In the Song Dynasty, there was no law or order.

The next morning, at four o'clock in the morning, before dawn, Yan Shu had already brought the imperial physician here.

Zhao Jun had just gotten up, and he couldn't see anything during this period, and he had already developed a biological clock of the Song Dynasty.

After the old doctor did acupuncture as usual, Yan Shu asked: "Do you want to take off the gauze today?"

"Okay."

Zhao Jun also wanted to see how his eyes had recovered.

Although he had taken it off to see a few days ago, just like a person who wants to lose weight every day wants to weigh himself to see if he has lost weight today, a blind person wants to see if his eyes have healed every day.

The imperial physician took off the veil, and Zhao Jun opened his eyes. It was dark, and there was only a single candle in the room, and he couldn't see anything clearly.

"Can you see?"

Yan Shu asked.

Zhao Jun said, "I can see, a little better than the last few days, but it's still blurry and I can't see clearly. It's too dark."

"It's morning now, it's not even daybreak."

Yan Shu made an excuse and said, "The doctor told you not to take off your veil for at least a month. Even if your eyes are healed, you have to consolidate them first."

"I know."

Zhao Jun responded. Since it was about whether his eyes could recover, he still obeyed.

He put on the veil again. All the wounds on his body had healed now, and the gauze had been removed. Except for his eyes, other parts were almost healed.

After breakfast, Zhao Jun took a short rest and started class. Today he continued to teach math and Chinese, teaching division and pinyin.

There are 63 pinyin, and the progress of teaching is relatively slow. I think it will definitely not be learned in just a few days, so I have to continue.

Next, he plans to teach like this. It won't take long for his eyes to get better. It is estimated that the road down the mountain should be open by then. First go to the county for a check-up, and then see when the Education Bureau will arrange a new teacher.

Soon it was ten o'clock in the morning. The day's classes were over, and Fan Zhongyan came to bring him food.

He helped Zhao Jun clean up the wooden boards used for class and the chairs for students in the room, and brought the food to Zhao Jun. Zhao Jun heard his voice and wondered, "Uncle Nima, where is Uncle Lari?"

"Lari Muzi went to the path to see the progress of the digging."

Fan Zhongyan used a long-prepared excuse to evade the question. In fact, it was because Yan Shu had not come to the back garden or the court recently to take care of his wife, and he had not been seen in the three-division yamen until now.

So after Yan Shu came back, he had to go and do some handover work. Otherwise, even if he was slacking off, it was still necessary to report first and understand the basic situation of the Ministry of Revenue.

Zhao Zhen and his men still didn't come today. Recently, the court has been vigorously carrying out some small reforms. Shengdu is opening a bank and Li Zi is arresting tea merchants.

Although it is not a big change, Zhao Zhen and his men still have to keep an eye on the reform situation to make adjustments.

Because they also want to see if the method Zhao Jun said is really effective, and see if this young man in his twenties really has such great talent.

If he has talent, he will be quickly reused after Zhao Jun's eyesight recovers.

If he has no talent and is just strong-willed, he may still need to gain experience, or simply be a political adviser, which is better than him messing around with the country in the future and making some radical measures to destabilize the country.

Fortunately, from the current situation, the Jiaozi business and the tea law are still going smoothly, mainly because these two items have not harmed the interests of court officials. The Jiaozi business is a good thing for officials who have business dealings between Bianliang and Chengdu Prefecture, and the tea law is even more damaging, which only harms the interests of border officials.

As for the tea merchants behind the senior officials, they are in the first-level wholesale market and do not need tea permits. Therefore, the entry into China has nothing to do with them, and the tea permit problem has been solved from the source. This is the power of the privileged class.

So the reform has lasted for a while, and there has been no chaos so far, which makes Zhao Zhen and Lu Yijian very satisfied.

Soon Zhao Jun had lunch. There were no old men and women at the entrance of the village. Fan Zhongyan said they went to work in the fields. Zhao Jun could only sit on the ground outside the door and chat with Fan Zhongyan.

Fan Zhongyan always held a pen in his hand and had to write down important words. This was a habit maintained by Yan Shu and Fan Zhongyan as recorders.

Now Fan Zhongyan was demoted to secretary and junior supervisor. He no longer needed to do his job. His main task was to take notes. Therefore, during this period of time, while Zhao Zhen and others were away, he secretly asked Zhao Jun many questions he wanted.

For example, the Qingli New Deal and Li Yuanhao's founding of the country. At present, Fan Zhongyan has a clear plan for his life. He wants to reform and change the current weak predicament of the Song Dynasty.

But having learned from the lessons of his failed reforms in history, Fan Zhongyan no longer thought about other things, but concentrated on studying the reform of officials.

Zhao Jun knew that the secretary of Granima Village was a fan of Fan Zhongyan and that he liked to learn about the Qingli New Deal. He did not hold back and expressed many of his opinions, such as affirming Fan Zhongyan's reforms, while also pointing out many deficiencies in Fan Zhongyan's reforms.

"In short, the overall environment of the Song Dynasty was not very good. Fan Zhongyan was able to be reused by Zhao Zhen to start the Qingli New Deal because the war in the northwest was stable, Li Yuanhao officially established a country, and negotiated with the Song Dynasty."

"After the foreign invasion came to a temporary end, Song Renzong thought about solving internal problems, alleviating the increasingly acute social contradictions and huge military expenditures."

"Several wars with Western Xia led to the people's livelihood in the Song Dynasty, and the uprisings continued, and the fiscal deficit was getting worse. In this situation, if no change is sought, serious consequences may occur."

"The three redundancies, the redundancy is directly caused by redundant soldiers and redundant officials. Fan Zhongyan did not dare to take action on the problem of redundant soldiers, so he could only solve the redundant officials first, but his measures were too radical, leading to opposition from the whole court."

"In fact, many officials do not want to do things, but they have no power in their hands, and they have no way. As long as good officials are selected, let them complete KPI, and implement a reasonable punishment and reward system, I believe that the enthusiasm of officials can be mobilized."

"So it is important to make the pie bigger. Some of his reforms are more reasonable, but you can't dismiss so many officials right away. That will easily create a sense of crisis, making more than 99% of officials afraid of being dismissed, and thus being used by those with ulterior motives, Incite the offensive and abort the new policy. "

"And promoting the system also requires methods. Chairman Mao said that the correct way is to make fewer enemies and more friends, win over some people, suppress some people, and reduce resistance. "

"In addition, the system of the Northern Song Dynasty was already very rigid. Fan Zhongyan's reform actually only made a lot of minor adjustments, and there was no drastic change at all. But even so, it was still opposed by these conservative bureaucrats. This is because the officialdom of the Song Dynasty lacks vitality. "

"How can you do politics well with a group of insects? So in addition to the clear reform route, more vitality should be injected. As for how to inject vitality, I don't know. I am not very interested in "History of the Song Dynasty" and have not studied it in depth. "

"Zhao Jun told Fan Zhongyan all his understanding of the Qingli New Deal, and Fan Zhongyan also wrote it down very carefully. He has been listening to the lectures for a long time these days. These contents not only broadened his horizons, but also allowed him to find practical solutions, which helped him a lot.

It was not until the afternoon that Zhao Jun had dinner and went back to his room to rest, and Fan Zhongyan left work with today's harvest. On the way back, even when he was sitting in the sedan chair, he thought about today's content over and over again. This has become his habit.

At the beginning of the evening, Fan Zhongyan returned to his home in Daguan Lane. It was sunset at this time. A ray of sunlight shone through the door of the study, reflecting a long orange light wave on the ground.

Mottled dots of light fell on the ground, windowsills, bookshelves, desks, and scrolls. Most places in the house were dark, except for Fan Zhongyan's resolute face on the south side, near the windowsill, and on the desk. The lower half was exposed to the sun, and the upper half was hidden in the shadow, with light and dark interweaving.

He sat solemnly in front of the desk, on which were countless papers.

The booklet recorded in the palace cannot be taken out of the palace, because the emperor and the prime ministers have to read it every day, but after he comes back, he will write down his thoughts today and hide them in a secret compartment. After work every day, he will lock himself in the study and take them out to read.

It records a lot of things he thinks should be done now and what needs to be changed in the future.

"Zhao Jun said that reform is not a dinner party, it requires perseverance and the courage to burn the boats, but now is not the time for reform. He is right. In the face of internal and external troubles, we should first quell the external troubles and then solve the internal troubles."

Fan Zhongyan cast his eyes on the several pages of paper that were taken out separately on the right. They were some of his ideas for going to the northwest to serve as the Shaanxi Jinglüe Envoy and preparing for Li Yuanhao to establish a country.

Zhao Jun believed that it was unlikely for the Song Dynasty to defeat Li Yuanhao, and Fan Zhongyan could only defend against Li Yuanhao's attack at most, but the government hoped that he could win a battle. This task was still quite difficult, and he made a lot of efforts for this.

For example, he hoped to change the northwest military system after going to the border, strengthen the training of border soldiers, repair the dilapidated city walls, and let the border residents and the court send some imperial troops to the northwest to build water conservancy projects, cultivate land and reclaim wasteland, etc.

The Guanzhong region was extremely prosperous in the Tang Dynasty, but it had declined in the Song Dynasty. Today, there are still a lot of abandoned arable land. If it can be reclaimed, it can alleviate a lot of food and grass pressure.

It was mainly because of the Anshi Rebellion and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms that repeatedly caused wars in the Guanzhong region. By the beginning of the Song Dynasty, the population of the Guanzhong Basin was less than one-fifth of the heyday of the Tang Dynasty. Chang'an, an international metropolis with a population of one million, had a permanent population of only 120,000.

But there is another problem in reclaiming wasteland, that is, the Tang Dynasty was too brilliant in Chinese civilization, and Guanzhong could not withstand such prosperity. The upper reaches of the Jing River, Wei River, Yellow River and other rivers suffered extremely serious soil erosion.

The clear separation of Jing and Wei has appeared since the Zhou Dynasty. By the Song Dynasty, the Wei River also became turbid. In later generations, the Wei River was even deeper than the Jing River.

Therefore, Fan Zhongyan knew that it was not easy to open up wasteland on the border, and water conservancy facilities must also keep up.

There were still two years before Li Yuanhao established the country and three years before the war. Fan Zhongyan felt that he could do a lot of things in these two or three years.

Then the next thing was the reform.

Fan Zhongyan looked at another pile of papers on the left hand side of the table. Compared with the war in the northwest, he was more interested in the new policies in Chongqing.

After all, this was what could change the country's poverty and weakness.

On the paper, he wrote a lot, which was the note he was going to submit to the government.

Such as "clear promotion and demotion", "suppress luck", "fine tribute selection", "select superiors", "equalize public land", "encourage agriculture and sericulture", "improve military preparation", "reduce corvée", "emphasize orders", and "extend favor and trust" are all included.

And more than ten more items were added.

Such as "rectify official style", "examine total", "perform performance evaluation", "investigate corruption", "square field tax", "recruit corvée", "commander-in-chief system", "strict profit and tax", etc.

The latter ones borrowed a lot of content from Wang Anshi's reform, and there were also some suggestions from Zhao Jun.

Fan Zhongyan scanned the paper for a while, and then added "cut weak soldiers", "baojia system", "market exchange affairs", "equal distribution", "enter the grassroots", "regular transfer", "calculate the accounts", "three-house system", etc.

These contents almost cover many reforms such as officials, land, law, army, economy, education, etc., which are more radical than the Qingli New Deal in history.

According to Zhao Jun's statement, at least twenty items should be crossed out, and less than ten items can be retained.

But Fan Zhongyan looked at the content above and had no intention of changing it.

Because he knew one thing.

The officials only came occasionally these days, and Fan Zhongyan was always with Zhao Jun.

So he could often hear some interesting words from Zhao Jun in private.

"The Chinese people always like to compromise. For example, if you say that this room is too dark and you need to open a window here, everyone will definitely not allow it. But if you advocate tearing down the roof, they will come to compromise and are willing to open the window."

This sentence gave Fan Zhongyan a lot of inspiration.

He heard why he was able to fail in the Qingli New Deal in history, because it touched the entire interest group.

Since only such a small change has caused a huge wave, why don't I break this sky?

Fan Zhongyan looked at the papers on the table, and he wrote hundreds of words on each item, which added up to thousands of words.

If those corrupt officials, mediocre officials, lazy officials, landlords and merchants, and incompetent soldiers saw it, I'm afraid they would be heartbroken.

"I heard from Zhao Jun that Wang Anshi was later nicknamed 'Stubborn Prime Minister', saying that he was as stubborn as an ox."

"But you don't know that anyone who has the ambition to reform the country must have such stubbornness. Otherwise, if he can't stick to it and the reform is abandoned halfway, it will bring great harm to the country."

"Wang Anshi's Qingmiao Law cannot be implemented because of poor official administration. Zhao Jun is right. If you want to change the country, you must first have a clear political system."

"The political arena cannot be a stagnant pool. If everyone is thinking about petty gains and losses and doing nothing, how can this country last for a long time? ?”

“If that’s the case, I might as well take on the reputation of being a stubborn prime minister. The government asked me to take a long-term view on how to reform the law, but I will go against the flow and carry out the reform to the end.”

“I think even if Zhao Jun’s eyes recover, he will support my idea. I hope that he will stand on my side when the time comes!”

Fan Zhongyan raised his brush, dipped it in some ink, added some details to the few new articles he had written, and then took out a blank memorial from the table next to him. After a little thought, he began to write furiously.