Chapter 654: Western Expedition

If you really want to do it, Jiangnan is also weak—the poor and lower-middle peasants and tenant farmers are not idiots. After a few times, they can naturally see that the old masters are using them as guns, and the holy emperor's target is also these old masters, not them. So of course they don't do it. So the chaos can't be big—the south originally had military households, but they had already been abandoned in just a few decades.

The Prince of Nan'an also buried the army he used to suppress the southern barbarians, and the decent army he practiced in these years was also sent away in Bai Lang's southern expedition. Now these gentry want to rebel, and the soldiers in their hands are not good—the only trouble is that they are familiar with the terrain, and if they are scattered, they will become bandits. Some local gentry can also pull up some ambitious and fierce prisoners and miners, which still has some combat effectiveness.

This group of guys is not very good at fighting, but there are too many of them, one after another. Bai Bao and Bai Biao have a headache that the time spent on the road is far more than pacifying the chaos.

Bai Lang sits on the throne, governing the country but only bowing his hands—he has recently learned the expressionless means of those guys he once saw when opening the morning court and the cabinet small meeting. He found that this means is really super easy to use. "Try to speak less, preferably don't speak. Isn't this majesty and mystery coming out?" As a founding emperor and a guy with unparalleled martial arts, he was already full of majesty.

After opening it a few times, he didn't go anymore—because the atmosphere was too bad when he was present, and several cabinet ministers were trembling as if they would have a heart attack and die at any time. So "Forget it, forget it, don't go. Just look at the records when the time comes." Bai Lang felt that he would not attend such routine state affairs meetings in the future unless it was a major military and state affair or a fixed meeting date. A generation of martial arts masters, actually mixed into a "stupid emperor" who could only mess around in the West Garden all day, Bai Lang felt it was really quite boring.

That's right, the hostility on his body has also gone away. He feels that he is a stupid emperor—especially taking the concubines of the late emperor for his own enjoyment. Of course, he didn't touch Yuan Chun, which was also because he didn't like her. Yuan Chun was released from the palace by him to live with her parents... The behavior of governing the country with sleeves, actually made the upper and lower people think that it was a wise emperor who could do it.

In the mouths of his ministers and some scholars and many people, Bai Lang was already catching up with Li Er... Obviously, in terms of cruelty, Bai Lang's dynasty was much fiercer than Li Er, who killed more than a dozen death row prisoners a year—at least there was a beheading show in the vegetable market every few days. The country at least reported the review of the Dali Temple and the Ministry of Justice in the north, and the list of autumn decisions was at least a thousand people...

It is no wonder that people call Bai Lang "wise," for he abolished most methods of capital punishment, such as death by a thousand cuts and waist-chopping; even for the crime of treason and plotting against the state, the penalty is now merely beheading. The methods of execution have been streamlined to only beheading and hanging. Beyond that, there are only prison sentences of varying lengths and corporal punishment by whipping. For this, Bai Lang even had the imperial court allocate funds to renovate the prisons in most of the northern prefectures and counties, and he required that unconvicted suspects be kept separate from those already sentenced, with the latter being forced to perform various forms of hard labor arranged by the county.

This kind of emperor life, which Bai Lang regarded as having no fun, had passed for another five years. His two younger brothers and two younger sisters took turns to attack, and finally pacified the south and promoted the imperial court's laws. For this, quite a few gentry were killed, and the shed people who hid in the mountains and did not obey the king's orders from the previous dynasty were also pacified. This was the martial hand, and the literary hand was that Bai Lang opened the imperial examination, and both literary and martial arts were opened.

Among them, the literary examination also had to test the Six Arts of the Gentleman, and the martial examination also had to test the military books and battle formations—the literary people could not be without the strength to bind a chicken, and the martial people could not be illiterate. Once the imperial examination was opened, the scholars in the south immediately had no voice, and began to take the exam quickly. "Give the scholars an official position, and they are willing to do anything." Bai Lang laughed wildly. Of course, he said this in the harem. It was really bad to say it in front of the cabinet elders, and Bai Lang didn't do such boring things.

Bai Lang saw that his younger siblings had returned to the court—by the way, the wives and concubines of the two younger brothers had given birth to children. He already had three nephews and two nieces, and the two younger sisters had also caught their favorite husbands, "Don't beat your husband at will, and don't kill your husband and change people at will!" This was what Bai Lang had strictly explained in secret. As for whether the younger sisters wanted to find a lover and wear a green hat for their husband, to be honest, Bai Lang couldn't manage this... If the upper beam is not straight, do you expect the lower beam not to be crooked?

"I can only say that they have the style of the princesses of my Great Han and Great Tang, otherwise what else can I say?" Bai Lang was also dumbfounded.

After they returned to the court, Bai Lang handed over the government affairs to them and the cabinet and the palace supervisor, and he himself took the army out of the pass, "It's time to fight north and west. Damn it, taking advantage of the fact that I haven't unified the world, they swallowed my Western Regions Protectorate and Dingbei Metropolitan Department first. This time I won't stop until I hit Lake Baikal and the Caspian Sea!" This time Bai Lang brought three thousand fully armored cavalry, three thousand craftsman camps, and five thousand infantry, carrying more than forty thousand horses and over one hundred thousand cattle and sheep moving...

He went north to Lake Baikal first, then went west to fight, and after reaching the Caspian Sea, he went south and east to circle back. Along the way, he had already prepared to burn, kill, and loot, especially for those Cossack barbarians who came from the west, he was ready to leave none—if he wanted to leave, he would leave some women. He decided to execute the wheel-cutting according to the rules of the grassland, that is, the rules of Genghis Khan, and all men taller than the wheel would be beheaded.

The infantry wore chain mail, and the weapons in their hands were firelocks and spears, while the cavalry were spears and horse sabers and maces. Both people and horses were armored. The craftsman camp repaired and built military weapons along the way, and was also responsible for using ten small and medium-sized Frankish cannons. Bai Lang didn't bring women to the battle this time, and he also refused the "request to fight" of his younger siblings—"They are not willing, I know they all want to stay in the Imperial Capital to hold power." Besides, this was Bai Lang's fun, so how could he share it with those guys.

The marching speed in the country was quite fast, and then he waited for the cattle and horses to be sent behind at Yumen Pass. Two months later, Bai Lang led a vast army, moving toward the north at a speed that was not fast, and the goal was Lake Baikal