Zhang Zhongwu's life is indeed very difficult now.

As Li Ze said, Yingzhou, Liaozhou, and Shenzhou are indeed vast areas, but one of the biggest problems is that there are few people, especially too few people from their own clan who can reassure Zhang Zhongwu. Wanting to control such a large area is a great problem for Zhang Zhongwu now.

If Zhang Zhongwu was an invincible god of war and a god-like butcher in the minds of those miscellaneous beards and savages, this fear has dropped greatly after he was repeatedly defeated by Li Ze and his military strength was greatly damaged.

It turned out that Zhang Zhongwu was not invincible.

Once this kind of emotion grows, it will naturally spread, and the people in that land will no longer be willing to be exploited, oppressed, and rebelled against one after another by Zhang Zhongwu.

The vast area gave the rebels room to maneuver, but Zhang Zhongwu's forces were already showing great inadequacy. Forcing those led by Kan Yan to settle on the border of Pingzhou was itself a kind of cohort, but in the end it was swept away by Li Ze. By the way, even Deng Jingshan was unlucky.

At present, Zhang Zhongwu's army can only hold some important strategic points and large cities, and other regions can only be resigned, and at the same time, they must maintain a strong army in Goguryeo, because Goguryeo is now their most stable source of military expenses and food.

Even in this place, it's not so stable.

King Goguryeo and Tan Daoji are not stupid, on the contrary, they are also outstanding people, in the past few years, they have fought to the death, but in vain let Zhang Zhongwu get huge benefits from it, they are getting poorer and poorer, and after a while, it was Zhang Zhongwu who finally got the most benefits from Goguryeo.

These two have now had the meaning of working together to make peace.

It was impossible for Jang Zhongwu to give up Goguryeo, and he could only maintain strong military pressure here.

There were too many of his troops stationed here, and in other places, of course, there were not enough.

In desperation, Zhang Zhongwu could only change his course.

Under the advice of Zhang Zhongwen, Song Yu and others, Zhang Zhongwu began to copy Li Ze's policy.

First of all, the first step is that a large number of professional armies are re-transformed into government soldiers. These people settled in the vicinity of large cities and some important strategic strongholds, cultivated in peacetime, and served as soldiers in wartime, but they did not pay taxes, and of course, they also needed to prepare their own weapons, armor, and horses.

Let these people feed themselves, and Zhang Zhongwu only paid for some uncultivated land.

But these people do not pay taxes, those who remain in the standing army, the officials still need to be fed, and the operation of government agencies needs money, so naturalizing those Hu people, savages is the top priority.

Since the implementation of the policy for more than half a year, the effect is still obvious, but there are also many problems.

They lack liquidity.

They lack suitable farming tools.

They lack most of their daily necessities.

And these can only be obtained from Li Ze now.

Li Ze naturally did not intervene in the specific negotiations, and after having a long talk with Zhang Zhongwen overnight and delineating the general framework, the rest was for the specific staff to talk.

Li Ze and Zhang Zhongwen only talked about two points.

The first point is that Zhang Zhongwu belongs, and to re-establish the banner of the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Zhongwu needs the Zhenzhou court to be a minister, and the Zhenzhou court will allow Zhang Zhongwu to guard the northeast as the king of the county.

The second point is that the two sides have designated Jianchang as a treaty port between the two sides, and the two sides are not allowed to station troops in Jianchang, and the area around Jianchang is a security zone within 50 miles.

In this regard, Zhang Zhongwen did not have much resistance. After all, this is just a matter of status, Li Ze wants Zhang Zhongwu's nominal submission, and what Zhang Zhongwu gets is the funds, materials and stability that he urgently needs now.

As long as Zhang Zhongwu returns to the rule of the imperial court, then Li Ze will no longer have a reason to fight against Zhang Zhongwu, and the current Zhang Zhongwu can't help but fail again. For Zhang Zhongwen, if his strength becomes strong again in the future, it will not be a big deal to tear down that banner. Of course, if in the future, Li Ze's strength far exceeds his own, and his side has no room for resistance at all, then there is no need to say anything.

In short, it's riding a donkey to read the record book, and we'll see.

Who can say for sure what will happen in the future?

For Li Ze, he doesn't want to fall into the quagmire in the northeast now, or if he is desperate to march to the northeast now, he can defeat Zhang Zhongwu, but it is unlikely that he will completely destroy the opponent. More importantly, what is the use of taking this place?

That place can only be a huge burden for Li Ze now. If you want to completely take this place and become a beneficial part of the empire, it will take huge manpower and material resources, and these are not available to Li Ze now.

It's better to let Zhang Zhongwu run it first.

In any case, the main body of Zhang Zhongwu, a military entity, is still the Tang people, and what they implement on this land is still Tang law. It is still extremely advantageous to manage and assimilate this place, putting it above the interests of the entire Tang people.

Zhang Zhongwu was in a corner, and he was controlled by many parties, and the threat was far inferior to Zhu Wen, who occupied Luoyang, Chang'an.

As long as he defeats Zhu Wen and then goes south, after dominating the world, he will turn around, gather the power of the world, and threaten Zhang Zhongwu with the overwhelming momentum of Mount Tai, maybe he will be able to surrender without a fight.

Flies can't bite seamless eggs, but now that Zhang Zhongwu's military entity has been pried open by himself, the next infiltration will be much simpler.

Economic infiltration, financial infiltration, military infiltration, all kinds of methods. With the dominant position that the Zhenzhou Imperial Court now occupies and Zhang Zhongwu's current predicament, even if they want to contain it, they can't contain it. Because it is impossible for them to sever this connection, because once they do, it is they who will suffer the most.

The territory of the Northeast not only has a vast land, but also rich mineral deposits, as long as it is well managed, it can provide an endless stream of help for itself.

Xia He returned satisfied.

She successfully got Zhang Zhongwen to agree that the copper coins minted by the Zhenzhou Money Division could be legally circulated in the area controlled by the other party, Zhang Zhongwu now has no ability to mint money at all, and his ruling area is now about to fall to the stage of bartering, and there is not much resistance to Xia He's request. And another major victory for Xia He was that the Jiaozi issued by Wuwei Qianzhuang was also recognized by Zhang Zhongwen.

Jiaozi is a kind of paper certificate issued by Wuwei Qianzhuang, which was originally only used within Wuwei and between some businesses controlled by the imperial court to replace the inconvenience of a large number of silver money transactions. Today, Li Ze is slowly beginning to shift general equivalents from grain to gold and silver and other valuables, and in the end, Li Ze's goal is to reforge a trading system at the expense of government credit. Jiaozi's ability to be used on a large scale in transactions with Tohoku will greatly facilitate this process.

Xia He's plan is naturally part of the financial infiltration, and the deep-seated purpose of these actions, except for some extremely core figures in the account opening department, is only understood by those people in Wuwei Academy who specialize in studying these knowledge. Zhang Zhongwen and the like still don't understand the huge threat here, but when they understand it, it will be too late.

On behalf of the supply and marketing cooperative, Wang Mingren negotiated with Zhang Zhongwen for several days and signed a series of treaties, ranging from daily necessities to strategic materials of considerable scale. Of course, Zhang Zhongwen couldn't come up with the money, and the only thing he could use to repay these things was the mineral deposits in the Northeast, medicinal herbs, and grain that had not yet grown in the fields.

The sale of weapons is also being negotiated. The representative of Tu Hu will be the supervisor to negotiate with Zhang Zhongwen, in this business, Zhang Zhongwen has no room for bargaining at all, even if Tu Hu and the lion open his mouth, Zhang Zhongwen can only grit his teeth and respond. He needed these weapons to replace the dilapidated weapons of the Lu Long Army, and he needed these sharp weapons so that they could control a wider area with fewer armed men.

Of course, as an additional condition for these commercial negotiations, Zhenzhou also stipulated that within the area under Zhang Zhongwu's jurisdiction, each county must have a school to teach Tang culture, and the problem of insufficient teachers would be solved by the Zhenzhou court, in other words, Zhenzhou would send countless teachers to these places. The required funds are naturally provided by Zhenzhou, and Zhang Zhongwen can participate in the proofreading of the content of the professor.

In Zhang Zhongwen's opinion, this is not a big deal, it is nothing more than the assimilation of those wild people, miscellaneous beards and other ethnic minorities, and this kind of thing is also beneficial to them, anyway, Zhenzhou takes the money, he doesn't care.

Zhang Zhongwen is very busy, and every day there will be different people to negotiate and negotiate with him for various cooperation, and what he doesn't know is that many insidious small actions that seem inconspicuous now, but will have a huge effect in the future, have been unconsciously joined in these negotiations.

Zhang Zhongwen was very happy, because according to the signed treaty, when he returned, he could return with a large number of caravans and a large number of urgently needed supplies in the Northeast.

At this time, Li Ze's eyes had already turned to the northwest land, where a large-scale war had broken out.

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