Jiang Yueguang and others did not expect that the old senior Liu Zongzhou would suddenly admit defeat.

This caught everyone off guard and had to follow suit.

When Gao Huan decided to hold this debate, just in case, he arranged for one person to break into the opposition in advance.

Gao Huan knew that Jiang Yueguang and Qian Qianyi had a bad relationship and could not find a helper, so he needed someone to help him debate, so he asked Liu Zongzhou to join Jiang Yueguang's team to solve his urgent needs.

Jiang Yueguang stared at Li Yan and sent his subordinates to stare at the reformists. He never thought that Gao Huan, as a referee, would do such a trick, and he became careless for a moment.

As for why Liu Zongzhou surrendered to Gao Huan, it was because he had been at Liuzhuang Farm, a cradle of Daliang officials.

It is the magical farm that transformed Chen Debiao and Chen Guifan and cultivated the ace of the Guoan Department to make Hou Zongze.

When Gao Huan's team was founded, due to the lack of civil servants, a large number of gentry transformed by farms left Liuzhuang, entered the Daliang officialdom, and became a member of the bureaucrats of the Liang State.

According to statistics, about half of the gentry who entered the farm to renovate in the early stages, the gentry who entered the farm to renovate in the early stages, were pardoned in advance, or after being released from prison, they became officials of the Liang State.

Liuzhuang Labor Reform Farm can be said to be the cradle for the early training of officials in Liang State.

Because there were many officials here, there was a phenomenon of people who had a relationship and hoped to go in for transformation later.

After all, half of the 100 people are officials, and this proportion is even more attractive than participating in the imperial examination.

Some opportunists hope to enter the Daliang officialdom through Liuzhuang Farm.

This is the phenomenon of labor reform farms with the opportunity to become officials after transformation. After all, it is a product of a special period. After Gao Huan had other channels and obtained officials and talents, the vassal state stopped recruiting talents from the farm.

This made those scholars who spent a lot of money to enter the farm shed tears of regret in the farm pigpen.

When Gao Huan occupied Jiangnan for the first time, he cleaned up the Nanjing nobles and Jiangnan gentry. Liu Zongzhou was arrested and imprisoned. Later, he was released back to Jiangnan because his family raised a sum of silver to redeem his sins.

This time, Gao Huan wanted to send people to infiltrate the opposition team and ask the Guoan Department to provide a candidate. The Guoan Department contacted Liu Zongzhou, who lived in seclusion in Zhongshan and wanted to ask for an official position.

Liu Zongzhou was a big boss in Donglin. He served as the Zuodu Censor during the Chongzhen Dynasty, and was the most suitable candidate. After the Guoan Department contacted him, he immediately agreed to surrender to Gao Huan.

The debate on salt and iron and mine state-owned enterprises ended with the victory of the reformists.

Because Gao Huan asked someone to record the whole process, the debate process and the words of both sides were recorded in "The King of War".

This caused the newspapers on the next day to be sold out directly, and finally 5,000 copies were added, and they were sold out.

With Li Yan winning the debate, the State-owned Salt and Iron Act was officially promulgated and implemented.

Because of Li Yan's performance in the debate, his influence in Jiangnan increased greatly and he gained enough reputation to promote reforms.

Gao Huan then activated the Jiangnan scholars who supported the reform, such as Liu Zongzhou, Chen Youlong, and Lu Zhenfei, to completely separate the Donglin forces and no longer form a joint force.

At this time, although the gentry and businessmen in Jiangnan saw Gao Huan showing their fangs and showing a political stance to suppress the powerful and safeguard the interests of ordinary people, it was too late.

...

Wuchang.

While Gao Huan was in Nanjing, he implemented reforms and intended to increase taxes from Liang State, a series of major events occurred in Huguang.

First, in September last year, Gao Huan regained Nanjing, and the pseudo-Wuchang King Zuo Liangyu became sick due to worries and anger, and eventually died of illness on the Zheng family warship.

Xu Yong and others took Zuo Liangyu's body and took the Zheng family warship to Zhejiang first, and treated the body with anti-corrosion. Then they took sea to Fujian, then land to enter Ganzhou, Jiangxi, and returned to Huguang by way of passage.

In the first month, after the soldiers of the Left Army buried Zuo Liangyu, Xu Yong, Li Guoying, Jin Shenghuan, Fu Shangrui and others, they immediately supported Zuo Liangyu's son Zuo Menggeng as King of Wuchang.

Zuo Menggeng was the queen. In order to appease the soldiers and boost morale, he rewarded the soldiers of the Left Army and sent envoys to Shandong to pay tribute to the Northern Ming court and requested a formal enthronement.

Zuo Menggeng inherited Zuo Liangyu's title and became the lord of Wuchang. This was the first major event.

Zuo Menggeng hoped to stabilize people's hearts by relying on rewards and the enthronement of the Northern Ming court, but the effect was not ideal.

After Zuo Liangyu's death, Zuo Menggeng was not in prestige and was regarded as a puppet by Li Guoying, Xu Yong and Jin Shenghuan. In order to compete for the rights of Wuchang, the three of them fought openly and secretly, and even took action.

After Zuo Liangyu went east, Li Guoying accompanied Zuo Menggeng to take charge of Wuchang. His position in Zuo Town was originally relatively low, but the 200,000 troops heading to Jiangnan were basically finished. Li Guoying, who controlled most of the Left Army in Huguang, became an important figure.

Xu Yong was Zuo Liangyu's confidant. He traveled thousands of miles and brought back Zuo Liangyu's body, which gave him a high prestige, but he had no soldiers.

As for Jin Shenghuan, he took 30,000 defeated soldiers and fled back to Wuchang through Jiangxi. He had 30,000 elite troops in his hands, which made people unable to ignore his existence.

These three people each have their own advantages, and no one convinced them for a while, making Wuchang messy and even fought.

At the same time, after learning that Zuo Liangyu died, He Tengjiao, in Hunan, began to move, intending to drive Zuo Bing out of Hunan.

Zuo Menggeng was the queen and faced with such a situation of internal and external troubles. This is the second thing to do.

When there was chaos within the Left Army, many external forces naturally would not miss such a good opportunity.

Originally, all forces were concerned that Zuo Zhen’s soldiers were mostly known as 800,000. Although they were salivating at the Huguang granary, they did not dare to attack rashly.

The situation is different now. As soon as Zuo Liangyu died, the Zuo Army lost more than 100,000 troops in Jiangnan and suffered heavy damage in strength. Li Zicheng seized the opportunity and sent Li Guo to lead 100,000 troops to collect Wuchang.

Dashun suddenly sent troops, which was the third major event that happened in Huguang recently.

Last year, Gao Huan and Li Zicheng formally formed an alliance and won the war between the two major camps of the alliance.

However, although Lianheng's alliance won, the fruits obtained by Liang Shun, which were in a core position, were not the same.

After the war, Gao Huan obtained the Jiangnan area south of the Yangtze River and north of the Qiantang River, and his strength doubled. However, Li Zicheng attacked Hedong, but his gains were relatively limited. He only captured several counties in Hedong, and soon lost them again, and was taken back by the Qing army.

This made Li Zicheng realize that although the Qing Dynasty suffered a defeat, its strength was still stronger than that of the Shun Army. So Li Zicheng temporarily stopped expanding to Hedong and decided to look for other opportunities.

Now around Dashun, it can be said that it is surrounded by powerful enemies. There is the Qing Dynasty in the northeast, Gao Huan in the east, and Zhang Xianzhong in the south.

Each of these three forces is stronger or less powerful than Dashun.

With such a strong enemy around, the Dashun regime can still exist, thanks to Li Zicheng robbing Guanzhong, a place that is easy to defend and difficult to attack.

With strong enemies around him, it was difficult for Li Zicheng to find the direction of expansion, and Gao Huan's crippling Zuo Zhen was an opportunity for him.

Taking advantage of Gao Huan's busy reform in Jiangnan and not taking advantage of the opportunity to advance to Wuchang, Li Zicheng seized the opportunity and decided to pick peaches first.

Therefore, after the Shun Army encountered a wall in expansion in Hedong, Li Zizhen mobilized the Shun Army from Nanyang, Xiangyang and Jingzhou to attack Zuo Menggeng.

In early February, the Shun Army lived up to its high expectations and defeated Zuo Menggeng in Xiaogan. The army rushed to Wuchang, and was about to take advantage of the situation to cross the river and seize the important town of Wuchang.

What Li Zicheng did not expect was that after occupying Sichuan, his old acquaintance Zhang Xianzhong intended to cross the border with Jingyi, and ordered Li Dingguo and Liu Wenxiu to lead troops to the east and seize Jingzhou in one fell swoop.

The fourth major event was the Western Army that went east and occupied Jingzhou.

For a time, Shun Army was attacked from both sides, Li Guo retreated to Xiangyang, and the situation in Huguang was in chaos. Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong, Zuo Menggeng, He Tengjiao and others fought together, and the situation was in chaos.

At this time, in Nanjing City, in the Liang Palace.

Gao Huan sat in the study, looking at the news sent by Huguang, and couldn't help but frown.

At this time, Zhou Yanru had the opportunity to show his opinion and said, "King! Wuchang is a place where Huguang is beautiful. Since ancient times, the Southeast has survived and lost, and died. I, Daliang, must not sit idly by and watch Wuchang and fall into the hands of others!"

(Refresh update the day after tomorrow, update it normally tomorrow.)
Chapter completed!