Among the people who came out of the Chenyang Hall of Shoushan Palace, there were already various news circulating everywhere.

"Xiangyang lost !。。"

"How could Xiangyang be lost."

"That's the Jingbei Xiongcheng built by the power of the two major divisions, and the hub of all roads."

"Isn't there still Han Water for the danger. The boatmaster is the screen and the wings. ”

"There have been two northern expeditions and two southward expeditions, and there have been no problems, how can it be."

"But it's the enemy from Shuzhong, who sailed down the river,"

"First cut off many strongholds along the coast, and then drove straight to the back of Xiangyang from the road."

"The front is in turmoil, although there is a commander to suppress it in person, it is also a matter of taking care of one or the other."

"Although tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have gathered in the city, they are short of food and equipment.

"As for the boat master, it's all the old yellow calendar of the past"

"Since the abolition of the Jingbei Xingsi and the collapse of the armies, most of the boat divisions have been withdrawn to protect Jiangning downstream."

"The rest are scattered into the flow of water in the vicinity."

"Sun Yichen, the commander of the local navy, rearranged more than 20 large and small ferries to carry troops to Fancheng on the north bank"

"As a result, the boats were set on fire upstream, and most of them were burned down and capsized in the river."

"Since then, there has been no help inside and outside Fancheng and it has fallen."

"Then Xiangcheng was also trapped by thieves, and Duan Shuai could only lead the city to attack the enemy in person."

"After defeating the enemy several times in a row and forcing him to retreat, he began to lead the crowd to break through."

"Jingbei is completely lost."

"Jingnan erosion is just around the corner."

"Maybe it won't be long before the thieves will be on the banks of the river."

"Since then, the north of the river is no longer owned by the country."

For others, it is the strategy they advocate of "gathering troops and gathering troops to lead the water to the east" completely bankrupt.

The northern territory that the dynasty took the initiative to shrink its defense line and retreated from did not allow those western thieves to fight and compete with each other in the Central Plains because of this, but continued to kill the forces of the southern dynasty.

And in the south of the river, it is also not stopping, Jiangdong, Jiangxi, and Liangzhejiang are the essence of the southeast financial endowment, most of them have been reduced to a paradise of big cloud thieves and all kinds of chaotic people, except for a few prefectures headed by Jiangning Mansion and Wangyao Dayi, there is no longer a little peaceful foothold as far as the eye can see.

In order to maintain the situation and basic access in the mountains, the dynasty had to pay tens of millions of military salaries every month, and astronomical quantities of goods were filled into this bottomless pit every day.

Once the protection of Shuzhong and Jinghu Lake in the upper reaches is lost, it will be difficult to maintain the traditional Southern Dynasty pattern of continuing to possess the Lingnei and return to the sinister situation when the country was founded.

However, for another conservative force that has re-emerged in the court, these seemingly unfavorable changes are not relatively good news;

Because, this also means that the imperial court may give up, the unrealistic persistence in the ridge and the false name of the so-called achievements of the Northern Expedition, and refocus and focus on the operation and stability of the basic market outside the ridge; As a result, it is possible to change the general policy and devote all kinds of resources and personnel to overseas colonization that is more familiar and convenient.

At the very least, they relied on military pressure on the Saikaido feudal domains to complete a new round of negotiations and negotiations.

In the case of continuing to retain part of the authority and title, and no longer pursuing and implicating; They were forced to cut the land, pay indemnities, pledge and confess their guilt, cut off their titles, abdicate, and even dismiss and surrender a certain number of private armed forces, and hand over a sufficient number of sea ships and the remnants of the rebel sailors hiding on the islands, so as to raise enough funds for the imperial court's latest training of various armies.

It is only in the two Northern Expeditions that the generals and officers who have been lost are not so easy to train and replenish, so it is urgent for the new generals brought back by Wang Duanchen, the only surviving governor of the North, to re-form their basic combat strength in a relatively short period of time.

And in Hebei Province, in the territory of Beizhou,

Cui Boqi, who has become the leader of the bandits who has been wanted for a reward of 50 yuan, also tried his best to ride his horse and gallop on the wilderness where he escaped for his life.

It was only such a winter, and when he came out of the mountain where the cat winter was hidden, he found that the world he was familiar with seemed to have changed from one person to another, and he was almost unrecognizable beyond recognition.

Everywhere there were villagers paraded on the roads with weapons, and all kinds of defensive fortifications, post stations, and sentry posts were built on the roads, mountain passes, bridges, and markets, and if they made the slightest movement, they would suffer heavy damage in all kinds of encirclement, pursuit, and interception.

And once upon a time, these lowly people who used to let fish and meat still only bow their eyebrows and pleasing their eyes, and even endure with forced smiles, actually dared to resist their meager requests for and take away the young and strong during the period of lurking and resting;

A bloody mark on Cui Boqi's brow, as well as most of the parts trapped in his hometown village, are the heavy price he paid for his momentary negligence. You must know that most of the land in the surrounding villages is under the name of his Cui clan, and the tenants and slaves who farm and work for the Cui clan alone occupy more than eighty percent of the residents of these villages.

However, in front of the swords and guns they brought out to show off their might, the former tenants and villagers almost gathered together, and while closing the doors and windows to resist, they set off fireworks on the roofs to report the news; If he hadn't seen the opportunity to withdraw in time, he was afraid that he would have been trapped in the village that had once made him very familiar.

And all of this is the great change brought about by those rebellions.

You must know that his ancestor was also a member of the Qinghe Cui clan in Qiwangzhong, a member of the Qinghe Cui clan, known as the seven clans of Shandong; Between the two Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms to the Sui and Tang dynasties, in the heyday of the Five Surnames and Seven Wangs, they even had more beautiful and prominent fame and authority than the family of the Son of Heaven, and basically only intermarried in small circles within each other's clans to ensure the nobility and purity of the bloodline.

And those kings who were born recklessly or had Hu blood, all tried their best to marry the daughter of a certain family in the five surnames and seven hopes, in order to gain a certain sense of recognition in the bloodline, and then recruit corresponding well-educated people or outstanding children from the five surnames and seven hopes, so as to enrich their own court and local government, and strengthen and stabilize their rule.

As a result, the family gate lords also gained more privileges and benefits granted by the imperial court, and through various land annexations and hidden exiles, more people and acres of land were included in their direct or indirect control, and even outside the limited ruling order of the government, on the grounds of following the name of etiquette and religion and the customs of the township, they created a set of exclusive social ethics and moral systems from the state and county, so as to carry out hidden ideological domination and public opinion guidance in disguise.

Any dissent and opposition generated during this period will either yield and beg for mercy in the face of the powers and forces that have taken root in the government system, or will disappear completely because of various accidents and banditry.

Even the Li Tang Dynasty, which is known as the most prosperous imperial power and national power, is known as the way to open the door to the cold door with the imperial examination, and tries his best to suppress the land annexation of Zhenguan, to the Kaiyuan period, the lineage of the prime minister who is full of the court and the lineage of the concubines in the relatives are still Cui Wei Pei Lu, who are inextricably linked to the five surnames and seven wangs, or simply the prominent family of the branch clansmen.

This kind of relationship of struggle and confrontation, as well as compromise and dependence, was carried on until the outbreak of the Anshi Rebellion, when it was seriously broken and split because of the different positions and tendencies upheld by the five surnames and seven wang families, and then suffered heavy losses in the continuous war that swept most of the world.

It was easy to survive the initial determination of the chaos in the world, and then the Qianyuan Emperor, who set things right, and the Taixing Emperor, who later began to prosper with the assistance of Liang Gong, began to take advantage of the situation to further suppress and weaken the power of these clan gates, and once as one of the unswerving national policies of the successor.

In the hands of the later generations of the Son of Heaven and the descendants of the ruling Duke of Liang, the Tang Dynasty began to gradually recover its vitality and command all directions, both at home and abroad, there were continuous conquests and territorial expansion, and generation after generation of princes who split the land and divided the domain also began to be born in any piece of land that the Tang Dynasty soldiers and merchants set foot on.

But for the powerful imperial power, the breathless family gate valve is inevitably a dark time that cannot be looked back. The treasures and goods and massive product resources transported back from overseas greatly strengthened the prestige and power of the centralized power of the imperial court, and also armed and maintained a large number of various military forces at home and abroad.

And these are not any Leo or a group of big families who can easily resist and disobey; Not to mention, a large number of bankrupt farmers and fugitive tenants who went overseas under the guidance of the government also became the inducement and fuse for the personal control and social influence of these clans in the places where they were located, and further weakened and declined.

They even had to put down their bodies little by little, and tried to redeem and curb these hidden dominant populations with the love of the village party that could not leave their homeland and the continuous improvement of the treatment of tenants.

It was also the era when the children of the poor family and the officials from the Shu clan were all over the world, and the famous families had to underground their noble heads and figures, desperately restraining their children and relatives, so as not to be given the truth and opportunity to find Daxing prison and criminal litigation by these cool officials who were eager to make meritorious contributions and had no background.

Therefore, when the court and the central government in the Yiwei period began to show various countercurrents and undercurrents against the ruling Liang family and its henchmen, these long-suffering wealthy county wangmen lords and surnames almost hit it off and pushed it with all their might.

Thus, the rebellion that broke out later was, in a sense, both a success and a failure;

The turbid currents and countercurrents that they have carried have certainly been able to overturn the Longwu clan and its henchmen who have been suppressing their heads and making it difficult for people to breathe from the times;

But it also opened up a long and endless chaotic era, and the endless suffering and blood and tears that followed; It is not, as they wish, to return to the ideal era of mutual game, compromise and dependence between the great families and the sons of heaven in the limited framework of high-end political struggles.

When the Mad Emperor clan, as the culprit of the troubled times, was completely purged and slaughtered by the branches of the Longwu clan that took turns to retaliate in various places, these clans, which were the promoters and supporters behind the scenes, also ushered in a new wave of liquidation and revenge, and the irresistible overthrow and extinction were in the general trend of the rolling era.

His family can be said to be one of the few remnants that survived the doom of the family because of the too remote distant side relationship;

Despite this, according to the powerful identity of his family in the local area and the big surname composed of more than 1,000 clansmen, he is still up and down in this troubled era, and continues to control the language power and social resources in the local township;

and even relying on the forts and walled cities built up from generation to generation, the large amount of food and the population seeking refuge that were easily gathered, and the reckless heroes who whirled up and whirled one after another, or the officials and subordinates of the feudal towns one after another, continued to wrestle and play for a long time;

Even if the tenants and people who worked for it around died in the midst of hunger, cold, soldiers, fires, and famines, and changed generation after generation, Cui's position as the leading figure and the head of the township still standstill.

However, the arrival of Huaizhen completely broke everything they were familiar with, and also forced them on the decisive road of rising up and resisting.

Until now, many people, including him, still don't understand and can't understand why these Huai troops can't properly appease and use the local wealthy families and leading figures to continue to maintain this good situation of humility and rank;

Why should these good families, famous families, and village gentry who have maintained local peace and stability for generations, be forced to a dead end without compromise, and not even give any room for accommodation and tolerance?

Therefore, they can only find this anger and resentment in everything related to Huaizhen; Raid and kill officials who leave the city or go to the countryside, burn the cantonments of new immigrants, and loot the teams that transport supplies.

Then, relying on the familiar place and people everywhere to ventilate the news, and even for the convenience of hiding and sheltering, deal with the garrisons who come to crusade, so that they are tired of rushing into the air again and again or return in vain.

However, after a winter, everything changed, and with no one to give them any news, most of the familiar faces and supporters were gone, and the former hiding places and supplies were gone.

Therefore, as the activities became more and more difficult, they had to take the initiative to find some villages that were quite familiar.

Suddenly, as soon as his horse's hooves went limp, he fell forward and rolled on the ground, and it was so easy that he struggled to get up.

Then, trembling and despairing, he fell to his knees, for, just in front of him, there were rows of lead-gray horizontal formations and metallic reflections.

Then the cavalry held up the banners of the mountains and fields, as if they were endlessly marching in his direction.

(End of chapter)