choke element

Chapter 1010: Use Long (Part )

Lin'an.

Due to the development of commerce, the number of people responsible for managing the post office has increased in recent years, and the organization has gradually become more complex. Since last year, the Post Office under the Three Yamen has been complaining that the office originally located near the Privy Council's Jiage Storehouse is not enough. Soon after, the court simply ordered the Post Office to be moved out of the Hening Gate in the south and merged with the Supervisory Office under the Ministry of War to work near Tianshuiyuan Bridge.

This place is surrounded by water on three sides. On the west side, there are forage fields and grain warehouses such as Chunyou Baiwancang. Therefore, the daily road maintenance is particularly careful, making it very convenient for fast horses to gallop and deliver messages.

The postal system they managed also grew rapidly in size, especially from the port of Qingyuan Prefecture to the central Lin'an Prefecture. Because it was related to whether the important figures of the court could understand the inflow and outflow of bulk materials and transaction prices in a timely manner, the number of shops increased by more than 20 each year, and the number of soldiers increased by more than 500.

In Kuaiji alone, which is an important transit point, there are now 43 shops and 481 shopkeepers.

In comparison, the scale of the western-facing shop system has not changed much. After all, the east and south face the sea, and any news is related to money. Even if the court does not care, many bigwigs will send people to the shop. The inherited documents in the west are all serious military and political affairs, so it doesn't matter if they are delivered early or late.

That being said, rising tides lift all boats. Because the court had more and more horses, the speed of transmitting military intelligence from Huguang, Sichuan and other places was much faster than before. Originally, even the messengers holding red lacquer gold plates or orpiment blue plates could only transmit 350 miles a day at most; now, with frequent changes of horses, the speed has returned to the 500 miles a day at the beginning of the country.

However, those messages that were transmitted at the fastest speed usually went to the residence of the prime minister or some other senior official first. Tianshuiyuanqiao could only receive and archive documents afterwards, and its main job seemed to be raising horses.

In recent days, dozens of urgent documents were sent from Sichuan at the fastest speed of 800 miles, and all of them went directly to Prime Minister Shi's private door, and no additional news was released.

The outside world only heard that because of these news, many elite officers with outstanding riding skills were exhausted, and dozens of war horses died of exhaustion. No one dared to ask what happened in Sichuan.

It was four o'clock in the morning.

Shi Miyuan did not sleep, and even asked people to open several doors inside and outside. He leaned on a brocade couch, chatting with people. Judging from his expression, it was not clear whether he was happy or unhappy.

It was the coldest time of the day, so the servants set up several large braziers inside and outside the door for warmth.

Gusts of night wind blew, making the flames in the brazier look strange and distorted, casting shadows on the surrounding walls, as if a group of demons were dancing wildly. The servants and guards felt the chill go through their bones as they entered and exited the courtyard, and they stamped their feet from time to time to circulate their blood.

The young and strong guards were like this, and the old Xuan Zhuang couldn't bear it. He looked at Shi Miyuan from time to time, and wanted to ask him to go back to the house, close the door, and have a good rest, and just leave a few people to wait for the military report. But looking at Shi Miyuan's expressionless face, he swallowed the words back several times when they came to his lips.

Suddenly, the sound of horse hooves like thunder came, and they passed through the gates one after another without stopping until they stopped at the inner courtyard. The guard leader at the gate asked a few questions in a low voice, then came back quickly and presented the documents with both hands.

Shi Miyuan's eyes flashed coldly.

In the flickering firelight, Xuan Zhuang vaguely saw his elegant face suddenly become ferocious, and the veins on his forehead also popped out. But this should be an illusion. In the blink of an eye, Shi Miyuan stood up safely and calmly took the document to read it.

The document was an emergency letter sent by Nie Zishu, the governor of Sichuan, saying that a large Mongolian army had suddenly broken into Shukou and were burning, killing and looting at will. Because the mutiny of the garrison at Shukou had not yet been quelled, the local people were unable to resist and had lost more than 140 cities and towns in succession.

In Shi Miyuan's eyes, this document had another meaning. He carefully read it twice and noticed that there were a few words in the document that were written slightly bolder than normal.

Before Nie Zishu went to Sichuan to take up his post, he used a short song written by Shi Miyuan as his title, and agreed on a method of passing the name that only the two of them knew. When he saw these few words, Shi Miyuan immediately knew the true content of the document.

"Tens of thousands of Mongolian cavalrymen have advanced eastward as agreed and have already passed Raofeng Pass. They have slaughtered many fortresses along the way and are gaining momentum. Very good. If we calculate the time, they will soon break into the Tangdeng area and threaten Bianliang."

Shi Miyuan sighed with satisfaction.

This was the thing that had troubled him the most in recent months. Now that it was progressing smoothly, the burden in his heart seemed to have disappeared a lot.

Seeing Xuan Zeng standing beside him with a look of surprise and confusion on his face, he handed the document over and lay back on the brocade couch.

The guards and servants nearby immediately began to close the doors one by one, and someone came up to lift up the brocade couch and placed it safely back into the warm tent.

The door closed, the cold wind was blocked out, and the tent curtains stopped fluttering. The surrounding environment suddenly became quiet, but Xuan Zhan followed behind, and his footsteps sounded a little heavy.

"Zong Yu, are you scared? Do you want to drink some soup to calm down?" Shi Miyuan asked half-jokingly.

Xuan Zeng didn't know what to say for a moment.

He had a close relationship with Shi Miyuan and was always regarded as the most trusted confidant among the trusted confidants. However, because he was in charge of trade affairs with the north, he often traveled across the rivers and seas and had little time to return to Lin'an. Therefore, he did not know some things and only heard a little bit of rumors.

In recent years, the Great Zhou has been expanding its influence along the coast of the Song Dynasty through maritime trade. They even abused force in many places under the banner of pirates, disturbing local peace and causing a flood of emergency documents from the local areas, which greatly affected the stability of the political situation in the Song Dynasty and also led some people to criticize the Prime Minister for his ineffective governance.

Xuan Zeng heard that Shi Jian was extremely dissatisfied with this.

In fact, the Zhou people's maritime power was insignificant, but they continued to lure Song craftsmen and ship workers to the north with huge sums of money. It is said that they built large-scale shipyards in Shandong and Liaodong. As a result, their fleet expanded rapidly, and their range of activities had already reached Guangzhou in the south, which was equivalent to competing with the Song Dynasty's maritime merchants.

Xuan Zeng heard that the wealthy merchants at sea who were close to Shi Xiang were extremely dissatisfied with this.

In addition, there are many other things. The trade with Zhou brought great benefits to Shi Xiang, but also gradually showed its bad results. In the final analysis, the power of Zhou was too strong. Their actions were too active and their aggressiveness was too strong to be expected. For the Song Dynasty, which had always been stagnant, the disturbance they brought was too intense.

Naturally, Shi Miyuan would not remain indifferent to this situation.

The two families were not blood-sworn allies. They were tied together by interests, and they could turn against each other at any time because of interests. As for cooperating on one side and confronting on the other, that was a piece of cake, and there was no scruples at all.

It's just that most of the Zhou people were born in the grass, and they relied on their powerful military force, and their style of doing things was fierce and rough. In the eyes of political veterans like Shi Xiang, there were too many ways to suppress their momentum of grabbing benefits and give the Zhou people a little punishment.

But Xuan Zhuang really didn't expect that Shi Xiang would make such a big move? He actually controlled the northern Tartar army in the palm of his hand, allowing the Tartars to mobilize tens of thousands of people to fight the Zhou people?

No wonder Dong Juyi and Nie Zishu were sent to Sichuan one after another. No wonder Dong Juyi's whereabouts were unknown after he lost his job. It turned out that Shi Xiang had already planned to take advantage of the opportunity of the court to sort out the Shu area...

This, this is not something that can be done casually?

Xuan Zhan was really scared.

He suddenly remembered the old story of Emperor Daojun making an agreement with the Jurchens to attack Liao.

During the maritime alliance, the Song Dynasty also thought it could use the Jurchens for its own benefit, but it ended up with half of the country changing hands, the two emperors being exiled to the north, and the country's situation becoming uncontrollable. What kind of agreement did Shi Xiang make with the Mongols? What would be the result? Could it be that Shi Xiang was not afraid of the tragedy during the Jingkang years? Even if he was not afraid, he should have understood the fears of the government and the public, right?

No, no, let’s not talk about the result. Just inviting the Mongols through the Shukou Pass is no different from inviting a wolf into the house.

Since hearing the news, Xuan Zhuang felt a buzzing in his head and severe headache. Although he followed Shi Xiang in, he had no idea what he was doing.

It was not until Shi Miyuan asked him a question that he woke up with a start.

With the wisdom of the historian, it is impossible that he did not think of the consequences of such actions, but he still drove the Mongols to confront the Great Zhou... What was the reason?
Xuan Zeng didn't want to ask too directly, so he beat around the bush and said, "Just now, it was said that the Mongols massacred the fortresses in Sichuan? I wonder how much damage there was in the area? Since the Prime Minister is using them, he would have provided them with food and fodder, right? Why are they still acting like this?"

"The border states at the mouth of Shu are exhausted and can't gather much food and fodder at the moment. The Mongols are no different from wild beasts, so it's only natural for us to start looting them."

Shi Miyuan raised his hand to comb his lush beard and continued, "We should use their strengths and not worry about some minor vulgarities... Even if there are losses, it is worth it."