I, Altria, only want to rule China.

It has to be said that when the State of Wu had already launched a massive invasion of the State of Song, the two brothers were still busy fighting for the throne, which is beyond reproach.

Early May, 2 AD

After several months of chaos, the Song State was temporarily pacified, and the fate of the two brothers also came to an end. Liu Shao was killed by Liu Jun. The Liu Song Dynasty perfectly demonstrated to the world what it meant for a son to kill his father and a younger brother to kill his older brother.

And Leah took advantage of the civil unrest in Song Dynasty to occupy a large area of ​​land in Song Dynasty.

She took over half of Jingzhou, all of Henan, and Chengdu in Sichuan. It can be said that the country's area increased dramatically.

If it weren't for the need to digest these lands, Leah would have continued fighting.

However, the people in these lands were severely persecuted by the gentry and officials, and it was impossible for Leah to just take over the land and ignore them, so she could only temporarily stabilize these places.

Otherwise, if these people all starve to death, then they won't care whether Liya is a benevolent army or not. If you are so benevolent, why don't you save us?

Therefore, if these people are not handled properly, they will be rebelling against her, and her future logistics and grain transport teams will definitely be obstructed.

Moreover, she not only had to deal with the local people, but also a large number of people who had fled from other states and counties. These were all things that Liya had to deal with.

Leah's method was very simple, which was to let these people work in exchange for relief. Wasn't she going to build a road anyway? So she let these people who had difficulty escaping help build the road, and she would just provide them with food.

After the people settled down, we helped them build houses and rebuild their homes. Time passed just like that, and half a year almost went by in a flash.

And Leah also temporarily restored the lives of the people to the average level.

In the Chang'an Palace, the daily court meeting was going on. Leah listened to the report below and nodded from time to time.

Liya suddenly thought of something and asked the ministers below: "By the way, how are the students now? How is the construction of the school going?"

When schools were mentioned, Xiao Ran, the leader of the civil service system, immediately replied, "Your Majesty, schools have been established throughout the Wu Kingdom. Many children who have reached the required age have already enrolled, but even so, there are still many people who have not sent their own children to school."

Here in Leah's place, school only teaches for three years. After all, things are different now than in modern times, and there aren't so many books to study, so it's considered fast.

"Why is this?" Leah was a little surprised.

"Your Majesty, for the common people, although being literate is a relatively glorious thing, most people still believe that farming and herding cattle are the right path, so..."

"This is indeed a rather troublesome matter. No matter what, Lord Xiao still needs to publicize this matter more."

Leah immediately understood that for some ordinary people, going to school was a waste of family labor. It would be more cost-effective to use that time to cultivate more land.

"Yes, Your Majesty." Xiao Ranhe nodded.

"But Your Majesty, even so, although many schools have been built in some places, there is still a lack of teachers. As for those counties that have just experienced war, the shortage of teachers is even more severe."

"Of course, as time goes by and more and more people become literate, the problem of these teachers will definitely be solved. Although it is not time yet, what should we do with these students once they graduate?" Xiao Ranhe asked.

Chapter 134: Opening the Imperial Examination?

Liya lowered her head and thought about it, then raised her head and said, "I remember that most schools now focus on literacy, right? There are also some simple subjects."

"Yes." Xiao Ranhe nodded.

Liya continued, "If that's the case, then we'll build a higher education institution for three years. The original schools were called elementary schools, and the new one will be called a university. It will teach all kinds of knowledge that is beneficial to the people and the country."

"Considering that there are not many teachers who can teach these things now, we only need to build one in each prefecture, and these universities will recruit the best students who have graduated from primary schools. If the court is short of manpower in the future, we will give priority to promoting officials. If there are still not enough, we will recruit people from the universities to train them."

Leah's exam is actually an imperial examination, but her exam is not just about writing good essays, but it is more rapid, allowing the court to find the talents it needs.

The imperial examinations in the past are completely different from the ones Leah is having now. The only officially recognized knowledge is Confucianism, and the scope of the imperial examinations is inseparable from the Four Books and Five Classics.

In fact, for any student, studying the Four Books and Five Classics for a few years is enough, and after that it is just rote memorization.

As for Leah, the university she founded involves many subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. These subjects are no longer suitable for the imperial examination system.

In the future, as more and more knowledge is discovered and sorted out, students will need to spend more time. It is very likely that in a lifetime, one may not be able to learn all the knowledge in a category, and can only study part of it.

If she adopted the imperial examination system, wouldn't she be back to the old ways? By then, the entire court would still be filled with Confucian scholars, and those students would be able to focus on other miscellaneous subjects?

Liya told those students clearly that even if you have learned the Four Books and Five Classics, it is not enough. You are not the talent I need. If you want to be an official, you have to learn another subject, so that you have a chance to become an official.

As long as such policies are implemented in the future, won't the court be afraid of lack of talents?

When some of the ministers below heard this, their faces suddenly changed. His Majesty meant that in the future, officials would no longer be selected from aristocratic families, but would be recruited from the grassroots.

Although they wanted to say something, they sighed again considering the methods of His Majesty.

Once His Majesty makes a decision, no one can shake it. Even death is of no use. There were ministers who even died in order to stop some of His Majesty's policies.

The result was that the minister really died, but Her Majesty remained unmoved and continued her autocratic rule. However, the actual result also proved Her Majesty's foresight, and her policies soon achieved results after they were implemented.

The unprecedented prosperity of Wu State today is inseparable from your Majesty's various policies. Those ministers who died for their advice not only did not leave their names in history, but were also labeled as corrupt scholars. It can be said that their reputations have been ruined.

Although some ministers were unhappy, some of the Hundred Schools were very happy. Although Leah's move was not good for most officials, it was beneficial to the Hundred Schools that had been suppressed.

Because once Leah's policies are implemented, the court will no longer be dominated by Confucianism, but will be populated by hundreds of schools of thought, and everyone will be able to speak freely.

There is no need to listen to a bunch of corrupt scholars opposing here and there every day.

"Yes, I understand. According to your majesty's wishes, after I return, I will immediately arrange for people to organize these books, classify them, and prepare for the subjects to be studied in college." Xiao Ranhe nodded.

"I'll trouble you, Prime Minister, for this matter." Liya nodded, and then asked the Ministry of Industry, "Gongsun Zhi, how efficient is the steam engine developed by the Ministry of Industry now?"

"Your Majesty, after being improved, the steam engine has been officially used in the arsenal. Its efficiency in manufacturing firearms is several times higher than before." Hearing His Majesty asking him this, Gongsun Zhi immediately stood up.

"That's good. See if you can improve it further. I just hope that these things will get better and better, instead of remaining the same as before." Liya said

"Yes, I will definitely have people make improvements to make the use of the steam engine faster and more convenient." Gongsun Zhi nodded.

Liya thought for a moment and said

"In fact, I have something here that can be lit without candles. Even at night, it can illuminate as brightly as during the day. However, this thing is very dangerous, so I need you to find some people to solve this problem."

What Leah was talking about was naturally electricity. She thought about it for a long time and decided to take it out.

Although she couldn't solve the problem of insulators, it didn't mean that the people from the Ministry of Industry couldn't solve it. As the saying goes, there is strength in numbers.

She has so many people under her, there must be someone who can solve these problems, and she should believe in the wisdom of these people.

She proposed the direction, and the people below implemented it, instead of her struggling to figure out how to solve the problem.

After saying that, Liya asked someone to give the electricity-related design drawings and some knowledge to Gongsun Zhi, and asked him to go back and take a good look at them.

Gongsun Zhi took a look at the design drawing. To be honest, he couldn't understand it. But since His Majesty had taken out this thing, he would just follow the instructions on the design drawing. If there was anything he didn't understand, he could ask His Majesty.

After doing all this, Leah planned to send troops again.

She planned to first completely capture Jingzhou, and then go straight to Yangzhou to directly defeat the Liu Song Kingdom.

However, this time Leah did not lead the army personally, but directly sent out her generals to capture the cities of Song State in three routes.

With the help of powerful firearms, the army of Wu State was able to break through the enemy lines. Facing the army of Wu State, the State of Song State was basically defeated again and again.

The gap in equipment between the two armies was too big. Moreover, Leah had money and food. Compared with the army of Song and Wu, the army of Song was like beggars.

So in just a few months, Hubei and Anhui were completely taken over by Leah.

Liu Jun was also very puzzled after learning about this situation.

Why is it that the army under my command cannot defeat the army under other people's command?

What’s even more terrible is that the Wu army has been advancing steadily, taking over a village today and a county tomorrow.

We don’t know when the attack will reach Nanjing.

Chapter 135: Unification of China

So now there are only two options before Liu Jun and his ministers.

Either continue to fight the Wu State to the end, or simply surrender early.

To be honest, if the State of Song was not so chaotic now, it would not be impossible for it to fight the State of Wu to the end, but now the only two places he can actually control are Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

Now those governors and provincial governors have no intention of marching to support the king, otherwise the Wu State would not have been defeated so easily.

Don't these people know?

Once Liu Jun is defeated, the next target of Wu State will be these governors, or...are these people ready to surrender???

Faced with the relentless pressure from the State of Wu, Liu Jun was somewhat helpless, but he could only try his best to send people to contact other governors and ask them to send troops to repel the State of Wu together.

After seeing how much benefit Liu Jun would gain after defeating the State of Wu, these provincial governors and inspectors finally stopped watching and chose to send troops to help Liu Jun defeat the State of Wu.

Liya soon learned that other regions of Song State were planning to support Liu Jun, so Liya secretly contacted the local rebel leaders and asked them to lead their men to launch a rebellion in the local area.

The leaders of these rebels were none other than the Jinyiwei that Leah had sent out before.

These Jinyiwei came to the territory of Song State and formed a number of uprising teams, and Leah also secretly sent them some firearms.

As a result, those provincial governors and governors who originally wanted to support Liu Jun were suddenly thrown into chaos by the rebels in their own territories. They had originally planned to set out to support Liu Jun's army, but they immediately returned.

As a result, when their army returned, these rebels quickly disappeared with their men.

When they set out with their army, the rebels appeared again. The back and forth directly confused the local governors, and finally they simply stopped supporting them.

Compared with the benefits given by Liu Jun, they felt that their own lives were safer.

Liu Jun, who had no support, was now completely desperate.

Beaten again and again.

Moreover, they were obviously the people of Song State, but they took the initiative to lead the army of Wu State. Could it be that Song State was so unpopular?

This battle lasted for half a year due to Liu Jun's stubborn resistance. Finally, under the siege of three armies, Liu Jun saw no hope and committed suicide.

With the death of Liu Jun, the Emperor of Song, officials of all ranks in Yangzhou also surrendered voluntarily.

After Liya completely took over Yangzhou, the Song Dynasty was considered to be destroyed by her. Seeing this, many provinces surrendered to Liya one by one.

With the demise of the Song Dynasty, Liya took over large tracts of land from the Song Dynasty one by one, but many sequelae also emerged.

The sudden emergence of such a large territory was a huge pressure on the newly established dynasty of Leah.

Apart from anything else, she had to send officials to each prefecture, state, and county, which caused Liya to be short of manpower again.

But others handed her a letter of surrender, and she had no choice but to accept it, so Leah suddenly felt a headache.

At present, Leah has directly occupied the entire Chinese land, leaving Yunnan, Guangxi, Guizhou and other places still occupied by those truly ambitious provincial governors, and the rest of the land has become the territory of the Wu State.

Because it occupied such a large area of ​​land in a short period of time, the Wu court also lost the ability to continue expanding outward in a short period of time.

In the following period of time, Leah could only digest these areas first. Moreover, there were far more aristocratic families in the south of the Yangtze River than in the north, so there was enough to keep her busy.

On the other hand, the remaining few provincial governors who did not surrender to Leah were thinking about how to make their own firearms. From the firearms of the Wu State, they also saw the power of this weapon.

Of course, the research, development and manufacturing of firearms cannot be completed in a day or two. No matter how carefully the Wu Kingdom keeps them, they can always find some samples and then disassemble them for inspection.

Soon Leah got some news that many musketeers were attacked by some mysterious masters, and their flintlocks and grenades disappeared.

There is really no good solution for Leah for now, but this also reminds Leah.

It would be impossible for her to stop others from developing firearms in the future. All she could do was to make the current firearms more powerful.

Of course, since these people stole some firearms from her and wanted to research how to make them, Leah didn't plan to hold back on them.

Although there is such a large area that has not been dealt with, it is better to conquer the remaining three provinces and deal with them together. This will save the trouble of dealing with it slowly in the future, and it is better to just cut the Gordian knot!

So Leah sent out a large team again and asked them to directly recapture the last three provinces.

So a year later, in 4 AD, Leah officially unified China, and once again unified the Chinese nation that had been divided for hundreds of years.

It almost reached the same territory as the original Han Dynasty.

After completely unifying China, Leah found that some changes seemed to have taken place in herself, but she couldn't explain this change. In short, it felt very mysterious.

What Leah didn't know was that after she officially unified China, she also officially accepted the dragon energy of China.

This dragon energy was transforming Leah's body without her knowing, and she was gradually changing from a Western dragon to an Eastern dragon.

But Leah didn't know about this situation yet. She just felt that there seemed to be some strange changes in her body, but she couldn't find out what it was, so she could only shake her head.

But there was one thing she was sure of, her physical condition seemed to have improved.

The most special thing is that his magic power seems to have increased, and it is getting more and more every day. It seems that it started after he unified the Chinese land.

Could it be that unifying China would also increase magical power? Leah didn't understand and could only keep this doubt in her heart.

The newly unified dynasty naturally had a lot of work to do, so Leah established colleges and built roads all over the country, abandoned the old wooden houses and replaced them with new cement brick houses, and finally exempted the people from taxes for three years.

After unifying the Chinese land, Leah officially began to recuperate.

This cultivation lasted for five years, and China, which had suffered from the turmoil of war, gradually recovered. The population even doubled. According to statistics from all over the country, the current population of China has reached 7000 million!