Thief Emperor

Chapter 924: Three Envoys

Once the pace of unification begins, it will be difficult to stop.

The situation in Youyan was temporarily out of control, so Li Yun only asked Meng Qing to go to Hebei Province to make some preparations for the attack on Youyan while reorganizing the Pinglu Army. However, Li Yun could no longer wait in Guanzhong.

In addition to his desire to kill the Wei father and son and rescue the people of Guanzhong, he also had a relatively important political need.

That is to take back the old Zhou capital.

It is true that the new Tang Dynasty had established its capital in Luoyang, but the real capital of Wu Zhou was not in Luoyang, but in Guanzhong. Although Li Yun captured Emperor Wu and ascended the throne, he did not take the capital of Guanzhong, which was somewhat unjustified.

After taking Guanzhong, Li basically completed the great unification in the traditional sense.

What was missing were only states such as Youzhou and Jizhou.

By the time Youyan is recaptured, there will be no problems on the homeland. By that time, Li will have reached the "passing line" of a unified dynasty.

If you want a higher score, you have to be enterprising and expand your territory.

However, future progress and expansion of territory may not be something that can be accomplished in the past few years.

What Li Yun needs to do now is to pass the exam first, then rest and recuperate for a few years. After the world is initially settled and the vitality is restored, he can consider making progress.

Now, he is just one step away from passing the exam.

Guanzhong is the most important step.

Du Qian and Zhao Cheng stood up and bowed their heads in greeting. Just as they were about to leave, a palace servant hurriedly handed a document into the palace and placed it in front of Li Yun. Li Yun opened it and took a look, a smile immediately appeared on his face.

"Minister Zhao."

He called Zhao Cheng, who immediately stopped and bowed his head, "Your Majesty."

"Zhou Luo from the Imperial Guard, your Ministry of War should issue a seal to him and ask him to go to Meng Qing's army and serve as a lieutenant general of the central army."

Zhao Cheng thought about it, lowered his head and said yes.

Li Yun also touched his head and continued, "And your nephew, if he wants to join the army, he can also be sent to serve under Meng Qing as a lieutenant general."

Zhao Cheng took a deep breath and bowed his head, saying, "Your Majesty, the Battle of Guanzhong is imminent. Can my nephew serve under General Su and contribute to the Holy Dynasty in the subsequent Battle of Guanzhong?"

Li Yun glanced at him and said with a smile: "These are all trivial matters. You are the Minister of War, so you make the decision."

Zhao Cheng quickly bowed his head and thanked him.

Li Yun looked at him and asked, "Li Zhen has been in the Ministry of War for a while. How is his work going?"

Zhao Cheng lowered his head and said, "Minister Li is a son of an official family. He has helped me a lot in many things."

"That's good."

Li Yun smiled and said, "You two should get along well."

"Let him join us in the discussion on this expedition to Guanzhong."

Zhao Cheng bowed his head deeply: "Yes."

"I will go to the Ministry of Revenue right now, say hello to Minister Du, and then start to handle this matter."

Li Yun said "hmm" and reminded: "The Ministry of War should remember to send those ten new things to Tongguan."

"Yes."

Zhao Cheng bowed his head and said, "I will never forget."

After saying that, he bowed his head and left.

Du Qian was not in a hurry to leave, but watched Zhao Cheng go away, then smiled at Li Yun and said, "Minister Zhao's style of doing things is not like that of a military officer at all. Some of our civil servants are rough and not as polite as him."

"After all, he is a son of a general and has received education."

Li Yun praised him and said with a smile: "It is right to let him be the head of the Ministry of War. Otherwise, I still don't have a suitable candidate, so I have no choice but to invite Zhou Liang to Luoyang."

After Zhou Liang retired to the second line, he first worked in the Privy Council. Later, Li Yun took the court away from Jinling. In order to maintain stability in the southeast, he left Zhou Liang in Jinling and ordered him to guard Jinling with more than 10,000 Jinling soldiers.

Although Zhou Liang did not have any great achievements, he had the longest seniority and could barely be the Minister of War.

Moreover, Zhou Liang was also granted the title of Duke, Duke Xuan.

Du Qian sighed, "Maybe there is a destiny in the dark."

He looked at Li Yun and said with a smile: "Your Majesty seems to be in a much better mood. It seems that there is good news from Qingzhou."

Hearing this, Li Yun narrowed his eyes and smiled: "My elder brother is very sensible, which saves me a lot of worry."

Although the Pinglu Army surrendered first, it was precisely because they surrendered first that Li Yun never had the "boss" to directly seize the military power of the Zhou family. It was not until after the founding of the country that he started to do this.

Moreover, the number of Pinglu Army was not small, almost the same as that of Jiangdong Army. Li Yun seemed to take this matter lightly and only sent Meng Qing to handle it, but in fact, he attached great importance to the acceptance of Pinglu Army.

If he could successfully take over the Pinglu Army, he would save a lot of energy. Otherwise, not only would there be another chaos in the east, but the arrangements for Youyan would probably have to be postponed for two or three years, or even longer.

Now, with the cooperation of Zhou's father and son, things in Qingzhou have become smoother, and Meng Qing can have more helpers. Maybe after a few years of training in Hebei Province, this army will become a strong army under Li Yun.

Li Yun showed Du Qian the news that Jiusi had urgently sent over. After reading it, Du Qian couldn't help but bow to Li Yun and said, "Your Majesty is truly worthy of being entrusted with the destiny."

"Today, the unification of the world is as unstoppable as a bamboo breaking through a bamboo pole."

Li Yun waved his hand and said with a smile: "We can't be completely careless."

The two chatted for a while, and then talked about the arrangement of officials. Li Yun took the map handed over by Du Qian, looked at it, and said: "After the Pinglu military campaign is over, the prefectures and counties originally controlled by the Zhou family will also be vacant."

"Plus the dozen states in Hedong Road."

Li Yun looked at Du Qian and asked, "How do you plan to fill these vacancies, Brother Shouyi?"

Du Qian said, "Let's follow the old method and send a minister to take charge. The officials of the prefectures and counties can continue to stay in their posts."

"In the future, we will replace them little by little."

Li Yun looked at Du Qian and said with a smile: "I have a different idea."

"Your Majesty, please speak."

Mr. Li knocked on the table and said, "The officials we admitted to the Jinling Literary Society are definitely not enough, but didn't the imperial examination in Luoyang a few months ago select a lot of Jinshi?"

At this time, Li Yun has officially confirmed the title of "Jinshi" for the students who passed the imperial examination. This should be the first time that someone in the world has used this title.

Du Qian frowned and said, "There are about 100 to 200 people, but these people..."

“No experience yet.”

Li Yun knocked on the table and said slowly: "They have no experience, so they can't be county magistrates. County magistrates are the most basic officials, and if they have no experience, it will be bad."

"There may be chaos, and there is a possibility that we will be manipulated by local forces."

"so."

Li Yun looked at Du Qian and chuckled, "So, I plan to select the top 50 from this batch of Jinshi and assign them to local areas to serve as provincial governors and deputy governors."

Du Qian was stunned when he heard this: "Your Majesty, they passed the exam in the first year of junior high school, so you let them become state officials?"

"The governor can't make a big mess."

Li Yun smiled and said to Du Qian, "After all, they are in charge of officials, not the people. Moreover, they have no power to dismiss county officials. If anyone really does something wrong, they will naturally be impeached."

"You can give it a try."

This was actually an idea devised by Emperor Taizu Zhu.

In another world, when the Ming Dynasty was just established, there was also a shortage of officials. Zhu even directly allowed people who had just passed the imperial examination to go to the province to serve as officials and governors.

Those young people are full of enthusiasm, but they don't understand many things. If you let them manage the people, there may be problems. But if you let them manage the officials, there may be some miraculous effects.

Of course, this is only a temporary measure. After a period of time, when the bureaucratic system of the Zhangwu Dynasty is functioning normally, this approach will no longer be used.

Du Qian thought about it carefully, then nodded and said, "Your Majesty's method..."

"Maybe give it a try."

Seeing Du Qian agreed, Li Yun was somewhat happy. He stood up and pulled Du Qian to sit down, and said with a smile: "It's good that Brother Shouyi agreed. I have another idea that I want to discuss with Brother Shouyi."

Du Qian looked at Li Yun, somewhat curious: "What else does your Majesty want to say?"

"I think…"

Li Yun looked at Du Qian and said with a smile: "I think there are hundreds of states in the world, which is a bit too many. It is a bit difficult to manage so many states directly under the jurisdiction of the court."

"It would be better to set up another level of government office."

Du Qian lowered his head and thought about it.

"Your Majesty, are you talking about level one?"

In the official system of the old Zhou Dynasty, although the world was divided into many circuits, there were no permanent official positions at the circuit level.

For example, the Observation and Disposal Envoy and the Defense Envoy were officials temporarily sent by the court when there were special circumstances in the local area.

"Correct."

Li Yun tapped the table with his hand, then looked at Du Qian and said, "Originally, the court temporarily sent observation envoys and defense envoys to various regions."

"I want to add a few permanent officials, called the governor, the censor, and the defense commissioner."

"They are in charge of local government affairs, criminal law, and soldiers respectively."

Mr. Li reached out and knocked on the table, the sound was gentle.

"Let's start from Jiangnan East Road and try it out for three years."

(End of this chapter)