I'm really not King Jing of Zhongshan

Chapter 402 Chang'an
On the far northern border of Han, the outbreak of the Battle of Mayi can be said to have opened a new chapter between the two regimes of Han and Huns, and even the two civilizations of farming and nomadic.

And in the Central Plains of China, and even the political and cultural center of the known world: Chang'an, the atmosphere of war is also quite strong.

It is not to say that the chariot and cavalry general Zhi all fought with the Huns in Mayi, and the Han emperor Liu Sheng also fought with them in Chang'an;
But at the time when the Battle of Mayi broke out, the public opinion in Chang'an was almost completely filled with war-related topics.

For example, above the court, the Prime Minister’s Mansion said: The winter training held every winter used to only include teenagers aged 17 to [-], and they only received one month of training each year.

For three consecutive years, the one-month winter training each year is not enough to make the fighting skills and skills of the young people of the right age reach the passing line;

Therefore, the Prime Minister's Mansion proposed to extend the annual winter training from one month to three months, and expand the scope of training to those between 19 and [-] years old.

When I heard the proposal from the Prime Minister's Mansion for the first time, the court didn't have much reaction at all. The big guys basically expressed their support with the mentality of "it seems to be okay to do so".

But soon, as the prime minister's mansion pushed its nose up and proposed that all the expenses required for the winter training would be paid from the treasury of the prime minister's mansion, the entire Chang'an court immediately exploded.

- What a joke!
Winter training, especially the winter training in Guanzhong, is a political activity that has continued since Emperor Taizu Gao!

That's right!

Political activity!

The purpose of the winter training is not only to equip the men of the right and quasi-age in Guanzhong with a certain level of combat quality, but also to make the majesty of the Emperor Liu more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

How to do it?
Of course, every three to five years, during the winter training period, there will be martial arts performances and military parades, and by the way, they will be rewarded with wine and meat!

Such an important political activity - a political activity that the emperor of Han invited to buy people's hearts on a large scale: winter training, paid by the prime minister's house?

What did that become? !
In fact, what really caused Chang'an Chaotang to explode was not 'this money cannot be paid by the Prime Minister's Mansion', but the true intention buried deep under the surface of the Prime Minister's Mansion's move.

Winter training is to cultivate pillars for Liu Han Sheji, and it is also to invite and buy the hearts of the whole Guanzhong for the emperor of Han, so the cost of winter training cannot be paid by the Xiangfu anyway.

Then Prime Minister Liu She, can you not know this truth?
Sitting in such a sensitive position as the prime minister, especially since the Han Dynasty, the first person to sit on the prime minister's position by flattery, can Liu She not know how to avoid taboos and suspicions?
Obviously: Liu She is not so stupid.

On the surface, Liu She yelled, "Let the money come from the treasury of my Prime Minister's Mansion", but in fact, Liu She wanted to use this move to force Liu Sheng to come to the top, and then said in a hurry: No!

This money must come from me!

In this way, Liu She's Prime Minister's Mansion had nothing to lose, and the emperor could make a promise to 'expand the scale of winter training, and the Shaofu's internal funds will bear the necessary expenses'.

This is the reason why Chang'an Chaotang exploded.

——What is the scale of the winter training in Guanzhong?
According to the millions of households in Guanzhong, there is an average of one boy aged 17 to 30 in every three households to receive military training. Calculated for a period of one month each time, roughly [-] people in Guanzhong will receive training every year;
According to the current ration standard of "two shi of corn per person per month" in the Han Dynasty, the annual expenditure of grain alone is 60 shi, which is about 3000 million yuan.

In addition to food, including site mobilization, ordnance transfer, accommodation, coordination, etc., the money spent by the Han Dynasty on winter training in Guanzhong every year will be roughly around [-] million yuan, and it can basically be controlled at [-] million yuan. within.

According to Liu She's proposal to expand the scale of winter training, how much will Shaofu need to spend?

——The age range from fifteen to seventeen was expanded by Liu She to fourteen to nineteen, directly doubling it!
Doubling the age range is basically equivalent to doubling the number of trainees, which is 60 people trained each year.

60 people have been trained for three months, and each person has two shi of corn per month, which is 360 million shi of grain, which is a full six times the original increase!
Converted into money, the food expenditure alone is 8000 million yuan!

Based on the past, food costs 3000 million yuan, and the total cost is about 8000 million yuan. According to Liu She's method, the food alone will cost [-] million yuan, and the total expenditure may be [-] million yuan. It may even be impossible to stop!
Some people may be wondering: Liu She had the idea of ​​spending money in the Shaofu, why did the Chang'an court want to explode?

The money in the Shaofu is the emperor's personal purse, and if it makes a profit or loses it, it has nothing to do with the foreign court?

——That’s not how the account is calculated~
It is true that compared with the treasury of the prime minister's mansion who is a "year-old family", Shaofu, who still has the energy to save some money every year, can indeed be regarded as having more money and more ways to get money.

But like the treasury of the Xiangfu, the Shaofu is also a planned and planned financial department.

It's like every autumn, before the agricultural tax is confiscated, the Prime Minister's Mansion has already planned how to spend it: the Shaofu's annual income also has a place to go;
And also before entering the warehouse, the destination has already been determined.

Like the treasury of the Prime Minister's Mansion, before the agricultural tax is collected, the amount of salary to be distributed, the amount to be reserved by the administration, the amount to be retained by the local government, etc. have already been determined.

The same is true for Shaofu's internal funds. Before each sum of money is in the pocket, it has already been determined how much to spend, how much to save, or how much to invest in which market.

To put it more bluntly: Shaofu does have a lot of money, and it is still making money continuously, but Shaofu has the task of saving money. It doesn't mean that if you want to save more, you can save more. Save less.

The total amount of money is certain, and the amount to be saved is certain. The money needed for winter training somehow changed from less than [-] million yuan to more than [-] million yuan. Where did the extra [-] million yuan come from?

Isn't it just picking from other places?

Pick a little here, pick a little there, in the end, isn't it just picking the welfare and rewards of hundreds of officials and ministers in the court, and the nobles and relatives of the court?
"Liu Shemu is crowned as a monkey, and after only a few days, he has lost his head for power!"

Chang'an Chaotang, who reacted to the Prime Minister's proposal, scoffed.

But despise Liu Shegui despise Liu She, when each department put forward their own opinions, they were no better than Liu She.

The eunuch said: This battle has been delayed until now, and even now I have not been sure of my life, it is all because there are not enough horses;
In order to produce enough war horses, a large amount of investment in horse administration should be quickly invested.

In the final analysis, he still reached out to ask Liu Sheng for money.

The Xiangfu was scolded even if he stretched out his hand, and the eunuch who stretched out his hand naturally did not get any better.

That is to say, Yuan Ang's self-contained courtesan attribute saved the servant from the verbal sword, but he couldn't escape a burst of sarcasm.

But no matter what, it is better for the eunuch to ask for funds from the horse administration than Liu She's proposal that the prime minister's house should pay for it and raise dead soldiers in the whole Guanzhong;

In the end, Yuan An still got a consolation prize: the eunuch's horse administration expenses for the next year will be increased by [-]%, which will be paid out of the Shaofu's money.

Seeing Yuan An's success, the other yamen naturally couldn't sit still.

The first is the internal history, which shows that in recent years, the administrative cost of governing Guanzhong has been higher, and many canals, military camps, and government offices have been in disrepair for a long time, and they all need appropriation from the court;
Then there was Ting Wei, who asked for a hundred pieces of about four hundred shi on the grounds that old cases had accumulated for many years and there was a serious shortage of manpower.

At first glance, it seems that what Zhao Yu wants is the weaving, but anyone with a discerning eye can see that: one hundred [-]-shi level weavings can be understood as an extra [-] shi of grain salary from the court every year, so that Zhao Yu can pay for it. Buying people's hearts in Tingwei.

Seeing that the situation was becoming more and more uncontrollable, Liu Sheng finally made a decision: the big battle is imminent, and all trivial matters will be discussed later.

The emperor made a decision to stop, and the two empress dowagers of the East Palace acquiesced, and the court finally stopped this magical dispute.

But no one noticed: when almost the entire Chang'an court was busy asking for money, funds, establishment, and power in the name of the war, the emperor Sheng, who was shrunk in Weiyang Palace, was slowly reaching out his hand , grab a white piece from the chess basket...

"I always thought that Marquis Tiao was a military general, and he was only familiar with military affairs, but I never thought that Marquis Tiao's chess skills are so superb?"

"It's a pity~"

"If I knew about it earlier - when the late emperor was still alive, I would definitely ask my father to let Tiaohou go to the palace more on weekdays."

"It's a pity~"

"pity······"

Talking in an easy-going way, Liu Sheng dropped the chess piece in his hand, absent-mindedly observed the chess game in front of him, and at the same time did not forget to grab the tea bowl at hand and drink it vigorously.

On the opposite side of Liu Sheng, Zhou Yafu, who was stretching his hand towards the chess basket, heard Liu Sheng's words, his outstretched hand was suddenly stuck in mid-air, and he couldn't recover for a long time.

After a long time, Liu Sheng's face froze when he realized it, and the hand holding the tea bowl was also stuck in the air like Zhou Yafu.

——Emperor Xian.

At this moment, an old man, a young man, a king, and a minister all missed the majestic emperor because of Liu Sheng's unintentional words.

Emperor Xiaojing of the Han Dynasty, Liu Qi.

Today's son Sheng's father, Zhou Yafu's half Bole.

Once upon a time, when the emperor mentioned "chess" and shocked the world, it was still a big taboo in the streets and alleys of Chang'an;
Even later, Liu Qi himself stopped mentioning it on his own initiative, and both inside and outside the court were trembling, for fear of playing games with this emperor who had a bad record.

It's just that nowadays, things are changing and people are changing.

It was obviously a sentence that should have made people's hearts jump, but it made Zhou Yafu panic at the moment.

yes······
It would be good if the first emperor was here...

If the first emperor is in...
"Your Majesty said so~"

"Not being able to play a game with the first emperor is really a regret in my life."

"I just don't know, does His Majesty have such regrets?"

Hearing in his ears, Zhou Yafu's tone was full of nostalgia, but also vaguely reminiscent, and Liu Sheng finally recovered from his short fugue.

With a slight grin, he gently put the tea bowl back to the corner of the table in front of him, took a deep breath, and began to pretend to be indifferent to recall the past.

"I have no such regrets."

"Since the age I can remember, the late emperor has been unable to find a 'evenly matched' opponent to play against."

"In the early years in the womb of the crown prince, I could always see the late emperor, who was still the heir apparent, playing chess against himself in the middle of the night—holding black and white at the same time."

"Later, Emperor Taizong Xiaowen passed away, and the first emperor ascended the throne. Since then, there was no one to play games with, and even self-play games, seldom had time to spare..."

···
"Later, the eldest brother was granted the title of King of Linjiang, and the seventh brother was also adopted at Mrs. Bo's knees. I have to make him the heir."

"Since I was established as the reserve, the first emperor finally found someone who can play chess."

"It's just that at that time, I was still trembling because of the past events in the early years of the late emperor, and I didn't dare to go all out."

"Every time I provoked the late emperor, I would not be happy, playing chess game after game, and in the end, I could only drive me away in boredom..."

Pretending to be indifferent, Liu Sheng finally did not forget to smile, subconsciously stretched out his hand to grab a chess piece, and dropped it on the chessboard in front of him.

After Zhou Yafu also instinctively stretched out his hand, he said again: "I can always learn a lot from playing against the late emperor."

"—Of course not chess."

"But when playing chess, the late emperor would always talk to me about many things."

"Some are what the late emperor saw and heard in his early years, and some are stories from the past. There are also some things that haven't happened yet, but the late emperor is sure that will happen."

"When talking about these things, the late emperor would always ask me at the end: Did you hear the truth?"

"I can hear that, the first emperor will not be very happy; if I can't hear it, he won't be very angry."

"If the answer was correct, the first emperor would nod his head and say nothing. If he got it wrong, he would just point out the reason indifferently, and then admonish me what to do in the future."

···
"Hi~"

"I'm getting used to it~"

"When playing chess, I can't hear the nagging of the late emperor. It's really boring."

"I can't learn anything, this chess game is really too boring?"

Silently listening to Tian Zisheng's rare thoughts, Zhou Yafu finally smiled knowingly when he heard the last sentence "playing chess is really boring".

With a slight release of the hand, the chess piece fell back into the chess basket with a 'click', and saw Zhou Yafu raised his head with a smile, and nodded slowly to Liu Sheng.

"Your Majesty's meaning, I understand."

"It's just a matter of battle formation, not just following the scriptures, so you can learn a lot."

"—Just like Ma Fuzi, who is clearly familiar with the art of war and poetry, but he can't escape the fate of talking about war on paper."

"This is because battle formations are always changing rapidly. If you are not careful, or even too careful, it may lead to unexpected changes."

"The so-called whether you are a commander or a general, the first thing you need to cultivate is the ability to respond in wartime."

"After the variables appear, those who can respond as soon as possible and make correct decisions as soon as possible can be regarded as good generals and handsome."

···
"In this battle, Zhidu is the commander in chief, so I am not very worried."

"——In the past few years, Zhidu has gradually become proficient in the way of using troops, and even won the title of 'War and Conquer General' in the background."

"Aside from other things, in terms of resilience alone, Zhi can't find any problems at all."

"As for Cheng Bushi, although he is a bit dull, it is precisely because of this that he can become Zhidu's deputy commander."

"One of these two people has a lively mind, and the other follows the steps. It can be said that they complement each other."

After saying that, Zhou Yafu finally shook his head with a smile, and raised his eyelids meaningfully.

"Furthermore - even 'that' group of people, His Majesty has sent to support Zhidu;"

"If this is the case, Zhidu will have to fight a big defeat in Daibei, then I'm afraid there will be no place to put this old face..."

(End of this chapter)