The Emperor ordered Zhao Tang

Chapter 115: Cold Moon on New Year's Eve
On New Year's Eve, the sage defeated the last two thousand soldiers of the Tongzhou army who had gathered to break out of the siege in the west of Dali City. Li Sizhou, Liu Zhijun, Li Yanzhen, and Gao Hanhong entered the streets to eliminate the remaining bandits. The evil army swarmed out and searched every house for the remnants. The Tongzhou warriors hiding among the civilians were identified and their toes were chopped off and shackled on the spot. All those who resisted were killed. Wu Qilang and other generals knew that they had committed the great crime of killing nine clans, so they killed their wives and children and then took poison to commit suicide; the once rampant Tongzhou army disappeared.

It was said that 300 rebel heads were found in Chang'an, and their bodies were left lying under a willow tree.

Except for the warriors who were convicted and their families who were sent to various counties, the sage did not pursue the officials, gentry and people of Tongzhou who were dragged into the rebellion. The four most brutal bandits in the eight towns northwest of Beijing, Qi, Bin, Tong and Hua, except Binning, who were still curled up in the dark and barely survived, were all finished. It seemed that peace had come to the interior of the pass for the time being. Jing, Xia, Ling and Fu were still arrogant, but they still had some sense of propriety.

At noon, the army returned to the capital to celebrate New Year's Eve.

Joyful men and women drove the baggage carriages in front. Warriors walked in the middle. Infantrymen took off their armor and threw it on the pack carts. Carrying long spears, they discussed how much money they would make in the new year. Cavalrymen led their mounts and combed their hair carefully. Scouts and messengers rode their horses on both sides with flags on their backs. Perhaps they were relaxed, chasing rabbits and foxes in groups of three or five. Saints were at the end. The large group walked happily on the flat and wide post road, which formed a strange picture under the warm winter sun.

"Luckily he didn't die in Tongguan, otherwise my wife would have been a widow."

"Hehe, I will send Dalang to study after receiving the reward. Being a soldier is not a way out. Fighting and killing, when will it end?"

"Go home and get married."

"Guanzhong can't stand any more chaos. I don't want my mother to be captured and forced to work in the trenches."

"Saint, can you find me a wife?"

"I want me too!"

"Can my second brother, whose body is not even a bone left, be carried into the Kaiping Shrine?"

"..."

The first year of Jingfu is coming to an end. Looking back on the past, the voices and faces of Li Maozhen, Yang Fugong, Li Jizhen, Ximen Chongsui, Li Shunjie, Wu Xiong, Han Quanhui, Zhang Fan, Zhu Wen, Li Siyuan and others are still fresh in my memory.

The anxious watching of the battle of Qishan. The disappointment of Danfengmen annihilating the Shen Ce Army. The triumph of executing the eunuchs. The twisted feeling of filling the lake with the bodies of the Qi people in the rain. The hardship of conquering Fengzhou, eating wind and drinking dew and trekking through the mountains outside Dasan Pass. The determination to defend Tongguan and sacrifice one's life for the country; the sleeplessness in the snowy Prajna Temple.

Then, he calmly attacked Tongzhou...

Almost two years have passed in the blink of an eye. Every day when I open my eyes, I run around non-stop. I am disgusted by corrupt officials, driven to schizophrenia by warriors, jealous of my wives and concubines, abused by opponents, and exhausted by paperwork and military affairs... I live in such a tenacious and tormenting way!

It's like the weeds under your feet.

Trampled and stomped by countless footsteps day and night, it still strives to be green. It cannot be killed or burned, and it will be reborn in the spring breeze.

Midnight.

Driven by the strong desire to celebrate the New Year, the warriors hurried back to the outskirts of Bashang; after receiving the sage's order to go home for the New Year, most of them did not bother to collect the rewards, but dispersed on the spot and left in a clamor. Let's have dinner with the family first! Anyway, the sage's reputation is there, and it doesn't matter if we collect it later. Yan Ziku and other officials were so angry that they cursed. Everyone worked overtime and waited until midnight... for nothing.

A cold moon shines through the past and present.

The saint slipped into the quiet Lihua Village with his entourage and guards.

The cold moon hangs high in the south sky, shining silvery, with tiled houses, fertile fields, beautiful ponds, mulberry trees and bamboos, and the young and old going back and forth to plant and enjoy themselves... The seedlings are overwhelmed by the ears of grain, and the wind blows golden waves... There is no such happy scene. After the Chaos Rebellion, there was a ten-year bloody battle in Guanzhong, and the emperor and his ministers had to sleep in the wild many times. How can they be called common people?

Fortunately, Li Maozhen and others were exterminated. Otherwise, according to the situation in later generations, it is unknown how many of the more than one million people who survived in Guanzhong would be left. When Emperor Zhaozong fled to Shacheng alone, the beastly soldiers slaughtered Chang'an with blood and burned the palaces. In one day, tens of thousands of people died.

Looking around, under the pale moonlight, there were only scattered thatched huts, and the winter wheat in the fields was also covered with snow. If the court had not appointed Li Qun, the Minister of Agriculture, to be in charge of farming, granting land and dredging canals, and encouraging farming and sericulture, and squeezed out a large amount of money, grain, and farm tools to settle the hooligans, this shabby scene would not be seen, and there would only be a white field.

However, Qinfeng, Fufeng, Fengling, and Jingzhao are big enough, and the saints have protected the security of the regime, and the military farming has also insisted on allocating resources and manpower. As long as there is no major defeat, it can continue to give confidence to the people and avoid large-scale abandonment of land due to war, and life can still be good.

Thinking of this, the saint calculated his family assets.

Excluding the dead, the Imperial Guards and Cavalry and Infantry Divisions have 32,000 soldiers in the various cities. The reward system is benchmarked against the military forces of the old vassal states of Wei Bo, Chengde, Zibo, Qingzhou, and Xuanwu. This is the core combat power and the guarantee for the saints and ministers to make a living. The court will sell everything it has to guarantee the treatment of the lords. For this reason, the salaries of officials can be postponed, the administrative establishment can be reduced, and the royal expenditure can be cut. Otherwise, if things go wrong, the troops will be stationed at the gate.

The six commanders of the Tiance Army commanded a total of 5,000 soldiers, including loyal and prudent warriors carefully selected from the inner manor and Xuanhuiyuan, which were supported by the emperor himself.

There are 23,000 foreign troops in the nine schools of Longxiang, Feixian, Longwu, Guangrui, Sheying, Kongxian, Feiqi, Tuqi, and Huorui. They are busy with farming, and in the rest of the time they go to the capital to receive training from the horse and infantry training departments, mainly after the summer harvest and autumn harvest.

Hmm. Fortunately, there is no pressure.

If Emperor Zhaozong had to follow the number and standard of the 100,000 Shen Ce Army, the saint would have found a hemp rope to hang himself.

Amid the rustling of leaves, the sage came to a dilapidated tile-roofed house covered with vines and full of ancient charm. There was a pond on the left side of the house and a mulberry and bamboo forest on the right. The previous owner must have died in the war, and the house was distributed to the refugees who moved in.

"Do you want to come in? I'll go and knock on the door." Zhao Jia asked.

The saint glanced at the warriors behind him and shook his head; don’t scare others on New Year’s Day.

He turned a corner and came to the mulberry forest on the right.

Here, there are lights projected on the snow.

The saint quietly walked to the window, stood on tiptoe, and put his face close to it.

Through the round hole, he saw firewood burning in the square earth pit, the red bonfire pit illuminating the room. There were people talking and laughing, mothers and children coming and going. The little girl was curled up in a pile of grass in the corner, her body trembling, as if she was having the hiccups. The old man was leaning against the wall, his wrinkled eyes slightly closed.

A stout, dull man squatted by the fire, tending to it. In the center was a clay pot, steam rising from the soup.

The wife tore the chicken into pieces with her hands and gently put it into the pottery pot. At the same time, she instructed her youngest son to find the rice bag and add a few handfuls of golden millet. She squinted her eyes and sprinkled a pinch of salt into the soup. After sprinkling, she put her fingers into her mouth and sipped. When she felt that the millet was almost cooked, she took out a bag of unknown wild vegetables and mulberry leaves and put them in.

"Thank goodness the government gave us food for the winter, otherwise we would have starved to death if we had fled to Guanzhong." The man said, holding the dying girl in his arms and sitting down by the fire. He looked at the purple lips of the little girl. The two girls would not survive the New Year.

The wife was silent. In Caizhou, the eldest son was captured and made into dried meat. After escaping to Guanzhong, the second daughter fell ill again. How will they live in the future? Can the two of them manage the land granted by the government?

Sighs were heard in the house.

The family's voices faded away, and the saint could only vaguely guess what they were talking about.

After listening for a while, they started to eat the New Year's Eve dinner. Because they added less salt, the taste of the big mixed soup was rather bland. There were also a lot of sand grains in the millet, and they kept pinching their mouths with their fingers. But even so, the family still treated it as a delicacy from the land and the sea, smacking their lips and eating it with relish.

This is what it means to rule under oneself. The sage put down his heels and felt an indescribable feeling in his heart.

After a slight hesitation, he took off his tiger-skin coat and placed it under the window.

I feel so cold!
My heart is also hot.

"How can a saint not take care of his body?" Zhao Jia said in a low voice. He pulled him slowly away, took off his crane cloak and put it on his brother-in-law, and blamed him: "People are suffering now, bandits are everywhere, the emperor should appoint virtuous people, postpone non-urgent expenses, abolish harsh taxes, kill corrupt officials, dismiss incompetent officials, eliminate cruel and violent soldiers, and make the people live in peace and production, so that the family can have enough food. Why do you have to do such a small favor? There are many sick children in the world. Can a saint save this one, can he save everyone?"

"Save everyone you see."

Walking out of Lihua Village, the sage leaned on the railing of Ba Bridge and looked at the silvery Ba River. The Ba River flows through the Han and Tang dynasties. Its sparkling waves have witnessed the barbarity and strife of so many emperors. I am thinking of the restoration of the country, what do I want? To conquer the wives and daughters of my enemies? To have a beautiful woman who shames the moon and the flowers, to have a majestic palace, or to kill so many people that the world trembles in fear?
No.

In front of me is the green wheat. Behind me is the lights of Chang'an. I am only here for this.

******
The first day of the first lunar month in the second year of Jingfu.

The sage got up and washed before dawn, and summoned officials from the Privy Council and the Hanlin Academy to work in the Penglai Palace.

Under the oil lamp, the Privy Councillor Luo Fu, Wenren Chuchu, Nangong Chongyan, the lower envoy Yang Kezheng, and the upper envoy Zhao Ruxin knelt in a row behind the desk, sorting out the piles of memorials. Hanlin scholars Yao Li, Dugu Sun, Zhao Guangfeng, and the court envoy Han Wei were grinding ink and writing, waiting for orders.

"In November of the first year, Zhong Wenji, the governor of Mingzhou in East Zhejiang, was killed. His general Huang Sheng claimed to be the governor and asked to be granted the magic weapon," Zhao read.

"No. The emperor ordered Qian Liu, the governor of Hangzhou, to attack him and ordered the Ministry of Personnel to select officials to assassinate him." The sage did not even think about it. Mingzhou, Ningbo in later times, was extremely rich. Even if the court could not get the money, even if it fell into Qian Liu's hands, it would not be able to support Huang Sheng, an ambitious man who killed officials to take over; not to mention that it was the time to exert influence on Liangzhe while defeating Zhu Wen.

Hearing this, Han Wei wrote in a winding manner without adding any punctuation.

"Lu Marshal Li Cunxiao thought he had made great contributions to the cavalry, but was not trusted as much as Li Cunxin and others. He was resentful and afraid of being punished by the king. So he secretly allied with Wang Rong and Zhu Wen, and secretly submitted a petition requesting to return to the court with the three states, begging for the granting of a flag and the permission to gather troops from various regions to punish Li Keyong..." Nangong Chongyan put down the petition and sighed.

Judging from the situation, the father and son have reached the point of revealing their true colors. The sage's previous mediation was in vain. What is the general doing? And Li Cunxiao, the father and son are in conflict, and you contact Zhu Wen? How can the general forgive you? Even the sage would not stand on your side. Confused!
"Ignore Li Cunxiao for now. I will discuss countermeasures with the prime minister at the meeting in Yanying Hall in the afternoon." The saint closed his eyes.

"News came from the east." Wenren Chuchu cleared his throat and continued, "Zhang Yan of Haozhou and Zhang Jian of Sizhou attached themselves to Zhu Wen. Guo Yan of Suzhou also wanted to surrender. Pang Shigu heard the news and led 100,000 Bian troops to attack day and night. At that time, Pu reported the danger to various towns. Xuan and Jin sent troops to help. Zhu Youyu led his troops to intercept and defeated Yanyun in Puzhou, then moved his troops to Pengcheng and joined Shigu. Pu will die soon."

Wenren Chuchu's heart trembled slightly.

The strength of the Bian army was simply astonishing. In the west, Zhu Wen confronted Jin and Pu in Xin'an. In the east, Pang Shigu and others led hundreds of thousands of troops to besiege Xu and defeated Yanyun several times; two fists against four hands. How did the saint make Zhu Wen lose at Tongguan? If the Bian army attacked in full force, could the court resist?
Ugh.

It's been so long since Zhu Wen was stripped of his official title, but no one under his command has rebelled. This doesn't make sense!
No, I think there are.

Wenren Chuchu suddenly remembered the two petitions she had read yesterday.

When Shao Guangchou, a salt bandit from Guangzhou, heard that Zhu Wen had hit the wall, he gathered 5,000 bandits and killed the governor, calling himself the Great General of Hengshan. Guang, Shen, Cai, and Chen were indeed full of fugitives, and they would rebel at the slightest opportunity. Zhu Wen had to send troops to suppress them? Otherwise, Shao would unite with the bandits in Runan, and that would be a disaster.

In addition, Wuchang Army General Hu Hong also killed Huangzhou Governor Du Hong after hearing the news of Zhu Wen's conviction. Du Hong was a vassal of Zhu Wen. He was of a very humble origin, an actor. If he could not capture and kill Hu Hong to deter him, he would not be able to sit on the position of general.

Very good. Today the Shao rebels, tomorrow the Hu rebels. Will the first to do this have no descendants? As long as Zhu Wen suffers a major defeat, his old nest will surely be in flames everywhere.

A saint can be a turtle... If Zhu Wen cannot defend Tongguan, the fortress of the world, where else can he defend?

Kaifeng County?
She wants to laugh.

She grew up in Zhengzhou. She had also been to Bianzhou. The place was surrounded by plains and there was no strategic location to defend. Once someone attacked the heart of the place, it was very likely that they would be wiped out, and there was a high probability that they would not even be able to wait for the foreign army to come back to help. Apart from the convenience of water transport, it had no other advantages.

The saint's sincere voice interrupted her thoughts and made a ruling on the matter.

"Appoint Shao the traitor as the governor of Guangzhou, and make him the commander of the Xuanwu Army, and the commander of the southeastern region."

"Appoint the Hu bandits as the governor of Huangzhou, and make him the concurrent governor of Eyue, and the commander of the southwest region."

Hear the words.

Zhao smiled. The sage's approach was exactly the same as hers - fanning the flames.

It is indeed difficult for Shao to kill Zhu Wen in one go, but judging from the fact that he easily gathered bandits to enter the city and kill the governor, he dared to think and act, and was not afraid of Zhu Wen at all, which is in line with the style of a thief embryo; he should be able to cause a lot of trouble. The rebellion of the Cai people is not so easy to quell... This may tie up some of Zhu Wen's energy.

As for the Hu thieves.

Du Hong rebelled as a general in the yamen. He got the position of commander by promising to the warriors. His control over his subordinates was not as good as Zhu Wen who started from scratch. As long as the Hu bandits are not stupid, they can do the same. As long as they dare to make promises and are not afraid of being killed by the warriors for not being able to do it, who can't be a governor? Moreover, Eyue is full of powerful people. When the Hu bandits kill in Wuchang, who will Du Hong rely on to quell the rebellion? Yamen? If he is not killed by the Yamen in advance, he will be popular among the soldiers. Powerful? Don't be kidding. Her family is powerful, and a family that deserves the word "powerful" is not so cheap as to work for actors.

If things go well, we can kill Zhu's traitor E Yue.

Zhao thought it was not important whether Shao and Hu would be loyal to the court. As long as they rebelled against Zhu Wen, they would be loyal ministers and half-brothers of their husbands. Rebellion, all of them. Let's join forces to kill Zhu Wen first, and then share the benefits.

What we need to do now is to eliminate the powerful vassal who is capable of subverting the imperial court. No matter who this person is, as long as he threatens the saint, he should die.

Zhao stroked her big belly. Maybe it's time to write a letter back to Tianshui and ask the family to select another group of family members to come to Beijing to serve the saint. It would be best if we can recruit 10,000 to 20,000 elite Han and Tibetan soldiers. Nowadays, the power of the Jin people is growing continuously, both around her husband and in the court. It may hinder her husband. And Zhuxie Wusi is about to give birth... It's too weak to rely on the two brothers Zhao Fu and Zhao Jia alone.

This is not beautiful, we need to make plans early.

"What are you thinking about?" The saint looked at him.

"I didn't sleep well." Zhao answered absentmindedly.

"Ahem..." Wenren Chuchu took a sip of water, tidied her hair, and picked up a new memorial: "Li Kuangwei led tens of thousands of Youzhou troops to attack Weizhou again. The general is fighting in Xin'an, and he will return to rescue Daibei after hearing the news; if the general leaves, will the people of Bian come again? We must discuss carefully with the prime minister at the meeting in Yanying this afternoon."

　I am preparing to apply for junior college. Can anyone recommend some schools and majors?

(End of this chapter)