Gongsun Sheng was sad to death, he accidentally met Zhao Yue at the Liaoguo Inn tonight, he was overjoyed, and Li Zhong came to visit together, greeting and feelings, and also wanted to ask Zhao Yue about the situation of the horse market further north, hoping that Cangzhao, an invisible strange man, could have a high trick to help him.

Zhao Yue couldn't help but smile as he listened to Gongsun Sheng's annoyance and disappointment.

Get at least a thousand horses at once? The goal is more than 2,000 horses?

Chao Tianwang is really arrogant and has a big appetite.

I am not familiar with the situation, and I only listen to the casual exaggeration of the two-horse dealer, so I am blindly optimistic and come to make a big deal, and it is strange that I don't hit the wall. My family is still powerful in the land of Liao, and it is because of the secret cooperation of the eyeliner forces that have been infiltrating and developing since more than ten years ago.

However, he did not mean to laugh.

In this era, the people of the Great Song Dynasty, except for some merchants who dared to take risks, others, whether they were the court or the people, were accustomed to or driven by life to naturally stare at the immediate interests and things under their noses, focusing on the domestic and not interested in foreign countries.

Even though Zhao Gonglian originally intended to introduce the rise of the Jurchens to the imperial court, hoping that the Great Song officialdom would pay attention to the changes in the situation in the north and prepare to deal with them in advance, the bureaucrats, including the emperor, soon focused only on the domestic country and paid attention to the conflicts of power and interests around them.

Looking at the world, that is the consciousness that only modern people who have reformed and opened up in later generations have.

It's not that these people in the Great Song Dynasty officialdom are so stupid that they have been reminded, and they are still ignorant and ignorant and ignorant of change.

Those who can ****** are the social elites of this era, and many of them are smart people who have been admitted to the Shibi Academy.

Although Cangzhao's widely distributed intelligence network persistently used various means to dig out the families of smart people in the people, and quietly transferred them to overseas resettlement. Let smart children and readers discard the pile of paper and turn it to focus on learning practical knowledge. As a pillar of the new country, the overall quality of the Great Song Dynasty scholars declined. As a result, the overall level of imperial examination results has dropped sharply year after year, but it is still not an elite.

The top group of people in the imperial examination is still not low.

Zhuangyuan, Bangyan, and Tanhualang are still the outstanding scholars of feudal academics, and continue to supplement the elite team of the Great Song Dynasty officialdom.

The vast majority of these outstanding people are the children of official eunuch families, and many of them are inextricably linked with the powerful people in the DPRK and China, and they are members of the ruling class of the Great Song Dynasty, and the intelligence network cannot be tapped. One is that the risk is too high; The second is to dig into the new world, but I am afraid that instead of helping, it will become a scourge.

The roots of these people are in the Great Song Dynasty. The interests are in the officialdom of the Great Song Dynasty, no matter how superior and good the new world is, it is impossible for them to sincerely move towards the new world.

The remaining leaders in the imperial examination were either corrupt or loyal to the Great Song Dynasty and were incorrigible; Either that's the fish that slipped through the net.

No matter how powerful the intelligence network is, it is impossible to discover and get rid of all the smart people in the Great Song Dynasty.

That's something that only an immortal who can pinch and calculate the power of the infinite can do.

Those who are not good at the level of the imperial examination are these students who are not the best.

For example, the origin of a jinshi and a jinshi was originally the difference between 100 points and more than 90 points, in terms of ability. There may not be much difference, and factors such as playing the backdoor relationship on the spot have opened the grade, but now it is a gap between 100 points and 70 points, or even more.

But the poor students declined in a big way. The rise of the children of the eunuchs is in line with the wishes of the ruling class.

Today, the Great Song Dynasty is really powerful and powerful, and no one will bother to investigate the essential reasons for this imperial examination phenomenon.

They played tricks on power in the imperial examinations. Take care of your own people, and you have a ghost in your heart. How can you find out the truth in the imperial examination and cause trouble?

Complex social phenomena are not something that can be understood by trying to figure it out.

The elite are not interested in spending time on things that do not care about their own interests.

Clever bureaucrats don't pay attention abroad. The root cause is twofold.

First, the Great Song Dynasty is the world's first developed country in this era. The bureaucracy disdains to pay attention to the barbaric laggards.

Second, the competition for power is too fierce and the infighting is too fierce.

If you are an official, you will become a victim of the power gangs, and you can't be busy with money and gifts, strengthening your status, and getting opportunities for promotion.

When the foreign enemy came, the principle was that the outside must first be settled, not to mention that the Great Song Dynasty was still singing and dancing steadily and peacefully.

Rulers who have nothing to do and are content don't care about foreign countries. The embarrassed people, including the thieves, struggle for their immediate livelihood and development, and do not care about distant things abroad. That's really none of our business.

Wang Qing and Fang La's ability to know that the distant Cangbei could enter the horse freely and participate in time was the credit of the southern merchants spreading the news.

Erlongshan doesn't know the new Ma Zheng in Cangbei, because he doesn't pay attention to the distance. Businessmen from other places knew that there were three major Kou in Qingzhou, so they took a detour. The merchants in the vicinity knew about it but kept silent, because they were afraid that these thieves would get the horses and become more powerful and more capable of running to harm them.

It is not surprising that Erlongshan, who only knew how to stare at the turtles with low eyelids, accidentally caught a horse dealer, listened to the wind and rain, and wanted to take advantage of the convenience of the new horse policy to make a whimsical attempt to get enough horses at once and equip them with real cavalry.

This is normal.

Da Song closed his eyes to the outside. A bunch of rough grass couges, you can still count on their foresight.

Zhao Yue knew that if he was not a traverser, most of them would be confined to Cangzhou with his family to develop, no better than Erlong Mountain.

The eldest brother doesn't talk about the second brother. There is nothing to laugh at.

He also guessed the reason why the eldest brother only helped sell goods and did not help Erlongshan get horses in Liaodi.

Erlongshan's group of people is an important chess piece in Cangzhao's overall strategic layout, with their own people lurking inside, they are available forces, and they want to help them grow, but after all, they are not their own people, and Gongsun Sheng, who leads the team, is not their own people.

Different factions, one official and one thief.

You can't use the strength of the Qingzhou army in the Liao State to help Erlongshan get horses, so as not to arouse suspicion, let alone expose the secret of Cangzhao.

Don't talk about helping Erlongshan fight against thieves.

Even if the Qingzhou Army, which basically controls another force in the family, needs war horses under the reality that the majority of officers and soldiers are still Great Song soldiers, and the eldest brother cannot transfer horses from Jeju Island, let alone let his own northern army go to Liao to grab horses on behalf of the Qingzhou Army and then transfer them.

In that way, it is impossible to tell the origin of the war horse, which will lead to suspicion between Cheongju and the imperial court.

Cheongju can only do it himself.

For this. As soon as the eldest brother grasped the power of Cheongju, he began to draw elite troops to strengthen the training of a large number of riders. Then, in the name of doing business, he sent riders to act as charioteers and escorts and other merchant group personnel into the Liao State. Not only to make money to raise the army, but also to adapt to the customs of Liao by the way.

During this period, he and some of the troops drawn from Duan Jingzhu's horse thief army pretended to be in Liaoxin in the Song Dynasty, and the good Han people of Liao State who were in the heart of Liao 'got acquainted', and had a reasonable expert guide, and then formed horse thieves, first in the mountains of Yanshan Prefecture, close to Qingzhou, to eat black and black, loot and annex the Liao horse thieves, obtain money and war horses, and send them back by sneaking across the border in batches, and then entrenched in the form of small groups of horse thieves to find out the local situation and engage in stealing.

Constant turnover during operations. Using the old to lead the new, not only to get money for horses and raise troops, but also to train the cavalry's actual combat ability and experience.

After training Qingzhou's own manpower, Duan Jingzhu's subordinates gradually withdrew and returned to the old department, and the Qingzhou army and horse thieves gradually developed to Yanyun and even the vast areas further north, expanding the scope of looting and getting more and better war horses.

At this point, at the same time, the eldest brother also encouraged the Jizhou, Qianning Army, and Xin'an Army under his jurisdiction to participate. Get an enthusiastic response. The four riders were combined and organized into several horse thief armies, which dispersed into the Liao State on foot in various forms to strengthen the army.

Until now. Nearly a year has passed, and the four armies of Cangbei have real war horses of a certain scale.

Zhao Yue knew that the eldest brother had more than 30,000 soldiers under his command, but he was only equipped with 5,000 military horses. Any more will cause some people in the court to be suspicious and jealous, and they will be transferred or forcibly separated by cavalry and horses. made a wedding dress for someone else in vain.

Just like that, I want to reach out and share the good. There are also many people who have repeatedly made things difficult.

If it weren't for the fact that the Liao army of Yanshan Mansion is now extremely hostile to Qingzhou, and always wants to take revenge when the opportunity arises, Qingzhou has become an extremely dangerous place, not a place to make money and enjoy the qualifications to be an official, and the incompetent people who are afraid of death do not have the courage and ability to defend Qingzhou, and they dare not come to seize power, and the Liao army is angry and hateful as a substitute for the dead ghost, but I am afraid that the eldest brother will have been forcibly transferred away by the traitors who instigated the emperor to force the emperor.

When the officers and soldiers robbed and grabbed war horses in Liao, they also grabbed more bad horses by the way.

The other three armies, or because of the small number of troops, such as the Qianning army of only a few thousand people, could not be equipped with too many war horses, or could not afford to raise too many horses, and did not dare to sell them in large quantities, so as not to be held accountable by the imperial court, so they left the surplus horses in Qingzhou, and the head was big enough, able to resist things, and would also run the leading brother Zhao Houye, who could afford to raise horses.

The eldest brother is not afraid of things, and the bad horses are constantly sold to horse dealers in order to make money to raise the four armies. Naturally, most of these horses went into the hands of anti-thieves.

But there is also helplessness.

In addition to sending some to deal with the imperial court and related households, Cheongju also has more than 3,000 relatively good horses, which are not easy to deal with.

Jeju Island has been robbing the good horses of the two countries in Jinliao for many years, and the excellent horse breeds brought by the Canadian Sea Trade from all over Europe and Asia are breeding, and the good horses can not be put down.

The Southern Army and the people of South Asia used the developed tropical horses, and there was no need for the heat-intolerant northern horses.

Sold to the country, but reluctant to sell it easily, lest it be cheap Tian Hu, Wang Qing and other thieves, and it will be difficult to clean up at that time.

It can only be raised in other places in the barracks, and is used to train new cavalry in the army in peacetime, and strive to train the Qingzhou army as a whole to at least have horses to ride, and then turn into the main force of the Cangzhao horse infantry army.

But these horses can't be accounted for and spent with public funds, which is a huge burden, and they can't be kept for a long time to be targeted and provoked.

Zhao Yue guessed that the eldest brother should have wanted the people of Erlongshan to buy back these horses in Qingzhou after they ran into a wall in Liaoguo. At least some of them can be dealt with, reduce the burden, and indirectly quietly strengthen the power of Erlong Mountain, so that it has the ability to clean up the other three Kou at that time.

He figured it out, and a thought suddenly flashed through his mind, remembering the damned thief of Yelu Mawu.

This group of ferocious and arrogant Khitan bandits who moved south would also be a powerful scourge if they moved to the opposite side of Cheongju. Zhao Yue had the heart to get rid of it when he met him, but he didn't have a helper.

The horse thieves of the Qingzhou army in the Liao State return to Qingzhou to rest and recuperate every time it is inconvenient to move in winter, and they may not have been dispatched at this time, even in Yanshan Mansion, Zhao Yue does not know how to contact them.

originally thought that after going back, he placed Liu Mu and Xue Limei, and then transferred people from the Qingzhou army to sneak back and raid and kill Yelu Ma Wuyi gang. Now that he has accidentally encountered the people of Erlong Mountain, isn't there a few hundred fierce robbers on hand that Gongsun Sheng is suitable for?

However, Yelu Ma Wu's batch of war horses were quite sophisticated, and they fell into Erlong Mountain, but I am afraid that they will eventually become the equipment of the Songjiang Group. The people who want to use Erlongshan can't let the horse fall into the hands of Erlongshan, so they can only persuade Gongsun Sheng......

Zhao Yue also wanted to subdue Gongsun Sheng, a transparent white man, to further clarify the relationship between the backbones of Erlongshan, and control the development of Erlongshan. Gongsun Sheng has become his own person, and he can better protect Chao Gai, the boss of the green forest who is too righteous and lacks power, to avoid Chao Gai from losing to Song Jiang sooner or later and may be cleverly played to death, and become a hero who died unjustly.

In Zhao Yue's plan, Chao Gai was never a victim of giving up.

He didn't mention the matter of horses, and asked Gongsun Sheng with a smile: "Mr. Yiqing, dare to ask, what kind of character is King Chao in your heart?" ”

Gongsun Sheng was stunned for a moment, then stared at Zhao Yue and said solemnly: "The true hero of Yi Bo Yuntian is a well-deserved good big brother." ”

Zhao Yue nodded and said: "Yes, this should be the reason why Mr. Yiqing firmly follows him, and it is precisely because of this that I will help you settle in Erlong Mountain to avoid the catastrophe." ”

"It's a pity that a good man with blood and responsibility didn't wait to show his skills and ambitions, and he easily died at the hands of traitors."

Gongsun Sheng hugged his fists: "This kindness, King Chao and my old man of Erlongshan have no teeth and dare not be ungrateful, but I don't know how to repay it." ”

Li Zhong pretended to be and nodded with Gongsun Sheng.

Zhao Yue smiled and shook his head, "I think you are a heroic brother worth befriending." Brothers need to repay their kindness, and they will inevitably lose the true meaning of affection. ”

Gongsun Sheng nodded in agreement, but he didn't speak.

He guessed that Zhao Yue had something else to say, and it was very likely that some major secrets were involved, so he waited quietly.

Sure enough, Zhao Yue smiled and said, "What I want to ask Mr. Yiqing is, if you want King Chao to return to my family, or even listen to my dispatch, if you tell the truth, will he be willing?" ”

Gongsun Sheng was slightly stunned, but shook his head calmly.

He knows very well that Chao Gai is used to being the boss, and he prefers to be the master of everything, trying to be free and happy, and as the owner of Erlong Cottage, he will never be so easy to bow to anyone or any force.

Don't say that Cangzhao is a powerful and wealthy family in the Great Song Dynasty, and Chao Tianwang, who is resolutely anti-Song, is not all the way, even if it is not, it will not work.

"Mr. Yiqing really can see clearly, and he is frank enough."

Zhao Yue praised it, and then asked, "What I want to ask again is, what does Mr. Yiqing think of Song Jiang?" ”

Gongsun Sheng pondered for a moment when he heard this, and then said: "Song Jiang is the best friend of the Heavenly King, and he came to report the news when the Birthday Gang incident happened. But the name of filial piety and timely rain is very telling. This person behaves admirably. ”

Zhao Yue smiled, "Mr. Yiqing, do you still remember my description of Erlong Mountain?" ”

"Of course, I don't dare to forget. Erlong Mountain, just like the top of the two dragon heads"

Gongsun Sheng said, suddenly, staring at Zhao Yue in horror for a long time before asking, "Are you saying that Song Jiang will take refuge in Erlong Mountain, and will engage in internal strife and turn against the Heavenly King?" ”

Zhao Yue asked rhetorically: "As far as I know, Song Jiang should have commanded the people of Zizhou Shejiaoling, what's the matter?" He hasn't led the team to you yet? ”

Gongsun Sheng shook his head very resolutely: "No." At least when the poor road came out, there was not even a letter there. (To be continued.) )