Longzang

Chapter 813 The Thirteen Protectors of the Wei Clan
When Wei Yuan emerged from the pass, one of his eyes was clear, while the depths of the other were filled with all sorts of curves and numbers.

With a sweep of his divine sense, he easily separated more than five hundred consciousnesses, which were used to process the backlog of official documents and read recent reports and various battle reports.

In the tenth year of the Tianqi reign, signs of great chaos had already appeared throughout the land. Of the nine states, five were at war with each other. Apart from Jin and Zhao, the Southern Qi was fighting two against one, dividing its forces in the north and south, and defeating the Northern Qi and the Ji state so badly that they could not raise their heads. The Zhao state also raised a detachment and continuously attacked and plundered the Ji state, taking advantage of its chaos.

As the war progressed, this detachment grew larger and larger, gradually showing a tendency to surpass the Western Jin front.

At this time, Wei Yuan's position as the Grand Councilor of the South was as secure as Mount Tai. After recovering Hanyang and Huangping counties, Wei Yuan had become the most powerful figure in the five counties, and he could levy grain and people at will.

Anyone who dares to oppose Wei Yuan, even if they are direct relatives of the Left and Right Chancellors, will be arrested without exception.

After they were captured, they were all locked up in the dungeon. No charges or reasons were given for their imprisonment, and no release date was announced. They were just kept locked up and beaten every few days. The whips, soaked in cold water, were used to make these smooth-skinned lords and ladies understand what it meant to be obedient to me and perish against me.

Wei Yuan's perverse actions naturally drew unanimous condemnation from the court, while numerous scholars with businesses in the three prefectures also launched a verbal attack on him. Wei Yuan, however, refused to back down and rallied a large group of scholars to retaliate, his momentum clearly overwhelming the opposition.

Wei Yuan personally devised a strategy for verbal warfare, which was to avoid defending his own actions and instead relentlessly smear the other side, calling them traitors, national villains, collaborators, liars, and so on.

Furthermore, they focus their attacks on personal morality, such as lust, keeping male lovers, being passive, violating human ethics, or even glancing at someone on the street. They will seize on this and insist that he had shameless thoughts.

The other party naturally refused to admit it, so Wei Yuan's side demanded that they produce evidence. Once someone presented evidence, they started nitpicking. Usually, by the time it came down to proving their innocence, the other party had already lost the argument.

This kind of verbal battle set a precedent in the literary world, and both sides quickly deviated from the original topic, launching into a massive personal attack. As for the original reason for the battle, it had long been forgotten.

Wei Yuan's side clearly had the upper hand in terms of public opinion, and they had cultivated more than a dozen scholars with outstanding combat power and no moral bottom line. Some of them even wrote several novels, making their opponents the main characters. The content was full of various acts of violating human ethics at home and various plots of harming their brothers and family members outside the home.

As a result, every copy of the storybook sold like hotcakes, with one on the theme of incest breaking publication records in a century. The old scholar, who became the protagonist of the storybook, was so angry that he vomited blood and was bedridden. Even in this state, his daughters-in-law and sons-in-law still had to avoid suspicion and were subject to gossip.

The reason these people were so powerful was not only due to their own talent, but also because Wei Yuan provided them with ample writing material, which allowed them to perform beyond their usual level, unleash their unknown potential, and stand out from the crowd of scholars.

In the end, these people refined their skills and became known in literary circles as the Thirteen Protectors of the Wei Clan, truly hated by gods and ghosts, and feared by everyone.

This war of words lasted for three months, ending with Wei Yuan emerging victorious.

Wei Yuan was not surprised by this result. When it comes to arguing, the Heavenly Azure Palace is the real professional. With the constant revision of strategies by the people around them and the large sums of Azure Yuan used to pave the way, they are bound to be successful.

As for the integrity of scholars, it has been proven that in the face of Qingyuan, most people can do without it.

However, it cannot be denied that the stronghold of Yunxiang Jiedushi, one of the three major military governors of the Western Jin Dynasty, had been destroyed, making a counterattack impossible. Meanwhile, the Zhao state continued its military campaigns in this direction, simultaneously negotiating and encroaching on Western Jin territory. Wei Yuan, on the other hand, only deployed 100,000 troops in his southern military camp. Several Zhao probes were met with heavy losses; aside from the crown prince, all the princes and princesses suffered defeats at Wei Yuan's hands. The princes and princesses unanimously urged the crown prince to go to war, but he feigned ignorance.

As long as the Southern Military Command stands, the five southwestern prefectures will remain as stable as Mount Tai.

However, while external enemies could not enter, internal troubles never ceased. Apart from Hanyang and Huangping counties, which had been thoroughly ravaged by the Zhao state and the Qingming army, bandits ran rampant in the other three counties, and were extremely arrogant.

When bandits passed through the area, even county magistrates and prefects had to come out to dine with them, and they would also bring along officials of all ranks. Otherwise, the bandits would kidnap all the beautiful concubines, maids, servants, and pageboys from the officials' homes, imprison them for ten days to half a month, and then release them.

As a result, officials of all ranks had no choice but to comply, since no one wanted to be associated with such a powerful figure. The bandits were all vigorous and fierce; a day in their hands was more tiring than a year spent by the master's side.

Of course, the officials who could become high-ranking officials were all very flexible and capable, which is why such a thing had never happened before.

Even the bandits had their code of honor; they robbed money, grain, and people, but they never touched land deeds or documents. This relieved all the wealthy families.

In their eyes, gold, jade, jewels, calligraphy, paintings, and servants are all fleeting wealth. Even if everyone is gone and not a single copper coin is left, as long as the land and the house are still there, and a sum of money is sent from their family in the capital, they can recover their strength in less than twenty years.

As long as the bandits did not alter the ownership of the land and houses, everyone could tolerate it. Some even praised the bandits for their understanding of righteousness and began to consider trying to win them over or curry favor with them.

This was also Wei Yuan's strategy; it wasn't time to cross the bottom line of these wealthy families. Wei Yuan wanted people, while the wealthy families wanted land and houses; there was actually no life-or-death conflict between them.

With the situation completely under control, Wei Yuan reopened grain trading, and the prices were not high. As a result, wealthy merchants flocked to the market, buying grain in large quantities. Wei Yuan accepted all comers, selling as much as they wanted.

Moreover, the bigholders quickly discovered that canned military rations were not much more expensive than raw grains, making them more cost-effective, so they switched to buying canned goods in large quantities.

Despite the release of food supplies, the number of refugees forced to leave due to famine did not decrease at all.

This was within Wei Yuan's expectations. After all, the grain buyers were large households, and they had no obligation to distribute the grain. The farmers also didn't have the money to buy grain. So, when large households occasionally distributed porridge, it was only enough to ensure that the farmers wouldn't starve.

Moreover, after Wei Yuan sold off a large amount of grain, the price of grain in the three counties did not drop at all. All the grain was stored in the lords' granaries, and without money, you couldn't get a single grain. After all, having experienced the good old days when a tael of silver cost one jin (500 grams), no one wanted to go back to the days when a tael of silver cost ten jin.

While the outside world of Qingming was in dire straits, the inside world was thriving. On the first day of the Lunar New Year, with the arrival of a new wave of refugees, the population of Qingming officially exceeded 30 million.

(End of this chapter)