Guiyi Fei Tang

Chapter 328 Prepare early
"Pattering..."

At the end of the winter month, a rain and snow made the city of Chang'an even colder.

But compared with the atmosphere in Xianning Palace, this so-called coldness is nothing.

At this time, there was a depressing atmosphere in the Xianning Palace.

Emperor Li Yi sat high on the Golden Platform, tightly holding in his hands the urgent memorials from the five towns of Lingxi, Guiguan, Hunan, Jiangxi, Xuanshe, and his face was gloomy and uncertain.

His eyes were like knives, slowly sweeping over Pei Xiu, Jiang Shen, and Lu Yan in the hall.

"The troops of five towns can't stop a mere nine hundred rebels?"

Li Yi's voice was cold and sharp, with anger and doubt that could not be concealed in his tone: "Is the world today going to repeat the rebellion of Wang Shouwen in the past?"

"Your Majesty..." Pei Xiu stepped forward and bowed, his tone calm but with a hint of helplessness:
"Your Majesty, the rebels are cunning and often take detours, avoiding the strong and attacking the weak."

"Although the soldiers from the five towns tried their best to hunt them down, they were unable to annihilate them in one fell swoop."

"Cunning?" Li Yi frowned, obviously not satisfied with Pei Xiu's explanation.

"Is this unknown general really capable of doing this, or are the military governors and governors of the five towns incompetent and are exaggerating the chaos into something extraordinary?"

Seeing that the emperor was dissatisfied, Pei Xiu could only sigh in his heart, then slowly lowered his head and dared not say anything more.

Seeing Pei Xiu remained silent, Li Yi became even angrier. He then turned his gaze to Jiang Shen and spoke in an even harsher tone:
"Have the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of Finance actually allocated the money and food for the garrison troops in the eight garrisons in Lingxi and other places?"

"If the funds were allocated to the right places, why would these garrison soldiers be dissatisfied and riot?"

For Li Yi, who lived in the Sixteen Kings' Mansions and the palace all year round, he always yearned for the outside world and made various tours.

He didn't understand why Wang Xianzhi and others would mutiniate. Even though they hadn't been home for three years, they didn't need to mutiniate to protest against the court, right?
Because of this, he attributed the problem to the lack of money and grain. However, Jiang Shen, who was in charge of the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of Finance, suddenly changed his expression and bowed quickly, saying:
"Your Majesty, the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of Finance have all paid out the full amount of money and grain, and there has been absolutely no deduction!"

"Then why are they causing trouble?" Li Yi asked impatiently. Jiang Shen was embarrassed when he saw this, but he still had to respond:
"The garrison soldiers rebelled because the imperial court extended the garrison period. In addition, there were too many poisonous miasma and snakes, insects, rats and ants in the west of the Ling Mountains, and many garrison soldiers died. Therefore, the remaining garrison soldiers were dissatisfied with the imperial court, so they took this risk..."

When Li Yi heard the words "extend the garrison period", his face suddenly darkened.

The extension of the garrison period was an order he personally issued.

Now that Jiang Shen brought it up to him in person, it was like a slap in the face, making him embarrassed and unable to refute.

For a moment, Li Yi was speechless, causing the hall to fall into a brief silence.

Feeling the suffocating atmosphere, Lu Yan carefully observed the emperor's expression with his peripheral vision. Seeing that the emperor's expression was not right, Lu Yan's eyes rolled and he had an idea in his mind.

"Your Majesty, the extension of the garrison period is all my fault."

Lu Yan stood up, his back straight, and bowed without being servile or arrogant, his tone firm and frank:
"If I had not failed to properly appease the garrison soldiers, causing them to become dissatisfied, the disaster today would not have occurred."

"I ask Your Majesty to punish me so as to calm the criticisms of the world..."

Li Yi was surprised by Lu Yan's act of standing up, but he quickly reacted and a complicated look flashed in his eyes.

After a while, the look in his eyes gradually softened, and he even nodded slightly.

Lu Yan's words not only helped him out of the predicament, but also put the responsibility on himself.

Thinking of this, Li Yi's tone softened a lot. He raised his hand to signal Lu Yan to stand up, and said soothingly:
"Minister Lu is loyal to the country. This mistake is just a small matter. You should learn from it and avoid making the same mistake again. There is no need to punish him."

"Thank you for your kindness, Your Majesty..."

In response to Li Yi's comfort, Lu Yan quickly bowed to express his gratitude, then returned to his original position.

Seeing that he knew when to advance and retreat, Li Yi breathed a sigh of relief, then looked at Pei Xiu and Jiang Shen:
"The Tianping Army's rebellion must not be delayed any further."

"Pass on my order, ordering all towns to intensify the encirclement and suppression, and make sure to defeat them before the end of the year!"

"As for the extension of the garrison period for the Lingxi garrison troops, let's put it on hold for now."

"Order the governor Cai Jing to recruit 5,000 soldiers from the refugees in southern Jing and send them south. The garrison troops in the seven garrisons in western Lingxi only need to wait for Cai Jing to lead 5,000 soldiers south, and then they can return to their hometowns."

In order to prevent the garrison soldiers in Lingxi from rebellion again, Li Yi finally decided to overturn his previous decision and pacify the remaining seven garrison soldiers and transfer them back to their hometowns.

"Your Majesty, five thousand new soldiers are too few. I'm afraid we can only defend Lingxi, but cannot rush to help Annan, Qianzhong and other places."

"I suggest recruiting 4,000 new soldiers from Hunan, Jingnan, and Jiangxi, and sending them south to defend the border in western Lingnan."

Pei Xiu made a suggestion, but Li Yi waved his hand and said, "The Southern Barbarians have been severely damaged by Gao Pian. I heard that Gao Pian has trained Dongchuan troops and horses since the beginning of the year, and has obtained 30,000 elite soldiers."

"With these 30,000 strong troops, I believe we will be able to recapture Zhuti and other counties in no time."

"If the Southern Barbarians knew about the situation in Dongchuan, they would not dare to attack other places!"

Li Yi was very confident, but Pei Xiu and Jiang Shen looked at each other and saw fatigue on each other's faces.

"The matter of the rebellious soldiers and Lingxi has been settled. I am exhausted."

"I will take my leave now. May you live for tens of millions of years..."

Seeing that Li Yi had hastily ended the regular meeting, Pei Xiu and Jiang Shen had no choice but to bow and leave, while Lu Yan followed closely behind.

After they left, music was heard again in Xianning Palace soon after. At the same time, the news about Wang Xianzhi spread throughout Chang'an as the regular meeting ended.

The yamen officers of the Jinzouyuan in each town copied the information and sent it to their own town, Longyou being one of them.

In just five days, the information from the Jinzouyuan was delivered to Didao City, and at that time Liu Jilian was discussing matters with Li Ji, Ma Cheng and others.

There is a sand table about ten feet long and six feet wide in the main hall, which almost covers the entire Helong area.

Stone blocks and clay represent mountains, scattered sand represents desert Gobi, and flags represent various forces. The wooden carved city is only two or three inches in size, but it is vivid and lifelike.

Among them, the situation in Shanzhou area is particularly eye-catching.

"Chen Jingchong and Zhang Chang sent a letter saying that Fuxi City has been captured. The local people in the city surrendered without a fight. We captured 7,000 captives and nearly 100,000 cattle, sheep and horses."

As he spoke, Liu Jilong removed the off-white military flag representing Tuhun and planted the red military flag representing Longyou in Fuqi City on the west bank of Qinghai.

Li Ji, Ma Cheng and the other two, like Liu Jilong, rested their hands on the sand table and looked around at Fushiji City.

Shang Duoluo pointed at Fushi City and said, "This Fushi City was the capital of Tuyuhun in the past. It is of medium standard and can accommodate 40,000 to 50,000 troops."

"We can station all our troops here, but if we want to use this as a center and spread out to the surrounding areas to attack the Tuhun tribes, we may need to pay attention to the cold miasma."

Cold miasma is altitude sickness. Liu Jilian remembered that the altitude near Qinghai Lake was about 3,000 meters. The altitude sickness at this altitude was not too strong, but if troops were sent to the northwest or southwest, they would inevitably suffer from altitude sickness as the altitude increased.

Although Chen Jingchong was very cautious in sending troops and marching, and it took him more than four months to gradually adapt his army to the altitude around Qinghai, daily life and combat are two different things.

It will take a long time for the soldiers of the Tuhun punitive army to fully adapt to the local environment.

Fortunately, Liu Jilian did not intend to completely conquer the Tuyuhun area. All he needed to do was to use the smaller ones to defeat the larger ones, maintain a balance among multiple parties, and make hundreds of thousands of Tuyuhun people more dependent on Longyou.

The Tuhun punitive army focused mainly on training troops rather than occupying land.

While thinking, Liu Jilong wanted to say something, but at this time Cao Mao walked quickly into the main hall with an urgent letter from Chang'an in his hand.

"General Jie, there is rebellion in the imperial court again!"

Cao Mao's tone was somewhat teasing, and Liu Jilong asked, "Which town is the rebellion?"

"Lingxi, but it can also be said to be the Tianping Army."

Cao Mao replied, but Liu Jilong frowned slightly. He seemed to have no impression of the Tianping Army's rebellion. Could it be that it was just like Wang Shouwen's rebellion in the past, and it was the butterfly effect brought about by himself?

"Let me see……"

He took the express letter from Cao Mao, opened it and started reading it.

My original curiosity disappeared when I saw the names of the troublemakers, leaving only astonishment.

"Wang Xianzhi?!"

Liu Jilian was speechless. Although he knew that the court had mobilized soldiers from eight garrisons to guard the border, he did not know the names of the commanders of each garrison.

With his status, there was really no need for him to pay attention to the governor and officials below him, so he did not know until now that the garrison troops of the Tianping Army were led by Wang Xianzhi to Lingxi, and now they were even rioting because of the extension of the garrison period.

"Could they have the same name?"

Liu Jilong flipped through the information until he saw that Wang Xianzhi's destination was Tianping Army and his hometown was Puzhou. Only then did he confirm that this Wang Xianzhi was the Wang Xianzhi he knew. "Damn it, this is a mess... It's all a mess..."

Liu Jilong was in a mess as one of the two men, Wang and Huang, whom he was counting on to start the fire, had turned out to be a government soldier.

Historically, Wang Xianzhi's abilities and vision were not top-notch compared with many of his contemporaries.

Now that he is causing chaos as a rebel, even if he can succeed, I'm afraid he won't be able to maintain it for long.

Judging from the court's attitude and past actions, Wang Xianzhi, as the leader of the rebels, basically has no way to escape.

However, nothing is absolute. Liu Jilong wanted to know what kind of situation Wang Xianzhi could create in the Central Plains.

If he could cause a turmoil as great as Pang Xun's uprising, Liu Jilian would not mind adding fuel to the fire and sending the Tang Dynasty to see Emperor Taizong ahead of time.

"Cao Mao, keep a close eye on Wang Xianzhi's movements."

Liu Jilong explained to Cao Mao, who was surprised when he heard it: "General, even if a general rebels, you don't need to care so much, right?"

"No..." Liu Jilong shook his head and said to everyone:
"The refugees in the Central Plains today are everywhere, just like the gunpowder in our hands. As long as there is a little spark, it will explode."

"Opportunities only come to those who are willing to work hard. If we are not willing to put in this little effort, sooner or later others will snatch the opportunity away from us."

Li Ji and the others nodded when they heard this, and Cao Mao also bowed and said, "General, I will send someone back to Chang'an to tell the Imperial Court about this."

"Go!" Liu Jilong gestured to him to do the work first, and then looked at Li Ji and others.

Seeing that Liu Jilong had arranged everything, Li Ji immediately bowed and said:
"General, when are we going to leave from the east?"

The development of Longyou has reached a bottleneck, and generals such as Li Ji are not good at governing the local area, so it is difficult to achieve results.

The only place where they can achieve results is on the battlefield.

They didn't dare to say it before because Liu Jilong didn't express his position.

Now that Liu Jilong had mentioned the possibility of unrest in the Central Plains, Li Ji boldly asked Liu Jilong about it.

Seeing Li Ji speak, Ma Cheng and Shang Duo Luo also turned their eyes to Liu Jilong.

Facing the gazes of the three people, Liu Jilong hesitated for a moment before saying, "The first bird to appear will be shot down by the arrow. We can't show up too early, nor too late."

"When will it come to the fore? It will probably be in the next ten years or so..."

Even though the current situation has become worse because of Liu Jilong, Liu Jilong still gave a relatively conservative time.

Ten years later, it was almost the fourteenth year of Xiantong.

Liu Jilian didn't know whether Li Yi could live to that time, but ten years later he would only be forty years old and still have time and energy to fight for the world.

When Liu Bang was forty years old, he was still a village headman who watched dogs fight. When Liu Bei was forty years old, he was defeated by Cao Cao and fled to Jingzhou. When Liu Yu was forty years old, he was still in a passionate confrontation with Lu Xun and barely became the Internal History of Pengcheng.

Compared with these three successful people from the Liu family, Liu Jilong's current status is considered high, not to mention ten years later.

Of course, judging from the current situation, Liu Jilian felt that he didn't even have to wait ten years before he could see chaos in the Central Plains.

Thinking of this, Liu Jilian felt that he needed to summarize the reasons for the failure of Zhu Wen and Li Cunxu.

Although he did not have a detailed understanding of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, he had read a lot of stories about Zhu Wen and Li Cunxu.

Li Cunxu's failure can be easily summarized. He was young and lacked self-discipline, and his bad character led to his own death.

In comparison, although Zhu Wen had his own character problems, it was mainly because of his political mistakes that he killed himself in the later years.

The situation he faced was very similar to that of Zhu Wen. First, he had to deal with the relationship with the Tang Dynasty after going east, and second, he had to deal with the relationship with the meritorious officials of the Yuan Dynasty.

Historically, after Zhu Wen welcomed the emperor back from Qixia, he quickly lost the first-mover advantage he had gained through twenty years of hard work through a series of clumsy operations.

First, he attempted to control the Tang Dynasty directly in his own hands, so that the princes of all parties had a righteous reason to accuse Zhu Wen of his misconduct.

In addition, his direct act of killing the emperor and establishing a new ruler also had a huge negative impact on the image of a loyal minister that he had previously established by welcoming the emperor at Qixia, causing many vassal states to be pushed to the opposite side of him.

He forcibly took power when most of the old and powerful warlords still existed, which politically blocked the possibility of peace for these warlords, and they had no choice but to fight to the death.

In addition, after Zhu Wen proclaimed himself emperor, he slaughtered his close friends and former associates on a large scale, resulting in the wiping out of the Liang army's outstanding cavalry generals and almost forcing Ding Hui and Liu Zhijun to rebel.

Behind these problems, Zhu Wen had many more problems.

Zhu Wen's personal failure was basically a previous version of Li Cunxu's.

He treated his close friends and meritorious veterans harshly, which made it easy for Zhu Yougui to kill the emperor, and the imperial guards did not take any action. This in itself was an indulgence and acquiescence to the status quo.

However, Zhu Yougui was not Li Siyuan, and he did not have high political prestige within the ruling group. His only ruling legal basis was the forged edict of Zhu Wen.

He himself was only the commander of the control cranes. In terms of official rank, he was not as good as Zhu Youwen and Zhu Youzhen. In terms of favor, he was even more defeated by Zhu Youwen in all aspects.

In addition, the legitimacy of his throne was greatly reduced as he came to power by killing the king. He was unable to suppress a group of meritorious officials and veteran generals who had followed Zhu Wen for decades, and was soon overthrown by Zhu Youzhen and others.

In comparison, Li Siyuan fought for the Jin State in Hedong for half his life. He was also the commander-in-chief of the Han and minority troops and the undisputed head of the imperial guards. Not only did he hold a high position and great power, but after the deaths of Li Sizhao, Li Cunshen, Li Cunjin and Li Cunxian, he actually became the person with second only to Li Cunxu in prestige within the ruling group.

However, even so, Li Siyuan himself still needed to display superb political skills to stabilize his rule over most areas of the Later Tang Dynasty and establish a new order centered on himself.

With the lessons of Zhu Wen and Li Cunxu in mind, Liu Jilian had much more lessons to learn than other people of the same period.

In addition, Longyou was conquered by Liu Jilian from scratch, and the customs there were completely different from those in other vassal states.

Liu Jilong could say with confidence that none of the generals under his command dared to contradict him or turn against him.

Even someone like Li Ji, who had a strong influence in the army, appeared very obedient when facing him.

What he needs to be wary of are mainly those generals and officials who may be recruited in the future.

"Marshal Jie, should we prepare early?"

Ma Cheng's questioning woke Liu Jilong from his reflection, and Li Ji took the opportunity to ask, "General, should we take Jiannan first and then Guannei?"

Li Ji's ambition was quite big, he even wanted to take over the entire Jiannan Road in one go.

Even Liu Jilian had only thought of plundering the population of Xichuan and had not thought of directly occupying Shu.

However, after Li Ji's reminder, Liu Jilong was somewhat tempted.

If the situation really becomes so bad that he has to start an army, then taking over Bashu will undoubtedly be very important.

Cui Xuan and Gao Pian of Bashu are both capable people. If they are allowed to occupy Bashu, it will be more difficult to invade it in the future.

If Longyou could capture Bashu, it would be able to form a navy, and in the future it would be able to march downstream from the upper reaches, threaten both sides of the Yangtze River, and even take the south into its possession.

In comparison, the Guannei Road was not that important. After all, he had formed an alliance with the Khitans, and they had not even digested the grasslands yet and had no intention of moving south.

As long as he could take over Bashu, he could then rely on the population of Bashu to sweep away the people inside the pass.

As for the economy and the Tang emperor, if the means are sufficient, the emperor can be used to control the disobedient, but if the means are not enough, it is likely to arouse public anger.

Liu Jilian has no plans for the time being regarding the hot potato of the capital.

Thinking of this, he said to Li Ji: "You go there in person and discuss with Gao Jinda and Cui Shu how to build several important official warehouses in Longnan."

"Soldiers and horses have not moved, food and grass go first."

"It takes a lot of time to build a big official warehouse, and the same goes for raising grain warehouses. We should prepare in advance."

"Yes!"

Li Ji and the other two were very excited when they saw that Liu Jilian was planning to build a large official warehouse in Longnan.

Although each state and county had official granaries, there were only four large granaries that could store more than hundreds of thousands of shi of grain.

The major official warehouses in Longyou were all in Longxi and Liangzhou. This was done because the situation was tense before, and Liu Jilian was worried about the outbreak of war, so he wanted to defend and counterattack.

Now that the situation has changed, it is more likely that an active attack will be launched, so more official warehouses will be needed.

Li Ji turned and left, while Liu Jilong leaned over to check the Helong sand table, pointed at Fuqi City and said to Shang Duoluo and Ma Cheng:
"Please pay more attention to Fuqi City. I know what you are thinking, but the iron must be hard before it can be forged..."

"Yes!"

(End of this chapter)