Chapter 801

Little Wei Yuan came out of seclusion, one eye clear, while the depths of the other eye were filled with all kinds of curves and numbers.

With a sweep of his spiritual sense, he easily separated more than five hundred consciousnesses, handling the backlog of official documents and reading recent reports and various battle reports.

In the tenth year of Tianqi, there were already signs of great chaos in the world. Among the nine kingdoms, five were at war with each other. Except for the Jin and Zhao kingdoms, Southern Qi was fighting two enemies at once, dividing its troops north and south, beating Northern Qi and the Ji kingdom until they couldn't lift their heads. Zhao also raised a flank army, constantly capturing cities and seizing territory in the Ji kingdom, taking advantage of the chaos.

As the war progressed, the scale of this flank army grew larger and larger, and it already had a trend of surpassing the Western Jin front line.

At this time, Little Wei Yuan's position as the Southern Military Minister was as stable as Mount Tai. Since recovering the Hanyang and Huang Ping prefectures, Little Wei Yuan already had complete control over the five prefectures, levying grain and people purely according to his mood.

Anyone who dared to oppose Little Wei Yuan, even if they were the direct blood relatives of the Left and Right Prime Ministers, was arrested without exception.

After being arrested, they were all locked in the prison, given neither a charge nor a reason for their detention, nor told when they would be released. They were just kept there, beaten every few days, using leather whips soaked in cold water to make these smooth-skinned masters and mistresses understand what it meant to "submit and prosper, oppose and perish."

Little Wei Yuan's perverse actions naturally aroused unanimous condemnation from the imperial court, and at the same time, many literati who had industries in the three prefectures criticized Little Wei Yuan. Little Wei Yuan did not tolerate it either; he also organized a large group of literati to scold them back, and the momentum clearly overwhelmed the other side.

Little Wei Yuan personally formulated the strategy for the literary war, which was not to defend his own actions, but to desperately splash dirty water on the other side, calling them traitors, national thieves, turncoats, liars, and so on.

Moreover, he concentrated his firepower on attacking their private morals, such as being addicted to beauty, keeping male pets, liking to be passive, violating human ethics, and even if they looked at someone more than once while walking on the street, they would be seized upon by others, insisting that they had shameless thoughts in their hearts.

The other side naturally refused to admit it, and then Little Wei Yuan's side asked them to produce evidence. If someone produced evidence, they would nitpick the evidence. Generally, by the time they needed to prove their innocence, the other side had already lost the argument.

Such a scolding war immediately set a precedent in the literary world, and both sides soon deviated from the original theme, opening the curtain on infinite personal attacks. As for the reason for the start of the scolding war, it had long been forgotten.

The volume of Little Wei Yuan's side was clearly superior, and they had cultivated more than a dozen literati with superb combat power and no bottom line. Some even specially wrote several storybooks, putting their opponents in them as protagonists, with content all about various violations of human ethics in the house, and various plots of attacking brothers' family members outside the house.

As a result, once the storybooks were released, every single one sold well, and one theme about a father-in-law and daughter-in-law affair even set a publication record for the past hundred years. The old master who was the protagonist of the storybook was so angry that he vomited three liters of blood and was bedridden. Even so, his daughter-in-law and son-in-law still had to avoid suspicion and be pointed at by others.

The reason why these people were so fierce in combat, besides their own talent, was mainly because the writing fees Little Wei Yuan gave were sufficient, allowing them to perform beyond their normal levels and dig out their unknown potential, standing out from the crowd of literati.

Finally, these people refined the best from the rest and were collectively known in the literary world as the Thirteen Taibao of the Wei Clan, truly hated by gods and ghosts, and feared by everyone who saw them.

Such a scolding war lasted for three full months and ended with Little Wei Yuan's complete victory.

Little Wei Yuan was not surprised by this result. When it comes to arguing, the Tianqing Palace is professional, and with the Human Realm's mortal world constantly revising strategies and using large amounts of Azure Essence to pave the way, it was naturally invincible.

As for the integrity of the literati, facts have proven that in front of Azure Essence, for the vast majority of people, this thing can be dispensed with.

But it cannot be denied that the lair of the Yunxiang Military Governor, one of the three Military Governors of Western Jin, had been destroyed, and he could not fight back at all. Zhao was still constantly using troops in this direction, eating away at Western Jin territory while talking. Little Wei Yuan only stationed one hundred thousand troops in the Southern Military Camp, and Zhao sent troops to probe several times, all of which were beaten until their heads were broken and bleeding. Except for the Crown Prince, several princes and princesses had their "undefeated golden bodies" broken by Little Wei Yuan. The princes and princesses all urged the Crown Prince to fight, but the Crown Prince played deaf and dumb.

As long as the Southern Military Camp does not fall, the five southwestern prefectures will be as stable as Mount Tai.

However, although external enemies cannot get in, internal troubles have never stopped. Except for the Hanyang and Huang Ping prefectures, which had been plowed by the Zhao and Qingming armies, the other three prefectures were ravaged by horse bandits, and they were extremely rampant.

When the horse bandits crossed the border, even the county magistrates and prefects had to come out to accompany them for meals, and they had to drag along officials of all sizes to accompany them. Otherwise, the horse bandits would kidnap all the beautiful concubines, maidservants, bookboys, and attendants in the officials' homes, lock them up for ten days or half a month, and then release them.

As a result, officials of all sizes had to comply; after all, no one wanted to have "grass growing on their heads." The horse bandits were all vigorous and energetic; falling into their hands for one day was more tiring than being by the master's side for a year.

Of course, the masters who could become officials were all flexible, beyond what ordinary people could reach, so such things had never happened.

The horse bandits had their own code: they robbed money, grain, and people, but they did not touch land deeds or documents. This made all the big families breathe a sigh of relief.

In their eyes, gold, jade, jewelry, calligraphy, paintings, and family slaves were all floating wealth. Even if not a single person was left and not a single copper coin remained, as long as the land was still there and the house was still there, they could send a sum of silver from the main family in the capital, and it would not take twenty years to fully recover their vitality.

As long as the horse bandits did not touch the ownership of the fields and houses, everyone could tolerate it, and some even praised the horse bandits for understanding the great righteousness, developing thoughts of winning them over or even clinging to them.

This was also the strategy formulated by Little Wei Yuan; it was not yet time to touch the bottom line of these big families. What Little Wei Yuan wanted was people, and what the big families wanted was fields and houses; there was actually no life-and-death conflict between the two sides.

At this time, the situation was completely under control, so Little Wei Yuan opened up grain trading again, and the price was not high. As a result, the big families flocked to buy grain in large quantities, and Little Wei Yuan did not refuse anyone, selling as much as they wanted.

Moreover, the big families soon discovered that canned military rations were not much more expensive than raw grain and rice, so they were more cost-effective, and thus turned to purchasing canned goods in large quantities.

Grain was released, but the number of refugees who had to leave due to famine did not decrease at all.

This was also within Little Wei Yuan's expectations; after all, those who bought grain were big families, and they had no obligation to distribute the grain, and the farmers had no money to buy grain. Thus, the occasional porridge distribution by big families only ensured that they wouldn't starve to death.

Moreover, after Little Wei Yuan sold a large amount of grain, the price of grain in the three prefectures did not drop at all. All the grain was hoarded in the masters' granaries; without money, you couldn't get a single grain. After all, having experienced the beautiful era of one tael of silver per catty, no one wanted to return to the days of one tael of silver for ten catties.

Thus, while the world outside Qingming was in deep water and scorching fire, Qingming was thriving. On the first day of the New Year, with the arrival of a new batch of refugees, Qingming's population officially exceeded thirty million.

(End of chapter)