choke element

Kaifeng House.

This city once had prosperity unimaginable by the world, and it also experienced countless sufferings. As the capital of the Song Dynasty, its golden glory and dazzling glory have long gone away, but even if only a little bit of legacy is left, it is enough to make this city have a vitality that surpasses its peers. Even the new north Tianjin Prefecture, which has grown up, will also follow.

In the middle of the twelfth lunar month last year, Kaifeng Prefecture resumed the Lantern Festival that had been so popular decades ago. The city immediately provided residents and guests with all kinds of pleasant, fresh and lively things to enjoy. After a hundred years, the city once again welcomed merchants from all over the north and south, even from the farthest reaches of Sichuan.

This year's festival is approaching, and Kaifeng Mansion has come up with a new trick, ordering to advance the date of the Lantern Festival by half a month. As a result, colorful sheds and exposed houses were erected on both sides of several streets radiating from the center of Kaifeng City to serve as temporary venues for displaying lanterns and displaying various goods.

This not only made local restaurants and merchants extremely excited, but also some Buddhist temples and Taoist temples outside the city became particularly lively.

A large number of people swarmed on the streets. They not only watched, cheered, burned incense, and asked for fortune-telling, but they were also busy negotiating, doing business, buying small items, and buying everything in bulk. There are more people here watching dramas, listening to stories, gambling and playing chess, and watching other people's plays and games. The jubilant crowds seemed to cover up decades or hundreds of years of decline, and made people forget the disaster of war.

Of course, the war never really stopped on the northern border of the Great Zhou Dynasty. The day before yesterday evening, news came by horse on the postal road that the emperor led his army to the north and hit the old Ushabao area in one fell swoop, where he killed the new army formed by the Mongols. The emperor was so majestic that the Mongols Zhan Xue was frightened and made many concessions, which greatly deepened the court's control over the grassland.

For officials south of the Yellow River, the threat from the Mongols seemed to have passed a long time ago, and the grasslands were very far away. What happened there seemed to be in another world.

But no matter what, this is good news. The officials' faces were filled with joy and they walked a little faster when they came and went. Yesterday, many people did not eat in the official office at noon, but chose to go home to tell their families the good news. Yin Chang, the deputy left-behind officer in Nanjing and the deputy envoy of the Nanjing Road Tongjun Army, simply ordered that today he also informed the officials I took a half-day off to make them all happy.

Because Emperor Guo Ning of the Great Zhou Dynasty liked to patrol everywhere. If the superiors had good ideas, the subordinates would follow suit. In several unified military divisions in the south, including Nanjing Road, military commanders are usually stationed directly in the army and travel to and from the borders of directly facing enemy countries. It is their deputy who is responsible for daily military and political affairs.

Especially during the New Year holidays, Yin Chang was always busy with many people coming in and out of the courtyard where the Office of the Tongjun Division was located. Not only were there relevant officials from the Left-behind Department and the Tongjun Division, but also the Transport Department and the Sentencing and Inspection Department. I often send people to ask for instructions and enquiries. It wasn't until Yin Chang ordered everyone to disperse, and after entering the courtyard several times, it became quiet.

Looking at where Yin Chang was, he found that even the soldiers on duty at the door had been dismissed.

Inside and outside, he was the only one sitting in the hall.

Yin Chang didn't go back to his mansion, he just sat there and read through the thick documents, writing down a few lines from time to time.

The noble warriors of the Great Zhou Dynasty had mixed origins. Many of them were just pawns and bandits, and they did not even know a few words. They held high positions just because they clung to Guo Ning. Guo Ning has continuously strengthened the construction of the military academy over the years, and introduced these groups of people to the military academy in turn for training. This is of course to cultivate the backbone of the military, but also because many people in the army have shallow knowledge and are not enriched, making them embarrassed for their big tasks.

Yin Chang is different from them.

As early as the Taihe period, he had achieved the sixth rank of Binzhou military jurisdiction by virtue of his achievements in conquering the Song Dynasty. If it were not for the influence of Han status, I am afraid that the fifth-grade commander and the fourth-grade defense commander would not be impossible to win. In the following ten years, Yin Chang, the military commander, became the de facto leader of a state, and he still achieved considerable results in both military and political administration.

When turmoil arose in various parts of Shandong, Yin Chang managed to get everything right and stood firm. In the eyes of the court, he was a powerful local official and one of the few great leaders in the red coat army. When he arrived in Ding Haijun, he was also He left the town of Jinan and served as an envoy to the Xingde Army.

Such senior officials will naturally gather huge authority. Especially when he was in the big city of Kaifeng and came into contact with various forces. This year, even if Guo Zhongyuan returns to Kaifeng, Yin Chang will still be busier than him.

After reviewing more than a dozen books in one breath, Yin Chang looked up at the sky outside the hall.

I don't know when thick clouds hung low in the sky, as if you could reach out and touch them. The courtyard was surrounded by brackets and eaves on three sides, making it look increasingly darker. Yin Chang stood up, held the candlestick himself, and lit several large copper lamps around the room. He felt that his heart was beating fast and his palms were sweating. He has great ambitions, and he also believes that he has the ability to make great achievements. But in the past few years, the people, money and material resources of the Great Zhou Dynasty have been leaking to the three recruiting bureaus in the north. The three military commanding bureaus in the south are facing the fattest and fattest piece of meat in the world, but they have never been able to do it. mouth.

Sometimes, Yin Chang had to compromise with this fat man, pretending to be modest and friendly to his neighbors, and from time to time he smiled and accepted the generous gifts given by the people of the Southern Dynasties.

This situation made Yin Chang feel very tired. If he wanted money, he could have spent the first twenty years of his life as a local emperor. But he doesn't care about any of that now.

He took refuge with Guo Ning because Guo Ning respected him and regarded him as a new and powerful arm in the Ding Navy. Later, he followed Guo Ning in his crusade against Kaifeng. He also mobilized various units of the Red Coat Army and marched thousands of miles, achieving tangible military exploits.

However, in the past few years, Sikong, the commander of the southern army, had a huge force, but they were never able to truly exert their power. On the contrary, the northern warriors relied on their merits in defending the grasslands and became closer and closer to the inner circle. Yin Chang was very dissatisfied with this.

From a personal point of view, this situation caused him to waste several years in the south, without making any progress in terms of official position, title, or reputation. He is almost sixty years old, how many more years can he last in the army? Every day wasted reduces the few remaining days of his military career that he can still ride a horse to.

From a rough perspective, Yin Changye really didn't understand what the Zhou court had been thinking in recent years. The current territory of the Zhou Dynasty, in the south, is similar to the territory of Guo Zhou that was replaced by the Song Dynasty, except for the southwestern Jing Road in the Southern Dynasties.

At that time, Wang Pu, Guo Zhou's adviser, gave advice to Zhou Shizong, believing that the way to attack was to start with the Yi. We should first take the north of the Yangtze River, and then sweep the south of the Yangtze River. We will get Wu Zegui and Guang as internal ministers. Min and Shu can summon them by flying letters. If they don't arrive, they will advance from all sides and sweep across Shuping. The easy ones are pacified one by one, and then the difficult ones are taken northward.

This strategy was the later strategy used by the Song Dynasty to unify the world, and it is still correct today. If we have to find faults and point out the omissions, we can only talk about the difficulty of first easy and then difficult, because Song State has no way to win in the north and lacks horses, so it is really impossible to win.

But Zhou Dynasty is not Song Dynasty! The Great Zhou Dynasty is in the north, with a vast northeastern hinterland, endless horses and foreign races to drive, which is more than a hundred times stronger than the Song Dynasty!

With such conditions, why not fight? Why not wipe out the Song Dynasty and hide in Yiyu? What's the point of doing business with Song people? Since the south is rich, wouldn't it be more satisfying to grab it with a knife?

Yin Chang did not understand the emperor's intention anyway. He wrote several times, vaguely mentioning whether the national policy should be changed in response to the current situation. But the court never responded.

Yin Chang was very impatient about this. So taking advantage of his current position and the connections he had accumulated over decades of long-sleeved skills, he gradually began to gather a group of soldiers who were interested in going south to fight and make meritorious deeds. Even starting last year, he reached out to Tianjin Prefecture, trying to continuously transfer people to The supplies in the north were held back for a while, relaxed, and then gradually leveraged changes in the general direction from these small things.

With his shrewdness and ability, he can naturally handle these things properly, which is effective and does not involve himself.

But among the documents returned from the postal route this time, in addition to Lubu who had won the battle in the north, there were also urgent reports from two subordinates he sent to the north, Xu Wende and Guo Zheng. The urgent report said that the left and right department, a supervisory agency directly under the emperor, had targeted Tianjin Prefecture for some reason, and that Li Yun, the doctor of the left and right department, was personally investigating. The two of them had a vague feeling that the visitor was evil, and after discussing it, they decided to leave Tianjin Mansion quickly to avoid the limelight.

Neither of these two people are hesitant. Since they said in the secret letter that they wanted to leave Tianjin Mansion, they would not delay. Calculating the distance traveled, they would not be much slower than Fei Qi on the post road. Yin Chang estimated that at most two days later, at this time, the two of them should return to Kaifeng and report to Yin Chang.

Where are they? Why not?

Yin Chang looked outside the door. Two of his close subordinates were still coming.

He was a little restless. When I unfolded the military and political documents on the desk, I felt dizzy and couldn't stand it anymore.

At this moment, footsteps were heard outside the courtyard gate, and several people were hurriedly walking. Yin Chang threw the document away, stood up and went out to greet him.