Thief Emperor

Chapter 674 Assassin
When etiquette and rules were first established, they were not actually created for the sake of civility and politeness, but rather a set of tools.

A set of tools for ruling.

This set of tools has morally constrained a large group of people, especially the intellectuals who can read and write.

As the ruler of Jiangdong, Li Yun is undoubtedly one of the biggest beneficiaries of this system of etiquette and law.

Even in the future, he still has a chance. Remove the word "one of".

It's just that he himself is not very sensitive to this aspect. Even if he knows the tricks here, he doesn't really care about it, because Li Yun has enough confidence that even without relying on the Confucian tools, his own abilities can fully control Jiangdong.

Hearing Xue Shou's words, Li Yun smiled and said, "Brother, your words are a bit heavy. They are just a few names."

Xue Shou shook his head slightly. He looked up at Li Yun and said seriously, "Jiangdong was founded by His Majesty. Of course, His Majesty can ignore these two titles. These two titles are unlikely to affect His Majesty, but..."

He said softly: "Your Majesty, you must consider the future. In the future, Yuan'er's generation will hardly have the prestige that your Majesty has, so the status of the Li family must be raised high."

"Your Majesty, you must also be high and mighty."

Li Yun rubbed his eyebrows and did not respond.

After he became the King of Wu, he was not in a hurry to appoint a crown prince because his children were still young. However, unless there were no accidents, the position of crown prince would definitely go to his eldest son Li Yuan.

Now, Xue Shou is already thinking about the future.

"Okay, I'll pay more attention to this later."

Li Yun smiled at Xue Shou and said, "Let's stop here. Big brother, go and get busy first."

Xue Shou bowed his head deeply, replied "yes", and walked out politely.

After he left, Li Yun sat alone in the commander's tent and casually flipped through a few pages of Su Gong's Art of War which he carried with him.

This set of military tactics was compiled by Zhao Cheng at the end of last year. It has now been handed over to the workshop for engraving and printing, but the printed version has not yet been produced. The one in Li Yun's hand is a handwritten copy, which was copied by Princess Liu Su herself.

After only turning two pages, Li Yun lost interest. After closing the book, he sighed and said, "Everyone has their own thoughts."

As the team grew in size, the internal situation of Jiangdong became very different from before.

When the organization was small, Li Yun was the core and his light could shine on everyone. There was only one faction in Jiangdong, and that was the Li Yun faction.

Now, Li Yun is still the backbone, but there are too many people, so naturally there are many mountains.

The most typical examples are Xue Shou and Xue Fang, the "descendants" of Jiangdong.

There were also those who came from the old village of Cangshan, those who came from the anti-theft team, and even the fellow villagers in Xuanzhou began to divide themselves into groups, some from Qingyang County, some from Shidai County, and some from Ningguo County.

There was also Du Qian's group, who fled here from the imperial court in the capital.

As for the city of Jinling, there are even more. The first batch of Jinling Literary Society and the second batch of Jinling Literary Society, people like Du Qian and Yao Zhong will most likely accept their own students, while people like Su Sheng and Zhao Cheng may each accept their own adopted sons.

In short, there are many mountains and each has its own thoughts.

At this time, Li Yun was still the core of the entire group, and he could easily influence the strategic direction of the entire Jiangdong Group, but he knew very well that there were some discrepancies in the interests of these small groups.

In other words, in the future, as the King of Wu, in addition to the task of leading the entire Jiangdong to glory, he will have another part-time job.

That is... balancing all parties, allowing these people to jump within the red line rules, maintaining the operation of the team while cracking down on those people or forces who want to go beyond the rules, and at the same time eliminating some people or forces who have already gone beyond the rules.

This task actually accounts for most of the emperor's work.

For Li Yun now, this job is of course just a part-time job, but in the future, the proportion of this part-time job in Li Yun’s work will definitely become larger and larger.

……

Five days later, the rewards for Su Sheng's subordinates, especially those for military merit, had basically been distributed. Naturally, some were happy while others were worried.

Especially at the level of captain, some captains were of the eighth rank of sergeant, and some who were brave in combat had even reached the seventh rank of lieutenant. The rest of the captains who only had the ninth rank of sergeant would naturally be unhappy.

After all, at the level of captain, everyone has a title, and the lowest is the ninth-class sergeant. A captain who gets this title will naturally not be convinced.

For this, many people went to Su Sheng and Chen Da to argue endlessly, and some even went to Li Yun to complain and almost shed tears. These captains had high salaries, and they did not particularly value the land and houses awarded as military merits, but they valued this honor and recognition very much.

In the end, Li Yun asked Su Sheng to take out the merit book of the army, gathered together those captains who had objections, flipped through the book page by page in front of them, and read it out one by one. These people finally lost their temper, bowed their heads and clasped their fists to Li Yun and Su Sheng, then turned around and walked out.

Su Sheng looked at their backs as they left, frowned slightly, and was quite worried: "The superiors, these captains should be treated equally. Some of the captains under them have received the rank of sergeant. They are also sergeants, so they naturally feel uncomfortable."

Li put his hands together in front of him and said calmly, "If you feel uncomfortable, go and fight for it yourself. Do you want me to make something out of nothing and give them credit?"

"As for my military honor."

Li Yun said slowly: "We can't give too much now. There will be many more battles to fight in the future. If we give too much now, there will be nothing left to give in the future."

He looked at Su Sheng and said calmly, "Brother Su, you have to take care of all the military affairs and the thoughts of the captains. If there are any who don't know what's going on and want to cause trouble again, Brother Su, just write to me and I will transfer them back to Nanjing."

Su Sheng quickly lowered his head and replied, "Yes!"

…………

After the affairs in Jingzhou came to an end, Li Yun and Zhao Cheng rushed to Xiangzhou together. As they rode horses all the way, they arrived at the city of Xiangzhou in just two days.

At this time, Meng Qing was stationed in Xiangzhou. He was also the most direct descendant of Li Yun's direct descendants. He led a group of generals out of the city to welcome Li Yun. After seeing Li Yun, he knelt on the ground without hesitation and said respectfully: "Greetings, Your Majesty."

Li Yun stepped forward and helped him up, saying with a smile: "Get up quickly, get up quickly."

After Meng Qing stood up, Li Yun reached out and patted his shoulder, smiling and said, "It's been a while since we last met."

Meng Qing smiled: "It's a pity that I didn't get to see the king offering sacrifices to the heavens at Zhongshan Mountain."

Now, even within Jiangdong, some people verbally accept Li Yun's title of king but do not agree with it in their hearts. However, people like Meng Qing sincerely hope that Li Yun will get better and better.

After helping Meng Qing up, Li Yun looked at the generals behind him, raised his hand and said with a smile: "Everyone, get up, everyone."

Su Sheng has received many of General Su's former subordinates. At this moment, only about half of the generals on Su Sheng's side were from the anti-theft team that followed Li Yun back then. However, most of the generals on Zhao Cheng's side had risen up together with Li Yun back then. After seeing Li Yun now, they were all very cordial. They surrounded Li Yun and called him out one by one.

Li was very happy to see some old colleagues whom he hadn't seen for a long time. He turned around and looked at Zhao Cheng, smiling and said, "Let's go, let's go have a drink!"

Zhao Cheng looked at Meng Qing and said with a smile, "Has General Meng made any arrangements?"

Meng Qing lowered his head and said, "The banquet has been arranged. Your Majesty, General, please follow me."

On that day, almost all the generals and officers above the rank of Duwei in Xiangzhou, except those on duty in the army, participated in the banquet. Even Li Yun, who had a good alcohol tolerance, got drunk and was supported by Su Zhan, staggering back to his residence.

Not long after he entered the bedroom, he heard hurried footsteps outside the door, followed by Su Zhan's voice: "Brother Meng, what's the urgent matter?"

came a familiar voice.

"Ninth Division, emergency situations must be reported to the higher-ups."

This is Meng Hai's voice.

Su Zhan looked at Li Yun's bedroom and said with a wry smile, "Brother Meng, I was very happy to be promoted today. I drank with some old brothers for more than an hour and just went in to rest not long ago."

Just as Meng Hai was about to speak, the door slowly opened. Li Yun, with a flushed face and bloodshot eyes, said in a hoarse voice, "Come in and talk."

Meng Hai lowered his head quickly, took small steps forward, supported Li Yun, and said, "Is everything okay?"

He is Li Yun’s first generation follower. Although he has been "sent out", he is still close to Li Yun.

If it were an ordinary foreign official, he would not come forward to support like this.

Li Yun was helped into the house and sat down. Then he looked at Meng Hai and exhaled a breath of alcohol: "What's the matter?"

Meng Hai hesitated for a moment and whispered, "General Li Zheng and General Gongsun were ambushed by assassins on their way back to the army in the south."

"General Li was hit by several arrows and was injured..."

"He was seriously injured."

(End of this chapter)