Liu Fei kowtowed so fast and hard that the center of his forehead turned red for a moment. It was obvious that his resignation came from the bottom of his heart, and he even kowtowed with all his strength.
Liu Ji remained silent and lowered his eyes, staring straight at his son's bent back. After a while, he joked,
"This is a blessing that others can't get even if they are trying every possible means to get it. Why is my son so stupid all of a sudden?"
Liu Fei gritted his teeth and said,
"This is a gift from the Father. It was disrespectful at first, but not only did my son dare not obey the order, he also tried to persuade the Father to take back the order!"
"oh?"
"Although the method of dividing the kings is a temporary solution for our Han Dynasty, it is by no means a long-term solution for peace and stability."
After Liu Fei finished speaking, he did not dare to raise his head and still kowtowed heavily.
"Okay, okay, stop knocking, let outsiders see it, and think what I did to you."
Liu Ji's tone was light, and he couldn't hear too much emotion. He quickly turned around and sat back on the imperial couch, resting his elbows on the curved jade table beside the couch, clasping his head and looking at the big man in front of him expressionlessly. Prince.
The room was as warm as spring, but the jade table was even colder. The slightest chill from the jade passed through the thin pajamas and spread into his limbs, making him shiver.
"Get up first, sit down and speak slowly."
"My son, I obey."
***
After kowtowing countless times, Liu Fei's eyes were filled with stars and his head was buzzing. He endured the pain on his forehead, returned to his side, and silently listened to Zhang Liang's discussion on weekdays. After going through many principles of current affairs and economics, I boldly said,
"My first experience during my six months in the northwest is that the country's territory is really vast. There are more than fifty counties from south to north, and the customs and customs are completely different in each place.
I heard from Taifu that the great cause that the first emperor wanted to accomplish was not just the superficial meaning of "cars on the same track, books on the same text, and actions on the same line", but also that every Guizhou head in the world should follow the same laws. , believe in the same morals, use the same measurement, use the same money, and abandon the customs developed over hundreds of thousands of years. "
"Well, Zhang Zifang is indispensable to the fact that you have this level of knowledge now."
Liu Ji was a little surprised, looked up at him quickly, scratched his head and sighed,
“The world is one family and the whole country is unified. It sounds easy, but it is really difficult to do.
At the beginning, your father and I were just small pavilion chiefs. We didn’t have so many big and high-level ideas. We only felt that the new policies introduced by the First Emperor were very complex and huge.
He abolished feudal states at home, established households under the direct control of county and county bureaucracies, attacked the Huns from the north, and built the Great Wall. The whole country struggled for more than ten years, leaving people confused.
Now I understand his true intention more and more, that is, 'Under the sky, is it the king's land, and on the shore of the land, is it the king's ministers'——"
Liu Ji's murmuring memories came to an abrupt end, and those he hesitated to say were inconvenient to say clearly even to his own son.
Although he followed the general trend and raised the banner of punishing the Qin Dynasty at the beginning of his army, deep down in his heart, he was always the same as the first emperor, firmly believing that the king referred to in "king soil" and "king ministers" was the emperor. , He is one person, the only emperor in the world, and he is by no means some ostentatious co-owner who divides power with other princes, kings, elders and heroes to rule the world.
***
Seeing that Liu Fei was listening to his lecture attentively, he changed the topic and continued,
"Your explanations about books having the same text and actions having the same theme are all right.
As for the car on the same track, you are still young and have not realized the true meaning of Taifu.
Cars traveling on the same track is just a means. Its ultimate goal is to enable the central government's decrees to truly reach the countryside. "
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the separatist vassal states were beggaring their neighbors one after another. When making carriages, each country deliberately made the distance between its own wheels different from that of other countries, and the carriages were painted on different tracks.
At that time, the roads were mostly dirt roads and gravel roads. Wheels with the same spacing and regulations rolled over for many years, leaving two deeply embedded ruts on the road surface. Later cars only had to follow these two ruts. The stool is fast and steady.
On the contrary, if cars of different shapes from other countries drive on this road, they will bump and sway or even overturn because they cannot fit tightly into the ruts.
Therefore, the First Emperor's insistence on promoting the same track was not limited to setting the distance between wheels to six feet in a narrow sense, but to completely break the traffic obstacles between different regions, so that the above-mentioned system could be controlled, and the superiors could communicate with the subordinates.
Only when vehicles and information can travel smoothly across the country can taxes and property from various regions be continuously transported to the central court, and the central court's vehicles and soldiers to suppress local rebellions can quickly and unimpededly penetrate into every part of the country along unified roads. corner.
If there are still places in the old empire that cannot be touched by administrative and military orders, how can it be called a great unity?
Liu Ji said with emotion,
"Now it seems that the First Emperor's path is all right. The cars are on the same track. The central government has direct control over the counties. The government orders directly pass through the counties. There is no day in the sky. To rule by one is to achieve great unification.
However, he was too impatient, thinking about everything internally and externally, and always wanted to get it done in one go, but he forgot that the people of the six eastern countries were not emotionless vegetation.
In the end, a dynasty that had been running smoothly collapsed. "
Therefore, he learned the lessons of the First Emperor and planned to complete the great cause of unification through twists and turns.
***
The process of Qin's destruction of the six eastern kingdoms was as fast as the wind and the remaining clouds, leaving many troubles in the future. Just fourteen years later, the heroes of Daze Township raised their arms and the aristocrats of the six kingdoms were revived.
In other words, the rise of Chen Sheng and Wu Guang eventually evolved into a war of restoration where the princes of the six countries united to attack Qin.
At the same time, Liu Ji finally ascended to the throne by cooperating with the princes and kings.
The enfeoffment of seven kings with different surnames was a promise and exchange by the superior to the coalition of princes. It was also the founding emperor of the Han Dynasty, a way of repairing and reconciling the Qin Dynasty's sudden destruction of the six kingdoms.
However, everyone still underestimated Liu Ji's determination. Compromise was just an expedient when he was subordinate to others. When the time comes, he will still persevere to implement his grand plan of unification——
Replace all the vassal kings with different surnames who were forced to enfeoff with their own people, and use several vassal states with the same surname that are absolutely loyal to the Han Dynasty to govern those areas that have strongly resisted the unification, such as Chu and Qi. .
The people he considers to be his own include the Liu family's children with the same surname, and Lu Wan, his brother with a different surname who is as close as brothers. There is also the honest and arrogant Changsha King Wu Chen and his family, who can be considered half of our own.
He granted the state of Qi to his eldest son Liu Fei, and split the state of Chu that originally belonged to Han Xin into two and granted it to his distant brother. Then let Lu Wan go to the Yan Kingdom to become the king, and together with Wu Chen of the Changsha Kingdom, one in the north and one in the south, as a buffer between the Xiongnu and South Vietnam, vassal the Central Plains.
If the surname of the counties and counties in the world is Liu, and several kingdoms are also surnamed Liu, it will be a complete family world. Even if the counties and counties are parallel, as long as they all have the surname Liu, it's done.
Since he ascended the throne, Liu Ji had been thinking hard to come up with this ingenious plan of retreating in order to advance. However, the indescribable panic in his heart finally came to an end in the joking and naughty words he just teased Liu Fei about not rebelling. Cold reality.
That joke was so obvious that it not only completely exposed the hidden worries in Liu Ji's heart, but also immediately awakened Liu Fei, who was overwhelmed by the ecstasy of being crowned king.
When Liu Ji was talking about the strategic position of Qidi, there was a moment when Liu Fei was grateful for his father's trust in front of him, and he was also intoxicated by the beautiful scenery of Qi State with more than 70 cities that his father had sketched for him.
