After the First Battle of Baijiangkou during the reign of Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty, the devastated Wa Kingdom quickly realized the huge gap between it and the Tang Dynasty in the Central Plains, and since then has been bent on emulating China.

In the following hundreds of years, the Wa Kingdom continued to send envoys to the Tang Dynasty to learn advanced culture and technology, and at the same time carried out many reform measures in the country.

Through these reforms, the domestic situation in the country gradually stabilized and entered a period of relatively stable development.

More than 130 years ago, Emperor Kanmu moved the capital from Nara to Heiankyo, and since then Heiankyo has been the capital of the Wa Kingdom for a long time, so this period is also known as the Heian period.

The current Emperor of Wakuni is Emperor Daigo, who has reigned for decades.

During this period, the Tang Dynasty was gradually collapsing, and the influence of the Tang Dynasty in the Wa Kingdom also continued to decline.

When the Wu people kept appearing around the Wa Kingdom, at first the Wa people did not realize that there was anything wrong.

However, with the emergence of gold and silver mines, the Japanese magnates saw great benefits, especially the rapid expansion of Wu's power around the Japanese state, which soon attracted great vigilance from the Japanese authorities.

In addition, during this period, the competition for the position of the prince in the Wa Kingdom also intensified, and in order to divert the contradictions, the Wu people entered the sight of the Wa authorities and became a thorn in the side of Emperor Daigo.

It's not that no one reminded him not to forget the fiasco of the Battle of Baijiangkou back then, but those who supported the war believed that so many years had passed since the Battle of Baijiangkou, and the current Wa State was no longer the Wa State of the past; And the Tang Dynasty of that year has long since disappeared.

Wu was just a local power in southern China, so he didn't need to care at all.

With the support of these main battle factions, the Japanese army soon went into action.

During this period, although the Wa Kingdom was stable for a long time and did not maintain many troops in peacetime, it was still easy to concentrate an army of 50,000 or 60,000.

On the Wu side, after learning of the signs of the Japanese state mobilizing troops, they also quickly responded.

Yang Wu advocated a preemptive strike, and sent troops to land in the Japanese country before the Japanese army attacked.

The execution of this war was naturally the naval army of Li Chengding and Sima Fu, of which the 5,000 army led by Li Chengding was the main force, and Sima Fu also had 3,000 naval troops, plus 3,000 people supported by the Goryeo State, a total of 11,000 troops, under the unified command of Li Chengding.

After the landing of these armies, they quickly caused a great shock in the Japanese state, and the Japanese side hastily gathered an army of 20,000 people to resist.

However, it has been a long time since the Wa Kingdom was peaceful, how can the combat effectiveness of the army be compared with the battle-hardened Wu army? Moreover, the Japanese army still responded to the battle in a hurry, but the Wu army was already prepared.

The outcome of the battle was already doomed before it began, and in the end the Wu army won a complete victory, capturing more than 7,000 Japanese soldiers.

Originally, according to the consistent policy of the Wu army, although it is not said that the enemy soldiers captured in this kind of war will be treated well, at least their lives will be guaranteed.

However, this time, for the Japanese prisoners, Yang Wu directly sent an edict, ordering all the prisoners to be beheaded and piled up into a Jingguan to deter the Japanese people.

Such a cruel edict startled Li Chengding when he just arrived here, although he felt a little unbearable, but the king's order was difficult to disobey, and in the end Li Chengding still killed all those prisoners according to the military order.

What Sima Fu said just now was this matter, even if he acted in accordance with the king's order, Li Chengding still felt a little uncomfortable afterwards.

"General Sima, why do you think the king is so ...... to the Japanese people" Li Chengding didn't say any more, but his meaning was very clear.

Sima Fu smiled: "Look, just now you said that you weren't thinking about it, but now you still admit it, right?" Actually, the king's temperament was originally like this, he has always been very kind to our own people, but for outsiders, especially foreigners, it is difficult to say. ”

"And our army uses troops overseas, and there are many things like this, such as Nanyang, Luzhou, Penn and other places, if the local aborigines rebel, it is not the same that there will be massacres. It would be nice for you to go through it a little more. ”

Sima Fu thought in his heart: "General Li was born into a famous family, and he has lived a rich life since he was a child, and he has never experienced this kind of massacre, so this is why he is like this. I want to ...... in the first place."

Think about it at the beginning, whether it was Huang Chao and Wang Xianzhi in the early days, or Qin Zongquan and Sun Ru in the later days, which one was not a cruel person, and the slaughtered population was more than tens of thousands? Even Zhu Wen's army did nothing less to slaughter the city.

Li Chengding was just in the Wu army, and his military discipline was relatively good, so he hadn't experienced these things, so he was a little uncomfortable for a while.

He pondered for a moment, then changed the subject and asked, "Do you know what the king is going to do with the Wa Kingdom?" ”

"I don't know, but I think I'll choose peace talks. With our strength, it is impossible to destroy the Japanese state; Therefore, there is no other choice than peace talks. Sima Fu said.

After defeating the hastily assembled Japanese army, although the Wu army had achieved a huge advantage, this advantage was not absolute.

On the one hand, the war potential of the Wa Kingdom has not yet been realized, and now it is just being caught off guard; On the other hand, Wu was unable to send more troops for the time being.

After all, the sea shipping in this era is not safe enough, and it is good to send thousands or even tens of thousands of troops, but if tens of thousands of troops are sent, the risk is too great, and if there is any "kamikaze", then Yang Wu must not cry to death.

Moreover, now that Jin and Liang are fighting for hegemony, the time is about to be ripe for the Northern Expedition of the Wu Army, so now is not the time for a large-scale attack on the Wa State, and peace talks are the best choice.

Therefore, Yang Wu ordered Li Chengding and Sima Fu to lead their troops to withdraw after plundering in the Japanese kingdom, and then took advantage of the opportunity of the great victory to send envoys to ask for benefits.

As for how much benefit they can get, that's not what Sima Fu and they have to focus on.

At this time, a large ship appeared in the place where the sea and the sky met in front of them, and from a distance, it was even larger than the warship they were on, with five tall masts on it, and at the top of the middle mast, a large flag was hung high, and the word "Xu" was written on it.

"It's the Xu family's merchant ship." Sima Fu quickly made a judgment.

To say that the major changes in Wu in recent years, in addition to vigorously expanding overseas, another point is the rapid development of overseas trade.

At the beginning, in order to expand maritime trade, Wu State specially established a merchant fleet by the state.

This merchant fleet did play a role in expanding trade in a short period of time, and the effect was extremely obvious, and now the annual tariff revenue of the two places in Suzhou and Quanzhou is as high as 2 million.

Don't look at two million guan doesn't seem like much, but in fact, in the early years, Huainan's total income a year was only three or four million guan; Even after the unification of the south now, the annual income of Wu State is only tens of millions.

The revenue from one tariff alone reaches 2 million yuan, which is 20% of the annual tax revenue.

The merchant fleet played a huge role in the rapid development of overseas trade.

However, with the passage of time, all kinds of corruption in the merchant fleet are also breeding, which is something that cannot be avoided, even if Yang Wu sets the rules strictly, even if he uses the method of killing chickens and monkeys or catching typical methods to deter others, but the effect is not obvious.

In the end, Yang Wu also realized that there was little point in continuing to maintain the merchant fleet.

Fortunately, at this time, the private overseas trade has developed and grown, and there is a merchant fleet in front of the demonstration and paving the trade route, and those large private households see the huge benefits, and soon follow up the maritime trade industry.

So in this case, Yang Wu officially ordered the disbandment of the merchant fleet last year, and the ships and goods were all auctioned off to individuals.

The Xu family, as the top family in the Wu Kingdom today, is naturally involved in this overseas trade.

"The Xu family." Li Chengding's perception is a bit complicated.

The reason why the Xu family was able to make a fortune was naturally the concubine Xu who married Yang Wu, the king of Wu.

In recent years, as several princes of Yang Wu have gradually grown up, the competition for the position of the crown prince has naturally begun to appear.

Now Yang Wu has a total of four sons, the eldest son Yang Jiong is sixteen years old this year, he is born to Queen Zhou Mengjie, with a noble status, and now he has been named the crown prince a long time ago.

The second son, Yang Yan, is eleven years old this year, born to Concubine He Yiyi, and is extremely low-key among several princes.

The third son Yang Yu is nine years old this year, born to Concubine Xu, although he is still young, but he is very famous in the government and the opposition, and many people praise him for his literary and martial arts, quite a father's style.

As for the youngest son Yang Zhuo, who is only two years old this year, he was born to another concubine Liu who only entered the palace a few years ago.

Of the four princes, Yang Jiong is not only the eldest son, but also the crown prince, and he is supported by Zhou Ben, a meritorious veteran, so it stands to reason that his position should be very stable.

However, in fact, Yang Jiong was close to Wenchen and was not very interested in martial affairs, which to some extent made those meritorious veterans not very satisfied.

Although the third prince Yang Yu is an uncle from Wenchen, in addition to his love of literature, he is also very interested in martial affairs, but he is close to many old people.

These two princes have now begun to fight each other secretly for the position of crown prince.

Of course, Yang Jiong, who is now the crown prince, still occupies an absolute advantage; And even among those honorable veterans, those who really support Yang Yu are a small number of low-level honorable veterans.

The real top meritorious veterans, even if they are not very satisfied with the current prince, have not participated in the battle for the prince.

After all, their status is there, and there is no need to get involved in the competition for the crown prince's position, and no matter who ascends the throne in the future, they will not dare to be disrespectful to them; On the contrary, it is rash to mix in, and you need to take a certain risk.