"Yes, yes, sir!" A layer of sweat oozed from Xu Xianming's forehead: "The lower officials must hurry up, and they must be allowed to spit out the belongings they have eaten!" ”

"Obviously, you misunderstood what I meant!" Liu Cheng sighed: "Where am I for money?" Now the city is mine, and there are 100,000 troops outside, and it is only a matter of raising their lives to take their lives, let alone property? I want righteousness, you know? The Son of Heaven was deceived by traitorous ministers, who deceived the superiors and subordinates, and preyed on the people. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 info I, Liu Cheng, led the border army into Beijing, killed the traitorous ministers, showed his evil deeds, and revealed them to the world. I want money, and I want righteousness! Remember, you can be tortured, but you are not allowed to beat to death, and the confession transcripts are compiled into a booklet and sent up, and I will keep the Ming canonical punishment! ”

"Yes, yes!" Xu Xianming then understood, he thought for a while and said in a low voice: "My lord, you also know that the deficit and the Cao position are intertwined and involve a wide range of things, if you start to do this, I'm afraid it won't end well!" ”

"Haha, what, are you scared?" Liu Cheng said with a smile.

"I'm a little scared!" Xu Xianming smiled bitterly and said: "My lord, such things can stab the emperor's relatives above, and hundreds of thousands of Cao troops below. For more than 200 years, no one in the Ming Dynasty wanted to start in this regard, but the results were all gone, and some even put their own lives into it. The subordinates still have a few bowls of dry rice to eat, how dare they wade into this muddy water! ”

"Obvious, obvious, you are really confused!" Liu Cheng said with a smile: "How are the intertwined roots, and what about the wide range of involvement? I, Liu Chengyi, have no relatives and clans, and second, I don't have a teacher of the same year, and I am still a Mongolian Tatar when I find a daughter-in-law, and one of my two righteous sons is a Mongolian and the other is a Jurchen. A person comes and goes naked without worrying, and you say that these people can hold up their disciples to my door? Daming has been untouched by no one for more than 200 years, they are because they still want to eat in the pot of Daming, I, Liu Cheng, are even going to smash this pot, what are you afraid of? Even if you let it go, there are more than 100,000 troops to support you, and I hope that someone will rise up to make trouble, and there is a shortage of people in Liaodong to build roads, mines, ports, and dams! ”

Xu Xianming heard the murderous spirit in Liu Cheng's words, he couldn't help but shudder, subconsciously lowered his head, and responded: "Yes, yes, my subordinates will do it immediately!" ”

How could Liu Cheng not see Xu Xianming's timidity, he stood up and gently patted the other party's shoulder, and said in a low voice: "If you want to do great things, don't be afraid of the dead." How many bad things have these city fox society rats done over the past few hundred years? If it weren't for them, how could the world of the Ming Dynasty be like this? Have you forgotten the thousands of hungry people in Shaanxi? How much grain did the imperial court come up with for relief? How can a family cry like crying all the way? Yes, if we kill them today, some people will scold us, but even if someone scolds, some things must be done, some people must also be killed, and the merits and demerits will be left to future generations to comment! ”

Xu Xianming heard Liu Cheng mention the old incident of the famine in Shaanxi, his eyes couldn't help but turn red, and he said in a low voice: "The affairs of Shaanxi, my subordinates can't forget it in their lives, sometimes in the dead of night, when you close your eyes, the scene at that time will appear in front of you." Don't worry, my lord, I will never be soft! Speaking of this, Xu Xianming bowed to Liu Cheng, turned around and walked out. There was the sound of footsteps on the floor of the hallway, and it was clear that he was very emotional at this time.

Liu Cheng walked out of the door, watched the backs of his subordinates disappear at the end of the corridor, and sighed. As a time-traveler from later generations, his intention to do this was naturally much more far-reaching than what Fang Cai said to his subordinates. Since Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty began to implement the imperial examination system, the imperial examination system has grown vigorously on the fertile soil of ancient China, the system has become more complete and fair, and the proportion and importance of the selected officials in the entire political system have also increased. From the beginning, it was only used by the imperial power to recruit heroes, and the tool of checks and balances gradually became the main source of officials in the feudal state. Especially in the middle of the Song Dynasty, the Shu landlord class formed by the imperial examination system gradually replaced the original nobles and scholars, and became the mainstream of the feudal scholar class. Even the supreme imperial power must maintain its rule on the premise of recognizing and protecting the interests of the Shu landlord class, that is, "to rule the world with scholars and doctors, not with the people." ”

There is no doubt that compared with the system of selecting officials before the prosperity of the imperial examination system, such as the inspection system, the promotion of filial piety and honesty, and the system of nine products in the middle of the formal system, the imperial examination system has great advantages, and the objectivity, fairness, and extensiveness of the selection criteria are conducive to the selection of outstanding talents from the imperial power to fill the ranks of the bureaucracy from the greatest extent, and to maintain a certain degree of metabolism of the ruling class to ensure the vitality of the entire class. At the same time, it was prevented from throwing itself into the ranks of the peasant uprising out of desperation, forming a greater threat to the feudal state. It is precisely because of these advantages of the imperial examination system that, despite the repeated periods, the scholar class was able to gradually overwhelm other groups such as nobles, relatives, and eunuchs, and became the mainstream of the ruling class of the feudal state and the most important foundation of imperial power.

Many modern people compare the imperial examination system in ancient China with the civil service system in modern times, and believe that the British were inspired by the imperial examination system in ancient China to establish the modern government civil service system. However, if we compare the two slightly, we will find that these are two completely different systems: the modern civil service system produces government officials, while the imperial examination system also has the function of selecting officials (usually does not produce junior officials), but in fact the main function is to produce members of the ruling class. Under the civil service, a person who passes the examination will have no power unless he holds a specific position, and he will be no different from ordinary people; However, under the imperial examination system, even if he only passes the lowest examination to become a student, the lucky person can obtain a number of rights: he and his family are not required to participate in government labor, a certain amount of land under his name is exempt from taxes, he does not need to be punished by corporal punishment and imprisonment before being deprived of his status as a student, and he or she can gain certain advantages in judicial trials, and so on. And these rights are unconditional - even if he does not hold any public office.

It is not difficult to see that in ancient China, the person who passed the imperial examination was immediately elevated above the crowd, and he would be in a position of superiority in all respects over his neighbors, and these privileges were recognized by society as a whole and protected by state violence. In fact, the imperial examination produced the nobility, but this nobility was not produced by blood, but by examination, and could not be passed on to the next generation. If it is said that at the beginning of the imperial examination system, the color of the aristocracy was not so strong, but with the emergence of the phenomenon of "separation of officials" from the Song Dynasty, more and more specific administrative affairs were undertaken by officials and staff, and the officials produced by the imperial examination sat down and talked about it easily, and the aristocratic color in the imperial examination system became more and more heavy. Even if a person is idle at home, he can still participate in political affairs and share benefits with his own identity; The incumbent officials could not even disobey the will of the local gentry. In the Ming Dynasty, many scholars and doctors did not want to become officials after gaining fame, and preferred to stay in their hometown and live a life of leisure and luxury with their privileges. Increasingly, the imperial examinations have become a pass into the ruling class rather than a channel for selecting officials. The power of this class was so great that it could even surpass the state - after the fall of the Ming Dynasty, the nascent Manchu regime recognized the status of the former scholars and selected the officials it needed from among them, and it was only after gaining the support and recognition of the Han Chinese doctor class that the Manchus were able to enter the Central Plains and establish a new empire.

But like everything in the world, the imperial examination system reached its peak in the Ming Dynasty and went to the opposite side of history. The beneficiaries of this system receive all sorts of privileges from the state, but refuse to assume the obligations of the ruling class. Indeed, compared with the various selection systems in the past, the imperial examination system has its advantages, which is also the reason why the scholar group is invincible in the struggle against the nobles, eunuchs, relatives, and small groups within the ruling class of the clan, but the more complete and huge this victory is, the more weakened the feudal state itself becomes, because there is no other group within the ruling class that can check and balance the scholar group, and as the supreme representative of the feudal state, the imperial power has made every effort to limit the unlimited expansion of the scholar group. But in the end, it failed - the blade never cut the handle. This is also why the Manchu and Ming dynasties were regressive compared to the Ming Dynasty in many systems, but they were able to reach the peak of the feudal state - as an alien regime, the imperial power could use the heterogeneity of the Manchu and Mongolian nobles and the Han Han to check and balance the Han scholar group for a longer period of time, so as to limit the unlimited expansion of their privileges, and when this balance was broken, the fall of the Manchu Qing was countdown. History is like this, it is not simple that the more progress the better, many times a big step forward, always have to take a small step back, otherwise it will be a pull.

As a time-traveler from later generations, Liu Cheng has a more profound view of this phenomenon. Why was the imperial examination system, in which the Shu landlord class was the biggest beneficiary, able to defeat other systems in a long battle for hundreds of years and become the mainstream of the ancient Chinese world? Even foreign invaders with great force have to adopt their system? The reason is very simple, since the fall of the manor system in the Tang Dynasty, the dominant economy in East Asia for the next few hundred years was the small peasant economy with small families as the unit, and the Shu landlord class was rooted in this economic form, unless the invaders could change this economic form, they had to seek the support of the Shu landlord class, and there was no other way. This is also the real reason why China's capitalist economy in the Ming and Qing dynasties has always been only a "bud". Since the Shu landlord class can ensure that its own interests are maximized under this economic and social model, why should it be changed? Change may bring more economic benefits, but in the long run it will undermine a favourable socio-economic model, and as a mature ruling class, the scholars know how to make trade-offs.

Historically, this pattern was broken by the strong ships and cheap commodities of modern times, and the Western powers, with absolute military and technological superiority, simultaneously destroyed the ancient feudal empire and the economic soil that hosted the imperial examination system, both politically and economically, and forced it to make changes. Therefore, Liu Cheng did not believe that ancient China could enter capitalism by itself, the reason is very simple, the political system of ancient China was perfectly embedded with the social system and the economic system, and there was no need to change a perfect system, and from top to bottom, he felt that maintaining the status quo was the best. There is only one way to change all this - to shatter everything with the help of an external force.

Liu Cheng has been working hard to prepare for this purpose, personally, he doesn't care who the emperor is, anyway, all seventeenth-century people are the same. In his eyes, a well-educated Confucianist and a peasant who can't read a single word are equally ignorant, and perhaps the latter is better educated, after all, they don't have so much self-righteous arrogance and prejudice in their heads. The time of the time-traveler is precious, to be spent on building a new world, and he has no interest in convincing and educating the recalcitrant one by one, but intends to use a simpler and more effective method - to cut off the heads of those who do not want to enter the new world, and the dead will not have an opinion.

"Someone!" Liu Cheng suddenly said loudly.

"Lord Jinong!" One of the guards knelt down.

"You go and invite Elder Liu!"

"Yes, sir!"

Looking at the guards who were leaving quickly, Liu Cheng returned to the desk, took out a pen and paper and began to write and draw with his memory, and by the time Liu Zongmin walked into the room, Liu Cheng had already finished his work.

"My subordinates meet your lordship!" Liu Zongmin put his cane aside, bowed down with difficulty, Liu Cheng hurriedly stood up, and said with a smile: "Zongmin, you are now an elder, there is no need to kneel and salute in front of me!" ”

"The subordinates don't dare!" Judging from the expression on Liu Zongmin's face, it is obvious that he still does not understand the meaning of the title of "veteran". Liu Cheng smiled, didn't explain anymore, and handed over the sketch picture that he had just spent: "Come, look at this drawing, can you make this machine according to it!" ”

Liu Zongmin took the drawing and looked at it carefully, although Liu Cheng's handwriting was a little messy, he could still see the general structure, but he couldn't see the purpose of this machine. He hesitated for a moment and replied, "My lord, it is not difficult to look like this, I should be able to build it in three days, but my subordinates don't know what this machine is for, I'm afraid it won't be what you want." ”

"So guess what's it for?"