When Li Yi's army arrived at the city of Picheng, Xuzhou Mu Taoqian led all the civil and military forces of Xuzhou out of the city to greet him.

Tao Qian saluted and said, "Greetings to the hussar general!" ”

Li Yi turned over and dismounted, and saluted back: "Tao Gong is too polite. ”

Tao Qian said: "The general is working hard, please follow Tao into the city." ”

Li Yi nodded, and asked Zhang Fei to lead the army to camp outside Xiapi City, and he entered Xiapi City with a thousand personal guards.

That night, Tao Qian and Li Yi had their first long talk in Tao Qian's mansion.

This is not the first time Li Yi and Tao Qian have met, after the extermination of the Yellow Turban Army, Li Yi was ordered to enter Beijing, and he knew Tao Qian at that time. However, this is the first time the two have had an in-depth conversation.

Li Yi could see that Tao Qian's energy was already a little low at this time. He came to Xuzhou for nearly two years, but not only did he not govern Xuzhou well, but he plunged Xuzhou into deeper chaos, which gave him a heavy blow.

In fact, what Tao Qian wants to do most at this time is to return to his hometown and spend the last days of his life in peace.

Tao Qian's vision is extremely accurate, and he almost never misses people. He knew that his descendants had no talent, and their conduct was not good, so he was not an official at all. Once you enter the imperial court, you will inevitably be played to death.

Therefore, Tao Qian hopes to be able to bring his descendants back to the countryside to live a peaceful life.

Therefore, in the conversation with Li Yi, he revealed the idea of sending Li Yi to govern Xuzhou, and he wanted to return to his hometown. It's just that Li Yi has no plans to take over Xuzhou at the moment.

Like Qingzhou, Xuzhou today is an enclave for northern Xinjiang. Although Li Yi's strength in his hands now seems to be good, he is beyond the reach of Qingxu Erzhou.

Therefore, Li Yi comforted Tao Qian, saying that after this suppression of the rebellion, Xuzhou should be able to get a few years of peace. Just give full play to Tao Qian's advantage of being good at governing the place.

………………

There are many super-rich people in Xuzhou, but there are only two of the most powerful, one is the Chen family and the other is the Mi family.

The representative figures of the Chen family are Chen Qi and Chen Deng, father and son. This father and son are from a typical family of eunuchs for generations, and their backgrounds are far from being comparable to Tao Qian.

Chen Qi is the grandson of Guanghan Taishou Chen Cong, the nephew of Taiwei Chen Qiu, and the brother of Wujun Taishou Chen Yu and Ruyin Taishou Chen Cong. And he himself is Peixiang. This background is absolutely hard to say.

As for Chen Qi's son Chen Deng, although he is now only a small lieutenant under Tao Qian. However, Li Yi knew that Chen Deng had made many major events in history, such as welcoming Liu Bei as the lord of Xuzhou, colluding with Cao Cao to defeat Lu Bu, thwarting the invasion of the Eastern Wu army one after another, and guarding Xuzhou for many years. It is a typical outstanding talent.

The end of the Eastern Han Dynasty was an era in which the scholar class dominated the country. There are many so-called celebrities in this era.

These so-called celebrities refer to a group of self-righteous intellectuals who are between "official" and "hidden".

In this era of knowledge monopoly. Due to their special social status and psychological state, they constitute a unique traditional cultural landscape. In simple terms. is arrogant, looks down on everyone, and always thinks that the world is in his own hands.

The emergence of a large number of celebrities and scholars has a lot to do with the rise of famous religions in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Therefore, Baume & Mercier can also be interpreted as "the person of the famous religion". However, the substantive core of the so-called famous religion is still Confucianism, and it is still a stinking and hard Confucianism.

In addition to injecting the complex of entering the world and the peculiar way of dealing with the world. In the Wei and Jin dynasties, when the etiquette system was bad, they also single-handedly pushed the horses to put Nanshan and put the knives and guns into the warehouse. Preferential treatment of foreign races. and even the main promoters who directly allowed aliens to live within the Great Wall.

These celebrities are the parasites of the whole country and nation.

And Chen Qi is one of the celebrities.

Chen Qi used to be Peixiang, but he was dissatisfied with some trivial things and left. Completely indifferent to the people and their own work. Because he was born in a family of eunuchs. Because he is a celebrity who has a monopoly on knowledge. As long as he wants, he can be an official anytime and anywhere. In this case, who cares about the life and death and feelings of ordinary people?

In Li Yi's view, these so-called celebrities are the most typical bullies who are afraid of the weak. When bullying the good and the weak, the gods are vicious. I can't wait to take off my arms and go shirtless. But after encountering a really ruthless character, he immediately shrank his eggs.

In the future, when the Wuhu is in turmoil, the performance of these celebrities is completely comparable to an unprecedented burlesque. One by two, they scrambled to their knees in front of the hooves of the alien horses. I cried bitterly and longed to lick the riding boots of the aliens.

It is precisely because he knows the faces of these so-called celebrities that Li Yi is not disappointed that there are not many celebrities who have joined the northern Xinjiang, and even if they are some celebrities who have taken refuge in the northern Xinjiang, Li Yi does not reuse them, and generally gives them a false position with little power to appease them. Nowadays, those who play an important role in northern Xinjiang are some people from poor backgrounds with real talents and real learning.

These celebrities have a common characteristic, which is to use a good word to know the current affairs, and to use a bad word to say, that is, to see the wind and make the rudder.

Chen Qi and his son are good at seeing the wind and steering the rudder.

Now Li Yi led tens of thousands of troops into Xuzhou to quell the rebellion, but in the eyes of Chen Qi's father and son, Li Yi must not be as simple as quelling the rebellion, from now on, the sky in Xuzhou may change.

Therefore, not long after Li Yi arrived in Xiapi City, they quietly visited Li Yi, showing their intention to take refuge in Li Yi and squeeze out Tao Qian.

Chen Jue and his son are very talented compared to celebrities who only know empty talk. They all saw that Li Yi did not directly include Xuzhou in Northern Xinjiang, after all, Xuzhou was too far away from Northern Xinjiang, so they vaguely said that Li Yi could take Xuzhou down, and then appoint Chen Qi as Xuzhou pastor to govern Xuzhou on behalf of Li Yi. In the future, when Li Yi leads the army south, they will take refuge again.

Of course, Li Yi was stupid and stunned, as if he didn't understand the meaning of the two at all, and then sent their father and son away.

For people like them, of course Li Yi won't believe it, let alone squeeze out Tao Qian and let Chen Qi be the pastor of Xuzhou. It's like beating a dog with a meat bun.

In fact, Li Yi knows the true intentions of Chen Qi's father and son, so what he is plotting is land.

As one of the most powerful in Xuzhou, the Chen family has a huge amount of land in Xuzhou. Especially in the Xia Pi Kingdom, the base camp of the Chen family, up to one-third of the land belongs to the Chen family.

However, due to various reasons, the influence of the Chen family was limited to the Xiapi Kingdom, and the influence of the Chen family in the other counties was very small.

However, if Chen Qi can become the pastor of Xuzhou and master Xuzhou, it will be the best opportunity for the Chen family to expand. Chen Qi and his son believed that with their ability, they would definitely be sure to take one-third of the entire Xuzhou land, or even more, before Li Yi went south.

In addition, what they are trying to do is the population, in addition to the reputation and the number of fields accumulated over the years, where can the strength of the family be reflected? It's not a mountain of grain, it's not a room full of copper coins with broken ropes, and those fresh people!

At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the imperial court tax revenue continued to decrease, and Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty was even forced to take the initiative to sell his official position to subsidize the finances.

In the Eastern Han Dynasty, which collected taxes according to the head and land, the main source of tax revenue was the head tax and the field tax.

Before the outbreak of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the number of acres of land in the Eastern Han Dynasty hit a record high, and the population was also unprecedented, with a population of nearly 70 million!

However, why did Emperor Han Ling sit on such a powerful resource but still be forced to sell his official position? Even the people who couldn't bear it were easily instigated by Zhang Jiao, a doctor in the countryside, to launch the Yellow Turban Uprising that shocked the world?

The reason is simple. Most of the fields were divided and concealed by the powerful lords. The common people, too, most of them were accepted into the homes of the powerful and became tenants!

Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty couldn't find anyone and land to collect taxes, and every tax meant a big upheaval, a luxurious feast for the powerful lords, and a disaster for the ordinary people.

The more the land is taxed, the less land there is, and the poll tax is worse every year. Emperor Han Ling naturally knew what the real reason was. But although he is the Ninth Five-Year Venerable, there is no solution.

After hundreds of years of accumulation, the strength of Haoqiang gate valve has already been completed. Not even the emperor could stand up to this entire class.

The enraged emperor chose to reuse the eunuchs and formed a new army, the Eighth Lieutenant of the West Garden, in an attempt to regain everything by force. However, it annoyed the noble class, and after finally died, he was given the nickname of "spirit".

After the failure of Emperor Ling's last struggle, the end of the Han Empire was already doomed.

This can be seen from the records of Shu Han. Decades after Liu Bei founded the country, Xichuan and other places have not suffered any sword soldiers. It has always been Zhuge Liang and Jiang Wei's northern expedition to Cao Wei, and the number of people in Xichuan, where the war is outside the country, is less than before Liu Bei entered Sichuan after so many years of recuperation.

Where are all the people in the land of abundance? There's no plan here, and it's even going to encourage childbearing.

Zhuge Liang and Jiang Wei are both smart people, but why have they been desperately fighting the Northern Expedition when they know that their strength is insufficient? It's not because you don't go out to rob others that your own people kill your own people.

The Shu Han, which is in the same vein as the Han Dynasty, naturally inherited the cancer of the Haoqiang gatekeeper. Liu Bei has worked hard for decades, but he has just harmed more people.

The demise of the Han Dynasty was already doomed from the time Liu Xiu raised his army.

However, the two plots of the Chen family's father and son are in conflict with Li Yi himself. Whether it is land or population, Li Yi is not allowed to be controlled by these powerful people. Therefore, he has a fundamental conflict with the Chen family's father and son, so naturally he will not agree to their proposal. (To be continued.) )