Gongsun Zan was born into the famous Gongsun family in western Liaoning.
The Gongsun family is not a powerful family in some place, it is a noble family worth two thousand stones.
It's just that because he is a concubine, he cannot be reused in the family. When he became an official, he was just a minor official in the county.
What I have achieved today is entirely due to my own efforts.
Therefore, he has a completely different mentality from brothers Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu, who almost completely rely on the Yuan family's family status.
The Yuan brothers were more concerned about what to do with the Yuan family, but Gongsun Zan was more concerned about what to do with himself.
Because he was not treated well by the Gongsun family since he was young, Gongsun Zan would not do anything for the sake of the Gongsun family.
The appearance of Li Yunze allowed him to see another bright road.
If you do well, you may not be able to get help from immortals, and you may even be replaced by a big man.
If that doesn't work, then it might be a good idea to make a good impression on the immortal, and then follow the immortal to practice Taoism and seek immortality.
If it still doesn't work, then with the blessing of the immortals, it will be possible to dominate one side.
No matter which one it is, you must first let the immortal see that you are worthy of investment.
Li Yunze's actions also inspired Gongsun Zan. Liu Bei, who was valued by Li Yunze, was probably an extraordinary person. He also made an investment in Liu Bei.
The scale of investment is not large, just three hundred white horses and a batch of food and fodder for military horses.
The materials in the Han Dynasty were actually very abundant.
Not to mention the Western Han Dynasty, the Eastern Han Dynasty also had two hundred years of accumulation, and the total amount of various types of wealth and materials was huge.
However, the only reason why the Yellow Turban Rebellion still broke out despite having a large amount of wealth and materials was unfair distribution.
Liu Xiu, who did not hesitate to fight the world all over again and fight to the end with the family members, finally lost the war.
By the end of the Han Dynasty, the entire Han Dynasty was not so much owned by the emperor as it had been divided and occupied by aristocratic families and local powerful people from all over the country.
There was no imperial examination in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and a recommendation system was implemented. That is, whoever wanted to become an official had to be recommended by celebrities.
For such idealistic matters, it is natural to stick to your own family, your relatives and friends.
You recommend my nephews, and I recommend your uncles and brothers, helping each other to become officials together.
Over time, this is how a family has four generations and three sons.
Not only do they hold great power in the court, but they are also like local emperors at the local level.
The local county governors and the ministers of the court were brothers, uncles, and relatives of the same family. They helped each other embezzle the fields, forced the people in the uninhabited land to become serfs, and then seized all kinds of materials from the court, sucking the blood of the big men and fattening their own families.
This kind of thing developed to the extreme, which was the disaster of party control during the period of Emperor Huan and Emperor Ling.
The big headscarves say that the disaster caused by the party's imprisonment is the eunuchs' persecution of the scholar-bureaucrats. This is pure nonsense with their eyes open and they are desperately throwing dirty water.
It’s not like Emperor Huan and Emperor Ling had too many idiots. The aristocratic families were dominating the local area, causing the court to be unable to collect even the most basic taxes.
There is no money or food in the treasury!
The emperor is not blind, how could he not see it.
Because the common people who paid taxes to the Han Dynasty no longer exist and have basically become serfs of wealthy families and powerful locals, there is naturally no tax revenue to speak of.
As long as the eunuchs are sent out to take a look at this kind of thing, it will be immediately clear to them by asking.
Therefore, in order to prevent the Han Dynasty from being overthrown by the noble families, Emperor Huan and Emperor Ling launched two party bans in succession and tried their best to attack the scholar-bureaucrats.
This has nothing to do with the eunuchs, they are just the emperor's tools to fight against these lawless scholar-bureaucrats.
Which of the imprisoned scholar-bureaucrats did not have a huge fortune? Which one did not have countless fertile fields and hordes of serfs in his hometown?
The headscarves insulted Emperor Huan and Emperor Ling by selling their official positions and titles, not because they had a sense of justice, but because the emperor had taken away their official positions and they could no longer get them.
And why did the emperor sell his official position?
Of course, it was because they were forced to be anxious. The court could not collect taxes and could only attack the interests controlled by the big headscarves.
Don't believe the so-called history books written by those in turbans.
Some scholar-bureaucrats are loyal and unyielding, some are unjustly imprisoned, some emperors are fatuous, and so on.
This is all nonsense, the real black hands are these pen-wielding writers.
Unfortunately, the family was deeply entrenched, and Emperor Huan and Emperor Ling failed to win despite their best efforts. After their deaths, they were maliciously given the humiliating posthumous titles of Huan and Ling.
As for the Yellow Turban Rebellion, that is even simpler.
During natural disasters, the harvest is not good, but the grain that the noble families have to collect cannot be reduced at all.
The serfs who could not afford to pay were either beaten to death or starved to death.
Those who did not want to be beaten to death or starved to death, so at the instigation of Zhang Jiao brothers, they picked up swords, guns, clubs and dung rakes.
Then, it naturally swept the world.
It is said that if we were not in the late Han Dynasty, the Yellow Turban Rebellion would definitely have succeeded whether it was in the late Tang Dynasty, the late Song Dynasty or the late Ming Dynasty.
It's a pity that the Han Dynasty's military strength was too strong at the end of the Han Dynasty.
The big man is not short of food or supplies, but these things are in the hands of aristocratic families and local powerful people.
If you want to take something from them, you either need to make them think you are worthy of an investment. For example, Liu Bei, Cao Cao and even the Sun brothers all gradually became rich after receiving multiple rounds of angel investment.
Or the simplest way is to use the money to buy it.
Among them, the value of gold and silver has long been recognized, and it is real hard currency in the eyes of aristocratic families.
Because they can make copper coins themselves.
And silk can also be woven by growing mulberry and raising silkworms.
Only gold and silver are truly rare.
Liu Bei left the coalition camp with three hundred white horse followers, Guan Zhang and the men he brought with him, and headed straight for Hanoi.
Along the way, he used the gold given by Li Yunze to buy a large amount of food, grass, military supplies, and manpower from many aristocratic families and local tycoons.
That's right, there are already very few people in the Han Dynasty who are registered to pay taxes.
The vast majority of the people have become slaves of the wealthy families and are their private property.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! For example, when Xuzhou tycoon Mi Zhu invested in Liu Bei, he gave away eight thousand slaves in one lump sum.
And these slaves are soldiers, and they are also the population that have been embezzled by the noble families.
In the final description of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, when the Shu Kingdom fell, there were only 900,000 people in the country. And when the Wu Kingdom fell, there were only 2 million men, women, and children in the country.
Even those with normal intelligence would know that this is impossible.
Although there is a war on the border, there has been peace and tranquility inside for decades, and generations of people have reproduced.
These are just registered citizens who have to pay taxes.
The slaves owned by aristocratic families and local powerful people are not included in this list.
Falling into the hands of aristocratic families, the common people have become nothing more than slaves.
The reason why Li Yunze was unwilling to take the initiative to provide investment to Gongsun Zan before was because Gongsun Zan came from a noble family.
He resented the aristocratic family from the bottom of his heart.
Liu Bei is not counted, and he is not even considered a local tycoon.
He is the most typical descendant of a down-and-out prince, the kind whose ancestors were wealthy hundreds of years ago.
After all, the Prince Jing of Zhongshan he talked about all day long was the brother of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, which was almost three hundred years old.
Prince Jing of Zhongshan was the famous Alexandre Dumas, with more than a hundred sons recorded in the books.
Not counting daughters, not counting those who have not been recognized.
In comparison, his younger brother Liu Che couldn't do it. After all, he was busy opening up territories all day long, so he had no time to pass on the family line.
However, the turbans poured dirty water on Liu Che, saying that he was bullying the nomadic tribes in the bitter cold land and not giving them a way to survive. He had no mercy and was a tyrant and a coward.
On the contrary, he greatly admired Liu Sheng, Prince Jing of Zhongshan, because such waste was most suitable for the big headscarfs to control the power and develop their own families into a powerful family.
That's why Li Yunze is also disgusted with bandanas, because these people have no bottom line.
If you want to refresh your moral bottom line, just listen to what the bandanas are yelling about.
Cao Cao here was explaining and apologizing to Zhang Miao.
Zhang Miao originally wanted to take the soldiers from Chenliu County back to Chenliu to suppress the bandits, but when he returned to his camp, he found that his soldiers and horses had been swallowed up by his friend Cao Cao!
He is so angry in his heart, I regard you as a good brother, and this is how you treat me?
Cao Cao had no choice but to think that Zhang Miao could come back alive.
In desperation, he could only apologize profusely, and then pat his chest to guarantee that these county soldiers still belonged to Zhang Miao. He was just worried about the camp roar, so he helped manage them for a while.
Zhang Miao accepted this explanation. After all, they were very good friends.
But this gap can no longer be eliminated.
Li Yunze's incident caused an uproar among the Kwantung Allied Forces.
The princes from all walks of life had different thoughts, especially after Gongsun Zan and Zhang Miao confirmed their words and led their troops away, the heroes naturally adopted a wait-and-see attitude.
At this time, all the pressure was concentrated on Yuan Shao.
The original intention of this leader of the coalition was to use this opportunity to establish the Yuan family's transcendent status, enter the court forcefully, and control the world.
But Li Yunze's appearance was like Mount Tai crossing in front of him.
If you can't even pass Hulao Pass, how can you talk about joining the imperial court?
His previous idea was to trick the heroes into going to war and reap the benefits as the leader of the alliance. He even left his main force in Hebei to recruit troops and expand his strength.
But now, all the heroes are cautious and don't show up anymore. If he, the leader of the alliance, doesn't want the coalition to disband and return without success, then he must continue.
It is impossible to count on the heroes. Before they know the details of Li Yunze, they will not stand out except for drinking and having fun.
At this time, Yuan Shao could only do it by himself.
At this time, Yuan Shao did not have the arrogant mentality that he had during the Guandu period, when he despised the world, was self-centered, and would not listen to any kind of persuasion. His thoughts at this time were very normal.
Until it was impossible to conquer Hulao Pass simply by relying on his own strength, so he directly sent Xu You as an envoy to deliver a letter to the pass.
The content of the letter is very simple, it is to greet Li Yunze directly, ‘Didn’t you say that you are an immortal who has known for five hundred years before and five hundred years afterward? If so, then come out and prove yourself in front of the heroes of the world!’
'After you have proven yourself, the heroes will naturally be willing to listen to you and wipe out the bad guys.'
'If you can't prove it, then go back to where you came from and don't get involved in anything here again.'