Chapter 35 2. The second half of Liu Hong’s life

Throughout Liu Hong's life, he was like a spirit possessed by him, and the fact that he was stronger than the Empress Dowager Dou and allowed her to enter the mausoleum smoothly was a remarkable thing that could stand the test of the sun in his unglamorous life. .However, after that, the devil invaded again, drove away the angel, and firmly controlled his soul. As long as man is present, he is with ghosts.What a terrible fate, but Liu Hong enjoyed it.He never thought that dancing with the devil was a very unlucky thing. How did that happen?No one understands.But I think, only one person can understand him deeply.And this person is himself.

To know a person, one must first know his childhood.A person, no matter how far he flies or how high he climbs, childhood memories can almost determine his future life direction.Therefore, if you want to understand Liu Hong's fate, you must start from his childhood. Liu Hong was not born with a golden spoon in his mouth. If he must say that he has a spoon in his mouth, it can only be said to be a rusty iron spoon.Because when he was born, although he had the name of the emperor's descendant and the title of prince such as title, he didn't have the ideal white horse. A prince without a white horse, of course, cannot be called a prince charming, at best he can only be called a bare prince.In fact, it is not too much to call Liu Hong like this.He was very poor in his early years, and his life was quite difficult.He must have thought it all over, don't talk about giving him a white horse, as long as you give him a pig, and he can eat a few good pork meals, he will already be brilliant to the sky.

Good luck tricks people, but fate arranged such an ending: he didn't become Prince Charming, but made him a real Prince Charming.As everyone has seen before, it was Empress Dowager Dou who made this poor descendant of the royal family ascend to the sky in one step, as if in a dream. In this world, although there are people who are poor, they don't love money, and it is never a pity to spend as much money as possible.In the eyes of those who don't love money, money is something outside of the body. It doesn't come with birth or die with it. Why is it so hard to be tired of it?However, some people are different. Because they are poor, they develop a glorious frugal style, and because they are poor, they develop a style of loving money like their lives.

Unfortunately, Liu Hong belongs to the latter. So after Liu Hong became the emperor, he often snickered at someone in his heart.That person was his predecessor—Emperor Huan Liu Zhi.Why are you snickering at him?The reason is stupid.Where is the stupid?That is, as an emperor, he can't even make money, what a fool. Those who call others stupid must think themselves smart.Therefore, Liu Hong, who is extremely smart, does not intend to be an emperor who is a king's minister, who leads the land, and who is not the emperor of the king's land. Instead, he wants to be a private property that can be bought and sold.

What is the most valuable in the world?Headhunters will say it is talent; real estate chambers of commerce will say it is land.But Liu Hong said, your answers are wrong. The most valuable thing in the world is not talent or land, but the officials who control the flow of talent and land market. Unexpectedly, Liu Hong was going to sell the most valuable official position in the Han Dynasty to the public.To this end, he also set up a special agency for selling officials, and listed the price of official positions. Two thousand shi for the sheriff, 20 million yuan; four hundred shi, four million yuan.

At the ministerial level, five million yuan; Sangong is priced at tens of millions. What's even more shocking is yet to come. If you have money, you can immediately hand over the money to the official. The price is fair and there is no deception.If you can't afford that much money at once, you can pay in installments.It is to make a down payment first, and then pay back the remaining money slowly after you take office to make money. Seeing all this, it's hard for God not to go crazy. In fact, in the history of the Han Dynasty, Liu Hong was not the first to publicly sell an official.The first to open this example was Liu Che, who was known as the iron-fisted emperor in the Western Han Dynasty.But having said that, the essence of the two selling officials is different.When Liu Che sold his official titles, he only freed up a small part of his titles to sell to supplement military supplies. There was no other way. He had fought against the Huns for a long time and burned a lot of money. If he continued to blackmail the common people, he would not be emperor for long.

When Liu Hong sold an official, what he sold was not a small part, but two-thirds of the entire establishment.The money obtained from selling officials is not included in the national treasury, and used as life-saving food for ordinary people, or to supply border military supplies.All the money he gets goes into his own private treasury. It's really not easy to be the emperor for this sake. It is indeed not easy for Liu Hong to be the emperor.He is the emperor, but all the sycophants of the court have gone to the eunuchs.Where there is flattery, there will naturally be money, so the money is pouring into the pockets of the eunuchs, and he is jealous when he sees it.Life is alive, as long as I live well, I don't care about the flood.

So, he opened one eye to make money, and closed the other eye to the eunuch who made a lot of money, which is a matter of course. However, when facing a certain type of person, Liu Hong's eyes are absolutely wide open, and both eyes are full of fierce light.These people who make Liu Hong look like they can't hold the sand in their eyes are the so-called cronies of scholar-bureaucrats. The incident happened not long after Empress Dowager Dou was buried in the mausoleum, and someone didn't know who actually posted a big-character poster outside the gate of Beigong Palace.It reads like this: The world is in chaos, Cao Jie and Wang Fuyou killed the queen mother, all the officials and ministers were dead, and there were no loyal speakers.

As soon as the big-character poster was posted, the eunuchs mobilized and reported to Liu Hong.When Liu Hong heard it, he was shocked. What he said didn't sound like scolding eunuchs or ministers, but rather like scolding the emperor.If you think about it, you know that eunuchs are arrogant and officials are unloyal, which means that the emperor is not good enough. Angry, Liu Hong immediately issued an order to Captain Sili to find out all those who posted big-character posters. A month later, the eunuch came to ask if there was any result, but they didn't expect to hear a rather shocking answer: no result.Why didn't there be any results? Captain Sili said, I haven't checked it out yet, how could there be any results?

Captain Sili, gender: male; name: Liu Meng. Why didn't you investigate carefully?The reason, this big-character poster is telling the truth, what is there to investigate? Big trouble.After working for a long time, it turned out that Captain Sili was an outsider, and he was in the same group as Li Ying and other cronies. What an accidental discovery. In fact, even if Wang Fu and the others didn't know who posted the big-character poster, they could guess with a high probability of 90%.Looking up the world, who would have the courage to sing against them?Apart from the opposition and the Tai students led by the opposition, who else would stand up and scold the street in the name of justice?

Liu Hong issued an imperial edict to demote Liu Meng, who had neglected his duties, as an admonishing doctor.Soon, he transferred another one from another place to fill the vacancy of Captain Sili.Then issue an edict to find out whoever posted the big-character poster. The guy Liu Hongxin transferred was indeed very fierce and resolute, arresting people everywhere, and throwing more than a thousand students, including Tai students, into prison for interrogation. Tai students, don't blame others for being too ruthless, they are born to be ruthless.Because the one you met was not Liu Meng, his name is Duan Jiong. Duan Jiong, courtesy name Ji Ming, was born in Liangzhou.This place in Liangzhou is the legendary Shanxi, which is the west of Xiaoshan Mountain. This is the place where fierce generals emerge.This surname Duan is one of the fierce generals, and he is not ordinary fierce. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, three Pingqiang fierce men were born in Liangzhou. Two of them had been seen before.These three people are known as Liangzhou Sanming in the world, and Duan Jiong is one of them. The rebellion of ethnic minorities such as the Qiang people has been a big problem since the founding of the Eastern Han Dynasty.The basic solution is: if you cause trouble, ask for a fight, if you fight, you will surrender, if you cause trouble after a long time, if you cause trouble, fight again.Of course, fighting alone cannot solve the problem. Holding a sharp arrow in one hand and shaking an olive branch in the other is the right way.Deng Xun, the great hero of the Ping and Qiang, used this trick. Unfortunately, after the death of Lao Deng, the Qiang people could no longer live a life of superiors. Huangfugui and Zhang Huan's strategies for rehabilitating the Qiang people are basically the same as Deng Xun's thinking, that is, beating is a strategy, not a goal.After Zhang Huan was transferred back to the central government as a minister, General Ping Qiang was replaced by Duan Jiong. He went against the philosophy of the previous two chiefs and attacked with an iron fist until you were convinced. In recent years, Duan Jiong has relied on a pair of iron fists to defeat the Qiang people in Liangzhou and gained a reputation. From the perspective of the country, the surnamed Duan is a hero. For the sake of the border, he has been fighting with the sword for ten years, and he has never slept peacefully.But why did Liu Hong suddenly pull him back from the border and use him to investigate the big-character poster incident?The reason is simple, Duan Jiong is different from his previous two colleagues, Zhang Huan belongs to the hard-core scholar-bureaucrat group, and Huangfu Gui thinks he is in the same group as them, and he has nothing to do with eunuchs. Duan Jiong was the only exception. His exception is not that he has no party or faction, but that he is very obedient to the eunuch. Wang Fu and others believed that Tai students were just puppets dancing on the stage, and they had to find out their behind-the-scenes bosses one by one, and that would be called a real fight.After Wang Fu gave the task, Duan Jiong got busy. He was the first to target Liu Meng, the former Sili school lieutenant. He first impeached him, then arrested him, removed him from his post, and sent him to serve in a labor camp. After finishing Liu Meng, the next one is Zhang Huan. Whether it is Wang Fu or Duan Jiong, there are 10,000 reasons to get rid of Zhang Huan. Let's start from the beginning, Zhang Huan was credited with destroying Dou Wu, Wang Fu and other eunuchs took credit for him and made him a Marquis, but Zhang Huan was determined not to accept it.Why don't you accept it? You know, Zhang Huan has always been with Chen Fan and other scholar-bureaucrats. He was suddenly taken advantage of, and he wanted to use this as a lure to join the team of eunuchs. It was more uncomfortable than taking his life. .Therefore, he resolutely refused to accept the title. That's all.Not long after the deaths of Dou Wu and Chen Fan, Zhang Huan took the initiative to play the memorial again, saying that they were loyal to the country and died unjustly, and that the country now needs to rehabilitate them. After the memorial was delivered, the eunuchs finally saw Zhang Huan's true face.This kind of person, if you don't show him some color, he really takes himself seriously, so they issued an edict in the name of Liu Hong and scolded Zhang Huan severely. It was just scolding, but Zhang Huan already smelled something ominous, so he had to throw himself into prison.After several days, he was released and his salary was withheld for three months. In addition to being at odds with the eunuch, Zhang Huan was also very out of tune with Duan Jiong, his successor to Ping Qiang. The two had confronted each other on the issue of how to Ping Qiang, and even quarreled with the emperor.It was because of this incident that Duan Jiong always kept it in his heart. At this moment, he thought it was time to repair Zhang Huan.