In Qingzhou, where Pinglu Jiedushi was stationed, a frowning Yang Guangyuan stood at the top of the city and breathed a sigh of relief, because after four months of siege, Li Shouzhen finally withdrew the siege.

However, it was not him, Yang Guangyuan, who defeated Li Shouzhen. Li Shouzhen was simply driven away by hunger.

Because since last winter, Qingzhou has still suffered from floods and droughts, and neighboring Zizhou was harmed by Yang Guangyuan himself during the Shanxi-Liao War last year.

This is why Li Shouzhen's 30,000-strong army besieged the city for four months, unable to collect enough food and grass, and had to retreat.

"Send out your elite cavalry quickly and travel day and night to deliver the message of distress to the Emperor of Liao. The lives of you, my father and my son depend on this!"

Yang Guangyuan put the handwritten letter asking for help into the hands of his eldest son Yang Chengzuo and ordered him to send someone to Khitan immediately.

The content of this letter is very simple. It is to report to Yelu Deguang the horrific natural disasters encountered by the Later Jin Dynasty, so that Yelu Deguang can take advantage of this opportunity to go south again.

On the other side, Li Shouzhen's army reached Linzi in the northwest of Qingzhou and refused to leave, because what could support their four-month siege was the hundreds of thousands of treasures that Yang Guangyuan had looted from Luoyang, Xijing.

The soldiers wallowed in the muddy water for several months without even catching a hair. They became increasingly angry as they walked. When they reached Linzi, they exploded. Everyone clamored for Li Shouzhen to reward him.

Li Shouzhen was numb at this moment. He thought that his soldiers would be unhappy, but he didn't expect the resentment to rise so quickly.

Originally, he was waiting to get to Qizhou (Jinan), and then try to get the court to allocate some money and food, or just conduct a small robbery outside Qizhou City to calm down his grievances.

But as soon as they reached Linzi, the team couldn't go any further. If they didn't think of a way quickly, there might be a riot.

While he was worried, Li Shouzhen's confidant Ya Jiang came in to report.

"It was Ma Huzi's group who took the lead in causing the trouble. Damn it, they saw Linzi's prosperity and wanted to rob Linzi and share the property!"

After Li Shouzhen heard this, he touched his chin. In fact, he really wanted to rob Linzi.

After besieging Qingzhou for four months, the soldiers below didn't catch anything, and Li Shouzhen didn't catch anything either.

"But Linzi City should have been prepared for it. Why don't you go and see if you can fight?"

Regarding the virtues of these soldiers and generals, Linzi City had already prepared for it. Therefore, from the moment they learned that Li Shouzhen had withdrawn, the governor in Linzi City only sent people to deliver 300 stones of grain and grass to the outside of the city, and then closed the four gates tightly.

"Superintendent must not do this!"

When his confidant Ya Jiang was about to go down to investigate, Li Shouzhen's secretary quickly spoke up to stop him.

"The supervisor defeated the Khitan on the Yellow River and won the trust of the emperor. Now is a good time to plan to release the town. If Linzi is plundered, the imperial court will probably regard the supervisor as a violent person. Are you willing to release it?"

The words of the Secretary Zhang can be regarded as speaking to Li Shouzhen's heart.

His biggest dream now is to release a town of Jiedu. If Linzi is plundered, the court may indeed be unwilling to release him.

As soon as the secretary in charge saw Li Shouzhen's actions, he immediately continued to speak.

"Ma Huzi and others have always been violent. Today the supervisor allowed them to loot Linzi. Tomorrow they will loot Qizhou again. What should we do?

And we had to retreat this time because they were unwilling to fight bloody battles. Otherwise, how could Yang Guangyuan's two or three thousand troops be able to hold on for four months?

They are not in a good position to fight, but they still want to coerce and lure the supervisors. The supervisors must not encourage this trend!"

"These are words from the bottom of my heart!" Li Shouzhen sighed and had to admit that the words of the Secretary Zhang made sense.

However, if he disagrees with the opinions of his soldiers, they may rebel.

At that time, it was not a question of whether to release it to the outside world, but a question of whether the head could be saved.

"My subordinates have a plan. Please give it a try, supervisor!"

Those who can come up with alternatives after rejecting a plan are good subordinates. The boss immediately had a way to deal with it.

"Speak quickly!" Upon hearing this, Li Shouzhen quickly waved his hand and asked the secretary to speak quickly.

"Yang Guang is far away from our army, so he must be lax. It is better to supervise the army to continue marching slowly, secretly select the elite, take a double route, and rush to the foot of Qingzhou City. Then Qingzhou can be defeated, and the treasures can also be rewarded.

Here you go, sergeants."

"Okay!" Li Shouzhen clapped her hands and laughed, then her face turned cold.

"Then let Ma Huzi and others be the vanguard. If the battle fails, don't blame me for not recognizing the person with the sharp knife in my hand!"

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The sky was slightly bright, and Yang Guangyuan, who was tossing and turning and unable to sleep, finally narrowed his eyes. Death and destruction were right in front of his eyes, which really made him unable to sleep.

The crisis has not been resolved now, because Yang Guangyuan does not know whether the Khitans can go south in time?

And there is another big problem. In the battle by the Yellow River, the Pinglu Army lost almost all its capable soldiers.

Originally, Yang Guangyuan wanted to collude with the Khitans to go south and let Yelu Deguang canonize him as the Emperor of the Central Plains. But now that he has no strength, I am afraid that he can continue to guard Qingzhou, which will be a great face.

In fact, if you can continue to guard one side, that's not bad. At least you can keep your wealth and family.

But Yang Guangyuan knew that this was overthinking. Can the Khitans tolerate him, but can the new emperor appointed by Yelu Deguang tolerate him?

Just when he was about to fall asleep with a lot of worries, suddenly, his second son Yang Chengxin rushed in from the door.

Yang Guangyuan was already feeling uneasy. He was immediately covered in cold sweat, and the carp rolled over with an erection. His head still seemed to be shining with fear.

"My lord, please leave quickly. Li Shouzhen is back to fight again."

The expressions of Yang Chengxin and Yang Guangyuan were similar, both were full of fear.

The rangers who had been sent out to watch were still following Li Shouzhen's army, so Li Shouzhen sent his elite soldiers back.

The Pinglu Army soldiers who had been besieged for four months were already exhausted, thinking that Li Shouzhen had all retreated to Linzi, so there was no one on duty at all.

As a result, Li Shouzhen's dead soldiers immediately reached the top of the city. After the gates were opened, the soldiers of Pinglu Army knew that the enemy had arrived.

The shouts of killing became smaller and smaller. After being rushed into the city, the soldiers of Pinglu Army quickly dispersed.

Yang Guangyuan could only dress up as civilians with his wife and two sons, and tried to run out from the south gate where there were not many enemies.

But unfortunately, they were recognized quickly.

Because Yang Guangyuan was tall and had dysentery, his wife was lame.

Even if it was a man with diarrhea and a lame woman on the street who were running for their lives in a hurry, it was still too obvious.

Li Shouzhen laughed crazily and ran over. Yang Guangyuan and his son had looted in Luoyang, Xijing, and devoured Fan Yanguang's property. Although they spent some money to win over the Pinglu army, there were at least hundreds of thousands of money left.

As long as the father and son are caught and tortured, these treasures will surely be recovered.

"Li Shouzhen, you thief slave! Why bother pushing people too far?"

Yang Guangyuan's eyes were splitting with anger. I wonder if he had ever thought about the fact that in the past, he was deeply favored by Li Siyuan, but in the end he killed Zhang Jingda, who was sent by Li Siyuan to conquer Shi Jingtang, and became an accomplice of Shi Jingtang's treason.

Did the people who were massacred by his troops in Luoyang, Zizhou and other places feel that he was pushing too hard?

However, at this moment, Yang Guangyuan was still very single. Amidst Li Shouzhen's proud words of "catching people alive", he held up a thick stack of banknotes.

Suddenly, a look of horror appeared on Li Shouzhen's face.

Yang Guangyuan gritted his teeth and said, "If you want my wealth, you are dreaming! I will give it to Hexi Zhang Zhao, but I won't give it to you either!"

As he spoke, with Li Shouzhen's heartbroken eyes, Yang Guangyuan soaked his whole body with the tung oil he carried with him, and finally burned it in a blazing fire together with the banknotes he had carefully collected.

"You thief slave! A certain family is going to kill your whole family!"

Li Shouzhen never expected that Yang Guangyuan would be willing to exchange his belongings into stacks of paper. He was caught off guard and before he could react, the banknotes had already turned into ashes.

"Damn it! Why do you need a banknote?"

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300,000 yuan received in bank card!

If such a thing existed in this era, Zhang Zhao's cell phone might sound like this.

He was in Qinzhou, busy with disaster relief, but he never imagined that Yang Guangyuan's hard work for a year and a half had made people angry and resentful, and in the end it all benefited him.

Without the banknote, the holder of the banknote is also dead. Since there is no banknote and no code, no one can exchange the money.

A total of 300,000 yuan belongs to the bank system developed by Zhang Zhao.

However, the bank's problems are not small, because Zhang Zhao's bank was not established by himself, but was integrated with the help of the existing financial systems of temples in various places.

This is not the dozens of big temples in Longyou, Hexi, but the whole temples in Hexi, Longyou, Shuofang, Guanzhong, Hezhong, Hedong, Henan and Hebei are strung together to form.

On such a large scale, even with Zhang Zhao's triple status as Khan, King of Heaven, and King of Dharma, he is far from being able to say that he is the one and only.

It can be said that the current bank is in a period of barbaric growth. Zhang Zhao tried his best, but he could only hold on to the right to issue banknotes. He was powerless to do the rest. Perhaps he could slowly start reforms after he took over the Central Plains in the future.

Taking advantage of the power of Buddhism, Zhang Zhao certainly cannot be as brutal and ruthless as Shizong Guo Rong destroyed Buddhism last week. He can only manage a big country like cooking a small fish, cooking it slowly.

Moreover, he cannot choose to immortalize the Buddha, because this is determined by reality.

After all, it seems from now on that in the entire Central Plains, with a population of about 10 million, the means of production have been greatly destroyed.

The only three groups that can provide resources for national rejuvenation are Buddhist temples, military commanders, and local wealthy families.

Although the military generals are large in scale and appear to be quite wealthy, most of them are not engaged in production, and the materials in their hands cannot be quickly converted into sustainable wealth. They are a group that looks rich, but actually does not have much oil and water.

Moreover, they hold knives in their hands. In the foreseeable ten or twenty years, Zhang Zhao can only execute the most shameful group of people, but has to win over most of them.

The local big families cannot be moved even more. After the aristocratic family system has been destroyed, the clan system relying on the imperial examination system has not yet grown, and the people are filled with mourning, they have only rural productivity left. Not only cannot they be moved, but they must also be protected.

Then, temple estates that occupy a large amount of production resources, do not produce themselves, and do not pay taxes are the only beings that can kill and eat meat.
To be continued...