In September, Lu Zhi was appointed by Emperor Ling, resigned from Dongguan, served as a servant, and became a close minister of Emperor Ling, asking about national policies.

For a time, Lu Zhi became a popular figure.

During the Qin Dynasty and the early Western Han Dynasty, the servants were just ordinary loose officials, and they were the retinue of the prime minister.

Starting from Emperor Wu, Shizhong became a close minister of the emperor, often got along with the emperor, and gradually became a valuable position of cronies, and it was easy for the emperor to appoint a high-ranking official in power.

Lu Zhi was appointed as a servant, so he was seen as a sign that the Spirit Emperor was trying to reuse Lu Zhi.

Lu Zhi had no choice but to leave Dongguan to become a servant, but before leaving, he still instructed Guo Peng to stay in Dongguan to continue to proofread books, learn knowledge, and not slack off.

Guo Peng was ordered by Lu Zhi, so he stayed in Dongguan and followed Cai Yong to proofread the books, and a month passed in a flash, and in October, a bad news came.

The Northern Expedition failed, the Han army collapsed and fled, Tan Shihuai led the army to chase and kill all the way, and the Han army suffered heavy casualties.

In this battle, the Han army's 30,000 cavalry lost eight or nine out of ten, and only one or twelve of them returned to the north alive.

The three main generals, Tian Yan, Zang Min and Xia Yu, fled back to Han with only their cronies' cavalry, and the accompanying army was almost completely wiped out.

Tanshi Huai took the opportunity to sweep through the border counties of the secluded land, and all the counties suffered a lot of losses, and the people's property suffered heavy losses.

Originally, Tanshihuai was going to go further into the Han land to further plunder, but in Liaoxi County, he encountered the stubborn resistance of Zhao Bao, the Taishou of Liaoxi.

Zhao Bao's brother is the eunuch Zhao Zhong, Zhao Bao is deeply ashamed, does not associate with him, and is an official in the bitter cold land of the border.

This time he encountered the disaster of pond fish, but he has always been extremely wary of the northern border troubles, and when he heard that the Northern Expedition failed and Xianbei entered the Kou, he immediately organized 20,000 soldiers and horses to meet Xianbei.

It's a pity that Zhao Bao's mother and his wife's family were all caught by the Xianbei people on the way to Liaoxi, and the Xianbei people used Zhao Bao's mother as a threat to make him surrender.

Zhao Bao made a painful choice between loyalty and filial piety, and finally in order to protect the state and the people, he led the army to cover up the killing, sacrificing his mother and wife's family in exchange for victory, and finally repelled the Xianbei people, stopped the defeat of the Han border army, and turned the tide.

The Xianbei people then retreated to the steppe and did not continue southward, so the losses of the Han Empire did not continue to expand.

When this matter reached Luoyang in early October, the Jingshi was shaken, and a large number of officials wrote to impeach Tian Yan, Zang Min, and Xia Yusan for dereliction of duty, losing to the barbarians and ruining the national prestige, demanding that they be beheaded, and demanding that they be held accountable and sat down, so as to attack Wang Fu, a great eunuch who advocated war, in an attempt to set off a new round of war against the eunuchs.

It was the emperor who ordered the war, but the courtiers could not hold the emperor accountable for his faults and wanted to preserve the emperor's face, so they put all the blame on the eunuchs.

But in fact, if Emperor Ling himself was unwilling to go to war, what could Wang Fu do?

Emperor Ling will not be so confused that he will be handed over to the eunuchs to operate, but in this matter, Emperor Ling does need Wang Fu to be the scapegoat, but at the same time, he can't damage his life, and he can't give the scholar group the opportunity to make a big fuss.

In the midst of this wave, Emperor Ling was keenly aware of the attempts of these scholars to overturn the case of the party.

So Emperor Ling immediately made a decision.

demoted Wang Fu, demoted Tian Yan, Xia Yu and Zang Min to concubines, made them spend a lot of money to buy their lives, and at the same time sent people to mourn Zhao Bao's mother, who was the Taishou of Liaoxi, and wrote a special account of Zhao Bao's heroic deeds, which caused a lot of discussion.

He diverted attention.

Soon after, it was reported that Zhao Bao cried and vomited blood to death at his mother's condolence meeting.

It is rumored that Zhao Bao said at the condolence meeting that he could not have both loyalty and filial piety, and what face did he have to live in the world, and then cried and vomited blood to death.

However, Guo Peng learned through the conversation between Lu Zhi and Cai Yong that Zhao Bao actually had the will to die, and took poison before the emperor sent someone to participate in the condolence meeting, and died of poison on the spot after apologizing, showing his "filial piety".

Guo Peng also felt strange, it would be very uncomfortable to be overly sad, but it was too unusual to cry and vomit blood excessively and die, how sad should you be to vomit blood?

This is clearly poisoned and committed suicide.

After understanding the reason, Guo Peng felt very sorry.

The Han Dynasty governs the country with filial piety, filial piety is the number one political correctness in the sky, no matter how ridiculous and cruel you are, as long as you are a filial son, you have merit, but no matter how shrewd and capable you are, as long as you violate filial piety, you are a bastard.

Everyone believes that a person who is filial to his parents will naturally be loyal to the country, and how can a person who doesn't even care about his parents prove his loyalty?

This man must be in the wrong mind!

Zhao Bao gave up the opportunity to save his mother in order to prevent Liaoxi from being poisoned by Xianbei, which led to the killing of his mother, which has violated the political correctness of the whole society, even if he has merit, he will continue to be blamed and abused in the years to come.

Because filial piety is greater than the sky.

So Zhao Bao chose to die, chose to die for all "filial piety", sacrificing himself, protecting the people, and preserving future generations.

Sure enough, this is very 'politically correct', and the officials who were still discussing Zhao Bao's abandonment of his mother to repel Xianbei was "greedy for merit" immediately wrote to the emperor to ask the emperor to posthumously seal Zhao Bao, and Emperor Ling understood the mystery and posthumously named Zhao Bao as the Marquis of Juan.

Zhao Bao's matter successfully diverted the attention of the whole Beijing division and bought time for Emperor Ling, and when Zhao Bao's matter was settled, it was too late for the scholars to try to attack the eunuchs again.

This humiliating defeat did not have too serious military and political consequences.

Tanshi Huai was foiled by Zhao Bao, and his original arrogance was hit head-on, realizing that the Han Empire was far stronger than him, so he did not dare to continue south.

Politically, the scholars tried to use this as a starting point to attack the eunuchs, but they did not succeed, but were pushed away by Emperor Ling's set of Tai Chi pushers, and they were very depressed.

It seems that the only losers are the three generals who have been deposed.

Among them, naturally includes Zang Hong's father.

Zang Hong learned that his father was demoted to a concubine after fleeing back to Dahan after the defeat, and directly locked himself in the house for several days and did not come out, and the group of people around him disappeared in an instant, as if they had never appeared, as if they did not exist.

Guo Peng didn't care about these things, broke into Zang Hong's house, dragged out Zang Hong, who was lying on the bed and smelly, stripped off his clothes and left a crotch cloth, and threw it into a wooden bucket filled with hot water.

"If you don't eat for three days, do you want to become an immortal?"

Guo Peng angrily reprimanded Zang Hong.

Zang Hong looked at Guo Peng with godless eyes, and said in a low voice: "I really want to die like this, so as not to go out and be embarrassed, and be said to be the son of the general of the defeated army, Xiao Yi, do me a favor and dig a pit to bury me." ”