Three Kingdoms: My Strategy Simulator

This explanation is undoubtedly pale and powerless.

Even generals who were not very politically sensitive, such as Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Zhao Yun, could sense that this was an invisible exclusion.

Li Ji had been away from Wujun for two years, and there was no doubt that quite a number of people did not want to see Li Ji come back and take control of Wujun again.

However, before Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and other generals could take the initiative to attack, Li Ji spoke first with a smile.

"As long as I have not taken up my post in Liaoxi County, I will temporarily serve as the county magistrate of Wu County. Do you have any objections?"

When the clerk saw Li Ji's eyes that seemed to see through his heart completely, he immediately forgot the words he had prepared in his mind and responded with a stammer.

"No... I dare not... I just care about you, my Lord..."

"Thank you very much, but the lord is calling a meeting right now to arrange important matters, so we should discuss these private matters later."

Li Ji did not take this little trick seriously, nor did he have any emotional fluctuations because of it.

Or maybe the two Zhangs knew that such words would not shake Li Ji's position at the moment, but in their view of following the "principle of checks and balances", this was necessary.

The purpose was even to let Liu Bei, as the lord, see the great influence of Li Ji, so as to support them and check and balance Li Ji to prevent Li Ji from becoming the only one in power.

Liu Bei seemed to be oblivious to this little farce and sat in the main seat with his eyes closed to rest.

This made Zhang Zhao and Zhang Hong, who had been secretly observing the changes in Liu Bei's expression, feel a little disappointed. They regretted that they failed to arouse Liu Bei's fear of Li Ji.

It’s a pity that what the two Zhangs didn’t know was that both Liu Bei and Li Ji were eyeing the whole world, not just the small piece of land in Wu County.

What Zhang Zhao and Zhang Hong wanted to see at this moment was Liu Bei's fear of Li Ji, but they didn't know that if Li Ji, whom they regarded as a political enemy, had not protected them many times, Liu Bei would probably have taken steps to directly eliminate a group of officials from aristocratic families.

With Liu Bei's current popularity and influence in Wujun and Kuaiji counties, and the fact that a large number of people are refugees fleeing from the north, even if they fall out with the aristocratic families, it will definitely not shake Liu Bei in the slightest.

At this moment, Liu Bei remained calm and showed no outward emotion, but in fact he was disgusted with the two Zhangs.

'These people from the aristocratic families really never forget to alienate Bei and Zikun day and night. They are really hateful.'

When all the civil and military officials who were qualified to participate in the meeting arrived, the first words Liu Bei said made many people present look surprised.

"Thank you all for coming here. This meeting will be chaired by Zikun. Please listen carefully."

Li Ji bowed to Liu Bei, then stood up with a scroll of bamboo slips in his hand and went straight to the point of arranging various tasks.

In addition to comprehensive military reorganization and preparation of military equipment within Wu County, it also involves all aspects of government affairs in Wu County.

With the death of Liu Hong, troubled times were approaching. The actions that Li Ji had previously had to carry out in Wujun in secret had now come out into the open.

The first issue to be affected is undoubtedly the household registration issue of refugees, which has been shelved for several years.

Previously, in order to avoid paying refugee taxes to the imperial court, the household registration issue was deliberately shelved.

Now, the Han Dynasty court undoubtedly can no longer supervise the local areas, and the fundamental household registration issues naturally need to be resolved as a priority.

In addition, there are salt and iron, papermaking, military system reforms, etc. that were previously not suitable for public disclosure, all of which need to be arranged.

As for salt and iron, there is no need to say much.

Under the guidance of Li Ji, the craftsmen of Wu County mastered the technology of drying sea salt very early. However, in order to avoid it being taken away by others through imperial decrees and becoming someone else's wedding dress, they kept it secret and never made it public.

The same principle applies to papermaking.

Nowadays, Wu County has actually completed the improvement of papermaking and developed movable type printing technology, but leaking it in advance would only be a crime, so it has been concealed until now.

As for the military reform, it was a preparation for the coming chaos.

Previously, the local military system of the Han Dynasty was actually a county soldier system. On weekdays, the county soldiers were responsible for garrisoning cities and maintaining public order, etc. In wartime, the tiger talisman was used as a seal to allow the temporary commander to mobilize county soldiers and recruit young and strong people to form an army.

As a result, the combat effectiveness of local forces is actually quite limited.

At this moment, Li Ji proposed a "military household system" that had been prepared for many years, which was a further development of the military farming system.

Perhaps, in the eyes of many people, the "Military Household System" later seemed to become one of the reasons for the demise of the Ming Dynasty. In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the "Military Household System" also led to the extremely weak combat effectiveness of the Ming army.

However, it is undeniable that during the early Ming Dynasty, the "military household system" enabled the Ming Dynasty to possess extremely powerful military force, and the army went to war without wasting a single grain of rice from the people.

It was only because the status of military households in the Ming Dynasty was low and it was difficult for their descendants to leave the military, coupled with rampant corruption, the use of empty salaries, withholding of military rations, and exploitation of soldiers, that the military household system became one of the reasons for the downfall of the Ming Dynasty.

Li Ji's current plan is to place military households around each city to replace county soldiers and actively improve the status and treatment of military households. When there is no war, in addition to farming, military households regularly take turns to conduct military exercises and security garrisons.

In addition to military households, some major generals were also allowed to lead their own troops to form elite forces in order to enhance the combat effectiveness of the army and to dispatch elite troops to fight in emergencies.

For example, the "White Horse Volunteers" were classified as a direct subordinate unit led by Zhao Yun.

Similarly, there were the three thousand sword-and-axe barbarian soldiers that Guan Yu brought back from Yizhou, and the three thousand cavalrymen that would be led by Zhang Fei.

This meeting lasted for five hours.

Almost every participant in the meeting was assigned a large number of tasks, and Li Ji seemed to know everyone's abilities very well. The arrangements he made made these people feel that they were just enough to fill themselves up without exceeding the standard.

Soon, as Li Ji returned to the government office, he took stock of everything and personally arranged and implemented the tasks from the previous meeting one by one.

Almost every official was so busy that he felt dizzy and had no extra thoughts to think about fighting for power and profit.

Wu County, which had accumulated four or five years of experience, also began to transform in a very short period of time.

In particular, the large number of elite soldiers of Wu County who were brought back by Li Ji from Youzhou and Yingzhou would become the core of implementing the military household system, and Li Ji would publicize and elevate their status in Wu County.

Now that countless fertile fields have been reclaimed in Wu County and Kuaiji County, these military households have been directly rewarded with large amounts of money, grain and fertile fields based on their military merits.

For a while, this triggered a wave of a large number of civilians in Wu County voluntarily applying to become military households.

Moreover, the glory of the fields of those military households all depended on Liu Bei, who implemented this policy. This also invisibly tied all the military households firmly to Liu Bei, making those military households Liu Bei's die-hard supporters who shared the honor and disgrace with him.

Jia Xu saw all of this and once privately lamented that it was as if he was seeing the military merit system practiced by the Qin people who unified the six kingdoms. The significance of Li Zikun's move may be no less than that of Shang Yang in the pre-Qin period.

Perhaps, there were some aristocratic families who felt that this move might infringe upon their interests, but with the support of the 30,000 elite troops brought back by Li Ji and a large number of military households, the slight opposition from those aristocratic families was simply insignificant.

Liu Bei had been cultivating Wu County for nearly five years. Once Liu Bei insisted on doing something, it would not be possible for a mere aristocratic family to stop him.

Just as Wujun was rapidly transforming, a piece of latest information was transmitted back to Wujun, which once again ended Liu Bei's good mood.

【Lü Bu killed Ding Yuan and led the Bingzhou army to join Dong Zhuo. On September 1, Dong Zhuo deposed the emperor and enthroned his son Liu Xie as emperor. He also poisoned Empress Dowager He in Yong'an Palace and prohibited the court from holding funerals for her.】

Once this news came out, it was a fatal blow to the Han Dynasty's remaining prestige.

Depose the emperor and kill the queen!
What Dong Zhuo did was even worse than what Wang Mang did.

Immediately, Liu Bei had no more hesitation and wrote three letters with tears in his eyes, which were sent to Liu Yu, the governor of Youzhou, Liu Biao, the governor of Jingzhou, and Liu Yan, the governor of Yizhou.

……

At a time when the world was about to change drastically, Cao Cao, who was in Luoyang, was determined to assassinate Dong Zhuo with the Seven-Star Sword, but he failed in the end. He fled Luoyang in panic and fled to his hometown in Qiao County.

But when passing through Zhongmou County, Cao Cao was so hungry and thirsty that he had to disguise himself and enter the city to fill his stomach, but he was captured by the soldiers guarding the city.

However, Chen Gong, the magistrate of Zhongmou County, admired Cao Cao's noble act of assassinating Dong Zhuo. Not only did he not send Cao Cao back to Luoyang to hand him over to Dong Zhuo, but he also abandoned his official position to rescue Cao Cao in the dead of night and fled eastward together.

Relying on his identity as a county magistrate, Chen Gong easily led Cao Cao away from Zhongmou County. He was about to ride away on a horse in the night to avoid being noticed by the officials in the city and being chased after him.

The fast horses that Cao Cao and Chen Gong were riding on the official road suddenly stepped into a horse trap. The two men fell to the ground along with their horses before they could react.

Fortunately, Cao Cao had a long military career and his martial arts skills were quite extraordinary.

Although Chen Gong was a scholar, he was also proficient in the six arts of a gentleman and had extraordinary physical fitness.

However, when Cao Cao saw clearly in the moonlight the horse trap that was obviously deliberately set up by the warhorse, his face suddenly changed, and he subconsciously drew his sword and pointed it at Chen Gong, shouting.

"Chen Gongtai, I thought you were a righteous man, why did you deceive me and dig a horse pit here?"

Chen Gong was startled by Cao Cao's action of drawing his sword and pointing it at him like a frightened bird, and he felt a little sad and explained.

"Brother Meng De, if I wanted to kill you, I only needed to arrange a jailer in the Zhongmu County Jail. Why would I go to such great lengths?"

Upon hearing this, Cao Cao immediately realized that he was too suspicious. However, before he could open his mouth to ease the relationship with Chen Gong, he suddenly heard several sounds of breaking through the air.

Cao Cao instinctively rolled to one side in a panic, and three feather arrows pierced directly where Cao Cao had just been.

Immediately, more than ten men in black holding sharp blades rushed out from both sides of the official road toward Cao Cao and Chen Gong. (End of this chapter)