At the beginning of March of the third year of Xuande, in the areas controlled by the Ming army in Jiaozhi and Guangxi, Guangdong, and Yunnan, more than 10,000 young scholars participated in the Enke held by Emperor Xuande in their respective state capitals.

This time Enke is different from usual, it is not the well-known literary ju, but the martial arts that have been neglected by people, to be precise, the new style of martial arts.

The reason why it is a new style of martial arts is because this martial arts is not only different from previous years, but also different from the literary examination, the test paper adopts a 100-point system, and it is no longer simply an article to be judged by the invigilator to distinguish the advantages and disadvantages of the article, which is an eye-opener for those who read.

According to the process of the new martial arts, all candidates participating in the examination must go through the literary examination and the martial arts examination, and then be admitted according to the comprehensive score according to the score from high to low, which avoids many human factors and can be described as the fairest admission method.

As with the new-style martial arts examinations in Nanzhili and Beizhili, this time Enke is divided into two stages:

The first stage is the preliminary examination, which can be held at the state government offices for all students who meet the age requirements and are proficient in writing and ink.

The second stage is the re-examination, in which the candidates for the preliminary examination are sent to the provincial capitals of Guangxi, Guangdong and Yunnan to take the examination by the officials of the Jiangwutang, and the candidates of Jiaozhi take the examination in Taiyuan City, where the three divisions of Jiaozhi are located.

Different from the martial arts examination in the north and south of Zhili, in order to attract more scholars to take the exam, Li Yuntian relaxed the age limit for candidates, from 16 to 25 years old, to 16 to 27 years old.

When Li Yuntian was fighting wits and courage with Li Li, the officials of the Wutang had already gone to Guangxi, Guangdong, and Yunnan to publicize Emperor Xuande's Enke matter in various state capitals.

In order to make this Enke Shun carry out, Li Yuntian specially allocated 30,000 taels of silver from Jiaozhi's military expenses to those officials who taught martial arts, so that they could build up momentum to attract local scholars to participate in the examination.

What was particularly important was that Li Yuntian asked those officials to publicize Emperor Xuande's edict in order to dispel the concerns of the scholars.

This edict is very special, it was issued by Emperor Xuande specifically for the bad situation of Jiaozhi: all candidates who participate in the new style of martial arts, once admitted, will be the Ming Dynasty's liuguan, its identity is the same as the people, although it is under the jurisdiction of the military cabinet, but included in the list of officials of the Ming Dynasty, and those with outstanding political achievements will be recommended by the martial arts hall and transferred to the three provinces of the two capitals.

In this way, once these candidates who participate in the new martial arts pass the re-examination, if nothing else, they will be given the status of lifters.

This is an out-and-out fame, and you can be transferred away from Jiaozhi if you get the recommendation of the martial arts hall, which makes many young scholars eager to try, as long as they have the fame of lifting people, they can officially step into the officialdom as officials.

However, it is not easy to obtain the fame of lifting people, the new style of martial arts is different from the current Wenju and martial arts of the Ming Dynasty, and the candidates for the re-examination are not directly awarded official positions, but to enter the six colleges under the jurisdiction of the martial arts, and will continue to be taught in the six colleges.

The six colleges under the jurisdiction of Jiangwutang, namely the Xingxing Agricultural Academy, the Xinghu Academy, the Xingli Academy, the Xingjun Academy, the Xinggong Academy, and the Law and Punishment Yuan, are the places where Li Yuntian specially used to train professional talents.

The candidates from Liangguang, Yunnan and Jiaozhi were the second batch of students from the six major academies of Jiangwutang, and the first batch of students had already entered the school when they were in the second year of Xuande, and they were selected from the candidates who participated in the last new martial arts of the North and South Zhili.

Because the school buildings of the six colleges are still under construction, the first batch of students can only take classes in the current private houses and move there after the school buildings are built.

As for this second batch of students, the situation is more complicated than the first batch, because they are the future officials of Jiaozhi selected by Li Yuntian, so all their studies must be completed in Jiaozhi, and Li Yuntian has already removed a group of teachers from the six major academies of the lecture hall to come to Jiaozhi.

Originally, due to the turmoil of war and turmoil in Jiaozhi, and because it was regarded as a barbarian land, the scholars of Liangguang and Yunnan were reluctant to go there.

However, as Li Yuntian won battles in Jiaozhi one after another, first conquered Anliang County, where the rebels were stationed, then ambushed the rebels at Luoyepo, and later recovered Langjiang Mansion from the rebels, so that people saw the hope of quelling the Jiaozhi rebellion.

Therefore, on the day of the exam, there were more than 10,000 candidates in Liangguang, Yunnan and Jiaozhi to take the exam, which had reached the target number in Li Yuntian's heart.

On the third day after the end of the preliminary examination of the new martial arts, the prefectures of Guangzhou, Yunnan and Jiaozhi announced the results and admitted the candidates who participated in the re-examination according to their rankings from high to low.

Subsequently, the candidates who passed the preliminary examination were taken to the provincial capital by the officials of the Jiangwutang to participate in the re-examination to be held in late March.

Since his retreat from Thanh Hoa City, Li Yuntian has been busy, not only to resettle the victims of the disaster in Jiaozhi, but also to pay attention to the new martial arts examinations and the recruitment of troops in Guangxi.

Zhang Ben, Wang Jian, and Wang Jin led their troops to Jiaozhi by land, but they did not go to Jiaozhi, but stopped at Guilin City, the seat of the Guangxi Political Division, under the order of Li Yuntian, and were specifically responsible for the recruitment of the Xiaowu Army.

The reason why Li Yuntian let Zhang Ben and others stay in Guilin City was because the situation in Jiaozhi was bad, and it would be useless for them to go, but to distract Li Yuntian, and second, Zhang Ben and Wang Jin had noble status, Li Yuntian was unwilling to let the two of them take risks in Jiaozhi, and they really couldn't afford to die on the battlefield of Jiaozhi.

After two or three months of preparation and planning, the recruitment of troops in Guangxi's prefecture capitals is in full swing, and the generous treatment and pension system of the Xiaowu army have made many local young people eager to try.

By the end of March of the third year of Xuande, the Xiaowu Army had recruited 20,000 soldiers in Guangxi, including civilian households, military households and Tusi soldiers.

For the Tusi soldiers who met the requirements, Li Yuntian offered a sky-high price of ten taels of silver per person to redeem himself from the Tusi, which made the Tusi everywhere very popular with this, and they sent their own strong soldiers to the recruitment site for a physical examination.

In the eyes of the toasts, Li Yuntian's approach is actually similar to human trafficking, they all pay for the ownership of those native soldiers, but Li Yuntian's bid is much higher than that of ordinary human traffickers.

Of the 20,000 recruits recruited by the Xiaowu Army, half of them were Tusi soldiers, and Li Yuntian spent 100,000 taels of silver on ransom alone.

Not only that, Li Yuntian also spent 200,000 taels of silver to redeem the families of those Tusi soldiers, and spent another 200,000 taels to gather them and settle them in more than a dozen resettlement sites in Guangxi, forming new townships and towns.

In this way, Li Yuntian spent a total of 500,000 taels of silver on recruiting more than 10,000 Tusi soldiers, which really surprised the outside world, and no one would have imagined that he would spend so much money on those Tusi soldiers.

In fact, the reason why Li Yuntian did this was not only to let those Tusi soldiers quell the rebellion in Jiaozhi, but more importantly, he wanted to take this opportunity to gradually cancel the Tusi in the Ming Dynasty, "change the land and return to the stream", so that the Ming Dynasty's decrees could be unified.

In order to accomplish this goal, his newly recruited Tusi soldiers will play a crucial role, and if they take the lead, they will bring the Tusi natives to the imperial court.

The so-called "changing the land and returning to the stream" refers to changing the Tusi system to the Liuguan system, abolishing the Tusi that originally ruled the ethnic minorities, and establishing prefectures and counties in the areas under the jurisdiction of the original Tusi, whose officials are appointed by the imperial court.

The change of land and return to the river was not only conducive to the rule of the imperial court over the original Tusi area, eliminating the war within and between Tusi, but also promoting the local social and economic development.

At the end of March of the third year of Xuande, Qin Kun, a staff general under Li Yuntian, and Han Wei, a guerrilla general, led more than 20,000 men under his command to leave Jiaozhi and enter Guangxi, preparing to go to Liuzhou Mansion and Qingyuan Mansion to quell the rebellion of the barbarians Wei Wanhuang and Wei Chaochuan.

Speaking of which, quelling the rebellion of Wei Wanhuang and Wei Chaochuan is the most important task of Li Yuntian as the general army of Guangxi, since the rebellion of the first year of Hongxi, Wei Wanhuang and Wei Chaochuan have been fighting with the Ming army in Liuzhou Mansion and Qingyuan Yuan Mansion for more than three years, and Gu Xingzu, the former general soldier of Guangxi, once sent troops to suppress it, but unfortunately it was unsuccessful.

Today, Wei Wanhuang and Wei Chaochuan's men have tens of thousands of troops, making them the largest rebel army in Guangxi.

After more than two months of reorganization, the 20,000 people in the hands of Qin Kun and the defenders have been organized into the Xiaowu Army, of which 10,000 are from the counterinsurgency army led by Liu Sheng, and the other 10,000 are from Wang Tong's counterinsurgency army and the local guard troops in Jiaozhi.

In order to reassure Li Li, Li Yuntian not only transferred the 20,000 elites to Guangxi to suppress bandits, but also ordered the old, weak, sick and disabled people in the Jiaozhi army to retire and return home, and the strong men who were forcibly recruited were also sent back to reunite with their families and engage in agricultural labor.

As a result, the number of Ming troops in Jiaozhi was greatly reduced, except for Sanjiang City and Langjiang City, which confronted the rebels in Jiaozhou City, which had a strength of 5,000 people, the strength of the rest of the provinces was only 2,000 or 3,000 people.

Li Yuntian was not worried that Li Li would tear up the agreement reached between the two, because Li Li had already received enough benefits, and now he wanted to end the war in Jiaozhi more than him.

Moreover, Li Yuntian transferred the main force of the Ming army away, even if Li Li could take advantage of the weak strength of Jiaozhi to capture the city controlled by the Ming army, then when the main force of the Ming army arrived at Li Li, he was not sure that he would be able to defend it, so Li Li would definitely not take the risk of doing such a thing that outweighed the losses.

According to Li Yuntian's plan, when the Ming army was suppressing bandits in Guangxi, it was divided into two routes, one to deal with Wei Wanhuang, who was active in Liuzhou Mansion, and the other to deal with Wei Chaochuan, who was active in Qingyuan Mansion, and annihilated the two sides after dividing and encircling them.

Among them, Qin Kun led 10,000 people into Liuzhou Mansion to cut off Wei Wanhuang's road to Qingyuan Mansion in the west, and Han Wei led 10,000 people into Qingyuan Mansion to cut off Wei Chaochuan's eastward escape path, thus separating the two sides.

However, Qin Kun and Han Wei's purpose was only to separate Wei Wanhuang and Wei Chaochuan, and it was the 20,000 recruits who were newly recruited in Guangxi who really attacked them.

After three months of recruit training and three months of intensive training, the 20,000 recruits will go to the front line to fight the bandits, improve their military skills and military qualities, and fight the rebels in Jiaozhi in the future.