Tiger Guards

Chapter 684 Long-term Goals
Zhao Family Manor, outside Changling, Jingzhao.

It was supposed to be a manor, but it had long been abandoned.

The nearby pavilions were also sparsely populated. As peace was restored in the Three Auxiliary Regions, the disaster victims and refugees who had been stranded in Hanzhong and Nanyang returned to their hometowns one after another.

People who returned to their hometowns lost ownership of their original land.

Unless you can find a way to prove that the land and homestead are yours, as long as you can find your tax records in the remaining documents of the county government and deduce from the amount of tax paid, you can prove that you should legally own the farmland and homestead.

As a result, many people who returned to their hometowns in the Sanfu area became landless refugees, and their household registrations were temporarily recorded as those of migrants or tenants.

The military commanders of Wuguan or other border posts only allowed refugees to return to their hometowns and enter the Sanfu region, and prohibited them from escaping.

Currently, over 30,000 households have returned to Sanfu this year, the vast majority of whom have lost their ancestral land.

Taxpayers were already a minority, and the population of the Three Auxiliary Regions had suffered greatly, making it difficult for honest people who paid taxes normally to escape the consequences. In addition, the large-scale destruction of county and prefecture archives made it even more difficult for such honest people to prove that they had relevant tax payment evidence in the past.

The Sanfu area is too large. Even if more than 30,000 households return and disperse to various counties and townships, there won't actually be many people left.

Of the Zhao clan members killed, only Zhao Qi and his nephew Zhao Jian remained. Given Zhao Qi's advanced age, he was naturally unable to shoulder the responsibility of continuing the family line and expanding the bloodline.

Zhao Jian did take several concubines, but his life in exile and on the run brought him severe psychological and physical trauma.

Otherwise, he would have had children long ago due to his diplomatic exchanges over the years.

Therefore, the once-great Zhao family of Jingzhao now consists only of Zhao Qi and Zhao Jian, uncle and nephew, and Zhao Jian's three concubines. Rather than concubines, they are more like high-class maids who take care of the uncle and nephew's daily life.

In addition, there are ten government slaves allocated to Zhao Qi. As long as Zhao Qi remains Zhao Ji's military advisor, his salary and various benefits will not be reduced.

Based on Zhao Qi's official position, the firewood, charcoal, and coal allocated according to regulations ensured that Zhao's family and the government slaves could keep warm and would not suffer from frostbite or freeze to death in the winter.

The room was warm, and Zhao Qi looked healthy and in good spirits.

He perused his own annotated version of Mencius, having already compiled the annotated version and sent it to Zhao Yan, who granted permission for it to be engraved, rubbed, and copied at the universities in Longcheng and Anyi.

But how can one fixate on a single version when it comes to scholarship and annotating the Six Classics?
Especially as Zhao Ji's career became increasingly unassailable and unstoppable, Zhao Qi also began to make subtle adjustments to the annotations in the old version.

Sometimes, changing a single word can alter the meaning.

By providing a proper commentary on Mencius, the Zhao clan of Changling could remain powerful and prosperous, while the Zhao clan of Jishan, following Zhao Ji, could enjoy the wealth and honor of the new dynasty.

To talk about wealth and status is a bit vulgar. As long as the interpretation of Mencius by the Zhao family of Changling is solid enough, they can serve as the right-hand men of the Zhao family of Jishan and together educate the people.

In fact, Zhao Qi, who has devoted his life to studying Mencius, now that he is older and has experienced the extermination of his clan, he actually agrees with Zhao Ji's governing philosophy.

The powerful and wealthy should not be treated as human beings.

He also grasped the core ideology of Zhao Ji's rule, which was that the monarch and the people were one, and the people in the middle were just officials.

Those who are called "臣工" (chengong) view their ministers as mere tools.

Use what is suitable and usable, and discard or destroy what is unusable.

Tools should not dominate everything; instead, comparisons should be made between tools, and the best ones should be used while the inferior ones should be discarded.

Based on this understanding, Zhao Qi began to revise and produce a new "Zhao's Commentary on Mencius".

He perused the new annotations and felt that they were too dangerous, positioning the Zhao family of Changling as the opposite of all the officials in the land.

Now, only he and his nephew Zhao Jian remain of the Changling Zhao clan, and it was the "Chen Gong" who caused the extermination of the Changling Zhao clan. Now that he is old and his family is almost wiped out, Zhao Qi no longer wants to recall or get entangled in the partisan purge and the rights and wrongs among the partisans.

Originally, there was still room for discussion and debate, and it was felt that the death of the Zhao clan member was very meaningful.

However, as the world descended into chaos, the two Yuan brothers vied for power, Liu Biao's passive observation of the world's successes and failures, and the inept performances of other party leaders and scholars, Zhao Qi was no longer willing to confront this issue.

Anyway, he just wanted to make the officials suffer, and that was enough.

Unable to exact revenge on their former enemies, all they can do is dig pits for groups similar to those enemies, providing theoretical support for future monarchs to suppress and torment their officials.

Zhao Qi patiently and carefully studied the text, occasionally taking out a pen to make marks in the gaps between the words, as these were the parts he thought were worth pondering.

With his personal purpose clear, he naturally wanted to build upon Mencius's work by connecting and attaching elements to it through annotations, firmly establishing the concept of the unity of the interests of the ruler and the people, and instilling it into future readers.

Therefore, some parts should not be too abrupt; a gradual approach is necessary.

"uncle."

Zhao Jian's voice came, but Zhao Qi, who was focused on studying the transitions in the characters, couldn't hear it clearly. He didn't even hear Zhao Jian's footsteps.

After a moment, Zhao Jian asked again, "Uncle?"

Just then, Zhao Qi was about to serve tea when he heard the sound and turned to look at the door. He couldn't see anything through the screen and curtain, so he coughed twice and said, "Come in."

Zhao Jian patted the snow off his body before entering the outer hall. He then took off his boots, put on leather wooden slippers, and walked briskly around the screen to the inner hall: "Uncle, the Prefect of the Capital has sent an envoy to request an audience."

"not see."

Zhao Qi didn't even look at the visiting card Zhao Jian presented: "He's in a hurry now, he's in a predicament himself, what does that have to do with my family?"

As he spoke, Zhao Qi pointed to the iron furnace that connected to the fire wall. Zhao Jian had no choice but to step forward and throw the visiting card into the furnace, adding a few pieces of coal as he did so.

As long as Zhao Qi remains a strategist on par with Jia Xu, Pei Mao cannot use violence to threaten or force Zhao Qi to submit.

Even if we capture Zhao Qi and obtain his military advisor's seal, it will have no practical effect.

Many of Jia Xu's former subordinates served in the Zuo Fengyi area. By capturing Jia Xu, one could leverage their connections to mobilize forces from various counties in Zuo Fengyi.

But if you capture Zhao Qi, it will be almost impossible to mobilize additional military forces.

Its sole purpose was to leverage Zhao Qi's reputation to promote him as the leader, thereby keeping more county magistrates from the old official backgrounds neutral and observing the outcome.

The governor of Jingzhao was relatively cleaned up by Zhao Ji, so Pei Mao could not mobilize troops illegally before he officially raised an army... Moreover, he could only control the prefectural and county troops, but without the corresponding imperial edict, Pei Mao could not even mobilize the prefectural and county troops.

The troop mobilization order would not be given to Pei Mao alone, but would also be sent to the prefectural commandant, county magistrate, and county commandant who needed to cooperate.

Zhao Ji was very strict and meticulous in his control over the troop deployment procedures.

Field garrisons are even more beyond Pei Mao's reach; he has no chance of launching an operation on his own.

Zhao Qi thought Pei Mao was foolish for courting death and sacrificing his own and his family's lives for the sake of the clan's prestige, and he didn't want to pay any attention to him.

But he also understood Pei Mao; Pei Mao didn't necessarily oppose or hate Zhao Ji that much.

The Pei family simply cannot do this; some blood must be shed as a way of giving an account to both the old and new dynasties.

(End of this chapter)