Standalone Northern and Southern Dynasties

Chapter 466 Sacrifice to the River God

The lord of a county actually took the lead in kneeling down to Liu Lingzhu, which shows the special status of sorcerers in Pingzhou area.

If Su Ze saw this person, he would definitely recognize him as the alchemist who had fought with Bian Ji in front of Longhua Temple.

Liu Lingzhu once served under the command of Qinghe King Yuan Yi. After Qinghe King fell, Liu Lingzhu fled back to his hometown in Youzhou.

When the news of the duel in Luoyang spread to the north, Liu Lingzhu also became famous. As various miraculous events involving Bian Ji continued to occur, Liu Lingzhu, who had once fought a draw with Bian Ji, also gradually became more famous.

Liu Lingzhu also widely recruited disciples in his hometown. Relying on his ability to play tricks, he took advantage of the chaotic times to gather a large number of followers.

The Pingzhou County Magistrate Wang Ji was his disciple.

In addition, Lu Wenwei, the head of the Fanyang Lu family, a prominent family in Youzhou, also worshipped Liu Lingzhu as his teacher.

"Master, are you really going to Youzhou? I heard that Su Ze is ruthless and is suppressing alchemists in Guanzhong. Will you be in danger if you go there?"

Han Lou once tried to recruit Liu Lingzhu, but Liu Lingzhu believed that he was not the true dragon master and rejected his offer.

Now that Han Lou has offered Youzhou, Liu Lingzhu wants to go to Youzhou instead. As his disciple, Wang Ji naturally cannot understand.

Liu Lingzhu said:
"A few days ago, an envoy came from Luoyang."

Envoy from Luoyang?
Wang Ji was shocked. The envoy from Luoyang was the emperor's envoy. The one who controlled the government now was General Tianzhu Erzhu Rong. He had heard Liu Lingzhu say before that he had extensive connections in Luoyang, but he didn't expect that he could actually establish connections with Luoyang.

"General Tianzhu promised me the position of governor of Youzhou and allowed me to gather my disciples to start an uprising in Youzhou."

Wang Ji felt a little awkward when he heard this. He was a county magistrate appointed by the Northern Wei Dynasty and an official of the Northern Wei court. He was an official appointed when Yuan Xu was emperor.

Today, there are still a large number of old officials like Wang Ji throughout the north.

Their positions are generally small, but numerous.

Their attitude is also ambiguous. Now there are three dynasties in the entire north, and the situation is complicated and changeable. Most people choose not to take sides.

However, in the hearts of these officials, they basically still recognized that the young emperor Yuan Xu was the legitimate heir.

Legitimacy is something that is innate, not to mention that Erzhu Rong also launched the Heyin Rebellion, which aroused hostility from a large number of scholars.

Wang Ji just didn't like Su Ze's anti-religious stance, but he still agreed with Emperor Yuan Xu.

In Wang Ji's view, the positions now granted by the Luoyang court are fake official positions.

Moreover, Erzhu Rong's purpose in asking Liu Lingzhu to go to Youzhou was very clear, which was to let Liu Lingzhu contain Su Ze.

Liu Lingzhu said instead:

"Compared to Su Ze, I have met Er Zhurong before when I was in Luoyang. He highly praised my alchemy and this appointment was also very sincere."

Seeing that Wang Ji was still worried, Liu Lingzhu comforted his disciple and said:

"This time, Master is not going to Ji County, the capital of Youzhou. I am going to Beiping County near Fanyang to check the situation. No matter how many minions and spies Su Ze has, a small county will not be able to trap him."

After hearing this, Wang Ji felt relieved.

He said:
"I heard in the county governor's office that Su Ze had appointed a group of officials in Youzhou. The county magistrate of Beiping is a Qiang-Hu hybrid. I heard that he is the son of Su Ze's close minister. His name is Hulu Guihan. He is obviously incompetent."

There were multiple chains of contempt in the officialdom of the Northern Wei Dynasty.

Before the collapse, Luoyang discriminated against local people. This was a major premise. At the local level, Han officials discriminated against officials of other ethnic groups. This was simply the opposite of the natural order.

But there was no way. These rough and uncouth people in the Northern Wei Dynasty had only been assimilated to Han culture for twenty years and they had little ability to govern the local area. The wealthy and powerful families were still fine as they could rely on their own staff and clerks to govern.

It was obvious that Hulu Guihan came from a humble family and must be the son of a close minister of Su Ze.

He was the son of a favored and treacherous minister and an official of a foreign race. In Wang Ji's mind, Hulugui was definitely a fool.

Liu Lingzhu nodded and said:
"This is why we chose Beiping County. Beiping is not far from Fanyang. There are descendants of the Fanyang Lu family serving as clerks in the county. It will definitely be safe for me to go to Beiping."

"If the people of Youzhou can be trusted, I will be ready to mobilize my followers to start an uprising."

Wang Ji became excited when he heard this.

The nobles and officials in Youzhou have always been xenophobic. After Han Lou occupied Youzhou, a number of powerful officials, including the Lu family of Fanyang, refused to cooperate with him.

Relying on the reputation of the young emperor Yuan Xu, Su Ze was able to recruit a group of local officials in Youzhou, but the local nobles in Youzhou still showed an uncooperative attitude.

There is no way around it. Whether it was the Equal Field System, the Fubing System, or the Chongwen Pavilion selection of scholars, they were all about digging into the roots of the wealthy families.

The gentry in Guanzhong had no choice, and now the gentry in Youzhou are still waiting and watching, and they still think they have a choice.

Liu Lingzhu relied on his magic to move among the nobles and powerful people in Youzhou, and indeed gathered considerable power.

Liu Lingzhu decided to go to Youzhou to check the situation. After explaining the affairs in Pingzhou, he immediately set off for Beiping County.
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In Beiping County, Hulu Guihan, who had just taken office, was really overwhelmed. Although he had learned grammar and writing in Chongwen Pavilion, he was still frightened by the mountains of official documents in Beiping County.

Beiping County is still just a medium-sized county. The county magistrate fled after the Six Garrisons Rebellion spread to Youzhou.

In just a small county like Beiping, the pile of official documents is like a mountain.

However, Su Ze did not let these new officials take office alone.

This time, each of the county magistrates who took office was equipped with five followers. These were the [Clerk] series followers summoned by Su Ze, but their grades were not very high. They were basically blue or green followers with negative attributes.

But it is enough. Although the negative entries are not small flaws, these people at least have one biggest advantage - loyalty.

Loyalty is an incomparable virtue.

In addition to five attendants, each county magistrate was also escorted by a team of twenty detectives.

These constables are not all followers of the system. For example, the chief constable Zhao Tie assigned to Hulu Guihan is a disabled veteran who retired from the battlefield.

Although this old soldier was blind in one eye, he had survived the bloody battle on the battlefield after all. He was full of vigor and spirit. With the protection of Zhao Tie, he repelled several waves of bandits who wanted to rob him along the way.

After Hulu returned to the Han Dynasty and took office, he was able to escape several assassination attempts thanks to Zhao Tie's protection.

Yes, less than half a month after Hulu Guihan took office, three assassination attempts against him had already occurred.

Thanks to Zhao Tie's desperate protection and Hulu Guihan's own excellent martial arts skills, he escaped a recent assassination attempt.

This shows the current situation in Peking.

In fact, it was not just Hulug who returned to the Han Dynasty. The county officials who were assigned to various counties in Youzhou were basically like this. The only one who had a relatively harmonious relationship after taking office was Jia Zhi, who was the former governor of Zhuo County.

After all, Jia Zhi was born into a noble family in Liangzhou, and had some connections with the local tyrants in Zhuo County, the Fanyang Lu family.

Therefore, Jia Zhi did not encounter too many difficulties after taking office, but that was all.

Hulu Guihan knew very well that the reason he was assassinated was because of his own interests.

During this period of disorder in the north, the imperial court gave up order, and naturally someone came to fill this order.

The officials and gentry who remained in the county, the local nobles and powerful families, and even the landowners, bandits, village tyrants and hooligans, all of them were beneficiaries of the order in the troubled times, so they would naturally oppose the officials appointed by Su Ze.

In addition to these common problems in Guanzhong, witches and alchemists are also a unique problem in Youzhou.

There has been a custom in Yan since ancient times. From the divination of Prince Dan of Yan about Jing Ke's assassination of Qin Shi Huang to the belief of Gongsun family in alchemy in the late Han Dynasty, the belief in gods and ghosts is very popular in this land.

The previous county magistrate set up a special hall in the county government office and invited alchemists to perform divination and exorcism every now and then.

When Hulu Guihan read "The Theory of the Extinction of Gods" in Chongwen Pavilion, he instinctively hated these sorcery techniques.

What made Hulu Guihan even more worried was that a prophecy was still popular in the local area - "Liu will become king."

This made Hulu Guihan speechless. In the past, when carrying out these superstitious activities, they would at least have some sense of ritual, such as having a thousand-year-old turtle appear with prophecies on its back, or finding prophecies in the belly of a fish.

However, there is no trace of the origin of this prophecy that is popular in Youzhou, as if it spread overnight.

Because of this prophecy, a local tyrant from the Liu family actually started a rebellion.

However, the Liu family was not a big family and was rampant in the village, so they had few supporters and were easily suppressed by Hulu Guihan and the county yamen runners.

Beheading the head of the Liu family in public did at least suppress the local powerful families, but Hulu Guihan became even more worried.

Local issues are so complicated and intricate that it is really hard to sort them out.

Hulu Guihan thought of the principles on the battlefield that his brother had told him. When fighting, one does not just rush in to engage in a head-on confrontation. One needs to find the enemy's weak points and penetrate them, causing the enemy's elite to collapse. This is the way to achieve victory at the lowest cost.

I need to find a breakthrough.

Hulu Guihan was very clear that he had the advantage of holding the righteousness, which was why the local underground forces could only send assassins to assassinate but did not dare to rebel openly.

If you really rebel, see if Murong Shaozong, who is in charge of Ji County, will agree?

It’s not that you can’t resort to violence in politics, but you have to find reasons that convince people before you do so.

The forces in Youzhou knew very well that the knife in Su Ze's hand was the hardest, so they could only make some small moves and did not dare to cause open unrest and give Su Ze a reason to use the knife directly.

The times are chaotic now. If I kill a few of your local officials, you won’t be able to find out the cause. In the end, you can only recognize the officials nominated by me at the local level.

During the turbulent period of the Two Jin Dynasties and Sixteen Kingdoms, most places did this.

At this time, the chief of the yamen runners, Zhao Tie, came in quickly and reported to Hulu Guihan:
"County Lord! The county wants to sacrifice a living person to the river god!"

(End of this chapter)