Chapter 131: That kid, this kid

Wang Chen stood behind a tree on the hillside, looking far away at Su Yan, who was riding on a high horse and was being escorted by a crowd of soldiers, with a very conflicting mood.

Before this, the last time I saw Su Yan, he was tied into a dumpling stuffed in the carriage, helplessly accept the end of being escorted back to the capital city jail for trial. Who expects to meet two sets of Tartar cavalry halfway, escort Su Yan’s Jin Yi Wei insufficient number of people, fell into the desperate situation of total annihilation.

He thought at that time that he was bound to die, like a worm that can only wriggle, suffocating at the bottom of a Tartar’s shoe.

–Instead of this, he would rather Su Yan personally end his life, as a kind of closure for the enmity between them.

However, Su Yan’s hand rose and fell with his knife, but only cut the hemp rope on his body.

“Even if you were to die, you would have to die by the king’s law, not by the beast’s sword. Go, run for your life!” The young royal historian resolutely let him go in his own defense, looking at him with regret, resignation, and a hint of hateful regret.

And he was also ghostly, actually did not take advantage of the opportunity to slip away, but instead manipulated the sword to kill the enemy, but also listened to the command of that cold-faced guard, escorting Su Yan to highlight the siege.

But in the end, he didn’t protect it. Su Yan was dragged away by a Tartar cavalryman with a lasso, and at that time he only had time to release an arrow with all his strength to shoot the Tartar off his horse, but he couldn’t catch up with the frenzied galloping horse, and in the end he watched as Su Yan crashed his horse and fell down the steep slope of a deep valley.

Without hesitation, the cold-faced guard followed suit and jumped down as well.

Wang Chen caught up from the rear and stopped beside the steep slope. In the night, the gorge was like a ferocious beast opening its dark mouth, hiding an unknown and deadly menace.

He hesitated slightly, wanting to go down and save the day.

At least make sure the dog officer is dead or alive, how else can I explain to my dead family and brothers? He said to himself. But on second thought, such a good opportunity to get away is in front of us, not to take advantage of the opportunity to escape, are you still waiting to clean your neck on the beheading platform of the vegetable market entrance?

While hesitating, a few Tartars at the back chased after him with torches. Wang Chen clenched his teeth, raised his whip and smacked his horse’s buttocks, fled the road, and finally, with the help of the night, got rid of the few pursuers.

He wandered around Qingyangfu for ten days before finally contacting his brother Wang Wu, who had fled in defeat.

Previously, Wang Wu had besieged Su Yan’s carriage near Qingping Yuan, trying to save his younger brother, only to be counter-attacked by the other side. Su Yan utilized the five hundred elite cavalry of Zhang Qiandu of Ningxia Wei to beat up his more than a thousand men and women, and a large portion of the bandits under his command died in battle and fled. Wang Wu himself was hit by a stray arrow in his arm and left in a hurry.

The good thing is that although this loss is large, but has not yet shaken to the foundation of Wang Wu, follow him to turn back the pastoral army, but only a detachment, and his subordinate rattlesnake pirates there are still three or four thousand people.

After meeting with Yang, the third leader of the army, Wang Wu chopped off a piece of his little finger and swore to heaven that he would need to catch Su Yan in the future and cut his throat and bleed him and chop him into pieces in order to sacrifice his dead father, mother and brother.

When they were reunited after the robbery, both brothers were shocked and delighted and hugged and cried.

Wang Wu told his brother about the oath he had taken and asked for Su Yan’s whereabouts.

Wang Chen heart like being pulled by a small file, the taste is difficult to describe, and finally said that he saw Su Yan fall into the valley with his own eyes, and he thought that he must have fallen to death.

Wang Wu still thought that Su Yan’s death was too painful and not enough of a relief. Wang Chen, in the midst of his brother’s curses, a pot of reunion wine drank out of the bitter taste, and simply poured himself into a drunken stupor.

The two men continued to lead the ringing horse thieves to roam around all the counties in Shaanxi Province, constantly encouraging the army surplus, horse households and stragglers who were living in hardship to join the gang, and buying people’s hearts with the money and grain gained from plundering the official warehouses and the rich households, and the team was growing stronger and stronger.

— Until the damned Su Yan Su Royalty came back alive.

Not only did he live, but he also issued a series of effective reforms: reorganizing the government herdsmen, gathering the displaced people, and reducing the corvée service for the horse households. He even told the state capitals that if the reform of the government herdsmen was successful, the civil herdsmen might be abolished, and the “household and horse law” which had been suffering the people for a long time would probably be ended in their generation.

As if a long drought had brought sweet rains, the exiled military remnants and horse households gradually responded to the government’s call to return to their places of origin. Because the treatment of the herdsmen was greatly improved, most of the exiles began to be enthusiastic about becoming herdsmen and herding official horses for the Supervisory Court.

As soon as the herdsmen have more hands, there will be no more death row inmates. Su Yan also suspected that the group of felons exiled by the Ministry of Justice, horse breeding is not good, horse abuse is very good, just like a time bomb like a social instability. He also clearly remembers, in the Qingpingyuan camp in the fortress to see the prisoners of death penalty pastoral army, those people face animalistic and ferocious, so all sent to the Shaanxi Tidings Inspection Department, according to the law should be imprisoned in prison, the beheading of the beheading.

These changes in Shaanxi’s current situation caused the hearts of the Rattlesnake Thieves to begin to be shaken within themselves as well.

If ordinary people could not survive, who would want to become a bandit and live in fear of being hunted down and besieged by the government every day?

Since there is a way out, and the government guarantees that displaced persons who voluntarily return to their homeland will be exempted from punishment, and allocates land for them to cultivate or graze their livestock, why don’t they go back?

So a lot of bandits have a different heart, in the middle of the night secretly put armor, weapons a throw, change back to the original folk dress, go back to their homes – also the bandit cottage divided into their horses also to ride away. Often at night people still sleep in several yards, and then get up in the morning to see that half of the yard is empty.

Wang Wu felt that he couldn’t go on like this, or else the loud signboard of “Rattlesnake Thief” would be smashed one day. Without men and horses in his hands, does he want to be a bachelor commander-in-chief?

He worriedly approached his brother, Wang Chen, to discuss his strategy.

Wang Chen was silent for a long time and asked rhetorically, “Brother, do you still remember our original intention of establishing the Rattlesnake Thief?”

Wang Wu froze, “It …… is because he can t live, and he wants to earn a way to live for himself and for the poor folks.”

“- Now the way to live has appeared.” Wang Chen lowered his head, not daring to look at his brother, and spoke with some difficulty, “Do you still remember that day in the fortress, when the two of us brothers were taken by Su Yan, and we had some conversations with him, and the oath of high fives?”

Wang Wu’s eyes were mesmerized for a few short breaths.

Of course he remembers.

At that time they were bound and at the mercy of others. And the young official, clad in dirty and tattered robes, stood barefoot before them, promising in a voice that was not resonant, but clear and firm, “I will let all you good men who have been forced to go to Liangshan be discharged from your armor and return to the fields, so that the officials can do their jobs and the people can live in peace and work in contentment.”

Su Yan said, “When the world clears up, you’ll break up and go back to your hometown to be good citizens, how about that?”

And they, too, with blood hot in their hearts, replied sincerely, “If there really is such a day, old me won’t be a rattlesnake thief or a mountain king! Go back to what we should do and live our lives.”

–What about now? Even if that day comes, can they really turn back, willingly?

–Since when has the original intention changed its flavor? Mixed with more and more difficult to ride the tiger, the arrow out of no return, and gradually turned into the desire for greater interests, more power and the pursuit?

–Desire never ends. Satisfy a lower one, and a higher one will spring up, satisfy a higher one, and a higher one will spring up, and so on, step by step, towards an uncertain future, and ultimately, the king will become the loser.

Wang Chen slowly raised his eyes and gazed at his twin brothers, “Brother, what he promised us in the first place, one and the same is being realized, no matter what the final result is, at least he spared no effort to do it. He has never lied to us …… and what we promised him in the beginning?”

Wang Wu’s face was extremely ugly at this moment.

He was steeped in fury, splitting his face and smashing his brother’s cheekbone, knocking Wang Chen to the ground.

He grabbed his brother’s lapel and went to his parents’ grave, holding down the back of their necks as they knelt together and hissed, “Say this to your parents and nephew and sister-in-law! Tell them that you are going to wag your tail to the government that chopped off their heads, and go back to being a pig dog to be slaughtered!

“You go to the brethren who follow us with all their hearts! Tell them that the promise you made to them in the beginning that they would suffer together and share the riches is all a load of crap! Say that you accepted the recruitment just to let them go back to the hard life of facing the yellow earth and the sky again!”

Wang Chen was shaken and yelled at by him, his face reddened and he couldn’t speak.

Wang Wu finished venting, gasping for breath, disliked Wang Chen, who was sitting on his knees, backward on the tombstone, against his brother’s forehead, his voice was low and full of emotion: “Sixth son, listen to my brother, we don’t have any other family members, and now the only one that my brother can rely on is you, and the only one that you can rely on is also me. You can only rely on me. We have to rely on each other, right? We have been together since our mothers’ wombs, we have been together for the first half of our lives, and we can’t be separated for the second half of our lives.”

He picked the wolf tooth necklaces around each other’s necks and shoved them into Wang Chen’s hands, as if he wanted to use this to remind the other party – they were blood brothers who had broken bones.

“Brother knows that you are not willing to do nothing, and you also have a heart that wants to excel! We’ve managed to pull the team up to this size, once we turn back, we’ll lose everything! Not only can’t we turn back, we must keep going!”

“How much further can …… we go?” Wang Chen’s sweaty forehead hair, the whites of his eyes covered in crimson blood, his hand cupped two cold and hard wolf teeth, and he muttered a question.

“As long as life lasts, we’ll go as far as we can!” Wang Wu said decisively, like convincing the other party and also convincing himself, “We don’t want to be rattlesnake thieves anymore, we want to be a righteous army! If Shaanxi can t stay for a while, we will go to Henan …… Do you know Liao Crazy?”

Wang Chen was stunned, “Crazy Liao? That crazy Liao who has been causing uprisings for years and has been suppressed by the imperial court four or five times, hiding like a lost dog?”

“He’s not as bad as you make him out to be! At least the court’s tens of thousands of troops have been fighting him for so many years, spending countless amounts of money and food, and they haven’t been able to cut him down to the roots, have they?”

Wang Chen wanted to retort again, but Wang Wu covered his mouth and said with his ear, “Listen to me! Crazy Liao sent someone to contact me, saying that he had heard of Wang Wu and Wang Liu’s great name for a long time, and that his heart yearned for them, and that he wanted to come to the border between Henan and Xi’an provinces to meet with us, and become brothers with different surnames. He also said that a scholar named Shi Suicai had defected to him, and that this man was a genius who had come to help him accomplish his mission. This Shi Sucai also said that we brothers will be his right-hand men in the future, and that we can’t accomplish anything without us!”

Wang Chen pulled away from his brother’s hand with force and gasped, “I’m not going to be some kind of right-hand man, helping others to accomplish things!”

“I still don’t know who will help who at that time!” Wang Wu laughed, a rough and gangly laugh, the bottom of his eyes filled with an ambitious ghostly light, “This is a wonderful opportunity, Sixth son, once you miss it, you won’t be able to turn around in this life!”

Wang Chen frowned, five parts disapproval, five parts indecision.

Wang Wu suddenly pressed the corners of his mouth, his accent odd: “I know your mind …… you can not let go of the kid surnamed Su, right?”

“Bullshit! That’s not true at all! He sent soldiers after us, and I shot an arrow at him, and he would have died under me without that guard! He kidnapped me, threatened me, and buried me in the dirt-“

“–But you still can’t break the idea!”

Wang Chen’s hasty defense came to an abrupt end.

“From the day you saw him at Eagle’s Mouth Mountain Falls, you had this thought …… you wanted to sleep with him.” Wang Wu said, while observing his brother’s expression, his heart is even more calculated, “It’s not just as simple as pressing someone under your body, you want him to sleep with you willingly, you want him to smile at you too, and say nice words to you …… But have you ever thought about it, on what basis do you get him? With your face and body? Or by the status of the second leader of the Rattlesnake Pirates? Do you believe that even if you ask to be his horseman, he will not even look at you?”

Wang Chen’s face was white with green, gritting his teeth in embarrassment, “Shut the fuck up! Or else get your ass kicked!”

“He is not only an official, but also comes from a family, you also saw his feet, not a single callus, the skin of his whole body is whiter than milk. People of such status look at you as if you were looking at silt and horse dung on the roadside.” Wang Wu ate a punch in his abdomen, bent over and coughed a few times, but still continued, “You can’t even touch the corner of his clothes in this life. Unless–“

Unless you can climb up to be his equal, or even higher than him, you will not be able to get him to look at you squarely, to be attracted to you, or even compelled to obey you then.

Wang Wu didn’t say anything further, but Wang Chen understood it all.

Wang Chen shook his head, “No way! That kid …… that kid ……”

He only said “that boy” repeatedly, but Wang Wu also understood that his brother was interested in his offer.

With a smile in his eyes, Wang Wu patted his brother’s shoulder, “Wealth and riches are in danger, and so are people. Greet all the brothers, pull out the camp and raise the fortress, let’s set out this time and head east along the Wei River to Henan Province.”

–

About this was recorded in the history of the insurgent division, our Su Yan students due to specialization did not point in the history of the dynasty, coupled with a good book do not seek to understand, wild gossip to see more than the main history, at the moment did not realize, will cause a storm in the future.

At that time, he was receiving the emissaries of the Northern Desert, was a group of foreign accents surrounded by a variety of pleasing, inadvertently listening to the same seat of the Wei governor said, Xi’an governor reported that there is a team of thousands of people to the east into the Henan Province, suspected of Wang Wu Wang six led by the ringing horse thieves.

“Our government has been successful in the control of thieves, and I heard that the governor himself led the troops to pursue and eliminate the thieves, and the ringing horse thieves fled in the wind–” the official document submitted by Xi’an Prefecture reads.

Wei governor stroked his beard and nodded his head, quite satisfied. Rattlesnake pirates have always been a tumor in the eyes of the Shaanxi state and county officials, and now do not scourge them, but scourge Henan.

Henan there is a repeatedly killed Liao crazy, now add a pair of Wang Wu Wang six, I do not know to toss into what kind of! However, the death of a friend is not poor, this is the governor of Henan should be a headache, and he Wei Quan has nothing to do.

Su Yan also only shook his head and sighed: “Good words are hard to persuade the damned ghosts, that’s all.”

He then focused his energies on these Northern Desert messengers in front of him.

These messengers came from dozens of tribes or forces in the Northern Desert, large and small, and this time, they were all courteous to him for the purpose of asking for a gold medal.

— not an Olympic gold medal, a voucher for the mutual market.

Suyen decided to get a gold medal system.

The general idea is that the court will unify and create a certain number of gold and copper tokens, and distribute half of them to the powers outside the country that have normal diplomatic relations with Daming. At that time take the gold medal over, and the other half of the Tea and Horse Division to save a collocation, match, good, tea, silk, salt and other essential goods can be sold to you, take the horse to exchange.

Without a gold medal, sorry, either you’re a denied visitor to Daming, or you’re trying to smuggle, and you can’t take a single tea stalk with you.

This system is the strongest against smugglers, followed by a clearer marking of the friendliness of the powers and increased access to studs.

Now those who need salt and tea, but do not have the strength to knock and loot, between the Tartar and Daming act as two sides of the various tribes and forces in the North Desert, it is necessary to make a clear posture.

You want to participate in the tea-horse trade? Can, my big Ming sea to accept all rivers, but to use the degree of friendship for the gold medal, once found that you and the Tartar stirred up together, get out of the way to grow their own tea and sun salt to go.

It’s not okay to rob someone’s gold medal. Not only do we have a code word, but we also make a register and check our identity every time.

If you want to come and buy tea, you can come anytime. The horse market is open every month at the Qing Shui camp. But when I need to buy horses, you will have to come here with a paper, and if the court still does nothing, I am sorry to say that this half gold medal of yours will be null and void, and I will also take the time to send troops and greet other tribes to go and crush you.

The tribes that answer the call to participate in the crusade will give you a partial reduction in import tariffs in the coming year oh mmmm.

Yes, I’m all about isolation and polarization, pulling together other small groups in the Northern Desert to diss you, dead Tartar.

Of course, you can’t write so nakedly in a memo.

But Jinglong emperor still look smile. He poked at some of the out of the ordinary words, to blue Xi commanded: “back to account for the recitation of the eunuch, these places do not read, specifically how to word, you call the Secretary of the proposed a statement to me look.”

Blue happy to see, pursed lips and promised, and heard the emperor shook his head and commented a sentence: “also thought that the field experience, can slowly stable up, do not want to still skin very, no rules and regulations.”

This which is to blame yo! Lan Xi understood the interface: “Su Royal Historian is young and talented, this force of skin is angry, is the true nature, rare and precious ah Royal Master!”

The emperor asked, “It’s snowing over there.”

Lan Xi said, “Counting the seasons, it’s almost time.”

“Go and pick out some winter-appropriate clothing and utensils, and have the post expedite their delivery.”

“Yes, the slave girl will go to the inner vault to select the best ones.”

“Also, the gold-copper albatross mentioned in the zhangfang can start drawing, finalizing, and casting the samples, and when it is discussed in the courtroom, I don’t know how long it will be delayed.”

“Yes, the slave girl will send a secret message to the Ministry of Labor.”

Thus, the outcome of this hall meeting at the Fengtian Hall was already predetermined before it even began.

The voice of the chanting eunuch was clear and high-pitched, and the aftermath echoed in the Golden Palace:

“…… Sixth, the tea and horse trading to establish a system of gold medals, the rise of the officials of the patrol ban, and the strict prohibition of private trafficking.”

“…… Seventh, rectify the military discipline of each border guard station, and audit the drill riding officials.”

“…… Its eight, rectify the salt course in Lingzhou, lower the price of salt, earmark money for the treasury, and crack down on smuggling.”

The whole eight programs, involving officials, soldiers, households, four ministries of industry, covering all aspects of horse political reform, will be deposited for a long time, one by one, the ills of the right medicine. Even in the eyes of Li Xifeng, a veteran minister of the two dynasties and the Minister of the Ministry of Revenue, it is a rare combination of the big picture and implementability of a good policy.

He can almost foresee that once this frame is set up and on the right track, even without Su Yan’s personal efforts, as long as the succeeding horse government officials insist on running it according to this model, our dynasty’s war horse reserves will reach a new peak. Shanxi, Liaodong and other parts of the country reformed as usual, then in less than ten years, the official herd of warhorses will be enough to equip half a million cavalry armies.

It’s a great benefit for the country!

“This kid ……” Li multiplied wind flicked his beard and lamented, “this kid ……”

Xie Shiyan, who was known as “the old man of thin mud”, couldn’t help but comment, “How come all the ‘Thousand Mile Colts’ are your disciples of the old man of the court of Li?”

Li Chengfeng had a winning look in his eyes and said with a stern face, “Nonsense, I have never taught such a cunning student.”

Xie Shiyan laughed, “He’s Priest Zhuo’s student, isn’t he just Pavilion Master Li’s disciple? You are clearly showing off, showing off, hahaha.”

The other two secondary auxiliaries Jiao Yang and Wang Qianhe were upset in their hearts, but they had nothing to say about it, and could only say behind their backs in a sour way, “This son loves to think out of the blue and does not follow the right path, and one day he will have to capsize the ship, so we will see.”

They are two civil servants with the Prime Minister Li Chengfeng faction, and in the founding of Tian Gongyuan, has been looking at this new into the fast boy is very bad, plus learned that the Empress Dowager because of the Wei’s reason for Su Yan hatred, natural tendency is very obvious.

Only in the way of the emperor’s clear statement of support, not good more cold water. Two people want to put Su Yan this kid outside a decade or eight years, people go tea cool, even if again back to the dynasty, there is no place for him.

Thousands of miles away in Su Yan, I do not know the Cabinet of four university professors on his attitude is clear-cut, looking at the task is going well, which after winter day after day of freezing wind cold, no, I do not suffer this wild crime, to apply to the emperor to go back to the capital for the New Year.

The application report had not yet been typed, and something happened on the Vaishnava side.