The third emperor of the Sui Dynasty

Chapter 690 The 'Loyal Officials' of the Tang Dynasty
Dozens of Guanlong aristocratic patriarchs and their families are under house arrest in Dugu Mansion, and their daily necessities are supplied by Wu Chuansi.After several days of fear and fear, everyone's sense of fear gradually disappeared, and the heads of the family gathered together to chat every day, and they felt that this kind of old man's life seemed to be quite good.

Under Li Yuan's order, Han Zhi came to negotiate with these patriarchs every day. These patriarchs hugged each other to keep warm, advance and retreat together, and formed an impeccable group. Apart from agreeing to donate [-]% of the land, they would not promise anything else.As for Li Yuan's most important private part, they were resolutely unwilling to give in.

Just because the Guanlong nobles are a huge group with a military origin, giving up their private trilogy is equivalent to giving up their inheritance, and the situation has evolved so far, everyone has turned against Li Yuan, the only way they can restrain Li Yuan is to spread rumors Handing over Li Yuan's private trilogy to Li Yuan is tantamount to abolishing his martial arts. Once he "abandons and surrenders", the life and death of the whole family will depend on Li Yuan's thoughts.The key point is that Li Yuan put everyone under house arrest blatantly, which is enough to show that he already has murderous intentions. How could the patriarchs who know so well agree to Li Yuan's conditions?So no matter how Han Zhi threatened and lured him, no one was willing to compromise.

The important thing is that from all aspects, the Tang Dynasty is not the opponent of the Sui Dynasty. Even if Li Yuan does not kill people after getting everyone's private trilogy, Li Yuan will eventually be wiped out by Yang Tong. If they are enemies of the Sui Dynasty, everyone will not be so stupid as to be enemies of the Sui Dynasty; if they do not make friends, Yang Tong will still feel that they are really loyal to the Sui Dynasty and will give everyone a way out, so everyone thinks that as long as they delay It will be safe until the Sui and Tang Dynasties.

At noon that day, when Dugu Cheng was discussing with Yu Yun and Zhao Yuan in the back garden, a maid ran over in a panic and handed a letter to Dugu Cheng, "Patriarch, look at this."

"Where did you get the letter?" Wu Chuanwei surrounded the Dugu Mansion, within a hundred steps, no one was allowed to enter, and even the maids in the mansion were not allowed to leave.So Dugu Cheng was very surprised by the sudden appearance of the letter.

The maid quickly said, "The cook got it from the belly of a big fish."

Dugu Cheng, Yu Yun and Zhao Yuan understood that someone stuffed the letter into Yu's mouth and then passed it to the mansion.

Dugu Cheng took the letter, and it was indeed covered with blood and knife marks. It must have been accidentally scratched by the cook when she was breaking the fish, but it didn't affect the reading. He opened the letter and read it quickly, his face turned pale.

Seeing this, Zhao Yuan quickly asked, "Brother, what happened?"

"I don't care about that." Without waiting for the two to ask further questions, Dugu Cheng strode towards the middle hall and called the heads of the family to discuss matters.

Although the Patriarchs usually lived scattered in Dugu Mansion, they wandered around the middle hall during the day so that they could gather at any time, so after a while, everyone gathered in the middle hall.

As the last patriarch hurriedly took his seat, Dugu Cheng said to everyone: "Just now someone sent me a letter through the belly of the fish. It said that our people gathered more than 3 soldiers and were heading towards Xiangyang to kill them." Come, you can come to the city tomorrow, even if it is tomorrow night at the latest..."

Dugu Cheng hadn't finished speaking, but there was already an uproar in the lobby.

The private trilogy is the gold medal of immortality for each family. As long as it is not handed over, as long as the trilogy is not exposed, Li Yuan will not dare to kill everyone at the price of the turmoil in the Tang Dynasty, so that the stalemate will last until the Sui army invades. .

However, Dugu Cheng actually said that this army was not only exposed, but also came to Xiangyang to kill. This means that the stalemate between the Guanlong nobles and Li Yuan has risen to the height of the joint rebellion of the Guanlong nobles.

Since ancient times, rebellion has been a major crime to destroy the nine clans, and the Guanlong nobles are not tolerated in the world, no matter in law or morality; Li Yuan can't deal with them too much at this moment.

Although the patriarchs have been yelling and scolding Li Yuan, wishing that Li Yuan would die sooner, they all know that the private trilogy is not a legitimate opponent of the imperial court at all.

The reason why Li Yuan didn't destroy it by force, but coercion, lure and persuasion, didn't mean he couldn't destroy these tens of thousands of private troops, but because he didn't want to fight like a snipe and a clam, making Yang Tong a fisherman for nothing. The tens of thousands of troops of the Guanlong nobles are not enough for the Guanlong nobles, and they are not the opponents of the imperial court at all.Now that he walked under the sun in the open and in the dark, it happened to give Li Yuan a god-sent opportunity to take it away with one pot.

What makes the patriarchs even more depressing is that their foundation is in Yizhou, and these tens of thousands of private troops are a lone army facing enemies all around in Jingzhou. After losing their support, they were immediately wiped out by the Tang army.The Guanlong nobles have now been accused of treason. Once this army is wiped out, Li Yuan can deal with them in a straightforward and easy manner. All the crimes and infamy will be borne by them.

Thinking that Li Yuan's butcher knife is coming, how can this not cause an uproar?
"We are all in Xiangyang now, isn't this giving someone a handle?"

"Who the hell is gathering the army?"

"Who killed Xiangyang on his own initiative? Isn't this going to kill us?"

"..."

The catastrophe is imminent, and all the Patriarchs are angry and afraid.

"Shut up all of them." Yu Yun roared angrily: "This is the end of the matter, it's useless to talk about it now, the more it gets to this point, the more unity and calmness is needed, everyone, listen to Patriarch Dugu to continue."

After all, all the people present here are the patriarchs of aristocratic families, and most of them have experienced countless storms. After the initial panic, and Yu Yun's roar reminded them, knowing that there is only a dead end for self-disruption, they all shut their mouths in an instant.

The lobby suddenly fell silent, and Dugu Cheng then said: "The masters of each family's private army can be mobilized, the elders of each family can be mobilized, and people who have the order of the patriarch can also be mobilized... Take the Dugu family and the Yu family. To put it bluntly, before the accident, the Yu family and I had given the tokens to Dugu Yanyun and Dugu Qingyun; you are all here, but your soldiers have all come. This shows that you either let the elders of the clan gather together The soldiers of the family, or like me, gave the token to the trusted generals, other than that, there is no third kind of people who can transfer troops."

"My Zhao family was mobilized by the elders."

"I gave the token to my nephew."

"..."

"Since everyone knows what's in their hearts, don't be surprised." Hearing everyone's words, Dugu Cheng went on to say, "The reason why the army went to Xiangyang is that I waited for the news of my imprisonment to spread. The elders and generals of the families were worried about our safety, but they had no other choice, so they simply raised troops, trying to force the Holy Majesty to release people by force."

"Brother Dugu is right. Sending troops is an unchangeable fact. It is meaningless to dwell on this matter. If I predict correctly, the army will arrive soon. We should come up with a safer strategy as soon as possible instead of putting Time wasted in unnecessary disputes." The one who spoke was Zhao Yuan, who was quite prestigious among the Guanlong nobles, and he and Yu Yun belonged to Dugu Cheng's right-hand men.

Although Dugu Cheng has the defect of inexperience, being selected as the heir by the wily Duguzheng is a resourceful person in itself. After all these changes, he seems to have matured a lot. He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down After coming down, he said unhurriedly: "Our army has been training for these years, and has been fighting various rebels in Yizhou, as well as Yizhou tycoons who are trying to plot our land. The unmatched warriors cannot be destroyed by the cowardly Tang army, and Li Yuan will not be able to destroy our 6 army without paying the price of [-] people."

"Li Yuan's army is not only not as good at fighting as the Sui army, but also not as good as the Sui army in number. Facing the large number of Sui troops who are capable of conscripting and fighting well, he can only tear down the east wall to make up for the west wall. As a result, he has to defend everywhere, but he cannot defend everywhere. He It is impossible to sacrifice [-] troops in the civil war, because Li Yuan has to bear this painful price. Therefore, as long as our [-] elite soldiers are still there, Li Yuan will not dare to kill us. Don’t be overly alarmed.”

Everyone agreed, and their beating hearts calmed down a little.Someone asked: "Brother Dugu, how do you think Li Yuan will deal with us next?"

Seeing everyone calm down, Dugu Cheng breathed a sigh of relief, and then analyzed: "The problem he faces now is that he wants to fight, but he dare not fight. The only way is to threaten the army with our lives and force the private troops to fight against each other. Compromise, forcing the private armies to surrender. At the same time, he may confuse us with high-ranking officials and use various insidious means to divide and separate us. As long as we have internal strife, we will break down one by one. After being fooled by him, I am sure that this family is not far from being destroyed."

"Patriarch Dugu is right." An old man in his seventies with white beard and hair stood up tremblingly. He was the Patriarch of the Hou Mo Chen family, named Hou Mo Chen Ren. He said, "Old man It is someone who watched Li Yuan grow up, and always felt that he was a man with different appearances. When the old Patriarch Dugu was alive, he also said that Li Yuan was honest and honest on the outside, but sinister and vicious on the inside, ruthless and ungrateful; The assassination of the old Patriarch Dugu is the best evidence of insidiousness, cruelty and ungratefulness, how can a person who kills his uncle and cousin who have made great achievements tolerate those of us who are charged with treason?"

"Of course, the old Patriarch Dugu has gone too far, but placing multiple bets is an unchanging rule of the family. If we hadn't placed multiple bets, how could Li Yuan be where he is today?"

In order to unite the internal affairs and prevent the Dugu family from being isolated by Li Yuan, after Yu Yun's persuasion, Dugucheng selectively revealed the news about Duguzheng a few days ago. Only then did Hou Mo and Chen Ren know about some of Duguzheng's actions.It's just that, as Hou Mo and Chen Ren said now, every patriarch doesn't think that Dugu is at fault. In the final analysis, it's Li Yuan's uselessness that makes people angry and hateful.

Hou Mo and Chen Ren are also a well-informed old fox. When Dugu Cheng mentioned division and estrangement, he expected that when some patriarchs were alone with Li Yuan, they were very likely to be bewitched and fell into Li Yuan's various schemes to defeat them. Take the death of Dugu Zheng, Dugu Huai'en and his son as an example.

After hearing Hou Mo and Chen Ren's words, some patriarchs who were swaying left and right felt a chill rush from the soles of their feet to their foreheads, and their thoughts of fighting Li Yuan became firm.

Hou Mo and Chen Ren said again: "We wholeheartedly support him in the hope that he will unify the world, but he can't even get out of Guanzhong. In addition to gaining a little bit of benefits from this kind of soft persimmon, even Xue Ju can't beat it. If the Turks hadn't defected, Guanzhong would have been owned by Xue Ju long ago. As for fighting the Sui army, almost every time they were defeated, they would be compensated for their disastrous defeat. So in the final analysis In the end, Li Yuan still doesn't live up to expectations, he can't do anything other than show off his powers and plot against his son and court ministers, it's no wonder the old Patriarch is disappointed."

"Patriarch Hou Mo Chen's words are right, you must not fall for Li Yuan's tricks." Everyone nodded, thinking that Hou Mo Chen Ren was very reasonable.

They are like a group of capitalists. Long before Jinyang raised troops, they gave Li Yuan a huge amount of money and food to support Li Yuan and let him secretly raise soldiers in Bingzhou. However, with the repeated defeats of the Tang army, the confidence of the Guanlong nobles in Li Yuan was shaken. up.They invested heavily in Li Yuan in the hope that he would bring huge profits to their family, but they didn't get any profit and brought them to the brink of bankruptcy. Of course, these investors were not happy, but because Yang Tong had Always unwilling to reconcile with the powerful family, they can only continue to invest numbly.If Yang Tong had expressed his kindness to the aristocratic family, he would have reconciled with the Sui Dynasty long ago, why would he wait until now?So Duguzheng is right, everyone is right, everything is wrong with the incompetent Li Yuan.

Dugu Cheng admired this fatherly figure, felt that his morality was still too far behind, but luckily he was there, so he settled everyone's minds with a few words.Otherwise, this loose alliance must be broken by Li Yuan.

"Patriarch, all patriarchs!" At this time, a maid hurriedly ran over. The servants in Dugu Mansion had been moved to another place. Dugu Cheng could only let the maid be in charge of sending messages and warnings. Profusely sweating, she obviously ran for a long time, she said out of breath: "Jun, Jun, the army is here."

Although it had been expected, when the news arrived, everyone couldn't help but change their expressions slightly.

Dugu Cheng hurriedly confessed: "Everyone must be steady, as long as our army is still there, Li Yuan will not dare to kill us, so he must not give in on the issue of the army, let alone go to the city to persuade, otherwise everyone All must die."

"I understand." Everyone expressed their opinions one after another.

Before the words were finished, a large group of troops rushed in. To everyone's surprise, it was not Wu Chuanwei who came, but regular soldiers of the Tang Army.

After a while, Qu Tugai came quickly under the protection of a team of personal guards. He bowed his hands to everyone, "Patriarchs, Wu Chuanwei imprisoned everyone here without authorization. The Holy One is extremely angry at Wu Chuanwei's lawlessness. , let me come here to be responsible for everyone’s safety, please cooperate.”

"Hahahaha..." Many Patriarchs laughed out loud, as if they had heard a big joke.According to Qu Tugai's words, everything was done by Wu Chuanwei. Li Yuan, who is in the Taiji Palace, doesn't even know that they are imprisoned here. Isn't this a joke?
"Everyone of us prisoners has a title, and there are more than 20 of the Dukes. Does the General feel that Wu Chuanwei dares to make decisions without authorization? More than 20 Dukes have been imprisoned for several days in the dignified capital, and the Holy One is actually You know? Your Majesty was shocked and furious?" Dugu Cheng said teasingly.

If Qu Tugai had come earlier before they got the news and said that their army had rebelled, the Patriarchs would have been terrified, but how is it possible now?

"Haha... the more than 20 of us, the princes, live and die at the general's whim, so how can we cooperate?" Yu Yun said with a smile.

Qu Tugai said coldly: "Let me tell you the truth. Your army has rebelled and is about to attack the city of Xiangyang. Your Majesty doesn't want to kill innocent people indiscriminately, and he doesn't want your army to be devastated, so I ask you to come forward and restrain the army." .”

Hou Mo and Chen Ren said indifferently: "Don't be joking, general. Since the rise of the army, we Guanlong nobles have donated countless money and food, and countless family servants have long been reduced to Yang Yu. We share weal and woe with the Tang Dynasty Relationship, what good does the civil strife in the Tang Dynasty do us? No matter how stupid we are, we can’t rebel.”

"Master Hou Mo Chen is right."

"Slander, this is blatant slander."

"General Qu Tu's slander, I express my strong indignation."

"..."

These Guanlong aristocratic patriarchs were furious, each of them was impassioned, each of them was righteous, and they turned themselves into loyal ministers of the Tang Dynasty, representatives of justice. head!

"It must be the rumors spread by the Sui army, the purpose is to make our Great Tang chaos without fighting. How can our Great Tang tolerate such a villain with two faces and three swords? Severe punishment is not enough to rectify the law of the country; not severe punishment is not enough to bring peace to the world!" Zhao said. Yuan also said.

"Brother Zhao's words are very true. We Guanlong nobles are dignified officials of the Tang Dynasty. Even if we die, we will not surrender." Yu Yun looked at Qu Tugai with a half-smile, slapped the table heavily, and said loudly Said: "Our Guanlong nobles are a bloody military family, and what we hate the most is double-faced people who betray their masters."

Qu Tugai's face was blue, red, black and white, extremely exciting.

He was originally a minister of the Sui Dynasty. Before the Tang army entered Guanzhong, he was appointed by Yang You as Daxing Jingzhao Yin, responsible for arresting all relatives related to Li Yuan. After he captured these people, they were all arrested by Wei Xuan and Yin Shishi , The bone instrument was cut clean.It can be said that he is an important person who has won the trust of Da Sui.

however……

Qu Tutong, whom Yang You regarded as an iron wall, surrendered, and Qu Tugai, whom Yang You regarded as his confidant, also surrendered.

What's even more exaggerated is that Qu Tugai had just surrendered, so he wore the armor and the BMW rewarded by Yang You, and went to persuade Yao Junsu with high spirits, hoping to make a contribution in front of the new lord Li Yuan.Under the city, Yao Junsu surrendered to the Tang Dynasty early in order to seek wealth and honor, but was scolded by Yao Junsu. He disarmed his armor and abandoned his horse in shame, and fled... He was killed by Yao Junsu in the Guanzhong War.

Therefore, the "two-faced and three-swording person who betrayed the master" in the mouths of Yu Yun and others naturally refers to Sang Huai.

The soldiers who followed Qu Tugai looked at each other and remained silent, not knowing what to do.

"I am not afraid of the rich and powerful, so I hit me, especially in the face." After being ridiculed by so many people, can Qu Tugai feel better?

(End of this chapter)