choke element

Chapter 968: Substitution (Part )

What Yin Chang said is absolutely correct.

Cui Zhongxian remained silent. After a while, he sighed and said, "The world is difficult. I have to do this."

Cui Zhongxian ruled Goryeo for decades. On the surface, his status was second only to that of the emperor, and his power was enough to cover the sky with one hand. But in fact, powerful officials have their own difficulties.

Unlike powerful officials like Guo Ning who continued to expand with powerful military force, Cui Zhongxian rose to power through coups rather than expansion. The Goryeo Kingdom under his control after the coup was small and poor, and there was only so much profit to be divided. However, after the military officials overwhelmed the royal family and the civil nobles through the coup, their appetite became bigger and bigger.

Cui Zhongxian relied on the power of military officials to control Goryeo, so he had to satisfy the appetite of military officials. However, he actually did not have that much benefits to divide. After fooling around for too long, he was bound to become alienated from his subordinates.

This is the reason why military officials have continued to rise and be overthrown over the years.

Cui Zhongxian, who was elected as the leader by a group of military officials who were dissatisfied with the status quo, himself became the status quo that people were dissatisfied with. Opponents appeared every now and then, but Cui Zhongxian's methods were more ruthless than those of his failed predecessors, and he managed to slaughter all the opponents every time.

But this situation cannot continue forever.

Over the past 20 years, with the continued game between powerful officials and subordinates, Cui Zhongxian gradually aged and gradually lost the energy to directly control the grassroots. The subordinates with ulterior motives became more and more able to understand Cui Zhongxian's thoughts and became more and more adept at pretending to be loyal.

When Cui Zhongxian suddenly woke up one day, he was surrounded by such people. Moreover, the power of each family had expanded to a considerable extent, filling the court. Cui Zhongxian could not tell who was truly loyal and who was fake, but the momentum of Tai'a's reversal became more and more obvious. Especially after the invasion of the Khitans, Cui Zhongxian's reputation was ruined, which accelerated this process.

Cui Zhongxian could only deal with it with the most brutal means.

He knew that his reputation was ruined, so he repeatedly pretended to have conflicts with his eldest son Cui Yu in the outside world, making Cui Yu vaguely the hope of the military officials to start a new government. At the same time, he took the opportunity of a cold and weakness to pretend to be seriously ill, and for several months, he almost let go of his control over all his subordinates.

As a result, Chi Yunshen, Liu Songjie and others who had claimed to be loyal immediately tore off their disguises and seized power. Many others also revealed their true colors.

Cui Zhongxian took advantage of the situation and acted like a fool, encouraging the group to act quickly and use the polo tournament as an opportunity to seize power.

In fact, Cui Zhongxian had already arranged everything. Although Chi Yunshen's forces had an advantage outside the court, their appetite was too big and they would definitely be attacked by everyone inside and outside the court. When everyone was killed or injured, Cui Yu would just show his hidden family assets to clean up the situation.

Outside of the court, the majority of the forces were loyal to Choi Chunghyeon. Chi Yunshen and his men thought they could wipe out the enemies in the court, but their own base was being taken away.

When all the people who were supposed to die were dead, everything was settled. Cui Yu inherited his father's power and redistributed the interests by stepping on the corpses of the dead. The entire Xingning Prefecture's political power was naturally handed over smoothly. The internal affairs of Goryeo were ironclad, and there was no possibility of outsiders interfering.

He put himself in danger throughout the whole process, which shows how bold Cui Zhongxian was; he purged those military officials who had become too rich and made room for benefits for those who came later, which shows how ruthless Cui Zhongxian was.

If someone took advantage and questioned the bloodshed during the period, it would be appropriate to attribute the instigator to Chi Yunshen and others who first recruited the Khitans. If the stability of the regime needs to be further strengthened, it would be a good idea to call on subordinates to share the same hatred and severely punish the Khitans with blood on their hands and expel them from the three thousand miles of rivers and mountains.

But Cui Zhongxian never expected that the arrival of Yin Chang and his party would cause the situation to completely get out of control.

"This world is not easy for anyone... Look, I was the deputy governor of Nanjing, but I suddenly got into trouble and was thrown into Goryeo."

Yin Chang responded to Cui Zhongxian's sentiments with emotion, and said solemnly: "But I am really not here to stir up trouble. Your country's internal affairs have nothing to do with us. We did nothing."

He just released some information truthfully.

He told all parties who were gearing up for action that Prime Minister Cui had not summoned any famous doctors from the Central Plains, so outsiders had no way of knowing his true physical condition and suspected that the rumors that Prime Minister Cui was seriously ill and about to die were false.

The situation in Goryeo had become suffocating under Cui Zhongxian's suppression for 20 years. If Goryeo remained in its previous extremely closed state, perhaps suffocation would be suffocation. As long as no one knew that there was an environment outside that did not require suffocation, everyone would be able to continue to endure.

However, due to maritime trade, a certain loophole has always existed, and its scale is not small. Therefore, many people know how huge the waves are outside the territory of Goryeo. Therefore, under the surface stability of people's hearts, many people's expectations of instability are increasing day by day.

They were able to endure because they were afraid of Cui Zhongxian; because their ambitions were far less than those of Chi Yunshen, Liu Songjie and others, and they could almost be called loyal. More importantly, everyone felt that since Prime Minister Cui was about to die, if they endured a little longer, they would be able to wait for changes. They had endured for twenty years, so why would they care about waiting a few more months?
This idea is absolutely correct.

But what if someone told them implicitly that Prime Minister Cui might be pretending to be sick, and that he wanted you to jump out one by one so that he could chop off your heads to make room for his son Cui Yu to take power?

Who can continue to endure?
If they continue to endure, the polo tournament will be their death! Either Chi Yunshen and others who are eager to take action, or Cui Zhongxian and his son who are sharpening their knives, either side may be the king of hell who wants to kill them. Will those Korean nobles who were originally hesitant think about giving it a try?
With the power of these people alone, Yin Chang was able to intervene in the political situation in Goryeo and turn the situation in a direction that was favorable to the Great Zhou. But Yin Chang did more and better.

Among the military nobles of the Great Zhou, those who came from the northern border were naturally the best in terms of bravery and fighting skills. However, the military men from the Red Coat Army of Shandong were not without their own strengths. For example, Yin Chang, who had risen to prominence by repeatedly relying on various parties over the past few decades, had a first-class ability to make subtle judgments about the situation, and his ability to quickly gather his troops from a fragmented chaos was the prerequisite for his standing firm in the chaotic world.

When Shandong was in turmoil, he was defeated by hostile forces several times and fled alone, and then he regrouped his troops from the refugees!

Goryeo is naturally not Shandong, but when it comes to refugees... aren't the Khitans, who once invaded Goryeo with great momentum but soon became disgraced due to their lack of political demands and governance capabilities, the most suitable candidates?

At the moment when the Goryeo nobles were recruiting Khitans on a large scale, as long as a little bit of news got out, the Goryeo nobles would feel that it was necessary to find some doctors to treat and recuperate the Khitans before letting them fight to their death.

Yin Chang took advantage of the doctors' continuous nights of communication to easily gather the scattered Khitan leaders and put forward new suggestions that were hard to refuse. For the Khitans, a former high-ranking official from the Great Zhou who was in charge of important responsibilities was undoubtedly a better partner than the hated Goryeo nobles.

Apart from this, Yin Chang did nothing.

The Koreans who were forced into a desperate situation and the Khitans who had already been at a desperate situation naturally worked together and formulated a plan to launch a fierce counterattack in the polo tournament.

This plan was radical and crude, and was hastily and hastily not carefully reviewed, so it was full of loopholes. However, in the days leading up to the polo tournament, Cui Zhongxian and the others were staring at their opponents and not paying attention to them.

Thus, the Khitans overwhelmed all the calculations in Kaesong with the most direct violence, and the plan was successful.

"The Great Zhou is so prosperous, why should we resort to underhanded means to deal with our allies? Even if we accomplish such a thing, aren't we afraid of becoming a laughing stock for future generations?" Cui Zhongxian asked.

The prosperity of the Great Zhou Dynasty was not based on benevolence, righteousness, and morality. There were countless people in the court holding knives and drooling over the surrounding countries. If it weren't for the Emperor's intentional suppression, so many tigers, leopards, jackals, and wolves would have been out of their cages long ago.

As for Goryeo...

Yin Chang felt that there was no need to argue with a dying man. He waved his hand, and immediately a Khitan warrior came up and grabbed Cui Zhongxian, preparing to take him back and execute him with other Goryeo nobles. Cui Zhongxian struggled hard, inevitably making a fool of himself.

Yin Chang turned his eyes away, and waited until the doorway was quiet again before he said, "Before I came, the Emperor said two things about the situation in Goryeo. One of them was, if you don't change your mindset, then change your people."

"What about the other sentence?" Chen Zixin asked in a playful way.

“Another saying is, if it’s not on the table, it’s on the menu.”

(End of this chapter)