After the New Year, the Thunder Lord of Mayi occupied the hot spot in the entire Luoyang City. As the civil and military officials quarreled again and again, plans were proposed again and again, but they were rejected time and time again. The ten permanent servants, nobles, and generals all wanted to

One of his own became the general who conquered Leigong Town, and at the same time, he did not let his opponent occupy this position.

The whole court had been dragging on for more than two months, but General Zhenbei was still undecided. Even the ordinary people of Luoyang City knew that the court wanted to deal with Thunder Lord of Mayi.

Emperor Ling was annoyed by the noise, so he simply ignored the issue. Anyway, Lei Gong had been staying peacefully in Mayi. As long as the court did not attack him, he would not move. Instead, he kept dealing with the Xianbei people, the Huns and the like.

People, because of Duke Tuo Lei, Emperor Ling has not heard any news about Xianbei invaders in the past two years!

Emperor Ling's current idea is to let Lei Gong and the Xianbei people fight, and it would be best if they both lose!

But the fifth year of Zhongping (188) was not a good year.

Starting from February, the remnants of the Yellow Turbans in the Central Plains started to revolt. In February, Guo Taiyi started an uprising in the Baibo Valley of Xihe (now Yonggu Town, Xiangfen, Shanxi), and attacked Taiyuan County (now Taiyuan, Shanxi), Hedong County (now northwest of Xia County, Shanxi), etc.

Not long after, news of small groups of Yellow Turban thieves also came from Central Plains and Jizhou.

When these bad news reached Luoyang City, Emperor Ling became agitated. It seemed that there would be many people rebelling this year.

This is endless. This year, the Yellow Turbans rebelled first, and they really couldn’t be killed!

But Emperor Ling didn't know that Dong Zhuo in Taiyuan County was overjoyed. This was not a deal for them.

Dong Zhuo also had a bit of a bad year this year. He originally wanted to recruit some refugees and sell Ma Yi's Lei Gong to make some money, but he didn't expect that some people would also rob the refugee business and open the Jingkou Gate, but he didn't expect that in

Zhang Yan of the Taihang Mountains saved the money for the refugees and started a business with the Thunder Lord of Mayi. Ten thousand to ten thousand refugees were transported to Mayi. Dong Zhuo had absolutely nothing to do with him. How could Dong Zhuo endure Zhang Yan to steal his business? It’s hard to see.

The accustomed Dong Zhuo robbed Zhang Yan of ten thousand refugees!

But he didn't expect that his behavior would anger Xu Wei, so he dispatched 1,000 ceramic armored cavalry (Xu Wei's experimental armored cavalry, the cavalry wore iron armor, and the horses wore ceramic armor to protect them from crossbows and swords, and their combat power and

The armored heavy cavalry is similar, but the cost is more than 3 times lighter, and the mobility is more than twice as strong. The disadvantage is that the impact power is more than twice as bad, a bit like the monkey version of the armored heavy cavalry), directly defeated Dong Zhuo 3000

Jingqi was so frightened that Dong Zhuo sent 100 Xiliang horses to apologize!

Xu Wei sent an envoy to warn Dong Zhuo not to touch Zhang Yan's people! Otherwise, he would bear the consequences!

Dong Zhuo was immediately frightened and never dared to touch Zhang Yan's people transporting the refugees.

Then he searched the entire Bingzhou and found only 20,000 refugees. He only made 20 million. Dong Zhuo would have been satisfied before, but now Zhang Yan only made 10 million for a thief. He suddenly felt that

The 20 million in his own hands is no longer good. Every day when Dong Zhuo doesn't scold Zhang Yan for half an hour, he feels uncomfortable!

And now tens of thousands of Yellow Turban Army soldiers are rushing towards Taiyuan County. This makes Dong Zhuo overjoyed. He immediately ordered 10,000 cavalry to lead Niu Fu, Li Jue, Guo Si, Hua Xiong, Hu Zhen, these fierce generals, the newly acquired

His younger brothers Lu Bu, Gao Shun, and Zhang Liao also took him there.

Guo Tai only had a group of refugees in his hands. How could he be the opponent of these fierce generals of the Three Kingdoms? He was defeated in the first battle. Except for a few confidants, all 30,000 troops were captured by Dong Zhuo!

Dong Zhuo even refused to let him go, and went straight to the Baibo Valley and robbed 70,000-80,000 women and children before withdrawing his troops with satisfaction. It can be said that Dong Zhuo annihilated all the Baibo thieves in history like Mrs. Guo in one battle.

When Dong Zhuo was discussing how to sell these captives to Xu Wei at a high price, he also sent a good news to Luoyang City!

Luoyang City, court meeting!

Emperor Ling listened irritably to meaningless nonsense for another day. The three princes and nine ministers now quarreled every day in court. Now it has reached the level of personal attacks and exposing each other's shortcomings. Of course, it is another fruitless quarrel!

Just when Emperor Ling was about to leave, an eight-hundred-mile fast rider came with good news!

Zhao Zhongcong took the bamboo slip, placed it on the table in front of Emperor Ling and slowly opened it.

Emperor Ling was overjoyed after reading this and said: "I finally heard some good news this year. The Baibo bandits in Xihe County have been annihilated by Dong Zhuo, killing 100,000 bandits!"

Zhang Rang said happily: "The former general can be said to be loyal to the king. In less than half a month, he wiped out 100,000 bandits. There are generals in the entire Han Dynasty who are more loyal and capable than the former general!"

Dong Zhuo is the general who Zhenbei was pushed out by Zhang Rang, so now even if he has a little credit, Zhang Rang will praise Dong Zhuo to the sky!

The three gongs and nine ministers were also surprised. Although Dong Zhuo was somewhat capable, the courtiers all knew that he liked to support bandits and respect himself, so the three gongs and nine ministers in the court did not like him either. He had never done anything like this to eradicate the roots! Why has Dong Zhuo changed now?

Alone? Could it be that he suddenly became loyal to the big man?

Everyone thought about it and felt that the most likely reason was that he didn't want to face the double attack from the Thunder Lord and the Yellow Turban Thief, so he eliminated the White Wave Thief in advance! This is the real possible reason!

But not long after, another eight-hundred-mile urgent battle report was handed in, and Zhao Zhong opened the shop again and slowly opened it on the table!

Just seeing the battle report this time, Emperor Ling's expression turned ugly! Emperor Ling, who was already angry, just threw this out.

Then he cursed angrily: "What kind of world is this? Why are there people who are rebelling against the wealth of Yizhou?"

Then Emperor Ling looked at the courtiers and said angrily: "It's because of you useless ministers that the Han Dynasty has been declining in recent years. People rebel every year, and they can't kill them all. One place is destroyed here, and another one is there! You know it every day.

They are fighting for power and gain, but they don’t know how to maintain the stability of the court!”

Yizhou is a land of abundance, one of the richest places in the Han Dynasty, and it is also one of the rare granaries of the Han Dynasty.

Jizhou has been in constant rebellion over the years, and the imperial court can no longer rely on Jizhou's money and food. Relatively speaking, Yizhou has begun to become important. Such an important place has also rebelled. It is no wonder that Emperor Ling is angry.

The three princes and nine ministers all knelt down and said, "Your Majesty, please calm down!"

Although they haven't watched it yet, they have already guessed most of it from just listening. Someone in Yizhou must be rebelling!

Emperor Ling cursed for a long time. After his mouth was dry, he drank water from a jade bottle before sitting down to calm down his mood!

Then He Jin picked up the battle report and everyone knew what happened!

It turned out that Yizhou people Ma Xiang, Zhao Zhi and others led 50,000 people to rebel in Mianzhu. Ma Xiang and others called themselves the Yellow Turban Army, especially this Ma Xiang called himself the emperor.

Then Ma Xiang led his army to attack the city, conquered the three counties of Guanghan, Bajun and Qianwei one after another, and killed Zhao Jian, the governor of Yizhou. Yizhou could no longer suppress the rebellion, so they had to pay 800 Liga

Urgently requesting the court's support.

Another emperor came, and the majesty of the Han Dynasty was really getting lower and lower. When Zhang Jiao rebelled, he only dared to call himself General Tiangong. When Zhang Niujiao came, he only dared to call himself the commander of the Yellow Turban Army. After Zhang Chunzhang and others rebelled,

One by one the emperors began to come out.

After calming down his anger, Emperor Ling pointed at Taichang Liu Yan and said, "Ai Qing, please tell me, it's not the same thing that the people are always rebelling?"

“Are the imperial taxes so high that they can’t survive?”

"Why do you come to me and keep saying that the national treasury is empty? Now it can only collect more than 2 billion yuan in taxes a year, which is less than half of the original amount. The people can't survive even if they are like this. Who on earth made this happen?

They can't survive!"

The three princes and nine ministers in the imperial court were all staring at Liu Yan, which made him break out in a cold sweat!

This is a gift upon arrival!

Liu Yan was not the kind of person who had a strong character and was loyal to his country. Naturally, he could not say that the local nobles had annexed too much land and forced the people of the world to rebel.

Not to mention that most of the officials and ministers in the court are corrupt officials. They have embezzled all the taxes from the court! The court may only have more than 2 billion in its hands, but the taxes and fees collected from the common people may be more than 20 billion.

.90% of the taxes were stolen by the morons in the imperial court.

Liu Yan thought for a long time with a grimace, and to be honest, this was not going to cost him his life.

He had no choice but to avoid talking about the issue of taxation, and only talked about rebellion: "Your Majesty, there are many rebellions in the Han Dynasty now, and they have been suppressed repeatedly. The main reason is that the governors of various states and counties have little power and are despised by the governors. The governors cannot control each state.

Although the county governor knew that some county governors were corrupt and violated the law, they could not remove these corrupt officials. They could only petition the court for impeachment.

However, officials up and down the court protected each other, and these prefects and county magistrates would not be punished at all. The people could only continue to tolerate these corrupt officials until they couldn't bear it anymore and had no choice but to take risks and raise troops to rebel.

When refugees rebelled, the governors often missed the best opportunity to quell the rebellion because they did not have the right to directly recruit soldiers from the county and state to quell the rebellion. This led to more and more rebellions among the Han people. In fact, many rebellions were relatively small when they first started.

They were easily pacified, but it was the missed opportunity that allowed them to grow to the point where the imperial court took action!"

Liu Yan's statement made everyone feel relieved, at least they cleared up their relationship!

Emperor Ling was also a little disappointed with Liu Yan. This was not the answer he wanted. He wanted to use Liu Yan's words to make the world's nobles and nobles restrain themselves, so as not to turn the world against him.

Emperor Ling was one of the few emperors of the Han Dynasty who was born among the common people. He did not know everything about local affairs, but he also had a general idea.

At that time, Emperor Ling had no one to protect his family because of his father's early death. Even though his family was related to the emperor, the land and property were still devoured by the powerful noble families in Jizhou. Therefore, he lived a very poor life in his childhood and could only barely survive.

Go down.

It was because I had the memory of the hardships in my childhood, and at the same time I saw the greedy faces of the powerful nobles in the local area.

Therefore, Emperor Ling was full of hatred and prejudice against the powerful clans. After becoming emperor, he never trusted them.

"Ai Qing, is there anything you can do?"

Liu Yan could only bite the bullet and said: "In places like Jizhou where the rebellion is particularly serious, the local governor is no longer enough to suppress the rebellion. The governor should be changed to the governor of the state, and the governor should be in charge of the military and political affairs of the state. Only in this way can we

It is better to pacify one side, and when the rebellion in a state is quelled, the imperial court will finally recruit the state pastor to return to the court, and pacify it with the positions of the three ministers and nine ministers, and at the same time send out the governor!"

Emperor Ling thought for a long time. Of course he knew the importance of the position of state pastor. The land of one state in the Han Dynasty was comparable to the vassal states in the Warring States Period. If it were not for people who were loyal to the Han Dynasty, the disaster would be greater than Zhang Jiao and his like.

It’s not that there haven’t been state shepherds in the Han Dynasty in recent years. For example, when Huangfu Song pacified Jizhou, he became the shepherd of Jizhou, but he was dismissed after serving for less than half a year. His clan relative Liu Yu now also serves as the shepherd of Youzhou, but this was also for the purpose of pacifying Zhangzhou.

Pure rebellion!

It can be said that each state pastor appointed by Emperor Ling was not only cautious, but also prohibited them from serving for a long time! He was just worried that these state pastors would become bigger in the local area!

But at this time, the rebellion of the Han Dynasty was already in a situation that could not be suppressed, and delegating power to the local governments could not be done even by drinking poison to quench thirst.

Emperor Ling retired from the court and was thinking about Liu Yan's suggestions in the harem!

However, Emperor Ling's move caused an undercurrent in the entire court. All civil and military officials could see that Emperor Ling was moved by Liu Yan's proposal.

Being able to become an important minister like Zhou Mu is a higher position and more powerful than the Nine Ministers, and compared to the official position of Zhenbei General who can threaten the imperial court, Zhou Mu seems to be more feasible.

So all the civil and military officials mobilized their own connections, hoping to get some news from Emperor Ling and help them mention their names in front of Emperor Ling. Fortunately, when Emperor Ling granted the title of Zhou Mu, their names were the first to come to mind.

The Han Dynasty only had thirteen prefectures. Excluding the ministers, there were only 12 prefectural shepherds. There were not many positions. There were many officials in Luoyang City, and there were many who were qualified to serve as prefecture shepherds. Everyone was trying to find a way to occupy this prefectural shepherd.
To be continued...