"I heard that the envoy sent by Liu Yan has arrived in Chizhou, and his purpose must be to seek Lone's approval, what attitude do you think Lone should take at that time?"

In the Huagai Palace, all the cabinet scholars and scholars were basically present, and although Guo Chongtao, Song Qiqiu and others were not cabinet members, they were able to participate in this meeting with Yang Wu's permission.

At this time, the issue under discussion is the issue of attitudes towards Lingnan.

Liu Yan has successfully succeeded to the throne, and there has been no turmoil in Lingnan, even Liu Changlu, Pang Juzhao and other forces that have always been at odds with Liu Yan did not take the initiative to provoke, but chose to wait and see what happened.

"Great King, the minister thinks that Lingnan is remote, and our army has not completely captured Hunan now, and Qianzhou, the main road leading to Lingnan, has not been seized, so at this time, it is better to recognize Liu Yan's status first and stabilize the situation in Lingnan!" Yan Keqiu was the first to speak.

In the cabinet, he and Guo Chongtao are recognized as two major think tanks, and Yang Wu attaches great importance to their opinions on many issues.

At this time, Yang Wu nodded lightly when he heard this, and looked at the other people.

"It is feasible to recognize Liu Yan's identity, but the minister thinks that the king can appoint him as the new envoy of the Qing Navy, but do not canonize him with any titles. If he wants to inherit his brother's title, then he needs to capture Pang Juzhao, Ye Guangluo and other forces! On the side, Liu Wei added.

Compared with Liu Yan, who had already nominally surrendered to the state of Wu, forces such as Pang Juzhao and Ye Guangluo were now nominally subordinate to the state of Liang.

Therefore, it is morally okay for Liu Yan to send troops to deal with these forces.

Zhou Yin was a little worried: "Let him go and consume each other with Ye Guangluo and other forces?" It's doable. However, Ye Guangluo and other forces are much weaker than Liu Yan after all, if Liu Yan successfully defeats these forces and seizes their territory, wouldn't that increase Liu Yan's strength? ”

"Zhou Ge is too worried!" Tao Ya shook her head and smiled: "Even if the king doesn't give Liu Yan an order, will he let Pang Juzhao and them go?" Don't forget, several of them fought last year! ”

Zhu Jin also said: "Yes, when our army sent troops to Tanzhou last year, Liu Yin also sent troops to attack Pang Juzhao, but in the end he failed to win. Even if we don't let Liu Yan attack, he will take the initiative to send troops. ”

"And we don't have a suitable reason to stop Liu Yan from using troops against Pang Juzhao and other forces!"

Zhou Yin was silent.

Yang Wu frowned slightly when he heard this.

The situation in Lingnan is already very complicated, and because of the remoteness, there are still forces of Chu that can be mixed in history, but now Chu has been crippled by Wu, and Wu does not want to meddle in Lingnan now, so Lingnan is basically fighting internally, and there are no external forces interfering.

However, also because the state of Wu was more powerful than in history, the state of Chu took the initiative to negotiate peace with Liu Yin a few years ago.

That is to say, Liu Yan's current territory is much larger than the historical territory, at least Zhaozhou, Hezhou and other six states have not been seized by Chu now.

In history, the reason why Liu Yan dared to build a country and claim the title of emperor was, on the one hand, because of the chaos in the Central Plains, and the various forces in the south contained each other, so that Liu Yan had no external threat; But on the other hand, it was also because of the other forces in Lingnan, except for Qu Hao in Jiaozhou, the others were all wiped out by him.

Now that Liu Yan's strength is stronger than in history, the time to eliminate Pang Juzhao and other forces is only faster.

It's a pity that just like Tao Ya said, even if he didn't give Liu Yan an order, he would take the initiative to send troops to attack Pang Juzhao and others, and Yang Wu couldn't find a suitable reason to stop him, after all, Pang Juzhao and other forces are still subservient to Zhu Wen.

At this time, Guo Chongtao saw Yang Wu frowning, and immediately knew his concern.

He pondered for a moment and then stood up and said, "The Great King is worried that after Liu Yan annexed Pang Juzhao and other forces, his strength has increased greatly, and it will be even more difficult to eliminate him in the future?" ”

Yang Wu was stunned for a moment, then nodded and said, "Yes, what did Guo Senjun think of?" ”

"Great King, in fact, even if Liu Yan eliminated Pang Juzhao and other forces, it would not be very harmful, but it would be more beneficial to us!"

"Why is that?" Yang Wu suddenly became interested, and the other ministers also looked at Guo Chongtao.

"Imagine that in the past, if our army entered Lingnan, it would be necessary to eliminate many feudal forces such as Qinghai, Ningyuan, Lingnan Xidao, and Jinghai; If Liu Yan helps us eliminate these forces, then we only need to eliminate one Liu Yan, wouldn't it be much easier? Guo Chongtao said with a smile.

Yang Wu and the others couldn't help but be dumbfounded.

Indeed, those small forces are also the enemies of the state of Wu and also need to be eliminated; Whether it will be difficult to say whether it will be difficult to deal with multiple scattered forces or a unified force in the future.

So after being reminded by Guo Chongtao, Yang Wu no longer bothered about this problem.

"That's it, it seems that you all agree to recognize Liu Yan's festival to make him the throne, but don't crown him as a prince?"

Yang Wu finally asked, he slowly looked at the crowd, and saw that they were all nodding, and immediately made a decision.

"The second thing to be discussed today is next year's imperial examination. I heard that Li Cunmiao, the king of Jin, had ordered the opening of the imperial examination to select talents. This was a major change in the national policy of the Jin state, and it seems that Li Cunqiao also realized the importance of strengthening the rule of culture. ”

Changing the family into a country, or changing the feudal town into a country, this transformation has been basically completed in the state of Wu, and the state of Shu and the state of Liang have also been completed; However, other countries are not as complete.

Small states such as Zhao and Chu were nominally canonized or self-proclaimed princes, and were able to appoint officials on their own, but these countries still had a strong atmosphere of feudal towns.

After all, it was transformed from a feudal town, and now it has not even fixed its territory, and it is still nominally subordinate to other forces, so naturally it does not dare to do too much, and many things in the etiquette system are still modeled after the feudal town.

The stronger forces such as Yan and Qi were much less constrained, and basically except for not being called emperor, other rituals were modeled after the emperor.

However, whether it is Liu Shouguang or Li Maozhen, they are either a martial artist and do not attach importance to civil governance, or they are arrogant and lascivious, and they have no idea of cultural governance at all, so neither of them opened the imperial examination, but recruited from the people when they needed civil officials as in the previous feudal town era.

The same was true of the previous Jin Kingdom, but now it seems that Li Cunmiao has realized the importance of Wenzhi and has taken an important step in the process of turning his family into a country.

What is certain, however, is that the Jin State still has a long way to go if it can reach a level of high concentration of power like the Wu State.

"What we want to discuss today is not the opening of the imperial examination in the Jin Kingdom, but the matter of the imperial examination in our country next year. According to statistics, there have been more than 300 scholars who have recently crossed the Huai River south from the north alone, and it is believed that there will be more scholars from the north going south before the state examinations this year. Yang Wu continued.

"Great King, it seems that the situation in the north is turbulent, coupled with the opening of the imperial examination in the Jin Kingdom, which has made many scholars take the initiative to go south. This shows that compared with the Jin Kingdom, these people are more optimistic about our country! ”

"Yes, in the past, there were not more than 100 scholars who took the initiative to go south every year, but this year there are so many, it must be because they were touched by the imperial examination of the Jin Kingdom!"

When the ministers heard this, they began to talk one after another, and everyone had joy on their faces.

It's no wonder they are so happy, after all, the state of Wu is located in the south of the Yangtze River, and only the Central Plains can be considered orthodox, even if these important ministers present will not admit it on the surface, but they all have this idea more or less in their hearts.

However, now that the Jin State has opened the imperial examination, it has caused many northern scholars to come to Wu State, which shows that Wu State has been widely recognized in the eyes of northerners, and is no longer a small government in a divided area.

"These scholars who took the initiative to participate in our country's imperial examination, no matter what their talents were, but after all, they represent the attitude of the northerners towards our country, so the next imperial examination must ensure fairness and justice, and no one is allowed to cheat!" Yang Wu said solemnly.

"Song Qiqiu!"

"The minister is here!" Song Qiqiu was shocked, and quickly stood up and said.

"You are Jinling Yin, and most of the scholars who have gone south from the north over the years will choose to take the examination in Jinling. So you have a lot of work to do, and I hope you can get it done properly and don't make any mistakes, understand? Yang Wu said.

"The minister will definitely live up to the king's trust!" Song Qiqiu bowed and replied.

"Hmmm! By the way, Jinling Changshi Wang Taifu, I heard that his talent is also very good, this Jinling examination, the two of you should refer to it together, and take care of next year's imperial examination! Yang Wu suddenly remembered something, and then reminded.

"Yes, the minister obeys!" Song Qiqiu was stunned in his heart and hurriedly replied.

But there was some horror in his heart.

Although he and Wang Taifu were both in the top three in the first imperial examination in Huainan, they don't know why, the relationship between the two has always been very poor, and they usually quarrel a lot because of some differences in government affairs.

So Yang Wu suddenly mentioned at this time that he wanted him to cooperate well with Wang Taifu, what did this mean?

"Could it be that the king is dissatisfied with my discord with Wang Taifu, so he uses this to beat me?" After he retreated, although his expression did not show any relief, his heart was extremely uneasy.