"In contrast to the bloody March, April has just passed when the ninth year of Baoda has not been peaceful, and May, which everyone laughs at and calls the 'month of the envoy', has arrived. In the hottest weather of that summer, on the road between the countries, on the sea, bright and dark, there were always envoys from various countries sneaking to the target country in various guises, full of worries, full of anxiety, full of hope for the unknown outcome, and full of fear. ”

——Excerpt from "The Book of the Southern Tang Dynasty? Lin Feng's Memorabilia Throughout May, except for Lin Feng who led a team to Liao State for commerce and trade, and Kang Renjie and his entourage to Japan, which were counted as half an envoy, the envoy teams between several other major powers basically did not stop, but some of them were swaggering, showing cars and horses, and some were disguised and stealthy.

Among these large countries, the Southern Tang Dynasty was the most relaxed.

Since the beginning of May, the Southern Tang Dynasty, which has a series of battlefield victories, has assumed the posture of a great power in the world, first sending a group of envoys to the Later Zhou, the gifts are still heavy, and the wording of the documents is still elegant and humble, but the taste of the words sounds a little wrong.

The document handed by the envoy said that the revenge of the Tang Dynasty against Wu Yueguo had been successfully completed, Wu Yue was willing to cede a place in Fuzhou, and the two countries had entered the warehouse, entered the mountain, and rested the sword soldiers, and asked Guo Weisheng of Zhou to stop worrying about this matter.

The second batch of envoys from the Southern Tang Dynasty to the north had not yet set off, and the Daoxi Concert from Li Congqian, the king of Chudiji, arrived first, and with them, there were even congratulatory envoys from Houshu.

In recent years, Meng Chang, the queen of Hou Shu, who has been insisting on "hiding in a small building to become a unified and ignoring Shu's foreign affairs", did not know the "red luan star movement" in the Dao, and suddenly handed a congratulatory document to the Southern Tang Dynasty, which was in the limelight, and directly called Li Jing of the Southern Tang Dynasty "the elder brother of the East"! Meng Chang himself was born in 919 AD, 3 years younger than Li Jing, who was born in 916 AD.

The two groups of envoys who "merged into one" suddenly made the celebratory atmosphere in Jinling City even stronger, and Li Jing, who was in a happy mood, quickly sent a second group of envoys to the north.

This time, the document presented by the envoy of the Southern Tang Dynasty was more straightforward and simple, reprimanding the Southern Han Dynasty and the small country of Yuer, but he had been greedy enough to swallow the elephant, and sent troops to the Tang Guiguan area three times and twice, and the Tang Dynasty had decided to send troops to Wenzhou in the Southern Tang Dynasty, and punished him a little. In the process of exercising justice, Datang will definitely take care of the local people, and will not accidentally hurt any honest and kind person, please don't worry about the Great Zhou Sheng.

Although the document was righteous and awe-inspiring on the surface, the strong flavor revealed between the lines completely annoyed the civil and military ministers of the Later Zhou Dynasty.

Later Zhou Wenchen's rhetoric was still elegant, and a group of fierce generals directly scolded in the court, and the most angry stomach had nowhere to go, and all pointed the spearhead at Wang Yan, who lost troops under Jinzhou City and damaged the prestige of the Great Zhou Dynasty, and unanimously believed that if Wang Yan had not dragged the Great Zhou back, the Great Zhou would not have lost face in front of the envoys of his subordinate countries, and strongly demanded that this ancient criminal be escorted back to Beijing and severely punished for his incompetence.

Guo Wei himself was killed from the battlefield, he knew the situation of the entire Jinzhou City War, and knew that he was afraid that this stalemate would be the same loss of troops, so he had to try his best to calm the anger of such a brother in the army, turned around, and asked a cadre of Wenchen how well he had studied the measures to reform the Southern Tang Dynasty?

Under Guo Wei's questioning, he worked overtime for a few days in a row, and rushed out a whole set of reform plans for the Great Zhou, and the basic context is very clear: reduce harsh sentences, reduce taxes, and hide wealth from the people; training elite soldiers, strict military discipline, and the formation of special forces; Emphasis on science and technology, selection of talents, and the establishment of the Academy of Sciences; Centralize military power, slow down the reduction of Tibet, and establish the authority of the central government......

After these measures were made public on a small scale, they were immediately revealed by people with intentions, and immediately caused an uproar in the Great Zhou court.

At this time, the latter week was the time of the alternation of the old and new dynasties, and to put it nicely, it was a waste to be revived, and to put it more realistically, it was a sinking scabies. These measures of determined change directly pointed to the interests of the magnates of the former Later Han Dynasty and the New Later Zhou Dynasty, which can be regarded as a big hornet's nest. On the surface, everyone says that the reform measures are very good and powerful, but when they change their mouths, they are all kinds of proposals that need to take into account the objective situation and specific national conditions, but in essence, they are accusatory and slanderous and find faults. In the face of one wave after another wave of provocations, a group of members of the "reform team" who were former Tianxiong Army staff members were tired of coping.

And the most headache for Guo Wei is that there are too many saints and Confucians in the Central Plains, quoting scriptures and classics one by one, allusions and holy sayings are flying all over the sky, stories and examples are everywhere, and a hastily introduced reform measure is "attacked" from every implementation detail.

Of course, Guo Wei knew the root cause of the matter, and the reduction of taxes hurt the interests of civilian officials, and the concentration of military power would inevitably hurt the interests of military generals, so it would be strange if they did not oppose it. After hearing the most reluctant, Guo Wei couldn't help but get angry, and first theorem two things: the formation of special forces and the establishment of the Academy of Sciences.

Academy of Sciences or something, everyone is on the same level, all of them are "white-necked", and naturally there are few people to fight. But for the question of who will lead this special forces, it is equivalent to throwing another hornet's nest into a group of generals.

Lin Feng, an unknown poor boy in the Southern Tang Dynasty, won martial arts all over the world, what did he rely on? Isn't it this Raushzi's special forces? As a result, the itchy generals have sacrificed their hidden performance skills - the generals in the capital swore one by one to prove that they were the most suitable to serve as the leader of this special force; The adults who are also the envoys of the festival near Kaifeng, Tokyo, are not far behind, and they have expressed their willingness to select elites in their own army to try. Within two days, well-informed envoys from all over the country sent fast horses to deliver the medals, show their loyalty, count their achievements, display their qualifications, and ask for permission to select elite soldiers in the army to form special forces.

Guo Wei also had his own selfish motives in proposing to form a special force first, and he secretly instructed a military general to nominate Chai Rong to return to Beijing to serve in this position.

As soon as this proposal was halfway through, Wang Jun, the privy envoy and the Pingzhangshi of the Tongzhong Shumen, jumped out and vigorously opposed the proposal, and he gritted his teeth and couldn't wait to bite the proposed generals and swallow them alive! On weekdays, because Chai Rong, the adopted son of the saint, is too smart and decisive and too prestigious, he has to even stop his recital, if he is allowed to return to Beijing easily, wouldn't it be overturned?

Arguments and arguments, balance and balance, this heavy responsibility fell on Zhao Kuangyin, the head of the eastern and western classes of the forbidden army, who was in charge of the palace guards! Zhao Kuangyin, who was twenty-three years old and the future Taizu of the Song Dynasty, started from this unexpected position and embarked on a different road of hegemony in the past.

When the quarrel and debate in the Later Zhou court were not over, the Wu Yue envoy group with Xiangguo Wu Cheng as the envoy rushed to Kaifeng, Tokyo on an inconspicuous merchant ship. In order to conceal the public, Wu Cheng, who "did not follow the usual path", did not follow the normal process of exchanges between the two countries at all, and directly stabbed his name to the military department and the privy deputy envoy Fan Zhenfu, requesting to meet the Great Zhou Emperor directly.

Fan Zhen, who has always been known for his "honesty and never being fed by the Quartet", was shocked when he saw Wu Yue, and immediately took Wu Cheng into the palace to meet Guo Wei secretly.

The terms of the alliance brought by Wu Cheng were very simple and straightforward, Wu Yue was willing to be a subordinate country of the Great Zhou, with an annual tribute of 200,000 guan and 200,000 silk horses, and asked the Great Zhou and Wu Yue to form a military alliance, attack the Southern Tang Dynasty in the north and south, and avenge the seizure of Fuzhou.

At the time when the current situation is difficult, Guo Wei is of course willing to have a big country take the initiative to take refuge, but the major military affairs are really reckless, and he signaled Fan Zhen to arrange Wu Cheng and others in the mansion, keep it secret, and then make a decision after the Great Zhou discussion.

In the following days, Guo Wei summoned his confidants and important ministers in the palace to discuss secretly and weigh the pros and cons.

The quick-attack faction insisted that the development momentum of the Southern Tang Dynasty was very strong, and if this trend was not suppressed, it would become a big problem in the future, and that the long-term pain was better than the short-term pain, and that they should first send heavy troops to kill their morale; The slow attack faction believes that the current Great Zhou is not stable internally, and the lost Jinzhou region is a thorn in the heart, and the attitude of the Northern Liao State is unclear, if it dares to attack a big country at this time, once it loses or the war drags on, it will be disadvantageous to the Great Zhou!

Both factions have reason, and both have pros and cons, and Guo Wei can't make a decision for a while.

A few days later, two other shocking news came: one was that Lin Feng had been appointed by the Southern Tang Dynasty as the Shouzhou Assassin and the Shouzhou Regiment Training Envoy, sitting on the south bank of the Huai River, facing Tokyo City; The other is that the envoy group of the Southern Han Dynasty has also arrived. Like Wu Cheng, the envoy of Wu Yue, Pan Chongche, the head of the Southern Han envoy group, went directly to the palace of Pu Wang, the doctor of Zuo Zhi and the privy direct study, to submit a letter to ask for Guo Wei to be introduced.

At this point, the big guys who can make decisions and conclusions in the Hou Zhou, Wu Yue, and Southern Han Dynasty are all gathered!

Just when the three kingdoms were quarreling for the interests, status, name, and dispatch of troops to each country, in the northwest corner of the Great Zhou Dynasty, Liu Chong of the Northern Han Dynasty also sent his own envoy group to the Liao State in late May.

The envoy time of the Northern Han Dynasty was more than a month earlier than the envoy group in the real history, but because of the brilliant achievements of Jinzhou City and the fact that he became the party that took the initiative to attack, Liu Chong did not invite himself to be the nephew emperor in this invitation ceremony as in the original history, but called himself a younger brother, asking the two countries to form a brotherly blood alliance with each other and fight the Later Zhou together.

Shi Zai, "In June, Liu Chong was attacked by Zhou, sent an envoy to call him a nephew, and asked for a soldier to thank him. ”