Chapter 268: The Deer Lost in Liyang, and the World Chased

Longhu Mountain was forcibly taken by Xu Chunlin, and the golden lotus of fortune on it was also taken into Xu Chunlin's pocket.

As I have said before, Longhu Mountain and the Liyang Dynasty prosper and suffer together.

The reason why Zhao Huangchao was safe and sound when he checked the Golden Lotus of Luck in Mount Longhu before was not only because Xu Chunlin concealed the secret.

There was also the reason that during his three years of travel, he quietly set up an array to gather luck in Longhu Mountain, guiding the luck of the surrounding prefectures and the spiritual charm of Jingjiang, a branch of Guangling River, to settle in Longhu Mountain.

That is why the golden lotus of fortune blooms vigorously every morning.

Xu Chunlin took Longhu Mountain away, and for a time, the places where Jianzhou, Luzhou and Jingjiang flowed through were all dried up and in chaos.

Tai'an City, thousands of miles away, suffered the backlash of the disappearance of the Golden Lotus of Fortune. If there were a Taoist master here, he would surely have discovered that the nine golden scales on the back of the Golden Dragon of Fortune hovering over Tai'an City seemed to have been wiped out by an unknown force and were forcibly pulled up.

For a moment, the golden dragon of luck wailed and roared.

Tai'an City seemed to have suffered a backlash, the earth dragon turned over, the sky collapsed, the earth broke apart, the mountains and rivers collapsed, and a huge earthquake directly covered the entire Tai'an.

More than half of the troops that were originally recalled to Tai'an City by Zhao Dun of the Liyang Dynasty were damaged in the earthquake, and even the walls of Tai'an City collapsed piece by piece.

Today's Tai'an City is like the golden dragon of fortune, lifeless and without its former prosperity.

"Is it true that Tian Zhen wants to kill me, Li Yang?"

Liyang Emperor Zhao Dun was in a state of disarray in the court, and he felt a headache looking at the two groups of people below who were already at odds with each other.

One side was headed by Zhang Julu, Gu Jiantang and others, while the other side was composed of officials from aristocratic families.

Denounce Zhang Julu and others as traitors to the country!

It's already a certain time, and they are still wasting their time fighting each other. The king is not a king who would destroy his country, but his ministers are. Sometimes Zhao Dun really wants to take up his sword and chop those officials to pieces.

But he couldn't. Li Yang was now like a broken glass bottle. Any excessive movement would cause the bottle to break into pieces.

a long time.

Liyang Emperor Zhao Dun said nothing, with a dim gaze, staring at Zhang Julu in the court, who had his eyes closed like Tan Tan Weng, wondering what he was thinking.

In the process of Li Yang conquering the world and establishing his rule in the Central Plains with the help of military generals, the butcher Xu Xiao made the greatest contribution.

Li Yang used civil officials to govern the world. In the following twenty years, it was thanks to Zhang Julu's iron-fisted governance that the Li Yang Dynasty became a stable unified dynasty.

During this period, Zhang Julu was the actual person in charge of this huge empire. Under his leadership, on the surface, the country's national strength was growing and the people lived and worked in peace and contentment over the past twenty years.

But now, Xu Xiao's campaign against the Tiananmen Rebellion has become a major concern for him, which forces Zhao Dun to think about what will happen to Zhang Julu?

As for the rumor that Beiliang was controlled by Xu Xiao's son Xu Chunlin, Zhao Dun of the Liyang Dynasty didn't believe it at all.

In the first twenty years after the empire was first settled, the Liyang Dynasty had an unstable foundation and needed Zhang Julu to act as a patchworker to protect the country for the Emperor of the Zhao family.

But in such a chaotic world, even if Li Yang had a large number of capable ministers, and even if Zhang Julu was stronger than these people, he would not be able to turn the tide.

On the contrary, Zhang Julu was the target of the rebellion in order to purge the emperor's side, and he was considered a traitor by the Northern Liang!

The most important thing is that when Zhao Chun was in power, he could barely suppress Zhang Julu's reputation. But after his death, the new emperor had neither military merits nor iron-fisted means. As long as Zhang Julu was in the court, his son could never truly take power.

This undoubtedly posed a great threat to the imperial power.

Zhang Julu's policies were beneficial to the country but not to the Zhao family.

Confucianism emphasizes that people are the most important, the country is second, and the emperor is the least important. Zhang Julu is an orthodox Confucian descendant who puts the interests of the people first. When the interests of the people conflict with the interests of the emperor, he always stands firmly on the side of the people.

For a long time, the Zhao Dynasty has had an internal contradiction, which is the contradiction between the wealthy and powerful families and the scholars from poor families.

The wealthy and powerful families controlled the government with their military achievements and wealth. As vested interests, they naturally hoped that their descendants would inherit their official positions.

Poor scholars hoped to pass the imperial examinations and change the fate of their entire family.

There has always been controversy over whether the world should be ruled by wealthy aristocratic families or by scholars from humble backgrounds. Both have their pros and cons.

The power of the wealthy and powerful families comes from the emperor. Only when the royal interests are guaranteed can their power be guaranteed, so they will support the emperor unconditionally.

The poor scholars, on the other hand, believed that the ruler was less important than the people and that the world ultimately belonged to the people. Whoever could bring benefits to the people should be the ruler.

In the past, even if children from poor families had extraordinary talents, they could not find a way to advance.

Zhang Julu encouraged the imperial examinations and suppressed the wealthy families. All his actions were to open the door for poor scholars all over the world, allowing these poor scholars to become high-ranking officials.

But for him as an emperor, if he relied too much on the wealthy and powerful families, these people would not be strong enough, often oppress the people, and lose the support of the people.

However, if poor scholars are given important positions, since these people are not completely loyal to the Zhao family, a ruling crisis may easily occur.

After weighing the pros and cons.

Zhao Chun felt that it didn’t matter if the world became worse, but power must be in the hands of the Zhao family.

Therefore, after his death, the next emperor should let the wealthy and powerful families take power to ensure that the Zhao family's position is consolidated.

Zhang Julu is the spokesperson for the poor scholars in the world. His painstaking efforts over the years have greatly changed the proportion of ministers in the court, and now there are many poor scholars serving as officials.

Therefore, Zhao Dun actually had the intention to kill Zhang Julu for a long time.

In the current situation, Zhang Julu has become the target of attack by the ambitious Beiliang villains. So he might as well go all out and kill Zhang Julu first, and then get the support of the aristocratic families.

After all, the aristocratic families have soldiers and food, and Zhang Julu should be pushed out to appease the anger of the aristocratic families. Zhao Dun did not kill Zhang Julu before because he was still useful. Now there was an earthquake in Tai'an City, and the cards in the hands of Liyang Emperor Zhao Dun, that is, those soldiers and horses, were mostly lost. He urgently needs the support of the aristocratic families.

In other words, Zhao Dun was panicking!
There were the Yellow Turban rebels in front and Xu Chunlin's troops behind. In addition, the ignorant people did not know the truth and some even thought they were imprisoned. The court allowed Zhang Julu to manipulate them.

Zhao Dun knew that the aristocratic families were responsible for the public opinion, but he could not offend these families now because Li Yang needed these families to be stable.

You can only record them one by one in the account and calculate them slowly later.

For the emperor, there is nothing that cannot be given up. If there is, it is because the benefits are not great enough. The same goes for Zhang Julu. If he spends a thousand gold coins to buy horse bones, then the horse bones must be worth a thousand gold coins.

When the time is right, this horse bone can naturally be sold!
Zhao Dun kept weighing the pros and cons and calculating the gains and losses. Once he had made a decision in his heart, he no longer hesitated.

"Okay, stop arguing!"

"Prime Minister, Beiliang claims to be following the will of heaven and pacifying the rebellion, so as to clear the emperor's side. What do you think? Are there really treacherous ministers around me?"

Zhang Julu opened his eyes, as if he had expected this day to come. He saluted with his hands, his eyes firm and without any hesitation, and said: "Your Majesty, I am indeed guilty, but the sin is in this life, and the benefit will be for generations to come."

"A building is about to collapse, and a single pillar cannot support it. This old minister is no longer able to support the crumbling Liyang. We need to replace it with another pillar."

"To ensure Li Yang's safety..."

"My lord, please die!"

"In this case, I am sorry to trouble you, my dear!"

The great prime minister Zhang Julu.

When things went wrong, he became a traitor cursed by the nobles and a traitor mocked by the people. He did not avoid axes, swords and halberds, yet the scholar was of high character and died proudly. He was beheaded but remained standing, turning into a monument in the wind and snow.

---

"Do you regret it?"

Xu Chunlin asked softly.

"What do you regret?"

“This is the path I chose.”

An illusory figure stood in front of Xu Chunlin and sighed, "I knew I was going to die in this situation, but I didn't expect it to happen so soon. Of course, you were also behind this."

"When these eight words appeared, my fate was already determined."

Xu Chunlin shook his head: "Even without me, you will still die in the end, it's just a matter of sooner or later."

The illusory figure looked at the snow and felt sad: "Yeah, didn't I expect this a long time ago?"

Zhang Julu thought back on his life over the past few decades.

During the first thirty years of his official career, he was always unknown. When he was still an inconspicuous minor official, he was spotted by the old prime minister who had a keen eye for talent and was identified as the next successor.

However, in order to hone his ability to govern the country, the old prime minister deliberately did not allow him to be promoted, which resulted in him being mediocre and making no significant achievements in the first thirty years.

After the death of the old Prime Minister, he turned into a dragon whenever he encountered wind and rain, and was promoted eleven levels to become the new Prime Minister of Liyang. In the following twenty years, he began to make great plans and shouldered half of Liyang.

He attached importance to people's livelihood, cracked down on powerful families, focused on imperial examinations, and opened up opportunities for poor people to make the leap to success, ultimately creating a prosperous era.

During the past twenty years, he has been attacked from all sides.

The royal nobles were suppressed by Zhang Julu like rats crossing the street; the aristocratic officials were blocked outside the temple by Zhang Julu and had no chance to make a breakthrough; the princes and generals were turned into pawns by Zhang Julu, who weakened their power.

During these twenty years, he kept destroying his own walls, discarding Zhao Youling, who was the most knowledgeable person in Yonghui, abandoning Han Lin, who was mature and steady, and throwing away Yuan Guo, who was extremely talented. He only supported Wang Xionggui, who did not have the qualities of a prime minister.

In the past twenty years, he has been desecrating himself. He used dishonorable means to purchase 300 acres of fertile land for his eldest son, and his second son won the second place because the examiner was his disciple.

He was blamed by his own children. He was worthy of the ungrateful and mean emperor, worthy of the country and people of Liyang, worthy of all the common people, worthy of the scholars of the world, and even worthy of Beiliang, but he was not worthy of his own children.

He is not a good father.

Zhang Julu looked at Xu Chunlin and begged, "Can you give my children a chance to live?"

"Sure, as long as you come with me!"

"A loyal minister should not serve two masters!!!"

"But your Lord has already abandoned you!"

Xu Chunlin told Zhang Julu this cold fact indifferently, and then advised:

"In today's world, there are many aristocratic families and local tyrants. The aristocrats are like termites to the country and cannot be trusted. The people are like rivers and lakes that feed all living things. They cannot be abandoned or hated. As a king, I should understand that the king is the boat and the people are the water. The water can carry the boat but can also overturn it."

"The greed of the aristocrats is like the abyss of swallowing the sea, endless. However, the long-cherished wish of the common people in the world is to have a good upbringing for the young and a place for the old. As a dragon hiding in the water, I should make the welfare of the people my first priority."

"In the past twenty years, I have built high walls, stored up abundant food, and slowly claimed the throne. After I ascend the throne, I will distribute land to the people, remove the shackles from the people, open up channels for people to express their opinions, open up trade routes, and reduce agricultural taxes. I also have the skills to accumulate wealth and benefit the people. You can use them well and implement benevolent policies throughout the world."

"One day I will be able to soar into the sky. I will conquer the world and rule over all directions. I will establish my mind for the world, my destiny for the people, inherit the lost knowledge of the ancient sages, and bring peace to the world for all eternity!"

"I have only one wish in my life, that all the people in the world can be like dragons!"

(End of this chapter)