On April 15 of the fourth year of Tongguang, north of Yangqu County, on the official road leading from Jinyang to Yanmen, from north to south, a dusty cavalry team came. At the front of the procession, there was a carriage with a simple canopy, and on it sat a veteran with a white beard, dressed in armor, but without a helmet.

The white-haired veteran was asleep in the car, and the team turned a hillside along the Muma River, and a sentry came in front of him to report: "General, the front is almost to Chitang Pass." ”

Hearing this, the veteran in the car slowly raised his head, opened his worried eyes, looked at the surrounding scenery and said: "Oh, this is Xiatang Village, and it is still more than ten miles away from Guancheng. ”

The sentinel who reported the message complimented: "Although the general is in the north, he still knows the terrain of Jinyang by heart, and this memory can't even be compared to a young man like me!" This is indeed Xiatang Village. ”

The veteran smiled and said: "Star, you kid don't make a lot of sycophants, when Lao Tzu was young, you didn't do this kind of thing, but you don't eat this set." ”

Na Shi Da also smiled and said: "It was your old man who followed Emperor Wu to exterminate the Yellow Nest and conquer Hedong, but he made great contributions. ”

The veteran couldn't help but be a little gloomy when he heard this: "Yes, there are not many old guys left who followed Emperor Wu to raise troops from Shatuo back then, and there are four old brothers, and now I am the only one left." ”

Shi Da said: "People are rare after 70 years, and your old man will be about to celebrate his 80th birthday in a few years, and this general in the army can be regarded as your junior." ”

The veteran on this carriage is the envoy of the Zhenwu Army, the veteran of the Jin Army, An Jinquan.

The old general had already been in office more than ten years ago and was recuperating in Jinyang. In the thirteenth year of Tianyou of the Tang Dynasty, the Jin Liang Wei Bo battle, and the Liang general Wang Tan led an army of 30,000 to raid Jinyang, which had an empty army. The veteran An Jinquan was old and strong, and took the initiative to ask for help, and recruited hundreds of Ding to help Zhang Chengye, the overseer of Hedong, defend the city. Later, together with the Luzhou cavalry general Shi Junli, he attacked the Liang camp at night, forcing the Liang army to retreat.

Subsequently, An Jinquan was reinstated by Li Cunqing, the king of Jin, and served as the assassin of Xinzhou in Shanbei, the defense envoy of Yunzhou, until the envoy of Zhenwu Festival, and became the general of the town guarding the party.

The veteran An Jinquan is seventy and six this year, but he is in good spirits, he has an easy-going and witty personality, he is funny, the only problem is that he is lustful, and after he was appointed as the envoy of Zhenwu Festival in his seventies, he married two concubines. This may be the old guy's fitness secret, and most people can't learn it.

He followed the martial emperor Li Keyong to fight everywhere all his life, and he didn't have much affection for Li Cunmiao, but he couldn't bear to see the Jin army that he personally participated in.

Therefore, after receiving the edict from the crown prince Jiqi, he didn't say a word, and immediately took a thousand cavalry to move first.

For the crown prince, An Jinquan had only seen him a few times when he was in Jinyang before, and he remembered that he was an elegant and polite young man, but he seemed a little weak, not as bold as Emperor Wu.

As a town, An Jinquan knows more about the chaos in the Central Plains.

The prince was able to return to Jinyang's lair in time as soon as the chaos occurred, and his choice and decision were impeccable. As the saying goes, in the current troubled times, Fang shows his true character as a hero, and the prince's previous series of choices and actions made the old general look forward to the future in his heart.

An Jinquan guessed that the biggest possibility was the idea given to him by Ren Yuan beside him.

He was facing each other, and the sentry in front came over again to report: "General, not far ahead, it is Chitang Pass, do you want to get out of the car and rest for a night." ”

An Jinquan looked at the sun that was about to set westward, waved his hand and said: "The old man has been delayed a lot of time on the road, everyone work hard, rush back to Jinyang overnight, and save any changes." ”

The emperor is dead, and the prince is young, so I am afraid that he will not be able to control the situation. And now Li Siyuan doesn't know what to think, if he wants to be unfavorable to the prince, there will still be some people behind his back who will obey him.

……

Li Qigang listened to the reports of Zhang Xian and Bo Caoxin, the head of Taiyuan Mansion, and was having a headache.

I need to recruit troops, but when I look at the income and expenditure of the treasury, my heart is cold for most of the time.

The Li family in Hedong is quite good at fighting, but when it comes to governing the world, it is really not good.

As one of the largest warlords in the late Tang Dynasty, his grandfather Li Keyong, the king of Jin, was extremely brave on the battlefield, but he still retained the style of many grassland Hu people. After each battle, he connived at the capture and plundering of the soldiers, so the foundation of the rule was unstable, and he won a lot of battles in his life, but he did not know how to cherish and govern the territory he obtained, which caused the turbulence of the territorial situation, and he rebelled, and the territory he laid was almost lost again.

Li Cunmiao has received a good Han education since he was a child, and his political ideology is very close to the traditional ruling class, and he knows the truth that "water can carry a boat, and it can also overturn a boat", so at the beginning of inheriting the Jin king, through this series of favorable measures, it only took a few years to make the national strength of the Jin army have been greatly enhanced.

It's a pity that due to the successive years of the Jinliang War, the expenses are huge, and the people are extremely harsh, and they have caused great damage to the people's livelihood in various places. Production withered and the people were struggling to make a living, resulting in a financial emptiness and a shortage of pay and food for the army, which was also a major reason for the frequent rebellions in various parts of the Later Tang Dynasty.

As the foundation of the Jin army, Taiyuan Mansion is currently the best place in the north of the country, but the annual income is only 15 or 60,000 yuan, which can only maintain the normal expenses of an army of more than 10,000 people.

There is no money and food, this is a hairy battle!

As far as these generals of the late Tang Dynasty and the fifth dynasty are concerned, they have no loyalty at all, and once they lack money and food supplies, they are guaranteed to make trouble immediately on the battlefield, and they will fight back.

Li Qi rubbed his temples with his fingers and looked at Zhang Xian: "Gong Zhang, this Taiyuan Mansion does not raise many soldiers, but there is not much savings in the treasury, where is the annual wealth used?" ”

"Alas," Zhang Xian sighed, "Naturally, it is for His Majesty's expenses in Luoyang, and since the destruction of the Liang Kingdom, His Majesty's expenses will become more and more huge." This Wei Bo is in chaos, it turns out that the generals of Liang State in various places rebelled with Li Siyuan, in fact, they were not ready to enter the world before! ”

Li Qi frowned: "In this situation, there is no way to fight, so we can only take the defensive position first and stabilize the situation." But if Li Siyuan's army attacked, he couldn't help but defend himself. "He has made a fortune in Shudi, and he still has accumulated less than 300,000 yuan of goods, but those money and grain have to bear the expenses of more than 20,000 troops in Guanzhong, which can only be barely enough.

Zhang Xian said: "This prince doesn't have to worry too much, I have been serving as the secretary of the marching army by His Majesty's side, and this Liangdi has been in war for many years, and the damage is serious in various places, and the situation is much worse than that in Hedong." Li Siyuan is also powerless now, and he can't afford much of the army's expenses when fighting. ”

Li Qi thought for a while: "That's what you said, let's spend it like this first, it's better to be safe......