choke element

Li Yundun was running around, busy with his business, while Xu Jin was ordered by the emperor to carry out a small-scale purge in Daxing Prefecture and Tianjin Prefecture.

At the same time, officials in Daxing Mansion in Zhongdu were busy with the complicated affairs at the end of the year and the beginning of the year, while arranging the celebration ceremony for the prisoners to be sacrificed when the army returned home from the expedition, as well as the relocation and sacrifice of the royal relatives. These two matters are related to the dignity of the country and must not be ignored. They are also important ways for Confucian officials to show their talents, so they also attract the attention of many people.

It is a pity that although they are all energetic and show their talents in ancestral temples, rituals, music, systems, etc., they try their best to show the laws of the great country and describe the majesty of the Han and Tang Dynasties; but the protagonist of the whole set of rituals, the Emperor Guo Ning of the Great Zhou Dynasty, has always been Stay in Tianjin Prefecture.

The emperor also sent a message saying: The ceremony must be simple and the process must not be complicated. Mr. Guo was not present at the previous rehearsal. I will be present when the formal ceremony is held.

As soon as these words came out, the possibility of all big things was eliminated. If it goes too far and the ritual process is complicated, causing the emperor to behave awkwardly and be laughed at by others, who should be held responsible? Who can afford it?

The once overly noisy atmosphere in some corners of the court returned to calm almost instantly, while Guo Ning had a few days of leisure in Tianjin Mansion.

On this day, Yelu Chucai came to Tianjin Mansion on official business. Guo Ning held a small banquet in the inner garden of the palace and invited Yelu Chucai to be his guest. In addition, he also invited several close friends from when he set up camp in Tangluo, Hebei Province to accompany him.

The building in the inner garden was very spacious and bright, and everyone at the banquet was in a good mood.

While eating, drinking and chatting, Yelu Chucai talked about the concerns of his own Confucian officials, the origin of their knowledge, made a few casual remarks, and then turned to the similar styles of the civil servants of the Southern Dynasties. In this regard, Yelu Chucai's skills were much better than those of Guo Ning and other warriors. When he talked eloquently, the listeners could only nod their heads.

Then Guo Ning said that the spies placed by the Left and Right Department and the Recording Department in the Southern Dynasties also had similar returns. It is said that the Confucianism admired by the people of the Song Dynasty was also mixed with the knowledge of Buddhism and Taoism. It no longer resembled "learning" but became closer to "teaching". People who believed deeply in this often also valued literature over martial arts, and regarded the country with warriors as a troubled time. This greatly weakened the political influence that Zhou claimed to have inherited from the Five Dynasties Orthodoxy, which was helpless.

Yelu Chucai nodded:

"After all, the mentality of the people of the Song Dynasty is very different from that of the people of the Central Plains. The Song Dynasty ruled the people with civil rule and extremely despised military preparation. It has persisted for more than two hundred years and has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Even the youngest children know that there is something outside Donghua Gate. The good men who were called out in Linxuan were thousands of times better than the warriors who defeated the enemy on the battlefield. Although this method could not be used to compete with the big powers, it actually maintained the stable livelihood of the people under the rule of the Song Dynasty. It had to be That makes sense."

Having said this, he turned sideways to look at Monk Luo who was eating and drinking happily, and said with a smile: "In the eyes of the Song people, we are regarded as northern captives, and they think that we are rough and violent, but we are still the mainstream. Maybe, in the Song Dynasty, the people in power In the eyes of foreigners, their huge trade with us is just the fat that feeds the many tigers under His Majesty's command. When the tigers are full of food and drink, there will always be times when they try to break free from their chains. Then, the people of Song Dynasty can easily see As the northern powers continue to fight among themselves, they are seeking their own death."

The military regions of the Great Zhou Dynasty were divided into three recruiting divisions in the north and three unified military divisions in the south. Monk Luo served as the commander-in-chief of Shandong as a marshal. He controlled the base area where the Dinghai Navy was founded, controlled one-third of the Southern Front troops of the Zhou Dynasty, and directly faced the core area and core force of the Southern Dynasty. It can be said that he had a high position. His official position and title have already outgrown his 20-30-year-old figure.

But Monk Luo's appearance now seems to be no different from that upright monk who ruled the mountain as king.

He just put down the wine bowl and looked at the two big pots of vegetables in front of him with all his attention.

A pot of braised elbow and a pot of charcoal roasted leg of lamb. The elbow is red in color, the sauce is thick, and it exudes hot white steam; the skin of the lamb leg is crispy and browned. Just by looking at it, you can think of the soft clicking sound when chewing, and the mixture of crispy and tender between the teeth and cheeks. happy.

When Yelu Chucai looked at him, he just responded casually: "Fat meat? Fat meat is delicious!"

Guo Ning laughed loudly: "If it tastes good, eat more. After I ascended the throne, the chefs I invited have extraordinary skills. These two dishes were specially prepared to comfort me. Try it, do you like it?"

"very good!"

Monk Luo rolled up his sleeves and brought two pots of vegetables directly in front of him: "To tell you the truth, I can't eat such good food in Yidu Military Academy these days. Those cooks in the military academy have been there for many years. No progress at all!”

Monk Luo certainly didn't come to Tianjin Mansion just to hang out. Since last year, the Tatars on the grasslands have become increasingly weak, and the emperor has been patrolling the three northern recruitment departments more and more intensively, revealing his intention to continue to invest resources in the north and launch military aggressiveness.

The military men under the Shandong Tongjun Division were either envious that their colleagues in the north would soon have the opportunity to be rewarded for their meritorious service, or they complained privately as to why the imperial court did not take any measures in the south. The warriors in Shandong generally have high qualifications, great achievements, considerable power in their hands, and greater courage.

Some of them were also working together privately, and some even planned to organize several large-scale provocations at the border in an attempt to attract the emperor's attention back to the southern front.

However, Monk Luo may seem rough and naive, but he actually came from a background as a frontier soldier. He has a lot of sophisticated military management methods and a deep scheming mind.

Just last month, he used various reasons to pull these people away from the headquarters, gathered them together, and then threw them into Yidu Military Academy, where they underwent a whole month of closed training.

During this month, the military academy was personally in charge of Monk Luo, and no one was allowed to enter or leave. Only the instructors smiled ferociously, looking at the juniors who had not come to suffer for a long time, and tortured them severely in various ways.

These instructors are either senior veterans in the military, or officers who have been tested for a long time but chose to retire due to injuries or other reasons. In terms of seniority in the military, even a higher-level general would not dare to show off in front of them. And these instructors have only one mission, which is to force the students to learn the truth that soldiers must not be domineering, must not disobey military orders, and must take obedience as their bounden duty, and re-burn this truth into their minds.

The martial arts group of the Great Zhou Dynasty was extremely powerful. However, Guo Ning never deliberately suppressed him, and even tacitly allowed the warriors to take some harmless measures to win some benefits for his own group. This is completely different from the Southern Song Dynasty’s attitude towards warriors. The Song Dynasty used civilians to control the military power, and used strict laws and regulations to control the military personnel. Even in the military layout, they tried their best to have both Xuan Xuan and Zhi Si; both institutional envoys and appeasement envoys. , the relationship between systems that restrain each other.

This is to prevent the military generals at the middle and lower levels from being related and interacting with each other, so as to prevent the military generals from joining forces and forming large military towns covering large defense areas to join forces to fight against civilian officials or even conspire against them.

The Zhou Dynasty naturally had no such considerations. Guo Ning himself is the most prestigious military commander and the natural leader of the largest faction in the army. What he asked for was that the entire army should work together to form a tight whole.

Guo Ning was not afraid of someone in the army who was ready to fight, and he didn't even have any special dislike. Even the most ferocious and reliable hounds on the grassland will inevitably bar their teeth at their masters sometimes. As an owner, you only need them to obey instructions at critical moments, and you don't have to be too demanding.

There is only one bottom line, that is, we must be loyal, we must stand firmly in the entire steel-like collective, and act with the sole will.

Therefore, those who intend to gather manpower and initiate a war to provoke the Song Dynasty in Huainan and Huaibei will definitely suffer unprecedented hardships in the military academy. Some people may be discharged from the army, and some may die... just like the deaths in Tianjin Prefecture The same ones. Guo Ning treats his soldiers well, but he will never relax the laws he has set.

This kind of binding force of the commander on the army comes from the trust that soldiers entrust their lives to each other, from the soldiers' obedience to the strong, from the continuous training of military personnel who meet the requirements of the military academies in various places, and the constant return of lessons and lessons. It comes from Guo Ning's deep understanding of the army itself.

This level of understanding is definitely not enough to prepare for a rainy day and solve all problems in advance, but it is enough to deal with problems in a timely manner after they are exposed.

If the local general, like Monk Luo, has the ability and means, the general will solve the problem according to Guo Ning's prior instructions; if the local general's qualifications and reputation are slightly insufficient, such as Guo Zhongyuan, who stayed in Nanjing, Guo Ning also has enough Tools and manpower enable you to carry out your intentions at any time.

Therefore, the army of the Zhou Dynasty will not become the warlords who competed with each other during the Five Dynasties as the Song people in the Southern Dynasties thought.

There are many reasons for this that the people of the Southern Dynasty and Song Dynasty could not imagine.

For example, the Zhou army scheduled officers' affiliations and service locations very frequently, so it was difficult to form a deep-rooted hilltop in the army. It is also difficult for ordinary generals to organize a credible group of people to do things that violate military orders. Even a veteran like Yin Chang could only use his strength outside the army in the end.

For another example, the Great Zhou Dynasty was a dynasty that rose up after defeating countless enemies with force. Even if the Zhou soldiers had more thoughts in their hearts, they would never reach the level of rebellion. People in the Song Dynasty believed that feeding arrogant warriors with fat meat would gradually cause them to start fighting among themselves. But in the eyes of no one in the Great Zhou Dynasty, the Song Dynasty in the Southern Dynasties was the fattest. On the contrary, Guo Ning always held the reins and prevented them from launching a southern invasion.

The most important guarantee was the staggeringly prosperous trade between the Zhou and Song dynasties.

The brutality and separatist rule of the warriors during the Five Dynasties was due to the fact that cruelty and separatist rule could bring them the greatest benefit. But for the generals of the Zhou Army, the greatest benefit was not the land, but the trading houses and the huge trade network that Guo Ning and others had continuously established.

A rebel may be able to seize a certain military state with his troops, but he cannot seize a certain trading house or a certain trade route. These two must be attached to the entire military group or the military honorary group of the Great Zhou Dynasty. The links are too many and too complicated to be robbed by a small group of people.

The result is that even if a small group of people separates the military state, it is impossible to use the human, financial and material resources that the entire military group of nobles can use. Any movement will inevitably cause chaos and destruction, and the warriors of the Great Zhou Dynasty can only be a whole. The biggest contradiction between them is nothing more than where to use their own fangs and teeth.

The only question that everyone is thinking about now is how to make the Southern Song Dynasty understand that only Confucian scholars can govern the country in the world, and that the system of the Zhou Dynasty has its own ability to stand on its own, and it is by no means comparable to the military regime of the Five Dynasties that only relied on brutality. ?

Guo Ning did not think that the Song Dynasty could be the rival of the Zhou Dynasty. But everything is planned in advance, and it is always better to think ahead.

As the business cooperation between the two companies has become increasingly close, the number of personnel exchanges has increased rapidly from hundreds to thousands. In Tianjin Prefecture alone, there were no less than three to five hundred Song merchant ships docked daily, with nearly ten thousand people on board.

According to the previous thoughts of several people in the center, under such intensive exchanges, the style of the Great Zhou Dynasty would naturally spread to the Southern Dynasties. The martial might of the Great Zhou Dynasty and the high-spirited spirit of the Great Zhou Dynasty could also be felt by the people of the Song Dynasty. However, maybe this is not enough?

Guo Ning vaguely remembered that nearly a thousand years later, the regime of the Central Plains had been in embarrassment and had been confined to a small island in the southeast for decades. Seeing that the new regime in the Central Plains was a hundred times more powerful, the people on the small island were still clinging to their own shackles and clinging to their little bit of pride.

It's just a small island like this, but the Song Dynasty is much bigger than it.

Not to mention the officials of the Southern Dynasty, the deep-rooted things in the minds of ordinary Song people have obviously not been shaken by the exchanges between the two parties. The group of people active on the trade line have far less influence on the sunrise and sunset of the Song Dynasty. And ordinary people who are resting. Therefore, the stronger Dazhou is in their eyes, the more it will arouse their vigilance and resistance, and the more it will prompt them to unswervingly defend their own way.

What can I do?

Yelu Chucai suddenly smiled: "I have a plan that can slowly reverse this situation. However, your Majesty and the soldiers must give some benefits."

Guo Ning asked with interest: "What's the plan?"