Chapter 6 4. Slipping through the net by chance during the liquidation

Now, Emperor Huan Liu Zhi is sitting in the Deyang Hall of the North Palace.This is the most majestic building in the palace. It is located on a high platform. Standing at the door, he can overlook the entire South City and Luoshui.Without Empress Dowager Liang, without General Liang, as the commander in chief of this successful coup, Liu Zhi had no reason not to be confident in his abilities. Liang Ji has been in power for too long, and the inside and outside of the court have changed beyond recognition.Emperor Huan issued an edict to clean up the officials of the three gongs and nine qings and below, to find out what kind of relationship these people have with the Liang family, and to report and expose each other.

After checking, he found that not many people in the court were innocent.Emperor Huan issued an edict that Taiwei Hu Guang, Situ Hanyan, and Sikong Sun Lang Afu Liangji failed to fulfill their duty of protecting the emperor (not guarding the palace), and should have been sentenced to death, but the sentence is now commuted so that they will not be common people. Other people related to this were also given measures such as demotion, dismissal, and transfer to judicial organs.In just a few days, as many as 300 people were punished and lost their official positions because of the Liangji incident.It is said in history that "the imperial court is empty".

The investigation found that among the Jiuqing, apart from Guang Luxun and Yuan Xu, who made great contributions to the incident, Huang Qiong was the most upright and famous, and had not formed a party with the Liang family.Emperor Huan issued an edict to promote Huang Qiong to Taiwei.In the absence of a general, Huang Qiong became the head of the hundred officials. Under the auspices of Huang Qiong and others, a large number of talents were introduced to make up for the difficulties in government operation caused by the sudden decrease in officials, and the court finally got on the right track.For Tang Heng and others who made the most contributions in this coup, Emperor Huan offered a heavy reward. These five people were all made county marquises in one day, and each had 10,000 households, an increase of 10,000 households alone.These five eunuchs are called "Five Marquis" in later generations.

Two years before this incident, a national census had just been conducted. At that time, the total population was more than 56 million, and the number of households was less than 11 million.The 60,000 households already exceeded 5/1000 of the total number of households in the country, and it was really a big deal to be dispatched by Emperor Huan within one day.The next step is to check and deal with Liang Ji's property.The gold and silver treasures, real estate and all valuable things of the Liang family were first registered and compiled under the auspices of Yuan Teng, the Luoyang order, and then auctioned.As a result of the final clean-up, Liang Ji's family's illegal income from corruption and bribery totaled 3 billion yuan.

According to the "Book of Later Han Shihuo Zhi", a stone of rice in the time of Emperor Huan was about 50 yuan, and a stone in the Han Dynasty was about 60 catties today. According to the theory of parity, a dollar in the Han Dynasty is worth more than a dollar now, which is about equal to It's about two bucks now.Three billion yuan is about the same as the current six billion yuan. At that time, 60 million shi of rice could be bought. If calculated in terms of purchasing power, the amount involved in the Liang Ji case is only less than that of the Hekun case handled by Emperor Jiaqing of the Qing Dynasty. The amount involved in the Hekun case was converted into a total of 100 million taels of silver, which could buy 66 million shi of rice at that time.

In this big liquidation, there is also a fish that slipped through the net: the Cao family. Cao Teng was a staunch supporter of the Liang brothers and sisters and their spokesperson among the eunuchs, but he did not appear on the list because Cao Teng had just passed away not long ago.Since he holds the title of Marquis of Feiting, he is called dead in the official obituary. Empress Dowager Liang passed away due to illness nine years ago, and the Changle Palace, which was busy day and night, suddenly became deserted.The eunuchs in Changle Palace began to look for a new way out for themselves, and it was the most ideal choice to be beside the emperor or empress, otherwise they had to retire early.

Only Cao Teng was not in a hurry, and it was useless to be in a hurry.As the boss of the entire team of eunuchs, it is difficult for him to get a job again.The emperor and empress have been dominated by the younger generation of eunuchs. These little eunuchs who used to tremble their legs when they saw him are now serving as servants and little yellow men. If he goes back, what will they do? Cao Teng's exact date of birth is not recorded in history books.Judging from the clue that he was selected as Shun Emperor Liu Bao's companion, he should be older than Liu Bao. Liu Bao was born in 115, and Cao Teng should have been born before this year.

According to historical records, Cao Teng entered the palace during the time of Emperor An, and worked in the palace for more than 30 years.Emperor An Liu Hu succeeded to the throne in 106, died in 125, and reigned for 19 years.Cao Teng entered the palace between 106 and 125 years. According to this calculation, it is more likely that Cao Teng was born before 100 AD. Therefore, Cao Teng should have been in his fifties when Empress Dowager Liang died.Since then, there has been no record of his activities in history books. We can speculate that after the death of Queen Mother Liang, Cao Teng asked to retire (become an official).After retiring, he put all his energy on two things: one is to support his adopted son Cao Song, and the other is to overhaul the cemetery in his hometown Qiao County to prepare for a hundred years later.

Eunuchs have no offspring.Emperor Shun Liu Bao became emperor when he was supported by eunuchs. In order to appreciate the achievements of eunuchs, he made an unprecedented decision: to allow eunuchs to adopt their adopted sons to inherit the family business and confer titles.So Cao Teng adopted Cao Song as his adopted son in Tongzong. The tomb of the Cao family that Cao Teng overhauled is clearly recorded in Li Daoyuan's "Shui Jing Zhu", and the scale is very grand.Today, after thousands of years of wind and rain, they are still proudly listed in the south of Cao Teng's hometown, Bozhou City, Anhui Province.According to accurate archaeological data, Cao Teng, Cao Bao, Cao Song, Cao Chi and others are buried in this huge family cemetery. They are all members of Cao Teng's clan. Here is a brief introduction to the relationship between them .

Cao Bao and Cao Teng were of the same generation, and they should be brothers or sisters. Because of Cao Teng's protection, they became the prefect of Yingchuan.His son is Cao Chi, who served as a servant and captain of Changshui, and is the father of Cao Ren and Cao Chun. Cao Chi is of the same generation as Cao Song, and in this generation, there are at least four to five clan members.One is Cao Ding, who served as Minister of the Order; one of Cao Ding's brothers is Cao Yu, who became General Wei; they also have a brother whose name is unknown, but his son is very famous, named Cao Hong.

In addition to the three brothers Cao Ding, there are at least two branches in this generation, one of whom was the prefect of Wu County, and he has a grandson named Cao Xiu.The other gave birth to a son named Cao Shao, and Cao Shao had a son named Cao Zhen. If Cao Teng and Cao Bao are the "Cao generation", the "Cao second generation" includes Cao Song, Cao Ding, Cao Yu, and Cao Chi; the "Cao three generations" include Cao Cao, Cao De, Cao Hong, Cao Ren, Cao Chun, and Cao Chi Shao; there are many "Four Dynasties of Cao", including Cao Pi, Cao Zhi, Cao Xiu, Cao Zhen, etc., followed by "Five Dynasties of Cao".The descendants of the Cao family after that are no longer the focus of historical attention. The issue of Cao Song's background has always been controversial, so I must explain it here. Chen Shou said, "You can't judge the whole story", which caused the Cao family to be discriminated against as "black and black households".Some unofficial histories believe that Cao Song is a descendant of Xiahou's family, and Cao Teng was brought from Xiahou's family at the beginning.Regarding the sentence written by Chen Shou, some people have always suspected that either his professional standards were out of order, or he had other motives. Chen Shou began writing "Three Kingdoms" in the first year of Jin Taikang (280), when Chen Shou was forty-eight years old, and he completed the book about nine years later.The place where Chen Shou wrote "Three Kingdoms" was in Luoyang. At that time, he was serving as the author and Zhongshu Shilang in the Sima court. 280 A.D. was the sixteenth year when the Sima family established the Jin Dynasty. Although Cao Cao had been dead for 60 years, there were still a large number of people who were familiar with the history of the previous dynasty. Among the survivors are Cao Zhi, Cao Huan and others of the "Five Dynasties of Cao". Cao Zhi is the son of Cao Zhi. He served as the prefect of Leping, the regular servant of Sanqi, the doctor of Guozi, and the doctor of Jijiu in the Jin Dynasty.In the ninth year of Taikang (288), that is, the year before Chen Shou finished writing "Three Kingdoms", he died of illness in Luoyang.As a colleague who was an official in the same dynasty and a party to important historical events, Cao Zhi should have attracted enough attention from Chen Shou. Unless Cao Zhi himself "can't judge the whole story" of his ancestors, this historical unsolved case can be easily resolved. The Cao Teng brothers should have more than four males (Cao Teng’s character is Jixing, and there should be Boxing, Zhongxing, and Shuxing on it). Even though the Cao family was very poor at the beginning, by the time of Emperor Shun, the Cao family should be very poor. Now that he is rich, why would he let Cao's children go and adopt someone with a different surname? Therefore, the reasonable explanation is that Cao Song is a child of one of Cao Teng's other three elder brothers, that is, his own nephew.Of course, this is also guesswork. Whether Cao Song's surname is Cao or Xiahou, or whether he was adopted from a beggar as Yuan Shao revealed, I am afraid that the debate will continue until there is no more powerful research to find out. There are very limited historical materials about Cao Song's children, that is, Cao Cao's brothers and sisters. It is speculated that Cao Song had at least six sons: the eldest son Cao Cao; the next is Cao De, Cao Cao's half-brother; The famous general in the Song Dynasty had the same name; the fourth child was Cao Yu, who died earlier, and later Cao Cao adopted his son Cao Hui to him; Zhang Xiushi died in battle; the sixth child's name was Cao Ji, and there are also historical records that Cao De and Cao Ji are the same person. In addition, Cao Cao had at least two sisters, one married to the Xiahou family, and the other married to the Sun family in Jiangdong.He also has two cousins, daughters of his uncle's family, one married to his future general Ren Jun, and the other married to a man named Song Qi. Now we can roughly speculate that Cao Teng died of illness in Luoyang on the eve of Liang Ji's downfall.According to the ritual system, Cao Teng had to return to his hometown before he could be buried. Cao Song and other Cao family members had to resign from their official positions and stay at home for three years.When Liang Ji fell from power, Cao Song and others were not in Luoyang, and they were lucky to escape the political liquidation.