Damn it, I'm in the garbage book I wrote

Chapter 289: The world is unpredictable

Seeing Master Li's expression and combining it with what he said, Xia Lin's heart skipped a beat for no reason. This young master must be more informed than Xia Lin. Since he said so, it meant that this matter must have been put on the table for discussion.

That would be interesting.

Yes, reducing the heavy cavalry can indeed reduce the pressure on the court and the people. After all, this thing is very expensive, so expensive that it is shocking. But the final result of reducing the heavy cavalry is only two, one is that the Central Plains will no longer have any means to resist the northern cavalry on the plains, and the other is to force the Li family to rebel in advance.

The people in the court should be aware of the seriousness of the matter, but they still wanted to do it. Xia Lin's sense of crisis suddenly arose.

After the previous generation of brave and skilled military generals left the court and even the world one after another, most of the new generation of military generals were meritorious officials. They did not have the ability or the courage to compete with the civil service group.

Yes, it is very expensive to maintain an army. Fuliang made so much money, but there was not much surplus every year. The reason was that there was a heavy cavalry to support. It took ten farmers to support an ordinary soldier, and one heavy cavalry took a hundred farmers.

After weakening the military, it is indeed possible to quickly become wealthy in a short period of time, but the question is what happens next? The threat from the north is still there, it has just been weakened in a short period of time, and people are also eager to come to the Central Plains.

Then there are the Li family in the west, father and son, a big family that only obeys orders but not propaganda. They went up to others and said that they wanted to cut off their family's military power. Isn't this a joke? It was so hard to split their family up, and now won't they be glued together again because of external conflicts?
Stupid move! Absolutely stupid move!
Xia Lin sat there tapping his fingers on his thighs, his mind working non-stop. Now he understood why Lao Guo had to go to the court to make trouble. It seemed that this matter would not end well.

However, if the sky falls, the tall ones will hold it up. If Lao Guo is still alive, it will not be Xia Lin's turn to hold it up. But I'm afraid Li Jing will not be so lucky. Now that he is gone, the descendants of the Li family are just that good. I'm afraid they can't muster the ability and courage of another Li family in the west. I guess Goguryeo will be so excited this time that they will dance with joy.

"I guess the imperial court wants to use a soft strategy to deal with Goguryeo, but this matter may not be that simple. Goguryeo is different from the Turks on the grassland. The Turks have just changed their royal court and need to recuperate, but Goguryeo is holding back its energy."

"And there are the Shiwei people." Prince Li supported his hands on his knees, his face solemn: "If the northern gate is opened, the two horse breeding areas of Jizhou and Youzhou will be gone, and Shandong will be directly exposed to the northern barbarians."

Xia Lin was silent for a long time after hearing this: "The world is divided into three parts."

"Four points." Prince Li gestured with a number four and said worriedly, "The court will eventually be trapped in the Yangtze River, but you and I both know that if we are trapped in the south, we can only rely on Xiangyang City. Once Xiangyang is captured, the entire south will be undefended."

"Bashu." Xia Lin added.

But this sentence made Li Shizi laugh bitterly: "Yes, Bashu. We will defend the natural barrier and look north to our hometown. Prime Minister Zhuge will jump out of his coffin overnight and point at us and scold us for three days and three nights."

Xia Lin sat there and smiled, then sighed: "Forget it, let it go. Let's take it one step at a time, and then talk about it in detail after it happens."

There is no other way. What else can we do except this? Li Shizi also understood in his heart. He leaned his head back and looked at his father's coffin expressionlessly.

"By the way, you bumped into Lu Chengqing today. He was here to test you. You need to be more careful."

"Him? A good-for-nothing with a hereditary title. I don't even bother looking at him. How dare he act so arrogantly in front of me?"

Although Lu Chengqing had served as prime minister in official history, it is well known that half of the prime ministers in the Tang Dynasty were water signs. Lu Chengqing was such a water sign, and he was a water sign in the reign of Emperor Gaozong. The value of his position was not at the same level as that in the reign of Emperor Taizong. The highest position he held in the reign of Emperor Taizong was Shangshu Cheng, a fourth-rank official, the same level as Ma Zhou today.

He is not a capable person, and Xia Lin is not afraid of him at all. What's more, this is on his own territory. If he has the ability to make trouble, Xia Lin has the ability to make him never return.

At this moment, Lu Chengqing was sitting there with a sinister look on his face, and next to him sat a little old man who was gently waving a palm-leaf fan. It had only been less than two months since the Chinese New Year, and to put it bluntly, he wanted to cosplay as Zhuge Liang.

But his charm and demeanor are much worse, and he looks like a low-level street storyteller.

But this is all a joke. This old guy is actually quite capable. He and Mr. Zhu who is beside the young prince are brothers in the same school. What they learned is the strategy of forming alliances and making coalitions. They are from the same school as Su Qin and Zhang Yi.

He just looked a little bit wretched, not as majestic as Mr. Zhu. He also wanted to assist the young prince, but the young prince disliked his crude and ugly appearance and gave him twenty taels of silver to send him away. Then he came to Lu Chengqing.

"My Lord, why should you be upset? The less they take us seriously, the better. Didn't Xia Daosheng beat you? You should just bear with it. As long as our plan succeeds, he will be nothing but a grasshopper in autumn. When we see him being beheaded, we will shout that it is unfair. Isn't that wonderful?"

Lu Chengqing lowered his eyebrows and said, "I'm afraid this man is not easy to deal with. Someone from above protected him. He killed the son of the Cui family and nothing happened. What can we do now?"

"There is no way to deal with him now, but he is only a young man in his twenties, and he will always get angry. There is already a fight for the throne in the court. Your Majesty has four sons. Although the eldest prince is the regent, he is still the prince of Qin in name."

"what do you mean?"

"The Duke has always been on good terms with the Third Prince. The Third Prince... heh." The old man chuckled, "He's just an abandoned pawn, but does the Duke know what kind of human nature the Third Prince has?"

Lu Chengqing lowered his eyebrows, chuckled and clapped his hands: "You are a good trick to kill someone with a borrowed knife."

Emperor Hongbao had six sons and eleven daughters in his lifetime. Apart from the eldest son who often appeared in public, the fourth and sixth sons died young, the second and third sons lived in the capital for a long time, and the fifth prince was always traveling outside because of his bold personality. If it comes to fighting for the throne, the second and third sons are naturally more suitable, but no one is optimistic about the third son. The military supports the young prince, the noble families support the second prince, and the third prince is a piece of shit. He has no resources and no connections.

It’s not that he is not qualified, but that this man has a perverse personality, is competitive, and has capricious moods. When he was in the capital, he once killed another family in anger because he lost a cockfight.

At that time, Emperor Hongbao had already issued an order to behead him in public, but in the end it was the Zongzheng Temple that stepped in to save the third prince. After all, it was the face of the royal family.

Later, although his life was saved, he became a useless prince, with a lot of money but no power. He even had to apply for a place to see his father during the New Year.

Should he be more restrained? No, he did not restrain himself. Instead, he made friends with all kinds of strange people everywhere, and he accepted everyone who came.

He didn't dare to do anything in the capital, but when he was outside, he was a real bastard. It was common for him to partner with others to lend money and seize other people's mines and farmland, not to mention bullying men and women.

"Tell him to come here. This is a precious place. Let the Third Prince have a good fight with Xia Daosheng." The lawyer shook his head and said, "Let's see who can beat whom. As a county lord, you should be a playboy when you should be a playboy, and be romantic when you should be romantic. You can sit on the mountain and watch the tigers fight. Forget the humiliation today. There will be plenty of opportunities later."

"it is good."

Then that afternoon, when Lu Chengqing was looking for a prostitute, he was caught by the yamen runners who had been waiting there for a long time...

"Master Xia, Master Xia, something bad has happened."

The head constable covered his hat and held his knife as he rushed into the government office. At this moment, Xia Lin was in the elegant hall discussing with several local wealthy people how to give Marshal Li a grand funeral. When he heard him shouting, he frowned and asked, "What are you shouting for?"

"This……"

The constable looked around and saw that the wealthy merchants around him were also sensible. They all stood up and said to Xia Lin, "Please ask Lord Xia to arrange the banquet at Qinghe Tower tonight."

They left quickly, and the constable spoke up, "We went to catch the prostitute just now, and we caught a man who said he was Lu Chengqing, the Duke of Fanyang."

Xia Lin raised his eyebrows and said, "Lock him for three days. Ask his family to pick him up. Remember to make him pay the fine."

"Sir... that's the Duke of the County."

"What Duke of a county? I told you to go!" Xia Lin slammed the table and said, "Good fellow, I haven't even gone to look for him yet, but he showed up at my door."

But suddenly he realized something was wrong. Thinking about it carefully, he felt something was fishy. So he waved his hand and said, "Go, call Lao Xu over."

After a while, Xu Jingzong walked in with a smile: "My Lord, did you ask me to come here because of the arrest of Lu Chengqing?"

"Old Xu, people can't be too smart. Being too smart will only lead to losses."

Xu Jingzong sat next to him and said with a smile: "He is really too blatant."

"Yeah, you also think it's too blatant." Xia Lin rolled his eyes twice: "But what does he want?"

"Of course I want you to not worry about him." Xu Jingzong's smiling face was like a smiling tiger: "If I were him, I would stay here and act like a scabby dog. No one in the world likes to step on dog shit, and you are no exception."

"Correct."

"As time goes by, you will no longer take me seriously. Then it will be much easier for me to do anything." Xu Jingzong raised his eyebrows slightly, and his treacherous tone came out: "My Lord, do you think it is normal for a scabby like me to have a few bad friends around me?"

"That's normal. It's abnormal if there isn't one."

"Okay, then, sir. If I am a scabby in Fuliang and other bad friends come to me, is that normal?"

"It's normal."

"What if there is a wolf among the bad friends..." Xu Jingzong narrowed his eyes slightly: "What if there is a wolf among the bad friends?"

(End of this chapter)