Quick Wear: Random Cheats

Chapter 131: The Humiliated Woman Beheaded and Abandoned in the City (14)

The timeline goes back to more than half a month before Ding Shui and the others practiced the body-tempering technique. After some planning, Zhu Xiangyang, the governor of Hedong Road, and his subordinates successfully implicated nearly half of the civil and military officials in the assassination of Emperor Qixiang, saying that they were the ones who conspired together to cause it.

The reasons are also well-founded.

That is, Emperor Qixiang had previously sent the Shaofu to extort money from various wealthy merchants, infringing on their interests.

So they wanted to kill the king in anger.

Stop Emperor Qixiang from continuing to blackmail those wealthy businessmen.

Reasonable, reasonable, very reasonable.

Immediately afterwards, without waiting for the officials to angrily curse and resist, Zhu Xiangyang dragged them away and ordered his soldiers to search their homes. At the same time, another group of people went to the emperor's treasury and the Shaofu to search their homes.

The remaining officials were all very sensible and felt lucky that they had not offended Zhu Xiangyang before.

On the one hand, they dare not say a word.

Because they were very sure that if any of them dared to stand up and raise objections at this time, they would definitely be dragged away immediately and become one of the rebels who conspired to kill the king.

Anyway, Zhu Xiangyang has already implicated so many court officials in the assassination of Emperor Qixiang.

A few more wouldn't matter.

This is probably what is called a scholar meeting a soldier. He has no way to explain his reason, so he can only shut up and protect himself.

The house search process lasted for three days and three nights.

The results were certainly quite encouraging. Even though they only raided the homes of less than half of the officials and nobles, the final haul was already six times the emperor's treasury. This haul made Zhu Xiangyang almost tempted to raid the remaining officials and nobles as well. Fortunately, his military advisors kept persuading him, which helped him control his inner impulse.

Bring all the harvest with you the next day.

Going home.

Of course, before leaving, in order to ensure that the roots of the problem were eradicated, he quickly determined the nature of the assassination of Emperor Qixiang and killed all the officials involved, that is, those officials whose property he had arrested and confiscated.

Important family members were either killed or exiled.

To ensure that no one will overturn the verdict in the future.

It was not until he left completely that the remaining officials, nobles, including the royal family, began to curse. While arranging for the young prince to ascend the throne, they gathered in the Purple Palace to hold a meeting to discuss what Zhu Xiangyang had done.

"Gentlemen, we must now face a very serious problem. Times have changed. It is no longer the time for the imperial court and our noble families to rule the world together. Those warriors do not abide by the rules at all. They only know how to rely on their own strength and the untouchables under their command to do whatever they want, and they are trampling our reputation into the mud.

This cannot go on.

If this continues, no matter how much wealth we accumulate, no matter how much money we save, they will eventually take it away. This time, Zhu Xiangyang didn't want to be like Dong Zhuo or Cao Cao, so he only took away some floating wealth, such as land, houses, and shops, because he couldn't take them away at all.

They were all left to us and not touched for the time being.

But what about the future? Who can guarantee that he won’t come back again and set his sights on the land, properties and shops in our hands, even if he doesn’t come back and doesn’t set his sights on them?

Word gets out.

Will the other Jiedushi be tempted?"

Zhu Xiangyang, for the sake of Queen Wang and the fact that the future new emperor was the grandson of Prime Minister Wang You, although he was very unhappy with Prime Minister Wang You, ultimately did not confiscate his property and exterminate his clan.

He just robbed his house by force. After that, he ended the matter with an apology for copying the wrong thing, and did not return a single copper coin. So at this time, Prime Minister Wang was extremely resentful of Zhu Xiangyang, and was also afraid of Zhu Xiangyang's reckless behavior.

He was not only wary of Zhu Xiangyang, but also of all the Jiedushi. He suddenly realized that the aristocratic families today were no longer the aristocratic families that shared the world with Wang and Sima in the past.

Back when the Wang and Sima families shared the throne, their aristocratic families possessed their own fortresses and private armies, easily raising an army of 30,000 or 50,000 men. However, over the past century, with the court's relentless crackdown and the rise of the imperial examination system, many aristocratic families have been converging their core strength towards the imperial capital. After all, only those who passed the imperial examination could become officials. Even the most powerful aristocratic families would decline and disintegrate if they failed to reach officialdom for several generations.

Therefore they had to adapt and monopolize the imperial examinations.

However, there is also competition among the aristocratic families, and the number of places in the imperial examinations is limited. It is impossible for all the aristocratic families to be satisfied. Even though they have basically monopolized the imperial examinations and excluded the vast majority of poor families, there are still internal struggles.

In order to ensure success in the imperial examination, they could only send the outstanding children of their family to the imperial capital, try to make a name for themselves and visit some high-ranking officials in order to pass the imperial examination.

Then he became an official, protected his family, and gave back to his family.

Generation after generation, the outstanding children of the aristocratic families flocked to the imperial capital. Coupled with the court's constant suppression of local forces, many aristocratic families' local influence had long since declined. Later, the court's power declined, and it was no longer able to continue suppressing the local aristocratic families. However, the local military governors grew stronger. While the court's suppression was at least in line with the rules, the local military governors had direct conflicts of interest with those local aristocratic families. When they suppressed them, or when they fought for power, the situation became even more brutal.

Nowadays, the aristocratic families can be said to be declining along with the entire Daqian court. The military governors who hold real power in the army are the real enemies of the court and the aristocratic families.

They may not have realized this before.

Until this time, Zhu Xiangyang completely woke them up.

"We understand what you said, Prime Minister Wang, but what can we do? It's difficult for us to win over individual Jiedushi these days, let alone subdue them all and make them obey us!"

Everyone understands the principle, but it is difficult to break the deadlock!

“You guys really are…

Why can the Jiedushi be so arrogant? It's because they have soldiers. If they can have soldiers, why can't we have soldiers? If the court had 300,000 or 500,000 soldiers, which Jiedushi would dare to be so arrogant as they are now! Treat us like this!

Right Prime Minister Wang finally stated his purpose.

Now that their family is completely tied to the new emperor, improving the strength of the imperial court is also indirectly improving the strength of his family. Therefore, he is naturally very active in planning for his grandson and wants to increase the strength of the imperial court.

"Anyone can say that, but the court is having trouble even supporting 30,000 imperial guards, let alone another 300,000 or 500,000 troops. Will you pay for it?"

At this moment, the smart ministers had realized what Prime Minister Wang wanted to do, and immediately began to express their dissatisfaction.

It goes without saying that Zhu Xiangyang just left.

Prime Minister Wang also took a fancy to the family wealth they had.

After all, everyone knew that the imperial treasury was basically empty. The emperor's treasury had just been emptied, and the money that the Shaofu had managed to collect was also taken away by Zhu Xiangyang.

Now, except for those officials who were not plundered by Zhu Xiangyang and may still have some cash in their hands, who else has money? They are all penniless. The funeral of the late emperor has not been held yet because there is really no money to organize it.

“Of course, it requires everyone’s collective efforts.”

There was no other way, Prime Minister Wang could only tell the truth.

"Prime Minister Wang, please don't make things difficult for us. We haven't received our salaries for three months, and the little money left in the treasury is unlikely to be saved. It's probably not even enough to hold the funeral for the late emperor, so there's basically no hope of receiving our salaries for the next six months.

What can we do in this situation?

You are not going to recruit soldiers from our family!"

Soon, the ministers began to oppose it, saying that they were powerless and could not do anything.