"Why is this Jiansheng doing things so slowly, could it be that something went wrong on the road, so Liu Cheng was pulled away by others?"

Yang He paced back and forth in the room a few times, only to feel that his chest was getting hotter and hotter, as if there was a fire ball burning, he couldn't help but tap the arm of the chair, and shouted: "Come on, go outside to see where Mr. Zhao has gone, if you meet him, let him come to see me immediately!" “

"Yes, sir!" The servant standing outside the door answered, and spread the word out, and after a while, he saw Zhao Wende walking towards the signing room with a man in a soap-colored robe, Yang He breathed a sigh of relief, returned to his chair and sat down, trying his best to pretend to be his usual majestic appearance.

"The last general will see the army master!" Liu Chengyun bowed to Yang He, Yang He nodded, and glanced at Zhao Wende on the side, Zhao Wende coughed lowly, and said, "Liu Dusi, you will tell me what I just told you about Lord Yang." “

"Yes, Lord Zhao!" Liu Cheng raised his head and looked at Yang He carefully, only to see that this second-grade master was sitting in a precarious position, still maintaining his usual majesty, Liu Chengzheng secretly sighed that this person was quite deep in the city, I don't know if he could convince the other party, and suddenly found that Yang He's low-hanging sleeves trembled slightly, and after a closer look, he found that the other party's hands were trembling slightly, obviously the other party was just pretending to be strong, and he couldn't help but be relieved, and recounted the things about the data that Fang Cai and Zhao Wende had just said, and finally said in a deep voice: " After the villain learned this, he knew that the safety of the northwest was at stake, so he immediately rushed to Guyuan to tell the lord of the army, and asked the lord of the army to show him how to act. “

"Liu Dusi, you did a good job!" Yang He nodded, he didn't know that it was Liu Cheng's idea to clean up the military tun, this was not because Zhao Wende took Liu Cheng's credit, but because in the eyes of the people of the late Ming Dynasty, Wufu was a reckless man who couldn't read big characters, and such a strategic thing was a matter for civilian officials and their staff, and Liu Cheng, as a military general, should not have the ability or qualification to make this kind of suggestion, which is also one of the reasons why Liu Cheng first came to see Zhao Wende.

"This is just the duty of the last general, and the army master has praised it falsely!" Liu Cheng replied in a deep voice.

"Hey, if the military generals of the Ming Dynasty could do their duty, the world would have been peaceful!" Yang He sighed, Liu Cheng and Zhao Wende didn't dare to talk, the signing room suddenly became cold, and after about half a sound, Yang He suddenly asked: "Liu Dusi, if according to what you just said, there are seven or eight out of ten thieves in Shaanxi, then if all the unruly thieves among the thieves are arrested, will the chaos in the northwest be calmed down in one fell swoop?" “

"This-" A layer of cold sweat suddenly oozed from Liu Cheng's forehead, obviously Yang He saw that due to the lack of money and food, it was difficult to implement the appeasement policy, and he was afraid of offending the Shaanxi gentry, so he wanted to use the method of surprise attack to eliminate the leaders and backbones of the peasant army that had been appeased in one fell swoop, and wanted to solve the problem of the popular uprising in Shaanxi at the end of the Ming Dynasty. Obviously, if Liu Cheng was in the peasant army at that time, it was very likely that he would have become a funeral object. Liu Cheng thought for a while, and said in a deep voice: "The last general thinks that this is probably not the best policy. “

"Why do you say that?"

"Lord of the Army, the last general has seen and heard a lot among the thieves who have been appeased these days. Among the thieves, nine times out of ten are unable to make a living, displaced people, the old and weak in order to survive dependent on the strong become small poles, small poles swallow each other and become big poles, big poles alliance with each other become a brigade of thieves, their leaders and coerced servants are only strong and weak, and there is no difference between good and evil. From this point of view, it is to kill all the backbone of its leader, and there are still strong and weak among the survivors, so they will still rely on each other and annex each other, which is just killing more people in vain, but will break the existing situation, and the next time the court wants to appease it, it will be more troublesome. “

Yang He listened to Liu Cheng's answer, and did not immediately express his position, but just sat there thinking hard, neither Zhao Wende nor Liu Cheng dared to interrupt Yang He's thoughts at this time, and for a while the signing room was as silent as death. After about half a sound, I heard Yang He's low sigh.

"Is there really no other way?" Yang He stood up and sighed: "Isn't it even possible to play the imperial court and call it sick?" ”

Liu Cheng lowered his head, not daring to talk, but he was shocked in his heart, he had been running around in Shenyikui in the past few months, and he had collected a lot of first-hand information about the situation in the northwest at the end of the Ming Dynasty, plus those things he saw on the Internet in his previous life. In Liu Cheng's view, the Ming Dynasty is not so much to be destroyed by foreign enemies, but to die in internal troubles, if the chaos in the northwest has always been maintained at the level of local civil uprisings, even if the Manchu Qing Dynasty can enter the customs, Emperor Chongzhen will have enough time to move the capital south to Nanjing, at least there will not be more than internal fighting in the Southern Ming Dynasty, and there will always be a situation of division between the north and the south. If you want to solve the chaos in the northwest, the first thing is to improve the combat effectiveness and mobilization rate of the Ming army in the northwest, which Chongzhen also saw, and the method he adopted was to levy "training salaries" nationwide to train a new army, but it turned out that the result of this was to push more people who could still struggle on the survival line into the abyss of disaster, and finally dragged his empire into it. Chongzhen's mistake is to use taxation to obtain resources to strengthen the military, because the bureaucracy at the end of the Ming Dynasty has decayed, collect one or two silver, and the various expenses on the way add up to at least six or seven taels of silver, and ancient China has always been a country with a very scarce precious metal, the rich and merchants have the habit of hoarding silver and high-quality copper coins, and collecting silver from farmers as a tax is equivalent to handing over farmers to rich merchants who hold a large amount of silver. so that they can sell their products at extremely low prices during the season when agricultural products are on the market, in order to obtain silver and pay taxes; In the spring famine, they had to buy food at several times the price, and soon became tenant farmers who had nothing. Therefore, Liu Cheng planned a plan to first appease the peasant army, and then use the appeased peasant army as a pressure to force Yang He to clean up the military cantonment, and obtain enough food and materials to strengthen Shaanxi's military strength and control the situation in the northwest. But what he never expected was that Yang He would rather sacrifice his career than take the step of cleaning up the military tun, you must know that for a bureaucrat like Yang He, his career may be more important than his own life, what makes him rather sacrifice his career than his life, rather than clean up the military tun? Liu Cheng began to realize that he had made a big mistake somewhere.

Hearing Yang He say what he said about illness, Zhao Wende understood what he had to say, after all, Yang He, as a second-class member, had a good son who was thriving in the court, and according to the unspoken political rules of the time, as long as he left, no one would trouble him again; And he, Zhao Wende, is different, but he is just a person

Born, he offended so many nobles in the matter of salt introduction, lost the protection of Yang He, and people casually stretched out their little fingers and pressed themselves to death, even if those nobles were magnanimous and no longer came to find trouble for themselves, their careers also came to an end

, is it possible that the ambition and talent in his chest have been in vain?

"My lord, you can't retreat! Nowadays, all the ministers of the DPRK and China have formed a party to protect themselves, and your lordship is clean and self-conscious, and there are no friends to care about. If you retreat, the situation in Shaanxi will inevitably collapse, and at that time, the court will talk about crimes, but I am afraid that you will not be at peace under Lin Quan! “

After listening to the advice of his confidants, Yang He fell into a dilemma: he did not dare to touch the minefield of the private occupation of the military camp, and he was afraid of the heavy responsibility he would have to bear after the failure of his strategy of appeasement, and the tremendous pressure from both sides almost made this bureaucrat, who had always been known for his shrewdness and ability, collapse, a difficult situation that he had never faced in his life. Liu Cheng watched it from the side, and said in a deep voice: "My lord, there will be a sentence in the end that I don't know whether to say it or not!" “

Yang He glanced at Liu Cheng and waved his hand a little irritably: "If you have anything, just say it!" ”

"My lord, you are reluctant to clean up the tuntian because you are afraid of retaliation from those victims?"

Liu Cheng's direct questioning made Yang He a little embarrassed, and he snorted coldly: "You are a martial artist, what do you know, this military matter is very involved, many landlords are local gentry, hands and eyes are all over the sky, and acting in a hurry will only harm your own body, and it will not help the country." ”

"My lord, when the last general was young, he read "Zizhi Tongjian" in the monastery, and the book said that when Emperor Gao Yang of Northern Qi Wenxuan was young, his father Gao Huan tasted the talent of the sons, so that each of them could control the chaos, and the foreign alone drew a knife to cut it, saying: 'The chaotic one will be killed!' , the end of the general thought that today's things are the same, the military tun after a hundred years, if it is carefully withdrawn, but it is just a delay of time, if the thunder momentum, the immortal merit, will be able to counter the harm for the benefit. ”

"Hugh is talking nonsense, even if the old man can calm the chaos in the northwest, can his deeds be compared to that Jiangling, you are putting me under the sword and axe!"

"My lord, Zhang Xianggong didn't have a rebellion in the east at that time, if you can clean up the military camp and pacify the chaos in the northwest, with tens of thousands of elite soldiers in hand, the Son of Heaven will definitely use you to deal with the east captives, how can you allow the villain to harm you?"

Listening to Liu Cheng's words, Yang He's eyes couldn't help but light up, Liu Cheng's immediate meaning was very clear, the fate after Zhang Juzheng's death was because the world was peaceful at that time, and Emperor Wanli could play the trick of "flying birds and hiding good bows", but now Liaodong has such a ** annoyance as Houjin, and the Manchu Dynasty is afraid of it like a tiger, even if someone impeaches him Chongzhen, he will be suppressed. And most of the newly trained Ming army are thieves who have been appeased, and the relationship with Yang He is much closer than the original Ming army.

Yang He's face regained the kind of reserve and majesty unique to high-ranking civil officials, and he stroked his beard under his chin: "Liu Dusi, you have worked hard all the way, go down and rest first!" ”

"Yes, Lord Commander!" Liu Cheng understood in his heart that the matter had become seven or eight points, so he hurriedly saluted and retreated, according to the tradition of the late Ming Dynasty, such an important matter as cleaning up the military tun was definitely not something that he could put a beak on his own, and Yang He allowed himself to say so many words was already extremely open.

"Jiansheng, what do you think of this?" After Liu Cheng stepped back, Yang He asked in a low voice.

"My lord, you should continue to suffer from it!" Zhao Wende's eyes showed a fierce light.

"That's it!" Yang He stood up, walked to the door of the signing room, looked at the blue sky overhead, and sighed: "Whether it is merit or demerit, it can only be commented on by future generations!" ”

The city of Yanzhou, was built in the Tang Tianbao period, the county seat is called Wu'erbao, according to legend, the Northern and Southern Dynasties Helian Bobo broke Chang'an, and all the guards placed by Liu Song moved to this place, so it is named after this. In the Song Dynasty, the Song Dynasty moved the Juzhou Governor to this place, and this place was an important stronghold for the war with the Western Xia, and in the Song-Jin War, after the Jin people captured this place, Guanzhong was not in danger to defend, and the Song army fell into the dilemma of being attacked on several sides. From the topographical point of view, the city of Yanzhou is the last barrier on the river valley passage from Yan'an to the Guanzhong Plain, and the left side is the Yellow River, in order to resist the invasion of the Mongolian cavalry on the grassland, Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty set up many guards in this generation, and the Yulin Guard, Ningxia Guard and other guards closer to the northern border are different, the land of the city of Dunzhou is more fertile, irrigation is more convenient, there is a small Guanzhong in northern Shaanxi, the responsibility of the local guard is not so much to defend the frontier, but to be further north, The forts along the border farther west provided food and soldiers. If it is said that due to the invasion of the Mongols and the bitter cold, some of the guards along the border forts are still retained, and the area around Yanzhou has not seen a war for nearly two hundred years, and the local garrison fields have long been embezzled by the gentry and the officers of the guards, and there are only 12 out of 10 left.

Juzhou, Zhizhou study.

Zhizhou Lu Boqi is fifty-five years old, which in ancient times marks the twilight of a man, it is difficult to tell from the appearance that he is an official: thin figure, withered and fleshless cheeks, a pair of eyes that always avoid others and dare not look at others, if you peel off the five-grade official robe, he can easily be mixed into those small citizens or peasants whose backs have been bent by life early. The reason for this strange phenomenon is very simple, Lu Boqi did not become a Xiucai until he reached his thirties, and it took more than ten years from Xiucai to Renren, and during this long period of time, his family gradually declined from a small landlord to an ordinary yeoman farmer - in ancient times, whether it was to rush for exams or study tours, it was a huge cost, not to mention the loss caused by being the pillar of the family but having no intention of running his own family business. When he was admitted to a lifter in his forties, he had to give up his further ideals and enter the office as a lifter, which made his career very difficult. When Lu Boqi became the governor of Yanzhou two years ago, he knew very well that this might be the culmination of his career

, so his only purpose as an official is to make his bags more bulging when he returns to his hometown without offending the local gentry.