In the summer of the tenth year of Xining, with the issuance of one government decree after another, the Great Song Dynasty finally began to strengthen the control of various religions in the country, first expanded the ancestral hall that was originally in charge of religious affairs, increased the authority of the ancestral hall, and in the future, all religions in the country must go to the ancestral hall for the record, only the religion that has passed the examination of the ancestral hall can be regarded as a normal religion in the Great Song Dynasty, and can be freely proselytized in the Great Song Dynasty.

In addition, the personnel within the religion must also go to the ancestral hall to register their names, and the assessment department under the ancestral hall will give an assessment before issuing the corresponding grade book to the other party, and each level of religious personnel has the corresponding authority, and the personnel who are not at that level must not exceed their authority, and the personnel in the assessment department are all appointed by the personnel stationed in each religion except for some officials.

With the issuance of the above decrees, the various religions in the Great Song Dynasty also reacted differently, and even the various religions were divided into several factions, some supporters and opponents, and some people held a neutral attitude, but in general, there were still many people who opposed it, after all, after the issuance of these decrees by the imperial court, they would be subject to more supervision and no longer as free as before, which naturally caused a considerable number of people to be dissatisfied.

However, Zhao Yan's attitude towards these opposing voices is extremely tough, and the current limit is limited to half a month, all religions in all parts of the country must be reported to the local government offices, and then submitted to the ancestral hall by local officials, and finally the ancestral hall will send personnel to review, and all religions that do not meet the requirements of the Great Song Dynasty must be dissolved.

The half-month deadline can be described as very tight, and even those religions are not given time to discuss at all, which once again causes many religions to be dissatisfied, but they also feel the court's tough attitude towards this matter. Therefore, some originally neutral people also expressed their support for the decision of the imperial court, after all, they could not really oppose the imperial court.

In this half month, Taoism took the lead in reaching an agreement, and each sect submitted to the local government for the record, and the officials of the ancestral hall were welcome to come to review it at any time, and then the various sects of Buddhism also quickly expressed their submission. As the biggest opponent of Taoism, Buddhism could not let Taoism use the power of the imperial court to deal with them, so they had to choose to surrender.

Buddhism and Taoism occupy more than eighty percent of the domestic religious power, so they have reported to the imperial court, which also makes the remaining small religions no longer have a choice, and they have reported to the local government. However, there were also some stubborn religions that refused to report to the government, and as soon as the half-month deadline expired, the imperial court immediately issued a decree banning these religions, and important figures of these religions were also supervised. They were never allowed to proselytize anymore, and their congregants were ordered to stop converting their religion, otherwise they would face twice as much tax as others, which was enough to turn a wealthy family into a destitute family in a few years, so in the face of such a heavy punishment, many people must have made a wise choice.

Of course, there are also some banned religions that are not reconciled, and even after being supervised, they still preach in secret, and encourage their followers to oppose the government. In this case, Zhao Yan mercilessly sent troops to arrest all the important personnel of these religions. Then, according to their respective crimes or exile or beheading, in just a few months, several religions that were unwilling to submit were exterminated, which finally made other religions realize the means of the imperial court, and they no longer dared to resist at the moment, and they were also very cooperative with the next arrangements of the imperial court.

After a few more months of hard work. In the end, the ancestral hall received hundreds of religious filing documents submitted from all over the country, and these religions were large and small, such as Buddhism and Taoism, and there were hundreds of thousands of clergy alone, and the number of believers reached tens of millions. As for the small religions, not to mention, some clergy only have one or two, and there are only a few dozen believers.

Of course, these reported religions will definitely not be all the religions in the Great Song Dynasty, and there must be some secret religions operating in the country, but Zhao Yan is not in a hurry about this, because as long as the ancestral hall completes the review of the domestic religions, some reward systems will be implemented for these religions, such as a certain religion reporting a religion that acts secretly to the imperial court, and it will immediately be rewarded by the imperial court. The country's secret religion will be at the end of the mountain.

After the rectification of domestic religion came to an end, Zhao Yan immediately set his sights on the Xixia sins in the northwest direction, after the Xixia was destroyed, the imperial court had already dealt several blows to the Xixia sins, and thought that they had been cleaned up almost, but they didn't expect that there were still many hidden among the ordinary people, taking advantage of the opportunity of the Great Song Dynasty soldiers to fall into the Liao State to make trouble, almost ruining the situation of the Great Song Dynasty, until Guo Kui's army destroyed Manichaeism, his Western Army immediately withdrew to the northwest, This made those rebellious Western Xia sins hide again.

When Zhao Yan first served as regent before, it was mainly used to stabilize the domestic situation, so as long as the Xixia sins were no longer in trouble, he didn't bother to pay attention to them, but now that he finally freed his hands, he naturally won't be polite to these Xixia sins, and it is thanks to them that they were able to jump out this time, so that the Great Song Dynasty court found that there were still so many Xixia sins, although they lurked again, but they had already exposed their identities once before when they were in trouble, so they must have left some clues to find, It is not impossible to find them with the strength of the Imperial City Division.

It is also in this situation, with Zhao Yan's order, the spies of the Imperial City Division flocked to the northwest like locusts, these people are almost pervasive, and in just a few months, they have almost turned over the northwest land, countless Western Xia sins who participated in the rebellion before were turned out, and those who dared to resist died immediately under the butcher's knife, and the rest of the people were also arrested, and then Zhao Yan was assigned to work in the mines of Nanyang.

Originally, mining is an extremely dangerous thing, so the mortality rate of miners is also extremely high, the Song people who go to sea will never go to the miners, only some criminals or natives who are lured by the profit are the main force of the miners, of course, because the number of criminals is limited, so the miners are still mainly natives, after all, the life of the natives has always been worthless, and even only a burlap is needed to buy the life of a strong native.

The spies of the Imperial City Division ploughed the northwest land like a plough several times, and almost all the Western Xia sins that came out before were arrested, and the rest of the people could not gain a foothold in the northwest, so they fled to the territory of Liao, but the Liao State also did not treat these Western Xia evils very well, so even if they went to Liao, they had to clamp their tails and be people.

While cracking down on the evils of the Western Xia, Zhao Yan finally began to deal with some of the problems left over from the law change, which made Sima Guang and other conservatives also mentally shocked, because in their opinion, if they want to solve these problems, they must abolish some new laws that have been implemented, otherwise it is impossible to fundamentally solve the problem.

However, Zhao Yan surprised everyone again this time, he did not directly abolish all the new laws, but tried to improve some new laws, such as the average tax law, water conservancy law, etc., which are all laws for the benefit of the people, Zhao Yan naturally will not abolish them, but vigorously began to implement them, and although the green seedling law and the high law have caused a lot of opposition, their essence is good, so Zhao Yan changed the appearance of these laws that can be improved, and re-implemented them under a new name, but he also absorbed the lessons of Wang Anshi's reforms. Moderate measures were adopted for the implementation of the new law, especially the organization of special supervision officials to patrol around, and all those who were found to have officials using the new law to make profits were dismissed and exiled, and the destination of the exile was all Nanyang, which was even more uncomfortable than killing them, so for a time the local officials were greatly deterred, so that the implementation of the new law was relatively smooth.

Of course, for some new laws that are extremely dissatisfied with the people, and there is no need to improve them, Zhao Yan will naturally not be polite, and directly abolish them in order to win the hearts of the people. Of course, the whole process will definitely not be smooth sailing, but Zhao Yan is improving on the basis of the original change, so the resistance encountered is naturally much smaller.

After a series of rectifications by Zhao Yan, the domestic situation in the Great Song Dynasty finally stabilized slowly, and the national strength began to grow gradually, especially some new laws began to play their due role, so that the people benefited from it, which should have been the main credit of Wang Anshi and others, but unfortunately because of Zhao Yan's improvement after serving as regent, the people naturally attributed all the credit to Zhao Yan, and as a result, Zhao Yan's prestige in the country reached a peak again.

It's just that behind this good situation, Zhao Yan felt an unspeakable hidden worry, mainly because Zhao Ji's body was not only getting better and better as he imagined, but getting worse and worse, Cao Ji and Zhilugu, who was nearly 100 years old, entered the palace several times and personally diagnosed and treated Zhao Ji, but unfortunately they all said that Zhao Ji was too worried, which led to the deficiency of the god and the form, which is no longer something that can be treated by medicinal stones, but Zhao Ji must be allowed to recuperate quietly.

Everyone felt very strange about the results of Cao Yan and Zhilugu's diagnosis and treatment, because Zhao Ji had handed over all the government affairs to Zhao Yan, and he stayed in the palace to recuperate with peace of mind. (To be continued......)