I am not Yuan Shu

Chapter 310 Undercurrents in Luoyang
The first trend is naturally to get closer to Yuan Shu.

People in this trend are either very interested in Yuan Shu's academic work, admire his abilities, or respect his military achievements, or they are simply optimistic about the fact that he will be the future successor, and naturally have the idea of getting close to him and getting closer to him.

As for the possible price to pay for getting close to Yuan Shu and the possible benefits in the future...

They don't think that they have to pay a great price, nor do they think that they will get nothing in return.

They felt that Yuan Shu was an excellent leader and treated his subordinates so well, so as long as they became his subordinates, they would naturally receive the same treatment.

As for whether you have to pay something to join in, that is normal. You may have to pay something at the beginning, but that is only temporary.

It is natural to decide whether or not you can get adequate compensation afterwards.

As long as Yuan Shu is not stupid, he will definitely not let those who work for him suffer any loss. Otherwise, would anyone still follow him?
So get closer to him and join him, you can’t go wrong!
The future is beckoning to them!

The second trend is to move closer to Yuan Ji.

After all, Yuan Ji was Yuan Feng's eldest son. With this status and position, naturally a group of people chose to get close to him, such as his wife's family, and some families who had long ago arranged for their children to get close to Yuan Ji and serve Yuan Ji.

These families often have a certain level of strength and status, otherwise they would not be qualified to approach Yuan Ji.

Their own power is already quite large, and there are still many differences in interests with Yuan Shu's Group. It is difficult to guarantee that Yuan Shu will not split up their vested interests to satisfy his own cronies after taking over in the future.

Moreover, because he had surrendered to Yuan Ji too early, it would be unlikely for him to jump ship, and it would be difficult for him to gain Yuan Shu's trust.

Naturally, these people do not want to see Yuan Shu take over smoothly.

However, the number of these people is relatively small, far less than the first trend. After all, the relationship between Yuan Feng and Yuan Shu has become clear, and it is only a matter of time before Yuan Shu is officially announced as the successor. Following Yuan Ji at this time is somewhat unclear about the situation or harboring some delusions.

The third trend is the neutral faction.

Between Yuan Shu and Yuan Ji, they chose the middle.

Don't please anyone, don't offend anyone, just lie down and wait for the future to come with the softest attitude.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that this group of people have no desires or demands. They are also very cunning.

They do not want to bear the expenses and hidden dangers that may come with joining either side prematurely. They just want to accept the facts after the dust settles and choose the path with the least benefits and the lowest risks. What they are betting on is that no matter who wins, they will need manpower to implement the policies.

They can accept a lower status, but they need to live.

Among these three trends, the trend of choosing to get closer to Yuan Shu is the largest, and as Yuan Shu's power grows, it has a tendency to become increasingly powerful.

The trend of choosing to get closer to Yuan Ji is the smallest, and as Yuan Feng's attitude becomes clearer, it tends to get smaller and smaller.

The third neutral trend lies between the two.

But what is more interesting is that although more and more people choose to join the Yuanshu trend, their number is also increasing.

It mainly inherits the part from the original Yuan Ji trend.

Overall, Yuan Shu's energy at this stage far exceeds Yuan Ji's energy.

If Yuan Ji was not the eldest son, if he had not reached adulthood, married, and become an official early, so that he could build up some power and have some followers before Yuan Shu rose to power, his power would probably be even weaker now, or even almost nonexistent.

Despite this, in front of the behemoth Yuan Shu Yi Xin Hui Group, Yuan Ji's power group, which was attached to his status as a county governor, still appeared very weak. Although it started early, it still felt vulnerable.

As for the power belonging to Yuan Shao within the Yuan family group, it is not really that weak.

Although Yuan Shao was no longer Yuan Feng's son in the patriarchal sense, but succeeded Yuan Cheng, his blood relationship was there and he was not a complete outsider.

If something really terrible happened and both Yuan Ji and Yuan Shu died, then Yuan Shao would definitely become the best candidate for successor.

By then, Yuan Shao will have control over the two forces of Yuan Feng and Yuan Cheng, unite the masses, and become the only heir. That would be a wonderful situation.

Of course, the possibility of this situation coming true is not very high, so there are not many people willing to follow Yuan Shao. Except for the relatives who belong to Yuan Cheng's lineage in the traditional sense, the rest are very limited.

Either they were Yuan Shao's own cronies, such as Xu You, or they were some auxiliary officials recruited by Yuan Shao after he took office as county magistrate. In either case, their quantity and quality were inferior to Yuan Ji's.

Even if Yuan Shao and Yuan Ji were tied together and multiplied by ten, they would still not be a match for Yuan Shu.

But it is not right to underestimate Yuan Ji and Yuan Shao.

Because in addition to the ruling Yuan family group, the power groups within the entire Luoyang central court also include other scholar groups, and there is also a group of party members who have only recently returned.

These two groups do not belong to the Yuan Group itself, but they also possess some power. They are not without the right to participate in the future, nor are they mascots that can be manipulated by the Yuan Group.

They also have their own base. As a large group, it is obviously inappropriate to simply use the word "scholars" to summarize them, but there are three general trends in this group. The first trend is the pro-Yuan forces. Although they do not belong to the Yuan Group, they are willing to cooperate with the Yuan Group. They recognize the Yuan Group's control over the world.

The second trend is the majority, which is a group of people who are content with the status quo and want to get by.

After all, there are more people living in this world, and not everyone is the kind of person who is eager to see the world in chaos. It would be great if they could live a stable life, eat, get married, have children, and have some hobbies of their own.

This group of people don’t care who is in charge of the world. No matter who is in charge, they are still being ruled, so it won’t make much difference.

The third trend is naturally those who are dissatisfied with the Yuan regime, want to end Yuan’s dictatorship, and restore the real power of the Han emperor.

After all, this group of people was a minority, represented by Zhang Jian. Their power was relatively weak, and after suffering an attack from Yuan Shu, they basically ceased to exist.

The fourth trend did not exist at first, but because of one thing, it began to appear.

This group of people were dissatisfied with the Yuan regime, had some negative views about it and wanted to make changes, and that incident was the Zhang Jian Incident.

Although the final result of the Zhang Jian Incident was that only Zhang Jian was punished and did not even die, the subsequent impact was huge.

This was the first time that the Yuan regime attacked a scholar leader.

This incident brought unexpected surprise to Yuan Ji and Yuan Shao, especially Yuan Shao.

The reason was very simple, because his wife Li was the daughter of the party leader Li Ying.

Initially, Yuan Shao's position in the family was to be a tool to get close to the party members and attract the eunuchs' firepower, so he married Li Ying's daughter as his wife, and because of Li, he gained the attention of some party members.

Later, under the encouragement of Yuan Shu, Yuan Feng chose to confront the enemy head-on, launched a mutiny and eradicated the eunuchs.

After the Luoyang Rebellion, the eunuchs were destroyed and the political structure of the Eastern Han Empire was completely changed.

The conflict between scholars and eunuchs ended with the final victory of scholars, Yuan's dictatorship emerged, and party groups returned to the court on a large scale to take up positions.

As a result, Yuan Shao's importance dropped to freezing point, and he was arranged by Yuan Feng to be a county governor, starting his official career again from scratch.

At that time, the party members no longer took Yuan Shao seriously. Even Li Ying's relatives and former officials only showed friendliness to Yuan Shao and had no intention of following Yuan Shao.

Their eyes were all on Yuan Feng, or Yuan Shu, and they all believed that only by following Yuan Feng or Yuan Shu could they have a better future.

Yuan Shao?

It doesn't make any sense anymore.

However, Zhang Jian's sudden and radical move shattered the honeymoon dream of Yuan and his party members.

Yuan and the party members could have enjoyed a longer honeymoon period, but Zhang Jian's sudden rise eliminated this possibility and brought the contradiction between Yuan and the party members to the surface ahead of time, making both sides very embarrassed.

After the embarrassment, in order to maintain the Yuan family's dictatorship, Yuan Shu replaced Yuan Feng as the boss and used a series of ruthless tricks to ruin Zhang Jian's reputation and win the final victory.

Although the situation was eventually brought under control and Yuan and his party members did not engage in an all-out attack, the honeymoon that had not yet concluded also came to an end.

A premature end.

Moreover, the Zhang Jian Incident made many party members realize the strength of the Yuan regime's iron fist, its desire for power and its will to protect power, and the irreconcilable contradictions between the two sides in many areas of interests.

Neither Yuan Feng nor Yuan Shu seems to be able to perfectly represent the interests of the scholar group.

The scholar group was seeking to share the central power of the empire, and did not pursue a strong emperor or other power groups. Zhang Jian's behavior was actually not in the interests of the scholar group, but Zhang Jian's behavior inadvertently hit the mark and exposed the fact that the Yuan group had undergone a qualitative change.

The Yuan group has become the Yuan regime and has begun to have its own interests. They have begun to seek benefits for themselves and have shown signs of breaking away from the scholar family.

The fact that they held the imperial power was irreversible, and they even became supporters of the imperial power, with signs of suppressing scholars for the sake of imperial power.

This is not a good thing.

If this situation continues to develop, the Yuan group will be more terrifying than the eunuch group, and may even lead to situations such as the change of destiny, which the scholars are not willing to see.

A decisive battle with Yuan's group was not what the scholars were looking for. Even the radicals among the scholars - the party members - did not want to have a head-on conflict with Yuan's group after seeing Zhang Jian's fate, as doing so would not have much chance of winning.

In particular, they saw Yuan Shu's establishment of a new standing field corps as an action taken by Yuan to defend his own regime, which would greatly enhance the power of Yuan's regime.

Direct confrontation is never an option.

Then, it would be best to directly find an important member from within the Yuan Group who can serve their interests, help him, assist him, let him become the person in charge of the Yuan Group in the future, and then transform the Yuan Group according to the needs of the Scholar Group.

(End of this chapter)