Li Longji's smile froze, he looked at Xiao Jiangyuan thoughtfully, and was silent for a long time, his eyes seemed to say, you can't even think of this?

It seems that this is not a difficult problem to solve, Xiao Jiangyuan thought about it in the simplest way, that is...... For Concubine Wuxian? It turned out that her family Ah Lang already liked Concubine Wu Xian so much. She couldn't help but think of Empress Zetian, could it be that in the history of the Tang Dynasty, there will be another Empress Wu? Isn't her Ah Lang afraid of repeating the mistakes of the past and reappearing in Wu Zhou?

At this time, Li Longji said: "What are you doing in a daze, why don't you come and help me sort out the imperial case?" As he spoke, he picked up a scroll of music, and frowned as soon as he read it, "Haven't I delegated power enough, why do some small things still have to be decided by me?" I said that why are there more and more of them, dare they refuse to even ask for power in order to be lazy, and want to exhaust me? ”

Xiao Jiangyuan had already knelt down beside Li Longji, and when he heard Li Longji say this, he reached out to take the scroll in Li Longji's hand. After reading it, Xiao Jiangyuan thought for a while and said, "Yes, even the ministers know what to do for such a trivial matter." If you are troublesome, it is better to hand it over to the ministers to deal with it in the future. ”

How could Li Longji not know that Xiao Jiangyuan was taking the opportunity to seize power, saying that he wanted to help him, but in fact he wanted to stabilize his position, so that he could gradually no longer do without her, everything had to be her. She did it so obviously and directly, he didn't know what to do, so he took the test for Xiao Jiangyuan a few times. Seeing that she answered with a straight answer, and it was not the same as before, Li Longji hesitated.

He really didn't want his limited time to be wasted on many small things, but he didn't want Xiao Jiangyuan to achieve her goal, thinking about it, he finally lost to his own feelings and agreed to Xiao Jiangyuan's request.

From then on, all the notes presented to Li Longji no longer only passed through Xiao Jiangyuan's eyes, but also through her hands, and only real national events would be put in front of Li Longji's eyes. And those relatively small matters are handled by Xiao Jiangyuan on her behalf, as long as she informs Li Longji at any time.

At first, Li Longji listened to them all, but later saw that Xiao Jiangyuan handled them very well, so Li Longji didn't have the patience to take the time to listen. At this point, Xiao Jiangyuan's power has increased a little more - there is some negligence, she doesn't want Li Longji to see it, Li Longji can't see it.

The truth is so, but Xiao Jiangyuan has never done this, one is that there is no such performance, and the other is that she wants to be a powerful minister, not a traitor.

In this way, it was not until February of the 11th year of Kaiyuan that Li Longji saw another big and small matter in the imperial case: "What, officials are corrupt and take bribes, you don't know how to deal with this matter?" ”

Xiao Jiangyuan was quite surprised by Li Longji's rhetorical question: "Everyone is not busy forgetting that it is no one else who embezzles and accepts bribes this time, it is General Jinwu." ”

"So what?"

"He is the younger brother of Xiao Zhang Xianggong."

Li Longji's face sank instantly.

This matter is very big, Zhang Jiazhen never imagined that her younger brother who is so transparent will one day be able to drag himself back. Thinking that the corruption of a small official under Yao Chong back then could make him lose his position, let alone his own brother now? Zhang Jiazhen was so anxious that her hair turned a lot whiter, and his subordinate Sijun couldn't do anything now, so he still listened to Zhang's persuasion in the political hall: "What's the use of you being in a hurry?" Something has happened, Brother Ling can only bow down and confess his guilt, and more importantly, keep your phase. ”

Zhang Jiazhen didn't expect that Zhang Shuo, who had been competing with her, would be able to say such a thing, and said ashamedly and humbly: "That Zhang Xianggong, what should I do now?" ”

Zhang said: "You hurry back to your home to sit in the sea, don't enter the palace in the near future, lest the saint see you angry, but it's not good." When the saint sees that you are sincerely repentant and remembers that you have been faithful to your duty, he may forgive you. ”

Zhang Jiazhen nodded again and again, respectfully thanked Zhang Shuo, and packed up her things and went home.

As a result, not only did he not wait for Li Longji's forgiveness, but waited for a derogatory order - from now on, he will go to Youzhou to assassinate him, and he will take up the post as soon as possible, and he must not violate it.

Zhang Jiazhen reacted at this time, and she fell into Zhang's calculations. If he doesn't enter the palace to meet the saint, he won't have a chance to defend himself, but isn't it what Zhang says? The saint must have listened to his slander before he ......

No matter how much he regretted it, he couldn't change everything that happened, so he had to leave Beijing angrily and leave the sad place of Chang'an.

More than ten days later, Zhang Shuo officially succeeded to Zhongshu Ling.

Everyone thinks that Zhang Shuo is vying for power and profit, but only he knows that in his many years of local service, he has seen the shortcomings of many countries. Now that he has become the prime minister, only by centralizing power can he no longer be bound and drastically change everything he wants to change. His goal is to make the Tang Dynasty more prosperous, assist Li Longji to become a more holy monarch, and at the same time allow himself to compete with Yao Chong and Song Jing, becoming the most wonderful stroke in the history books!

And he did.

He first solved two serious military problems. One is that there are too many frontier defenders, and he reduced one-third of them at one time, a full 200,000 troops, so that they can be disarmed and returned to the fields.

The second is that there are too few defenders of Liangjing. He did this more thoroughly, and directly abolished the long-used government military system. The so-called government soldiers are all peasants with a uniform land system, and when there is no war, they farm at home, and once there is a war, they have to leave home to fight, and even the equipment has to be prepared by themselves, and the advantage is that the country does not have to spend too much money on raising soldiers. In the past, when the Tang Dynasty was founded and the war was initially decided, this system could still work, but in recent years, there have been more and more conquests, and the government soldiers have no time to farm at home to ensure that they can eat at home, and they are very likely to have no return, so they are gradually unwilling to become soldiers.

——Some of the fugitives back then came from government soldiers.

There were fewer soldiers, and it was even more difficult to send some of them to the two Beijing garrisons. The 200,000 troops released by the border defense are going to return to their nearby hometowns to regain agricultural mulberry, and they want to transfer some people from them to Liangjing, which is a change of the imperial order, and it is absolutely not feasible to treat the symptoms but not the root cause.

Therefore, Zhang said that he simply changed the government military system to a conscription system, that is, to hire people to serve as soldiers with money, as long as they are in good health, no matter what their background is. In this way, within half a month, 120,000 elite soldiers were recruited in Chang'an alone. They did not need to farm, they only concentrated on defending the two capitals, and the quality of their soldiers was also higher than before.

The distinction between soldiers and peasants begins here.

Li Longji knew that this was a good way, but he still thought about it for a long time before agreeing, because the country's finances were finally in the hands of Yu Wenrong, and gradually improved. At present, as soon as some money is saved, it is all spent, and Li Longji is somewhat reluctant, but fortunately, Yuwenrong has made great efforts to persuade farmers to cover the fields, and Li Longji has put his mind at ease.

After reforming the military, Zhang Shuo set his sights on political affairs. Before that, he submitted many small things to Li Longji to deal with, and there were indeed some of his careful thoughts. The emperor will feel tired, and he is also old, so he naturally feels tired. He has his own full-time job, and he is already very busy, and he has to work part-time as a prime minister at the same time, running between the Zichen Palace, the Political Affairs Hall and his headquarters every day. And even if he came up with a decision tirelessly, the subordinates said that it would be dismissed, and it would be just that many things were inefficient, and in the face of many officials, even if he was the chief prime minister, he could not move, especially Yu Wenrong.

- Zhang said that he really hates envoys who are beyond the jurisdiction of the imperial court.

He simply played Li Longji, changed the political affairs hall to "Zhongshu Menxia", and at the same time set up five rooms under it: the officials' room, the cardinal's room, the soldier's room, the household room, and the torture room. Cancel the step of the provincial audit, and the government affairs will be directly resolved in the future, and then it will be stamped with the seal of "Zhongshu Menxia". In this way, the prime minister changed from a part-time job to a full-time job, and from then on he did everything and took charge of the government.

This greatly improved the efficiency of pushing the executive order, and also allowed the prime minister's power to be more concentrated, which not only solved a lot of cumbersome and troubles, but also reduced some of the pressure on Li Longji - in the past, a letter was drafted, from the draft to the final draft, it was necessary to review at least three times, and Li Longji was indispensable every time.

Li Longji has never been stingy in giving power to the prime minister, so he has more importance to Zhang.

Xiao Jiangyuan thought about it, and he was always uneasy: "In this way, will the prime minister's power be too great?" ”

Li Longji nodded casually: "Yes." ”

"That ......"

"So what?"

Xiao Jiangyuan thought about it carefully, and then understood what Li Longji meant.

Too much power is not necessarily a bad thing, it depends on how the prime minister uses it. A good prime minister will not gain power and mislead the country and the people, and whether a good prime minister can be used, or a good prime minister can be brought out, this is something that only her family Ah Lang can decide.

For her, that's actually a good thing. The prime minister is weighted, if one day her Ah Lang is jealous, and the prime minister is not yet able to be dismissed, her Ah Lang will support another force to balance it. That force must be fully trusted by her family, and with this standard alone, soldiers can't do it, courtiers can't, and only eunuchs are left, the retainers of the Son of Heaven.

At this time, even Wang Maozhong has to stand aside, but she has to do it?

After finishing the military and political affairs, Zhang said that he finally began to do what he wanted to do the most and was the most proficient. This is also the main reason why Li Longji originally wanted to appoint Zhang Jiazhen and Zhang Shuo as prime ministers, and finally chose Zhang Shuo among the two.

In the past, when Emperor Zhongzong was in power, he held a poetry meeting in the Taiji Palace, and Huiwen Zhaorong Shangguan Wan'er weighed the world's talents, and many poets have become famous since then, and many good sentences have also begun to circulate since then.

Such a brilliant poetry event left a deep impression on Li Longji.

Since then, the real prosperity in his mind has been indissolubly related to poetry. He also imagined that if one day, the country was not only rich, but even the children on the street could export chapters, and the people could chant poems no matter what they did, what kind of realm would it be, and what kind of beautiful Tang Dynasty would it be?