Regarding Liu Bei's words, Guo Hong was speechless. Ma Riyan frowned and pondered, and finally sighed deeply.

"Xuande, what you said makes sense, I admit that I can't say anything about you, but if you continue like this, the resentment of the officials will be very great, and when the time comes, you will ............."

"It is better for officials to be angry than to be resentful among the people." Liu Bei shook his head and said, "The officials are angry, what can they do?" Can their grievances outweigh the necessity of being officials? Given a choice between resentment and official status, what will they choose? They will only continue to be officials with resentment, and they dare not speak out. And the people's grievances are different, their grievances are big, they will rise up, give up the identity of the people, and fight to the death with the government. The choice between the two is completely different, so it doesn't matter if the officials are more resentful. After hearing this, he actually felt that what Liu Bei said was very reasonable.

But............ It's still a bit dangerous for the people who toss them, right? And............

"Xuande, what you envisioned is right, but how long can you maintain such a situation?" Liu Bei glanced at Ma Riyan.

"Ma Gong, this situation will eventually end, but now, aren't we going through it? Isn't Dahan recovering? Ma Riyan was stunned for a moment, and a glimmer of brilliance suddenly appeared in his eyes.

Leaning less, he showed a wry smile on his face again.

"But this will eventually end, right?"

"People will eventually die, this is an unchangeable ending, and there is no such thing as immortality in the world, so it is most important to have a clear conscience when you are alive. Liu Bei smiled: "Just do everything you need to do when you are alive, live up to the years, and have a clear conscience, this is enough." Ma Riyan finally understood Liu Bei's intentions.

So, he shook his head.

"Yes, people will eventually die, have a clear conscience, live up to the years, it's enough, Xuande, I remember your words in my heart."

"Very good." After speaking, Liu Bei looked at Guo Hong again.

"Guo Gong, what about you?" Guo Hong spread his hands.

"What can I do? Si Li's lieutenant is such an unpleasant position, and he will do it, the Guo family has always been like this, but Xuande, before I die, I want to be the third duke. Liu Bei nodded.

"That's what I promised you."

"Okay." Guo Hong didn't say anything more. In the past, the Imperial Court also had a general concept of a state council, but there was no more practical demand for local development.

Because of the difficulties in data collection and transportation, a series of practical problems made it impossible for even the emperor of the Han Empire to know how big his empire was, how many people and how large it was.

The emperor's understanding of this empire may be one-sided, because many emperors have never left the city of Luoyang, or even the imperial palace, in their entire lives.

In such a situation, it would be overthinking to expect them to be able to govern the country effectively. At this moment, the situation of the Han Empire has undergone profound changes, some unexpected things have appeared, and some unexpected people have risen, making the empire have an opportunity to change.

The biggest opportunity is that paper, as an important writing medium, has begun to be used on a large scale in daily administrative affairs.

Before Liu Bei made paper, the Han Empire also had paper, but limited by technical conditions, the cost of high-quality paper was too high, the production efficiency was too low, and the quality of paper with low cost and high production efficiency was too poor, and it could not be used in national affairs at all.

Therefore, at this stage, the official Han Empire was still using bamboo slips on a large scale, which can better preserve data, to write, and the trouble that came with it was that the price of bamboo slips was not low, and the writing efficiency was not high, and the weight was too heavy.

The cost of collecting data on a large scale and writing data such as population and land for recording is hundreds or thousands of times that of writing on paper, which greatly affected the effective governance and supervision of the local government by the central government of the Han Empire.

Liu Bei discovered this problem and began to make paper very early and perfected the papermaking technology. Finally, in Liangzhou and Yizhou, paper production was first started, and paper was gradually used to replace the writing habits of the officials under his command.

After three or four years, the technology of papermaking was further improved, the number of papermaking craftsmen was greatly expanded, and the number of papermaking workshops was greatly increased.

At present, the main papermaking base of the Han Empire is in Shu County, Yizhou. In the four years of Jian'an, there have been more than 200 officially-controlled papermaking workshops in Shu County, Yizhou, employing more than 10,000 people, who have been working around the clock to make paper from bamboo, providing the government with a huge amount of paper for administrative work.

Judging from the current production and transportation conditions, it is still a little difficult to give the country's readers the freedom to use paper to write, but it is enough to use the produced paper at the level of national governance.

The entire Han Empire has 160,000 officials and a population of more than 50 million.

If you really want to manage it, can you still be sad about a superpower with a population of hundreds of millions? At this stage, the output of paper is indeed enough to use, after the paper is produced, a large number of transportation to Luoyang, by Luoyang for distribution, several years down, there is a considerable amount of paper inventory in various places.

Lightweight, easy-to-use and highly efficient paper has gradually replaced bulky bamboo slips and has become the first tool used by officials to write.

Because of the abundant supply of paper, large-scale data collection has become possible, which has become an unimaginable thing in the era of bamboo slips, and its cost has been greatly reduced compared with the era of bamboo slips, both in terms of transportation and cost.

On this basis, Liu Bei promoted the system of the State Council, and also promoted the system of comprehensive data statistics and aggregation at the local level, so that the local government could no longer delay or refuse to carry out this task under the pretext of high costs.

If you refuse, the end is very bad. Moreover, after the implementation of the new system, the main person in charge directly pointed to the General's Mansion and Liu Bei, who would personally be responsible for the review of the data of the county government and the formulation of tasks, just like Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, he would personally inquire about these data.

After Emperor Zhang of the Han Dynasty, the local governance of the Eastern Han Empire basically maintained the status quo, and all development was based on natural growth, with little active growth by human intervention.

Basically, the government has no subjective initiative to do a good job, and if the days are good, God will bless, and if the days are bad, the thieves will work against me, and whether the local government is good or bad depends on the conscience of the officials.

It is better to count on this thing than to count on gold in the sky. So Liu Bei's meaning is very clear, rest is rest, and welfare promotion is promotion, but you have to do things for me, do it properly, otherwise don't want anything.

For officials who have completed their work indicators, they will not enter the elimination sequence, and for officials whose work indicators have not been completed or falsified, the elimination system of officials is a sword hanging over their heads.

Regarding this point, many officials within the Luoyang court said that Liu Bei's reform was a bit too radical, which had never happened in the past, even if Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty treated officials so harshly, there was no such elimination system.

Liu Bei nodded and said - Yes, Emperor Wu does not eliminate officials very much, they are generally physically eliminated, no matter what central place you have, no matter what you do, as long as you are unhappy, you will be killed.

Why don't we try it too? So no one continued to discuss this issue with Liu Bei.