Late Tang

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Liaodong City.

Above the golden palace of the former Koguryo Palace, Li Jing, who has a long list of titles, including the king of Andong, the Marshal of Hebei and Northeast Provinces, the envoys of the [-] towns including Ziqing, the ambassador of observation, and the ambassador of consolation, wears a A small lapel wallet, a pair of tight straight-leg leather pants, and a white rhinoceros belt around the waist.Her long hair was tied up in a bun on the top of her head, and instead of wearing a crown, she inserted a jade hairpin directly into it.

There is a fire path in the wall of the hall, and the fire is burning. Even in the season of Liaodong in November, the hall is still warm as spring.

Li Jing glanced at the booklet presented respectfully by Park Jung-eun, the retained Goguryeo eunuch, and glanced at the Hebei envoy standing in the hall first.This envoy who came here on behalf of the four towns in Hebei is an old acquaintance of Li Jing. He is currently the governor of Mozhou of the Lulong Army of Hebei and the commander of the Dingbadu of the Lulong Army Liu Rengong and Liu Kutou.At first he was Li Maoxun's subordinate, then he became Li Keju's subordinate, then he became Li Quanzhong's subordinate, and now he became Liu Yue's subordinate in a blink of an eye.

Because Liu Rengong and Li Jing were able to envoy him many times, the four towns of Hebei sent him again this time.

Looking away, after scanning Liu Kutou's letter, Li Jing smiled slightly.

As he expected, Liu Rengong came here because he finally made a statement earlier, and the north and the south dispatched troops at the same time, expressing their support for the imperial court.

Li Jing sent [-] troops to the border in the north of Youzhou. At the same time, he mobilized and deployed [-] troops on the Qingziqi line in the south of the Yellow River.This mobilization and arrangement really put great pressure on the four towns in Hebei.

Except for the three towns in Hebei that wiped out the Yiwu Army with lightning speed at the beginning, and expanded the three towns into four towns, they fell silent for a while.Instead of attacking the towns of the imperial court as imagined, they recruited troops and bought horses, guarding their respective territories, and deployed heavy troops on the Taihang Mountain line, the Yellow River line, and Youzhou line.The four sides are defended, while the middle is empty.

The layout of the four towns was obviously insufficiently prepared, and they did not dare to rush to attack the east of the river.At the same time, it is not difficult to see that they are very afraid of Zhen [***] who has not expressed his position.The territory of Zhen [***] is huge, not only has a huge territory in Liaodong, but also has occupied four prefectures of the Lulong Army in Jitan Pingying in the north of Youzhou, which is close to Youzhou.At the same time, in the south, Ziqing Town in the town of [***], although not connected to Weibo Town, but across from the Yichang Army, this also prevented the Hebei rebels from directly attacking Yichang Army, afraid of triggering Zhen [***]'s counterattack.

In addition, Zhen[***] has a powerful navy, which can attack Youzhou or Chengde from the east coast at any time.It can be said that in terms of strategic geography, the three towns in Hebei are now completely at a disadvantage of Li Jing.They had to guard against Li Jing, in case Li Jing suddenly sent troops from behind, it would be quite troublesome.

Now Li Jing has made a statement and is on the court's side.This dealt a great blow to the four towns in Hebei. The fact that Liu Rengong was sent here this time was actually hoping to change this result.

The gifts from the four towns were not light, 20 kabuki and dancers each, plus ten beauties.In addition, there are 1 taels of gold.But these were not the most surprising thing to Li Jing, because when Li Jing turned to the second page of the gift list and saw the gifts on it, she couldn't help being shocked and frowning.

The gifts from the four towns marked on the second page are the six crowns of the emperor.

The six crowns are the emperor's costumes of the Tang Dynasty emperors. There are six types of robes worn by the emperor on six different occasions.

The six crowns are all available, and each is quite complete.Even the four towns of Hebei carved six emperor seals for Li Jing.

Seeing this, Li Jing really wanted to yell absurdly.

No wonder people say that during the Five Dynasties, what the generals liked to do most was to support others as emperors. It was also in an era like the Five Dynasties that it was possible for Song Taizu to add a yellow robe.It turned out that Li Jing had always believed that Song Taizu's yellow robe must have been ordered by his subordinates to do it.

But after being in the Tang Dynasty for so long, Li Jing finally had [-]% confidence that Song Taizu's yellow robe was definitely not what he instructed his subordinates to do.It was the subordinate generals who did it on their own initiative.Just like right now, Li Jing is the King of Andong County in the Tang Dynasty, but it was only because he had reservations about the emperor's order before. As a result, these four towns in Hebei who were afraid of him immediately took the initiative to send the emperor Liumian , and even carved the jade seal for him.

If it wasn't for Li Jingyuan being in Liaodong City, the four towns in Hebei would not be his subordinates.Li Jing believed that if these people were his subordinates and they were in Liaodong City at this time, they might just add a yellow robe to Li Jing.

But just thinking about it, Li Jing fully understood the thoughts of the four towns in Hebei. They had been a semi-separatist feudal town before, but because of several misunderstandings, they were finally forced to rebel.But the current situation made them feel unconfident. After all, the rebellion in the four towns back then was much more powerful than the current situation.But in the end, it was flattened by the court, and judging from the mobilization of the court now, it is no less powerful than before.

What worries them even more is that behind them now, there is Li Jing, King of Andong County, who holds 20 soldiers.If he dedicated his life to the imperial court and led his troops to attack their backs, it would be difficult for them to withstand the imperial court's multiple attacks.

So after much deliberation, I finally came up with a solution that is not a solution.

During Dezong's reign, the imperial court sent Li Xilie, the king of Ping County in Huainan, to crusade against Ziqing Town. In the end, Ziqing Town sent lobbyists to persuade Li Xilie, and instead made Li Xilie form an alliance with the four towns and defected.Not long after Li Xilie rebelled, he established Chu and proclaimed himself emperor.

With Li Jing's current soldiers and horses, the momentum is no less than that of the four towns.And looking at his previous attitude towards the emperor's will, as well as Li Jing's actions in the past few years, it shows that Li Jing is not a simple person.

After some discussion, the four towns sent Liu Rengong to bring the imperial robes. The meaning was very simple. The four towns were willing to treat Li Jing as the emperor and them as ministers.

For the four towns, if this matter is successful, as long as Li Jing repents and takes over, once Li Jing proclaims himself emperor, it will be impossible for him to return to the imperial court.In this way, the biggest enemy becomes an ally, and not only the power of the rebels increases, but also the power of the imperial court drops, and the situation changes drastically.And what they paid was nothing more than a royal title.Anyway, the four towns never thought of taking Li Tang and replacing them. Their bigger idea was actually to turn the four towns in Hebei into a permanent separatist force that would be handed down from generation to generation.

It has to be said that this move by the four towns of Hebei is very unexpected and very tempting.

If it is an ordinary person, I am afraid it will be difficult to resist this temptation.You know, Li Jing's current subordinates, plus the newly established Liaozhong Fushun Army in Liaodong City, have a total of six towns, 21 troops and more than 20 million people in 500 states.

And if the four towns of Hebei are willing to regard Li Jing as the emperor, then with a nod, they can get at least 30 troops from the four towns and sixteen states.

In this way, it is not impossible for the rebels with 37 states and 50 troops to replace the Li family.How many people in the world can refuse this temptation?

However, Li Jing's mind is very clear, the act of wearing a yellow robe in Si Zhen, Li Jing didn't remember anything when his mind became hot.

For Li Jing, if he agreed to the request of the four towns, he would not get anything substantial other than the empty title of emperor.Proclaiming yourself emperor now will have many disadvantages.First of all, the morale of the army and the people in Liaodong is turbulent, which will inevitably hurt the vitality of Liaodong.In fact, when he became the emperor, the four towns in Hebei surrendered to him in name, but in fact he would never command to move these four towns.On the contrary, because the four towns belonged to him, it was impossible for him to attack the territory of the four towns.One more thing, once Li Jing became emperor, he would truly be the number one enemy of the Tang Dynasty.

The four towns in Hebei are kings. If the court feels that it is not stable, they can show their face to pardon their crimes and maintain their current territories.But once Li Jing proclaims himself emperor, the Tang Dynasty will never let him go, and there can only be death between the two sides.Since then, Li Jing has become the court's No. [-] enemy, and he will surely bear all the firepower.

And Li Jing is now supporting Liaodong, sitting on the mountain and watching the tigers fight. Neither the imperial court nor the Hebei rebels dare to provoke him, but they have to be careful with him.Maintaining the status quo, Li Jing can speed up the construction of Liaodong, while continuing to deal with Khitan and other backyard neighbors, and can continue to do business in his old business, and his savings will be stronger.

As long as the pros and cons are compared, how can Li Jing be tempted by the name of the emperor, so he doesn't know where to go.

The gold and the beauty Li Jing accepted it, but as for the hot yellow robe, Li Jing returned it unchanged.

Although Liu Rengong was a little disappointed after returning to the inn, he had already understood how a person like Li Jing could be easily moved by a yellow robe.Just as he was packing his luggage and preparing to return tomorrow, there was a knock on the door of the inn.

When I opened it, I saw several unknown characters, all of them silk and satin, very wealthy.

Before he could ask, these people had already reported their family backgrounds, and they were all big shopkeepers of major commercial firms.

"We want to do business with General Liu and others!" A middle-aged man who claimed to be the shopkeeper of Ng Fung Commercial Bank said directly.Under the name of Wufeng Commercial Bank, there is mainly a large fishing fleet and more than a dozen canning factories. Their main business is canned food, mainly canned fish, and they also operate some transactions such as lamp oil.

The business that the shopkeeper of Wufeng Commercial Bank wants to do is actually very simple, exchanging canned food for people.No matter adults or children, men or women, as long as they are under 50 years old and free from infectious or serious diseases, he wants them.All the population can be exchanged for canned food.

Liu Rengong's heart skipped a beat when he heard this, and he turned his gaze to several other businessmen. Although their products were different, their requirements were similar, and they all planned to exchange their products for people. (To be continued.)