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Chapter 223: Becoming the Enemy of the World
Marquis, even if it is just a title, even if Zhongzhou at this moment can no longer provide huge help like when the Red Emperor was still there, it is still enough. This is the highest reward that the emperor of this era can give.

As for the title of "Duke" which is above the rank of Marquis, it is almost impossible to obtain this title.

Just like Duke Taiping, he achieved the rank of Duke because of his unprecedented achievements, having saved the State of Chen from a battle in which the world's number one general almost trampled down Jiangzhou City and fought to annihilate the country.

Five hundred years ago, Duke Xue and Duke Chen had both established great reputations.

Marquis is the norm and a top position for military generals.

Needless to say, it was the Red Emperor who personally conferred the title.

Its status and significance are completely different from the titles bestowed by the States of Chen and Ying. Strictly speaking, the world is so big, and the rulers of the States of Chen and Ying are kings conferred by Zhongzhou, which is only one level higher than Li Guanyi's marquis.

If it was a banquet, Li Guanyi would also have to sit down, and the princes of Chen and Ying would have to stand up and pour the wine.

At this moment, although Zhongzhou has lost its original prestige, its reputation in the world is still there. Even overlords like Chen and Ying will not risk the world's condemnation and send troops to the area controlled by Qin Wuhou before resolving their conflicts with each other.

The attack was not directed at Jiangnan and Li Guanyi, but at the enormous influence and authority left over from the Chidi's eight hundred years of orthodoxy. It was a direct provocation to the existing order.

Chen and Ying would not send troops to Jiangnan under such circumstances.

However, they would extremely hope that the other side would send out troops so that they could take the upper hand.

Precisely because both sides have basic judgment and a broad perspective, a deterrent and stable relationship is formed, and the crisis faced by the Qilin Army is resolved.

My Lord, it is well!
Even Pang Shuiyun felt relieved, and his originally tense spirit gradually relaxed.

Because of the mental tension, the old man did not realize for a moment that the way he addressed the young general had quietly changed in his subconscious mind.

After gaining this momentum.

If Chen and Ying still plan to continue attacking Jiangnan at this moment, it will be a disadvantage on the battlefield. It will be easy for them to be divided and cause tension on other fronts. They will also be nominally scolded by people all over the world. From now on, the Jiangnan area can get a considerable amount of time to recuperate.

This period of stability will continue until there is a major change in the world and Ying and Chen are separated.

During this period of time, the Jiangnan area will be safe.

However, if Jiangnan does not make progress during this period and remains at the same level as before, it will eventually be destroyed. As long as one of the two major powers wins, it will take advantage of the situation and wipe out and annex Jiangnan with anger, and the world will be unified from then on.

Pang Shuiyun suddenly thought of another strategy, which was not to seek to rule the world.

It just maintains the balance of power among the countries, keeping Chen and Ying in the current state of struggle forever, helping whoever is weaker, so the world will always be in chaos, and the Jiangnan area will always be safe. Li Guan will sit in the south of the Yangtze River and overlook the world.

But soon, the old strategist threw away this strategy.

He is so conservative, and he relies on chaos to maintain himself. He has a strategy of not making progress, is short-sighted, and is not worthy of being called a heroic leader. Based on his understanding of the young master, Li Guanyi would not do such a thing.

Pang Shuiyun looked at the young emperor in front of him, the emperor of Zhongzhou. This young man who was considered to be just a puppet in the hands of the overlord, still had the passion of the Red Emperor in his heart. The emperor of Zhongzhou looked at Pang Shuiyun and said softly:
"You can go back and tell Marquis Qin Wu that I hope to meet him."

"During the reign of the Red Emperor, it is a tradition for the emperor to go hunting. You can invite Qin Wuhou to come."

Pang Shuiyun guessed the Zhongzhou Emperor's thoughts. He gave the overall situation to Li Guanyi and gave the Qilin Army precious time to catch their breath and recuperate. However, he also hoped to use Li Guanyi's military might to regain their prestige and get rid of the control of the Zhongzhou royal clan elders.

Not a stupid person...

Pang Shuiyun thought in his heart, smiled and bowed, and answered tactfully:
"I will obey your order and inform Marquis Qin Wu."

The matter ended here. Ji Zichang returned to his palace, holding the Fengwu sword in his hand, and remained silent for a long time. This sword was not a magic weapon, but just a sharp sword. He stroked the sword and thought about the current situation.

The elders of the Zhongzhou royal family interfered and influenced him, the great emperor.

The six palace masters of the academy were only responsible for protecting his life, but they were not at his disposal.

Si Wei, the strongest among the six palace masters, was wanton and lax. Ji Yanzhong, a generous elder, also took the Scarlet Sky Sword out of this place. Ji Zichang sighed for a long time, holding the long sword, but secretly gnashing his teeth, with great hatred in his heart:
"They are all traitors!"

In fact, he had already sensed that Li Guanyi's goal in this move was to use the remaining reputation of the Red Emperor of Zhongzhou to buy a chance for his troops in the south of the Yangtze River to recuperate and upgrade them from nominally a rebel army to a regular army.

However, whether he was out to respect the emperor and expel the barbarians or was just another ambitious person, Ji Zichang didn't know. He was like walking in the dark night. Even if there was only a little hope, he had to abandon everything else and grab it tightly.

"Li Guanyi, don't let me down..."

...............

The willow branches and the halberds collided with each other.

The heavy spear that was supposed to directly chop the soft willow branch into pieces was, however, like being entangled in a spider web. The overbearing and fierce energy was dispersed layer by layer. Immediately, the attack of the spear was guided off target and finally fell heavily to the ground.

The earth roared, the energy dissipated, and extremely hideous cracks appeared on the ground.

Li Guanyi's breathing was a little heavy.

The Qilin opened its mouth and spit out a blazing flame.

He combined his energy with Li Guanyi's and chopped down at his opponent with an extremely domineering momentum, but the man just moved his wrist slightly and swept the willow branch across, hitting both Qilin and Li Guanyi's foreheads, and then they stumbled back.

Qilin lay on the ground.

Li Guanyi pressed the tail end of the Tiger Roaring Sky Halberd in his hand against the ground. He raised his hand to cover his red forehead. He looked at the old man in green before him and said with a little regret: "I lost again..."

After the war, Li Guanyi had to accept guidance from the sword maniac Murong Longtu at all times.

Siming laughed teasingly, "You are taking it for granted to use the heaviness of the halberd to attack this old man. Among the ninety-six mysterious weapons held by the sword maniac, there are also some that are as heavy and domineering as the halberd in your hand. He has already achieved the martial arts realm of lifting light things as if they were heavy and heavy things as if they were light."

"Boy, you lose again."

when!
A toasted bun hit the old man on the head.

Siming's triumphant laughter came to an abrupt halt.

The old man turned around and saw the silver-haired girl next to him. There was no expression on her delicate face. She held a chopstick in her hand and poked it on the steamed bun, tapping it on the top of old man Siming's head. Then, without any ripples in her tone, she said, "Dim sum."

"Ah...ah?! Snacks?"

Siming took a look at the thing, which was charred and cracked, with a beauty similar to that of a hard meteor hammer, and then he smeared honey on the cracked parts.

The old man, who has lived for more than three hundred years, felt his scalp tingling.

He laughed dryly: "Ah, I'm not hungry yet, thank you little guy..."

He inserted the chopsticks into the steamed bun and passed it to Siming's mouth.

Poke, poke.

The old man tried to move his head in the other direction.

Avoid putting such unidentifiable objects into your mouth.

Siming has a free and easy personality, and gets along well with Yaoguang, whose father has not been around since she was a child. When Li Guanyi mentioned the war halberd, the sword maniac over there explained all the shortcomings of Li Guanyi's moves, and then said: "Guanyi, your strength is still not enough."

"Although your soul has made a breakthrough during this year's march, your overall combat power is still at the top of the fourth level to the fifth level."

At this time, Li Guanyi did not say anything about the second heaven or the second heaven.

Just listen carefully to the sword maniac's instructions.

Murong Longtu said gently: "With the power of Qilin, you can have the means of the Sixth Heaven. If you have the formation and fighting spirit of the Ten Thousand Armies behind you, you can hold the magic weapon and defeat the two famous generals of the Sixth Heaven head-on like before."

"However, although the battle formation is powerful, it is still half an external object."

"The strength of a warrior ultimately depends on himself."

"If we lose the Qilin and the battle formation, we will not be able to compete with the heroes of the world. In the end, we are still one level weaker."

"In such a chaotic world, those who can enter the top of the God General List all have the skills of a master, plus the assistance of the army's formation and the soul of the soldiers, and hold the magic weapon, so that they can move freely and freely. You are still a little short of it now."

Li Guanyi said yes. Murong Longtu thought for a moment and asked Li Guanyi to go to the pavilion to rest for a while. He took the tea and asked the young man, "Now, the Jiangnan area has been basically pacified. Do you have any plans for Guanyi?"

Li Guanyi stretched out his hand and took the chopsticks from Yaoguang's hand that were almost poking into old man Siming's mouth, and then he took the girl's arm under his arm, as if he was catching a white cat.

The girl's face was expressionless.

The girl struggled violently.

Li Guanyi ignored it, but his movements were very gentle. Then he looked at Murong Longtu and said:

"Well, take a rest."

"We first fought a battle outside Zhenbei City, then marched for more than eight months, and spent another three months to pacify this place. It feels like we have been fighting for the past year. Everyone is holding on here for a long time. Even a brave man can't fight endlessly."

"The Jiangnan area is rich in water and grass, and is also a strategic ferry crossing."

“It’s time to fulfill our promise and give everyone a home.”

Murong Longtu asked: "What happens next?"

Li Guanyi thought for a moment and said, "Practice martial arts."

The old sword maniac looked at the young man and smiled slightly. He held the teacup, but he seemed to have lost the lofty ambitions he had in the past. Instead, he looked like an ordinary old man. He asked the children for their consent and said gently:

"After that, do you want to go for a walk in the martial arts world with me?"

Murong Longtu said: "I am old, my old friends and enemies have all died, and the remaining old guys are no longer in their prime. Now that Jiangnan has become powerful, I should take you to meet them."

"After seeing the vastness of the world, I also want to see the heroic spirit of the rivers and lakes."

"By the way, let me get rid of this strange poison in your body."

"Although you can suppress the heart blood poison of [Fei] at the moment, it is a hidden danger after all. You don't know when it will erupt. It's okay at ordinary times, and I can help you suppress it. If it happens before a battle or in a battle formation, it will be troublesome."

Entering the martial arts world. This matter had already been mentioned by Jian Kuang.

It's just that there were always other things interfering before, so it couldn't be done.

Now that the Qilin Army from that time has been brought here, it is time to bring it up again. Li Guan thought about it and agreed. They agreed that after all the things at hand were resolved, he would go out to travel the world with his great-grandfather Murong Longtu.

A soldier from the Qilin Army came here and said that the military advisor Mr. Yuan Zhi had something to ask.

Li Guanyi immediately said goodbye to the two old men and left.

........................

Li Guanyi and Yuan Zhi met, and Yuan Zhi reported the current situation of the Qilin Army again. The matter was very complicated, and the most fatal point was the extreme lack of talents in internal affairs - all kinds of officials and clerks in the cities under the Qilin Army needed to be replaced.

Because these cities were transferred from Chen State and Ying State to the Qilin Army, there were a lot of government affairs piled up. It was difficult for Yuan Zhi to handle them all at once. In addition, there were also the goodwill of the major families and the cases squeezed into the prison...

The thing Li Guanyi has been doing most recently is escaping from internal affairs.

Then Yuan Zhi grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

My scalp tingled when I saw the document, and then I slipped away again.

Li Guanyi would rather lead the army to fight in battle, or go deep into dangerous places like he did in the Hunting Kirin Conference, than face the mountains of densely packed documents of all kinds. However, although he has a lot of warriors and rough men here at the moment, there are very few people who can handle these matters.

It can only be handed over to Yuan Zhi.

After explaining everything one by one, Yuan Zhi dismissed all the clerks who assisted him. He played chess with Li Guan to relax his mind and said in a deep voice: "As for the matter you mentioned, I have an idea. If it is about dividing the land, then we can combine [Military Merit] and [Land]..."

"Similar to the status of a military noble."

Yuan Zhi took out the dossier he had prepared, but was stopped by Li Guanyi. The young general carefully read the proposal made by his adviser and shook his head: "This is not the way I said to divide the land."

"If you ask me, evenly distributed fields are better."

"Also, things like granting permanent farmland according to official rank and granting farmland to oxen have all been removed. Which noble family member added this in? As soon as these guys start to talk, I know what they are going to say."

"We can't just give out uncultivated land. We need to give out good land, starting with the soldiers of the Qilin Army, and then slowly spreading out to give land to all the registered citizens."

"Noble families are prohibited from taking advantage of loopholes to seize large amounts of public land for themselves."

"Even a captain of the Qilin Army cannot do this... To prevent land annexation, ah, land annexation is..."

Li Guan put the file down and told Yuan Zhi everything.

The heart of this young strategist, who came from a poor family, was beating violently.

Although he was good at military strategy and battle formations but weak in other aspects, his strengths and weaknesses were compared with his colleagues in the academy. In other aspects, he still had a good eye, especially because of his poor background, which made him extremely sensitive in some special areas.

He took a deep breath and said, "In the past ten years or so, Jiangnan fell into the chaos of Chen State, Ying State and Jianghu, and many noble families fled here. Therefore, the fertile land you requested is still available, at least enough to share a part of it, but..."

"Even so, it will definitely anger the various families."

"When your decree is implemented, the people from the eighteen states in Jiangnan will flock here willingly. There will inevitably be a problem. There will not be enough land to distribute to them. Most of the land is unowned and wasteland. If you want to give the good land to the people, you..."

He looked at the young general in front of him, feeling a little dazed. He opened his lips slightly and said:
"Are you going to attack the noble families?"

Li Guanyi picked up the chess piece and answered directly: "They have too much land."

Yuan Zhi said: "You were born into a noble family..."

Li Guanyi put down the chess piece and said, "I have already told my great-grandfather that the Murong family will take the initiative to complete this step. Besides, my father was born in poverty, and I also ran around with my aunt when I was a child. Aristocratic family cannot determine what I will do."

“Give the land to the people.”

Yuan Zhi's throat moved, and he suddenly felt a sense of pressure from a powerful force.

He could almost foresee how powerful Jiangnan would be in the future.

But he immediately realized another thing and said:
"Will you also implement such a decree in the future?"

Li Guanyi said: "So what?"

The young counselor from a poor family remained silent and said:
"If so, you...will definitely become the enemy of the world."

Li Guan looked at him, dropped a piece, and said, "You are wrong."

"We are not enemies of the world, but enemies of the noble families in the world."

"Does the aristocratic family represent the whole world? Not necessarily, Yuan Zhi."

Yuan Zhi looked at Li Guanyi, and Li Guanyi said to himself: "I will go to the Imperial Academy in the future and bring back a group of talents. On the other hand, I will come back to Jiangnan to open an official school, but I need to lower the threshold for admission to the official school, so I need a group of students."

"Yuan Zhi, please help me deduce this matter."

The young counselor said: "My Lord, you want to..."

Li Guanyi picked up a black chess piece and placed it on the chessboard. He did not answer but said:
"I have heard a story about a monk who raised a tiger. He treated the tiger like a cat and fed it vegetarian food. Although the tiger was strong, it was also very docile. One day, he had a nosebleed and thought the ground was dirty and disgusting, so he pointed with his toes and let the tiger lick the blood."

"But I never thought that such a fierce tiger would know the taste of flesh and blood, and would think about it day and night. At first, it could still lie dormant and endure it, but one day it could no longer tolerate a life of eating grass and vegetables every day, and one day it pounced on the monk and ate him."

"So he returned to the mountains and forests, roaring like a tiger across the world."

"What do you think this story is about, sir?"

Yuan Zhi remained silent and replied, "I don't know either."

Li Guanyi shook his head and said, "The people are like tigers."

"The people of this world have great power, but they are just restrained. I cannot go against the limitations of this world and this era, but I want to let this sleeping tiger know the taste and deliciousness of flesh and blood."

Yuan Zhi had already sensed something completely different. He felt his throat dry and his heart beating so fast that it almost didn't belong to him. He saw the young general drop a piece. Li Guanyi continued:
"The so-called aristocratic family is about resources, civil and military officials, and monopoly."

"I will distribute the land and resources to the people, and then break the monopoly of knowledge officials of the aristocratic families, and return all of these to the world. Just like a tiger taking its first bite of blood, the people will know what it is like to own their own land and resources, and know that they can learn a future in civil and military affairs."

"The tiger will gradually wake up. If one generation can't wake up, then the next generation will."

Yuan Zhi looked at the chessboard, as if he saw the rules of the world for thousands of years, the layers of the common people, the noble families, the huge fortress with strong barriers, and then suddenly it collapsed.

"If so, even if I fail, sir, do you know?"

"They, this tiger, have already eaten the meat!"

Yuan Zhi raised his head and looked at the young man sitting there. His eyes were calm, but there was clearly an emotion as fiery as fire in them.

The young general said: "A tiger that has eaten meat will not tolerate itself returning to that situation, and the same is true for the people. In this case, even if I die, the world will be like a turbulent wave, constantly moving forward towards the future..."

"Such changes will not happen quickly, but the power is huge."

"Because that is what all people want."

"One day, we will be able to reach the prosperous world in our eyes."

Someone like Yuan Zhi could naturally see what that scene represented and how magnificent it was, but he could also understand how much pressure and obstacles the first person to take this step would face.

The states of Chen and Ying did not dare to go against the remaining power of the Red Emperor for eight hundred years and send troops to the south of the Yangtze River.

The dream described by the young man in front of him, is it not just the residual power of the past eight hundred years?
Yuan Zhi thought about his own experiences and what he had seen and heard. He had yearnings and desires in his heart, but he still gave a calm advice that a counselor should give, saying: "But you want to be an enemy of the world."

Li Guanyi emphasized: "We are enemies with the noble families of the world."

He looked at Yuan Zhi and said with a carefree smile: "Forget it, then you are the enemy of the world, I won't correct you."

After a pause, he said with contempt and pride, "So what?!"

The young general dropped a child and said calmly, "Taoism says that I have three treasures: kindness, frugality, and not daring to be the first in the world. But I am already a general, so I may not be frugal, but I will definitely be stingy."

"The last one, I dare not be the first in the world, but I will break it."

"No wonder the ancestor refused to accept me as his disciple at first."

"I heard that the master of the academy teaches everyone. I will go there now to see if the academy still has the master's lofty words."

"When we go today, we should invite the academy to come out, not the hundreds of schools of thought!"

"Haha, sir, you lose! Today's internal affairs are not my responsibility!"

Li Guan won the game in one go and laughed. Then he looked at the poor strategist who was in a trance and called out, "Sir?"

"gentlemen."

"gentlemen!"

After calling out several times, Yuan Zhi finally looked up vaguely and saw the young general smiling and holding out his hand to him. He said gently, "Although I am a madman who wants to make the world my enemy, and if I fail, I will be ruined, but will you accompany me on this journey?"

Yuan Zhi's lips moved. He was no longer the person who was hit by that kind of treatment at the beginning.

But he was just in a trance, and felt that he was in a state of great worship, so he answered:
"For the sake of my lord's will, I am willing to serve you like a dog or a horse."

"Death, no turning back!"

The young counselor smiled calmly and answered his wish:

"I'll follow you."

"If you die, Yuan Zhi, I will not live in disgrace in this world!"

(End of this chapter)