At the end of Qin, I became a son of the plane

Chapter 725: The downward spiral of history

December 95, 12th year of the Han calendar, Baima Town, library.

Zhu Bin was sitting in a secluded corner of a library. On the table were more than a dozen history books of various types, such as "The Storm at the End of the Qin Dynasty", "The Words of the Sacred God", "The Thoughts of the Two Saints", etc.

"This time traveler named Xu Fan is really bold and daring. He actually opened the Age of Discovery, occupied most of the world's land, and developed the world's technology to the level of the Second Industrial Revolution. He wouldn't have a plug-in for the technology tree, otherwise it doesn't make sense. In less than 100 years, the internal combustion engine has appeared." Zhu Bin felt a little ashamed when he thought of this.

He also experimented for a while yesterday, but found that he had no golden fingers and even had difficulty surviving. If he had not pawned his watch yesterday, he would probably have had to hide under the overpass and blow the cold wind.

What Zhu Bin admired most about this senior time traveler was that he actually stitched together three fiercely contradictory ideas: feudal monarchy, capitalist system, and the idea of ​​universal harmony, to create a three-headed monster that had never appeared in history.

Judging from the results, this stitching was extremely successful. He, as a predecessor, greatly expanded the boundaries of Han civilization, making the Han emperor a veritable captain of the world. The whole world now speaks Chinese, which is extremely rare in the time-travel novels he has read.

"This Xu Fan should be someone from the same timeline as me. He is good at using capital, but he is also very vigilant. He even left behind many popular stories. It is obvious that he has been whipped by capital."

Online novels also have a very clear timeline. If there was a time traveler coming from before the millennium, the Han Dynasty would definitely be an enhanced version of the Qin Dynasty, and the time traveler would just be an enhanced version of the First Emperor.

If after the millennium, the country established by the time traveler is either a strengthened version of the bald eagle or a strengthened version of Prussia, "The Struggle of the Petty Bourgeoisie" would be the most representative novel.

After surpassing Japan, national self-confidence began to rise, and people had some confidence in their own system. Five-cent party members began to appear. After the epidemic, there was not enough cake to go around, and there were more and more five-cent party members.

Zhu Bin suspected that Xu Fan had traveled through time and space to this world after the epidemic.

However, after reading the history of the Han Dynasty for nearly a hundred years, he still felt very sorry and said: "The dragon slayer eventually became an evil dragon."

Exploiting the feudal aristocracy will inevitably lead to backlash from the feudal system, and associating with capital will inevitably turn you into capital.

To some extent, the history of the founding of the Han Dynasty is the history of Xu Fan, a time traveler, pulling the entire Han Dynasty forward.

When this time traveler disappeared, the Han Dynasty's motivation to move forward also disappeared. The second generation of Han emperors could barely maintain the order established by the time traveler.

In the 69th year of the Han Dynasty, the heir who was taught by the time traveler died, and the third generation emperor of the Han Dynasty succeeded to the throne. The pace of the Han Dynasty's progress began to spiral downward.

The emperor could not see the direction to move forward, and did not dare to move forward by feeling his way, so he began to think about returning to his old path.

At this time, the former prime minister of India, the great Confucian scholar Dong Zhongshu, proposed the "Theory of Approaching Great Harmony", saying that the world of Great Harmony is a template close to perfection, an ideal state that is impossible to achieve in reality and can only be continuously approached.

After two generations of emperors worked hard to govern the country, the Han Dynasty was getting closer and closer to a world of great harmony. Realistically speaking, the Han Dynasty had already achieved a world of great harmony, and all that was left for the Han Dynasty to do next was to maintain this prosperity.

Dong Zhongshu's conclusion was recognized by the Han nobles, officials, merchants, and scholars. Almost everyone believed that the Han Dynasty had no strong enemies outside and no hidden dangers inside, which was the most prosperous era. The next generation just needed to maintain this prosperity. Following Emperor Taizu and Emperor Taizong was too tiring. If there were strong enemies outside, it would be fine, but the Han Dynasty was obviously invincible, so why did everyone work so hard?

Everyone wanted to take a break and relax for a while, but Emperor Taizu and Emperor Taizong would ruthlessly abandon those who could not keep up with their pace and replace them with a group of people who could keep up with them, so they had no choice but to continue to follow closely.

After decades of involution, people have become numb. Now someone finally speaks up for them. Dong Zhongshu's "Theory of Great Harmony" naturally spread quickly throughout the Han Dynasty and became the consensus of the Han Dynasty's top leaders.

The craftsmen and farmers of the Han Dynasty were not aware of the problem, or if some of them were aware of it, they had no way to speak out.

When the Han Dynasty lost its common goal of building a harmonious world, it had to start redistributing the boundaries of power, and internal disputes inevitably broke out.

First of all, the emperor believed that the power of the prime minister posed too great a threat to the imperial power, and there was a tendency to reduce the emperor to a mere seal.

The prime ministers at that time, Zhang Pijiang, Chen Mai, Yuan Ang and others, had good family backgrounds, qualifications and authority. The emperor's decrees could not leave the palace, and Xu Shao felt greatly threatened.

But at that time, Zhang Pijiang and his men had already gotten used to the system of the Han Dynasty. The emperor was responsible for the ideological field of the Han Dynasty and pointed out the direction for everyone to move forward. Then these officials would move forward in the direction pointed by the emperor. This has always been the ancestral law.

However, Xu Shao did not think that the ancestral laws could not be changed, and he personally fought for the power of prime minister. During the 70 years of the Han Dynasty, prime ministers Zhang Pijiang and Chen Mai retired.

He also dismissed his father's core team on the grounds that the old must give way to the new, and appointed Gongsun Hong, who had a very shallow background and qualifications, as prime minister.

Gongsun Hong also became the first treacherous prime minister in the history of the Han Dynasty. With his cooperation, the power of the prime minister was drastically reduced and gradually concentrated in the emperor. The Han Dynasty began to change from the prime minister responsibility system to the emperor responsibility system. He also reformed the power of the prime minister, added six fake prime ministers, and turned the Han Dynasty into a group prime minister system, decomposing the power of the prime minister.

The top leaders of the Han Dynasty were both dissatisfied and somewhat satisfied with this. What they were dissatisfied with was that after such reforms, the power of the prime minister declined greatly. Compared with the previous prime minister who was in charge of the world, Gongsun Hong almost became a mouthpiece of the emperor. The people of the Han Dynasty satirized him as the telephone prime minister, meaning that he was just a mouthpiece of the emperor.

But what is satisfying is that the number of positions for the Three Dukes has been greatly increased. Before, there were only four chairs for the Three Dukes, but the number of departments at the level of the Nine Ministers of the Han Dynasty has been continuously increasing. In the 4th year of the Han Dynasty, the number had increased to 70. Together with 26 provincial governors and some of their deputies, they had less than a 13% chance of getting to that position.

But the number of prime ministers of the Han Dynasty suddenly increased to nine, and the positions above expanded nearly three times.

Although Xu Shao was fighting for power at the top, he also continued to benefit the lower classes. For the city's artisan class, he bribed them with a lifetime employment system and reduced bankruptcy, giving them a future on the water.

As for the farming class, he promised to increase farmers' pensions and invest more resources in rural infrastructure construction.

These policies enabled Emperor Xu Shaoyouren to promote aesthetic education.

(End of this chapter)