As soon as the group approached Zhending City, they saw that the gate of the city was in a mess, blood was everywhere, and there were ten white black mountain thief corpses lying on the ground. The city gate was closed, Song Jiang and other officials such as the county lieutenant and the general of Ma Chao's army were waiting on the city gate tower, and when they saw that Ma Chao and others had returned, they hurriedly lowered the drawbridge and opened the city gate.

As soon as they entered the city, Song Jiang and other local officials came to plead guilty, saying that a large number of Montenegrin thieves had robbed the law field, and they were caught off guard and most of the prisoners were robbed. Ma Chao deliberately pretended not to know anything, pretended to be angry when he heard the words, and naturally sent them all to prison for investigation in the name of poor supervision and suspected thieves.

Song Jiang was dumbfounded at that time, Changshan County originally had thousands of county soldiers, but they were all distributed in various county seats, Zhending City in addition to the Yamen to quickly maintain law and order, the county soldiers guarding the city were only fifteen or six hundred, how dare they confront Ma Chao's nearly 10,000 troops?

At the moment, he could only bring out his brother Song Dian, who was a eunuch in the court, but Ma Chao didn't have anything to do after offending Duan Wei before, let alone take Song Dian in his eyes, and directly ordered Song Jiang and his minions to be imprisoned, and sent troops to confiscate his family property.

Afterwards, Ma Chao sent a number of documents such as "criminal evidence", "witness testimony", "physical evidence" and "petition of the people" to Huangfu Song, and there was a letter, stating that Song Jiang and other officials had been dealt with by military law for the crime of thief rebellion due to poor supervision, and asked him to re-send Changshan Taishou to Zhending City to take office.

Huangfu Song had long known the details of Song Jiang and Song Jiang's many evil deeds, but he didn't dare to offend the Ten Standing Servants and others, so he could only turn a blind eye. Some time ago, Bao Hong and Gai Xun were imprisoned for crusading against the Yellow Turbans, and the two refused to bribe the Ten Standing Attendants, and they are still suffering in prison. Looking at the officials in the Han Dynasty, only Ma Chao, who was guarding a state, dared to stroke the beard of the eunuch, and he did not get into trouble.

Liu Hong was overjoyed after receiving Huangfu Song's table, because he had vacated another official position to sell. Now the imperial court has continuously conquered Ge Po, Yingchuan, Qingzhou, and Xuzhou to make rebellion in all four places, and all of them have lost except Xuzhou, costing countless money and food. To add insult to injury, Liu Yan has lost contact with the imperial court in the entire Yizhou since he became the pastor of Yizhou, and there has been no news of the envoys sent to inspect several times. Dong Zhuo, the assassin of Xiliang, also pleaded with the imperial court to release grain for disaster relief on the grounds that the people were in turmoil in the Guanzhong area and the people were plundered.

Youzhou has just experienced the turmoil of Zhang Chun and Zhang Ju's rebellion, Qingzhou, Xuzhou, and Yuzhou have large-scale Yellow Turban rebellion, Yangzhou has Shanyue rebellion, Jiaozhou has barbarians rampant, Jingzhou thieves are like cattle hair, all kinds of reasons add up, resulting in extremely tight financial conditions for the imperial court. In order to maintain expenses, Liu Hong had to continue to sell his official position on a large scale.

Ma Chao stayed in Zhending City for more than half a month, during which he confiscated the property of Song Jiang and his subordinates and obtained 500 million yuan. The grain and grass hoarded in Zhending City were piled up into a mountain, enough for five thousand troops to eat for ten years. Ma Chao immediately decided to expand his army to 10,000 when he had money and food, and transferred more than 12,000 war horses from Zhang Liao of the neighboring Yanmen County, intending to establish an elite cavalry force here.

As long as Zhao Yun's cavalry force develops, the three counties of Zhongshan and Hejian in the north of Jizhou and the three counties of Bohai can be included in the bag at any time, and now that the world is not in chaos, he does not dare to expose his ambitions too much. Zhao Yun was ordered to recruit troops while crusading against the Black Mountain Liukou who had wandered to this area, and he himself led 5,000 soldiers and horses to reinforce Huang Zhong's troops who were fighting in the south.

During the period, I passed by Yecheng and learned that the trial did not agree to the outing, nor did it explicitly refuse, and it was obviously still in the wait-and-see stage. Ma Chao didn't care about this, he gave Zhang Yan half a year to train his troops, and at the same time ordered the ordnance battalion in charge of Li Tie's father and son to step up the construction of weapons, and only start to attack the Jizhou Haoqiang family when the autumn harvest is about to be made in the first month of next year. The first thing to deal with is a big family like the judge who has a castle and does not take refuge in himself. In this way, it will not only be possible to get rid of most of the landlords' strong resumption of land, but also not to let a large area of fertile land be wasted for a year.

Seven days later, the 5,000-strong army rushed to Cangyan Valley. Huang Zhong, Chen Zhi and others and Yang Chou, the lieutenant of Shangdang County, had besieged Cangyan Valley for more than a month, Ma Chao inspected and found that Cangyan Valley was indeed a place that was easy to defend and difficult to attack, and it was inevitable that there would be heavy losses if he rashly launched a general attack. There were about 20,000 strong men in the valley, 50,000 old and weak, women and children, and Huang Zhong's strategy of besieging but not attacking was extremely correct. In less than three months after going on like this, Yu Poison and the others ran out of food and grass and could only seek to break through, so that they had the opportunity to break the enemy.

Huang Zhong also tried to recruit Yu Poison, Bai Huan and others, but several times he sent envoys but there was no return. Ma Chao was furious when he heard this, and immediately ordered that after breaking the enemy, both young and old would be reduced to slaves. Then he brought 2,000 cavalry and 3,000 infantry troops to Huang Zhong to command, and at the same time 5,000 war horses and some money and grain transferred from Yanmen, so that he could expand the army to 20,000, including 7,000 cavalry, 3,000 archers, and the rest were all infantry troops.

Ma Chao's army is the official army of the imperial court, breaking the northern grassland alien races, exterminating Baibo and Montenegro, and the reputation accumulated is very good, and it is also very popular in Jizhou in a few months, plus there are monthly salaries and high pensions to get, it is not difficult to recruit soldiers. On the contrary, because Ma Chao has always adhered to the line of elite soldiers, many recruits have not been able to pass the test.

In this way, Ma Chao arranged 50,000 troops in Jizhou, including 20,000 Huang Zhong, 10,000 each Zhao Yun, Xu Huang, and Zhang He, and they were all elite soldiers, and the early battle for hegemony was definitely enough.

At the same time, Pang De, Fa Zheng, and Ma Dai also returned victoriously in the Xianbei army, which went out for nearly a year, capturing millions of livestock, capturing 150,000 strong prisoners, and nearly 300,000 Xianbei women. The price was that nearly half of the 40,000 elite soldiers were killed, and only more than 20,000 people rushed back to the Southern Xiongnu royal court.

Although Xianbei did not perish after this battle, it was no longer difficult to become a climate, and the remaining more than 100,000 troops were driven to the area north of the Sejingge River, and they did not want to recover for seventy or eighty years. Because Ma Chao and Han Sui both implemented the "three lights" policy, at this time, there were only some small tribes left in the Mobei area that were lucky enough to escape the war, and there were few human traces.

After arranging many matters, seeing that the New Year was about to be celebrated, Ma Chaocai rushed back to Jinyang City with Dian Wei and a hundred personal soldiers. After hundreds of thousands of people have worked for a year, Jinyang City is now more than several times stronger than before, and more than ten large villages have been set up around.

The harvest of the year is also extremely huge, the surplus grain created by the 500,000 displaced people in Tuntian near Guangjinyang is more than 7 million Hu, plus the taxes paid by the ordinary people of Taiyuan County and the small and medium-sized powerful landlords, the exiles of Shangjun, Hexi County, Shangdang County, the Southern Xiongnu Military Tuntian District, and the Black Mountain refugees in Shuofang and Jiuyuan. The surplus grain in Ma Chao's hands at this time was comparable to Jizhou, which was famous for its grain production, enough for 150,000 troops to eat for two years.

Ma Chao was overjoyed after reading the accounts, and immediately ordered the surplus grain from the royal court and Shuofang to be transported to Shangjun, and the grain produced in the tuntian area of Taiyuan County was concentrated in Jinyang City, and the grain produced in the Shangdang area was tuned in Jiguan City. At the same time, Pang De, Fa Zheng and other elite troops of Xiliang were transferred to Jinyang, and more than 100,000 Xianbei prisoners and more than 100,000 women came with them.

After initially solving the grain problem, Ma Chao planned to smelt iron and mine coal on a large scale in the next step. The state does not produce grain relatively speaking, but it is rich in mineral resources, as long as there is sufficient labor, it can try to develop cement products and increase the output of refined iron, these two things can greatly speed up the productivity, and must be put on the agenda.

In the past six months, his political achievements have been very obvious, especially in the selection of talents. Now that the county and county officials are complete, the government is operating normally, public order has been greatly strengthened, the number of civilian thieves and criminals has decreased, and the merger of prefectures, which was originally the third chaotic state in the world, has gradually made a smooth transition. In this way, it will not take two years to merge states and initially prosper.

The only fly in the ointment is that many powerful families have quite a cliché, because Ma Chao's high-pressure policy is too ruthless. There may not be many big families in Bingzhou, but there are still a lot of small landlords and small rich peasants, and those who gather to settle fields will include these small landlords, and they can't bear it, and many people jointly report this matter to Tian Feng.

Ma Chao, Tian Feng, and Li Yan also felt that this decree was inappropriate after careful discussion. It was then revised, and those who gathered a crowd to settle fields should hand over six hui rice per mu below 200 mu, seven pots of rice per mu between 200 mu and 500 mu, eight hu rice per mu between 500 mu and 1,000 mu, and 10 hu per mu above 1,000 mu.

In this way, many small landlords have been given a way to live, and the big landlords feel pressure, and the more land they have, the greater the pressure, and they will have to lose their capital in disaster years, so that the land will become less and less, and finally they will have to become small landlords. Ma Chao did not believe at all that the landlords of feudal society were the inevitable product of historical development. Survival of the fittest, survival of the fittest, and the collective farming system are only a temporary expedient measure, and in the long run, people will lose their enterprising spirit, and society will not be able to truly prosper. In order to stimulate the enterprising spirit of the common people, it is necessary to allow the existence of small landlords and give them the opportunity to make those commoners who are flexible and down-to-earth and willing to become landlords.

But the tens of thousands of domestic slaves, the family of Wubao built must be destroyed, because their power and influence are too great, big enough to affect politics and the foundation of the country. The system of keeping domestic slaves and controlling the life and death of domestic slaves must also be abolished, which is the product of the remnants of the slave society before the pre-Qin period, and it is this system that created those super families.

Everything was going on in an orderly manner, and in the blink of an eye, it was February 189. Ma Chao was busy with internal affairs, but he did not forget to practice martial arts and pick up girls. In his spare time, he spat in the mansion about the remodeled "Water Margin" commentary, Cai Yan, Du Xiuniang, Yang Wan, Dong Xuan, Ma Yunlu and several little Loli are his loyal listeners, and even Ma Xiu, Ma Dai, Fa Zheng, Pang De and others can't help but come to listen. This story has just mentioned that Wu Dalang went out to sell cooking cakes, and suddenly a guard came to report: There are three officials outside who claim to be the messengers of the Son of Heaven asking to see him. (To be continued.) )