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Chapter 1280 Unable to escape

The more the little emperor said, the more he said, he became more and more outrageous. He said that being an emperor was too hard, and you must worry about being coveted, jealous, plotted, and plotted by others. If you take his position, you can command the world. No one dares to refuse to follow. The glory and wealth are endless, which must be a great attraction. So foreign clans plan it, outsiders plan it, party members plan it, relatives plan it, even son plan it, and wife plan it... Only by being an emperor can you really understand what internal and external troubles are. Therefore, ancient emperors were usually a real lonely person and were enemies of the world.

Listening to these words that could be called "big rebellious", Wang De was so scared that he just wanted to cover his ears, but he had to listen. In the past, the young emperor had made similar complaints because of his hard work, but there was nothing shocking today. However, at that time, His Majesty was young, and even if people heard it, they would only treat it as a child's joke. At most, the empress dowager taught a lesson and the masters advised him for half a day.

But now Wang De knew in his heart that if the little emperor's words were leaked out a word today, it would cause shocks in the court and the public. After all, the emperor is no longer a child, and people will not regard His Majesty's words as a complaint from a child, but will be used by some people with ulterior motives. If there is such a rumor outside, then he will be the biggest suspect, which makes him feel absurd that His Majesty will silence him.

Of course, as the young emperor, Wang De was with his own people for more than ten years. Although he did not participate in political affairs, he witnessed it and understood the current situation better than ordinary people. Now he looked very good. He had basically recovered the territory before the south. It was many times larger than when he was in Qiongzhou. The population ruled by tens of millions. There were many Chinese officials in the court, military generals were like brigades, and subjects respected them. The financial situation was much better than before. The taxes collected every year were tens of millions.

But Wang De also knew that this was just a superficial phenomenon. In fact, the undercurrents in the court have been surging, and the situation is even more complicated. The conflicts with the Mongolian and Yuan Dynasty were the most prominent. Although a series of military victories allowed the Song Dynasty to take the initiative, the relationship between the two countries was still a situation of dying, and war was the only way to resolve the problem. In China, with the advancement of the new policy by the young emperor, it affected the interests of some people and was opposed by the government and the opposition. Even if the contradictions did not intensify for the time being, they could burst at any time.

Therefore, Wang De knew that the young emperor and a group of loyal ministers were facing great pressure. Others did not know it, but he knew that Lu Xiang and others had reported almost every day in the past month, with many concerns about the government. This Northern Expedition can be said to have mobilized the power of the whole country, and it can be said that it spent all the savings of the national treasury after entering Jiangnan. Due to tax reduction and exemption in the recovered areas of the Huaihe River and Huaibei, all expenses need to be subsidized by the court, and military expenditures depend on the supply of the court.

This is equivalent to overdrawing the court's income after several years. In other words, in some people's eyes, the victory of the Northern Expedition is more like a face-saving project. The recovery of the vast land loss not only brings huge financial pressure to the court. In this way, the court will inevitably reduce expenses, officials have no money to squander, or even reduce their salaries, and the people may have to bear more taxes, it seems that it does not bring any benefits to the court and the people in Jiangnan, which has led to the constant voices of the government and the people demanding to end the Northern Expedition.

The little emperor and the generals were under great pressure to fight to Yingtian Prefecture. When facing the closest city of Bianjing decided whether to stop here and ended the Northern Expedition, Wang De witnessed the difficulty of the little emperor making decisions. In those days, the little emperor and his opposing ministers kept writing letters, hoping to convince them to move forward. However, it was still difficult to reach a consensus. After analyzing and considering the current situation with several important officials in the court, the little emperor still made the decision to stop at Yingtian Prefecture.

Although Wang De didn't know what the little emperor was thinking, he could feel the anger and helplessness of the little emperor at that time. Although he looked nothing on his face, he still handled official duties normally and guided the war. However, the little emperor did not get off the boat for three days, and almost didn't say a word of gossip, and he wandered on the deck all night, which shows how unwilling he was about not being able to recover Bianliang, but he could not tell others about his anger. He had nowhere to vent his anger, so he could only be kept in his heart.

But what people in the world see is the king of a country and the body of the emperor. Ten thousand people bow their heads. From ancient times to the present, countless people have dreamed of, and regard this as the peak of life. But who knows how tired it is to be an emperor? How dangerous is it? Wang De saw the little emperor personally experience the battlefield, and how many times he was surviving from death. When the little emperor decided to fight in person, the three empresses were pregnant and now giving birth is about to come. His Majesty is also ready to return to Beijing, but there is another problem in Xiangyang, so he can only change his itinerary and leave his family and move to a new battlefield.

So what people see is the emperor's glory, but who knows the emperor's suffering? Wang De has been with the emperor for more than ten years. He knows that the emperor is not the god in people's eyes, but also a person, and he also has joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness, but he cannot express the negative in front of others. What he gives is always a smart, powerful, wise, and omnipotent side.

Fortunately, the little emperor gradually became sleepy while chatting, and actually fell asleep in the water. Finally, Wang De breathed a sigh of relief. He asked someone to gently lift the little emperor out, wiped the water stains on his body, put them on his clothes, and sent them to the bedroom to sleep. The little emperor slept very well that night. After dawn, he was worried about what His Majesty said yesterday, and was disappointed that he would really abandon his throne and go far away, and ignore the government affairs.

However, what made Wang De pleased was that when the little emperor woke up, he seemed to have forgotten what happened yesterday. After getting up, he practiced with the soldiers in the guard camp because it was fasting, and did not move weapons. Then he took a shower, changed clothes and had meals, and handled official duties. Everything was as usual. It did not happen as he imagined. It was just a false alarm, which made him breathe a sigh of relief...

Sacrifice was a very solemn thing in ancient times. Through sacrifice, people establish and strengthen their relationship status, their rights and obligations as humans and specific individuals in the spiritual life groups and cultural genealogy they inherit and uphold.

In the Song Dynasty, Confucianism was respected, and sacrifices were respected by Confucian etiquette. "The Book of Rites: Sacrifice" emphasized that "there are five classics, and nothing is more important than sacrifice." Sacrifice "is not what things come from outside" and "the heart is born in the heart". "The heart is afraid and worshipped with rituals" is the foundation of only "the wise can fully sacrifice the meaning of sacrifice". Therefore, the essence of Confucian sacrifice is "to teach it in what we follow", and putting oneself in the spiritual relationship established by sacrifice is to place oneself in a religious system to obtain the meaning of this religious system and its response to human problems.

Sacrifice to heaven means that man is given the nature of life as a people born to heaven, and devoutly obeys and follows the destiny and laws of mankind and his laws expounded by sages of all generations, and undertakes the principles of heaven and the laws of heaven and the principles of heaven and heaven, and then receives their education. It responds to questions such as where man comes from, what principles and morals are pursued.

As the founders and accumulators of life forms and achievements and cultural traditions, ancestors are part of the foundation of life. Sacrifice to ancestors means that someone recognizes himself as a descendant of a certain ancestor, inherits and receives the bloodline and education of his ancestors, thereby clarifying the historical foundation of his life, and taking on the responsibility of carrying forward the traditions of his ancestors and constantly innovating, so as to honor the family and imitate the cultural traditions created and accumulated by his ancestors. This is the basic method to determine the order of the world and the world and the hearts of the people.

According to Confucius' words: "I would rather not sacrifice than sacrifice." Whether it is praising the virtues of heaven or "pursuing and filial piety", it is first of all the expression of piety and emotional needs of inner piety, and shaping the emotions and morality of loyalty and filial piety in the sacrifice activities. A person who despises the gods and ancestors will not have the act of sacrifice to the gods and ancestors. This is the so-called "to be honest, integrity is called fullness, and fullness is called respect, and then you can serve the gods. This is the way of sacrifice."

In order to express piety, fasting is required before sacrifice, and fasting includes two aspects. Fasting comes from uniformity, mainly neatness, such as bathing, changing clothes, not drinking alcohol, and not eating meat; precepts mainly refer to refueling, such as not sleeping with wives and concubines, and reducing entertainment activities for several days. The emperor also did not eat irritating dishes such as meat, onion, garlic, leek, and ginger, and did not drink alcohol, listen to music, and did not stay close to concubines and did not mourn and ignored criminal activities.

According to the rules, Zhao Bing would rest in the vegetarian palace in the past few days to cultivate his mind and cultivate his nature, but he was not a "rules" person. This sacrifice was just a political show for him and he had to do it. It was precisely because this was a national ritual that not only the court sent officials from Lin'an to preside over the prefectures and counties to preside over it, but all officials from the county and counties also rushed to participate in the ceremony, so for a while, civil and military officials gathered here.

Zhao Bing had such a complete set of people, and he had a bad idea again. He regarded this event as a conference. In the name of accompanying him to fast, all the officials and generals above the seventh rank and commanders who came to Yingtian Prefecture to convene to the Zhai Palace for a meeting to inform the current situation, interpret the policies and discuss and resolve new problems that arise in the new land during this period.

Most of the officials currently serving in the newly harvested land came from Qiongzhou several imperial examinations. They can be said to be a firm supporter of Zhao Bing and a tough war pro-war faction with ambition to "expel the Tartars and shed the horses to the north". Therefore, they hope to recover their hometown and return to the old capital in one fell swoop, but they were very puzzled about the sudden end of the Northern Expedition and stopping at the city of Bianjing.
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