mingsheng also asked An Miaoyi to be frugal in all expenditures in the palace, not to be extravagant or wasteful, and to make the treasury finances healthy.

An Miaoyi was also resentful of Ye Mingsheng's request. She had lived in a powerful family since she was a child, so she had always pursued luxury and pomp in her life. Now that she was the queen, she naturally wanted to satisfy some of her own desires. There were many concubines who held the same idea as her, so this also led to the high expenses of the palace...
Compared to Ye Mingsheng asking her to cut back on spending, An Miaoyi wanted Ye Mingsheng to open up new sources of income for her. In her opinion, it was just a matter of a word from Ye Mingsheng, and she didn't even need to say anything. As long as Ye Mingsheng left it alone, she could easily handle it!

But no matter how much she said, Ye Mingsheng just didn't want to. Don't you think this is infuriating?
Although An Miaoyi was very angry about this, Ye Mingsheng was the emperor who dominated everything. No matter how angry or aggrieved she was, she had to do as Ye Mingsheng asked!

Therefore, under the background of Ye Mingsheng's request for the palace to save money, paying double overtime pay to those workers means that An Miaoyi herself will have to reduce spending!
As the saying goes, it is better to let my friend die than to let me die. An Miaoyi will definitely not save money and pay those workers double overtime pay!
So An Miaoyi didn't intend to choose any of the two suggestions put forward by Li Ke. She had some ideas of her own!
For An Miaoyi, her first choice is to teach those workers a lesson so that they will behave themselves. Although An Miaoyi cannot mobilize the Imperial Guards, she can give a greeting to the Yijing government office and let the city defense battalion and constables under the government office take action!
Although the city defense battalion and the constables are not as powerful as the elite imperial guards, they are more than enough to teach some unarmed workers a lesson.

An Miaoyi was very tempted by the thought. The current Yijing prefect Liu Ning, although a centrist in the court, did not participate in any faction and was devoted to his work and political achievements.

However, his wife, Chen, wanted to marry her son to a daughter of the Ye clan, so that their Liu family could have some connection with the royal family...

Just as An Miaoyi was thinking silently in her heart, Aunt Liu beside her came in and reported:

"Your Majesty! Concubine Rou wants to see you!"

Hearing that Chen Rouer came to see her, An Miaoyi frowned slightly. For the sake of his health, Ye Mingsheng had been running in the Imperial Garden every day during this period. This also attracted a group of women who wanted to become rich and powerful. This was not only immoral, but also greatly hindered Ye Mingsheng's exercise plan!

Therefore, in order to combat this unhealthy trend, Queen An Miaoyi convened a meeting in the harem.

At the meeting, she severely dealt with several palace maids who relied on their beauty and were eager to rise to the top, and warned the concubines not to disturb His Majesty by thinking about competing for favor every day. If she found out, she would never let them off easily!
An Miaoyi still had a lot of prestige in the harem, so under her threat, most of the concubines no longer dressed up to meet Ye Mingsheng in the imperial garden.

However, there are always people in this world who do what they want and are disobedient. Chen Rouer, who is bent on becoming famous, turns a deaf ear to An Miaoyi's words.

Chen Rouer thought that what she did was so secret that no one else could find out, but she didn't know that the harem was full of An Miaoyi's spies. Her little thoughts and actions had already been seen by An Miaoyi!
An Miaoyi had realized before that although Chen Rouer was young, she had great ambitions. However, Chen Rouer was quite respectful to her. An Miaoyi felt comfortable with her flattery. She also gave An Miaoyi all kinds of gifts on a regular basis. Therefore, An Miaoyi just ignored her little actions...

But An Miaoyi didn't expect that she would dare to go against the wind. She had just emphasized that it was not allowed to deliberately go to the Imperial Garden to meet His Majesty, but she still did her own thing. She really ignored her words. This was intolerable!
If An Miaoyi hadn't had a lot of worries during this period and she hadn't been able to free up for the moment, An Miaoyi would have made an example of Chen Rouer!

Although it has not been done yet, An Miaoyi is also preparing to bring Chen Rouer to justice in the next few days and use Chen Rouer to consolidate her majesty as the queen!
But I didn't expect that before I went to find Chen Rouer, Chen Rouer actually came to me first!
Thinking of this, An Miaoyi did not ask her why she came to see her, but directly asked Madam Liu to bring Chen Rouer to her.

Soon, the angry Chen Rouer came to An Miaoyi. Before An Miaoyi could get angry, Chen Rouer knelt down in front of An Miaoyi and said:
"Empress! You have to make the decision for me!"

"This Murong Xinyun is too much. Not only did she let the dog hurt people, but she also relied on the power of her Murong family to turn the tables and say that I framed her. It's really unreasonable!"

As Chen Rouer spoke, tears welled up in her eyes, and she cried like a pear blossom in the rain, as if she had suffered a great injustice.
An Miaoyi, who was about to get angry and blame Chen Rouer, couldn't help but change her expression when she heard the word Murong from Chen Rouer's mouth...