Sitting in front of the desk in the study, Zhou Jun had three letters from the north in front of him.
One letter came from Wang Zhongsi, another from Li Guangbi, and the last letter came from Tu Lishi of the Uighur tribe.
After looking at the three letters, Zhou Jun thought for a while and opened Wang Zhongsi's letter first.
Wang Zhongsi's writing was powerful and his ink stains penetrated the paper. He first thanked Zhou Jun in his letter. Although he did not elaborate on the specific reasons, both of them knew why.
Then, Wang Zhongsi talked about the situation in the Hedong Army. Zhou Jun read the whole article and found that if he could use four words to describe it, it would be "not optimistic."
Wang Zhongsi wrote in his letter that soldiers often died in border wars, but most of the generals would not report the death, because in this way they could conceal their defeats and win the favor of the saints.
In order to collect taxes, Wang Zhi, a doctor in the household department, deliberately included soldiers who had died but had not yet closed their households in the scope of taxation, in order to collect more taxes and fill the national treasury.
Taxes on the families of soldiers increased, and the people had nowhere to complain. No one wanted to join the army anymore, and some deserters even appeared. The cost of recruiting soldiers could only be increased again and again, and military pay was already insufficient.
Finally, Wang Zhongsi told Zhou Jun in his letter that if there was an emergency in Chang'an, he would come to serve in the army.
Zhou Jun put down Wang Zhongsi's letter and picked up Li Guangbi's letter.
In Li Guangbi's letter, he even omitted greetings at the beginning, and started talking about Shuofang's military exchange.
The letter first stated that Wang Duhu liked to drink tea, but Duhu only drank the cloud tea sent by Zhou Jun once and then never drank it again.
It was not because the tea was not good, but because Wang Duhu was reluctant to drink it. He ordered Li Guangbi to sell this batch of tea to fill the gap in military pay.
After Li Guangbi received the order, he found Hu Shang from Shuofang and held an impromptu tea party.
Those Hu businessmen drank cloud tea and saw the business opportunities in it. They all rushed to buy it and take it away.
In Li Guangbi's words, just the half of the cart of tea sent by Zhou Jun was enough to purchase food and supplies for a partial camp for half a month.
Not only that, Li Guangbi also regretted in the letter that he should be more cautious when setting the price. Otherwise, it would not be difficult to double the price.
Zhou Jun read the entire letter from Li Guangbi, and if it could be simplified into six words, it would be - "Shuo Fangqiong, I want tea, hurry up!".
Putting the letter down with a wry smile, Zhou Jun picked up the last letter.
To Zhou Jun's expectation, the letter written by Tu Lishi was the thickest among the three.
At the beginning of the letter, Tulishi first thanked Zhou Jun for the "elixir" he had given to him before leaving.
On the night when Tulishi returned to the Uighur Ministry, Guli Peluo Khan's wounds worsened, his fever persisted, and he even lost consciousness for a time in bed.
The shamans and doctors in the clan examined Khan and shook their heads, saying that it was probably the past few days.
Tu Lishi thought of Zhou Jun's bottle of "elixir", and with the last glimmer of hope, he gave the medicine to Pei Luo, the Bone Power.
Under the treatment of the elixir, Guli Peiluo sustained himself for three days and three nights. Although he still had a fever, his body was gradually improving.
However, the elixir was consumed very quickly, and Tulishi was worried that such a bottle might not be enough.
Therefore, while Tulishi was grateful to Zhou Jun for his great kindness, he also begged the latter to ask the Taoist monks for some elixirs.
A few days later, Tulishi would send his eldest son Hedari and several loyal servants to visit Zhou Jun again with gifts and pick up the medicine.
After talking about Gu Li Pei Luo's condition, Tu Lishi talked about cloud tea again.
After Gu Li Pei Luo's condition improved, Tu Lishi was in a happy mood, so he took some cloud tea and held a banquet among the Huihe nobles using the Central Plains tea art.
The nobles were amazed by this elegant tea-drinking technique, and were full of praise for the taste of cloud tea.
Zhou Jun read back a few more pages, most of which were filled with Tulishi telling interesting things that happened in the Uighur tribe, chattering and eloquently for several pages.
Putting down the letter, Zhou Jun recalled Moyanchu (Yaoluoge Tulishi) in the history books, the second khan of the Uyghur Khanate.
Tu Lishi was devoted to the culture of the Tang Dynasty and was close to the Tang court.
He is unparalleled in bravery, capable of conquering and fighting, but under the influence of Confucianism, he is soft-hearted towards his enemies, and is often ruthless enough to resort to thunderous means.
The most famous thing about Turish in history is that he once led the Uighur tribe to defeat the Oghuz and Tatar coalition.
However, determined to "conquer others with virtue", he gave a speech to the prisoners, to the effect that you were all bewitched by evil people, and that's why you turned against me. I will let you go back now, and remember to publicize it well.
"Benevolence and righteousness", bring those who have realized it and come back to me.
As a result, as expected, after the prisoners were let go, no one was inspired by his "benevolence" and still chose to continue to fight against him.
Turish was so angry that he defeated them again and captured them.
After putting away the three letters, Zhou Jun spread out the paper, collected his thoughts, and began to think about his elder brother's affairs in the coming spring.
Zhou Jun has seen Zhou Ze's article.
It has more than enough straightness but not enough splendor; it has a lot of character but lacks aura.
Before the Spring Festival, if you want to help Zhou Ze write papers for the examiner, then the article must be wonderful first and secondly, it must be in line with Zhou Ze's writing style.
The eight great masters of Tang and Song Dynasties are Han Yu, Liu Zongyuan, Su Shi, Su Xun, Su Che, Wang Anshi, Zeng Gong and Ouyang Xiu.
The two great masters of the Tang Dynasty were Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan.
Han Yuzhi's writing is majestic, striving for novelty, and has originality; Liu Zongyuan's writing style is simple, close to reality, and his literary skills are exquisite.
Comparing the two, the latter's writing style is closer to Zhou Ze.
While Zhou Jun was thinking, he copied several of Liu Zongyuan's policy essays and parallel rhymes on paper.
After reading it carefully, Zhou Jun felt something was wrong the more he read it.
Although Liu Zongyuan's articles are somewhat similar in style to Zhou Ze's, they are rich in content, skillful in technique, and concise in language, which the latter cannot imitate.
In desperation, Zhou Jun could only revise the article again, deliberately making it clumsy.
Anyway, Zhou Zechunwei didn't need to be the number one scholar in high school, he just needed to pass the exam.
In this way, after revising and revising it several times, Zhou Jun finally finalized the draft, found a piece of clean white paper, copied it over, and put it in the box.
After doing all this, Zhou Jun put the wooden box in his arms and planned to go to the Luo family house to meet Zhou Ze and ask him to write the papers as soon as possible.
After stepping out of the room with one foot, Zhou Jun paused, feeling that he had forgotten something.
He raised his head and glanced at the sky. Seeing that it was getting late, Zhou Jun simply stopped thinking about it and walked quickly to the concierge, picked up his horse and hurried all the way to Luo's house.
After Zhou Jun left, Xiao Qingchan entered the study room as usual and began to put away pens, ink and papers.
Inadvertently, she saw a lot of crumpled waste paper thrown under the desk, so she picked it up one by one and unfolded it.
Xiao Qingchan covered her mouth in surprise while reading.
After reading them all, Xiao Qingchan fell into deep thought and said to herself: "They are all masterpieces, why do they deliberately make them clumsy?"