The 30,000 yuan slave bid set by Kang Kejing and Yan Zhuang, if calculated based on parity, the total purchase price would be approximately 570,000 yuan.
The tax and tribute income of Yan State in a year is about 3.2 million yuan.
Calculated in this way, Kang Kejing paid half of the total purchase price to Yan State as a deposit. The amount was approximately one-tenth of Yan State's annual tax tribute.
This money may not seem like much, but for the Yan State, whose treasury is empty but eager to conquer the south, it is really a timely rain.
Through this incident, most of the courtiers of the Yan Kingdom knew about this wealthy Sogdian businessman who spent a lot of money.
All of a sudden, Kang Kejing became a guest in Luoyang, attending various banquets and socializing, and the scenery was really endless.
After talking about the Yan Kingdom, let’s take a look at the Southern Tang Dynasty.
Ever since the counselor Li Mi became disheartened towards Li Heng, the Southern Tang Dynasty had lost a person who could coordinate the overall situation and ease conflicts.
The party members headed by Empress Zhang, the chamberlain headed by Li Fuguo, the old noble families from the south of the Yangtze River, and the new noble families who moved from the north, the four forces were fighting for power and profit every day in the Southern Tang Dynasty. The plot was full of twists and turns, exciting and even...
Better than many storybooks.
As the king of a country, Li Heng, in terms of trust, prefers to use Li Fuguo, Yu Chaoen and others as his internal servants.
After all, in his view, the other three factions all speak and do things for personal gain, and only those personal eunuchs are the emperor's "intimate people."
It was precisely because of Li Heng's suspicion and the eunuch's seizure of power that a major event occurred in Jiangnan, a disaster that almost overturned the entire Southern Tang Dynasty.
Liu Zhan, the governor of Songzhou (now Shangqiu, Henan) and the deputy envoy of Huaixi Jiedu, was originally a small soldier from Chenliu (now Kaifeng). During the Anshi Rebellion, he was promoted beyond his rank because of his strict military management and military merit.
His good friend Li Xian was also promoted to the deputy envoy of Huaixi Jiedu because of his military exploits.
Liu Zhan and Li Xian were both deputy envoys of Huaixi Jiedu and had a good personal relationship with each other. However, their relationship with Wang Zhongsheng, the envoy of Huaixi Jiedu, was very poor.
Wang Zhongsheng wanted to kill these two thorny men together.
Because Li Mian was corrupt, Wang Zhongsheng found out about him and found an excuse to execute Li Mian in public. However, Liu Zhan had a good reputation for running the army honestly and caring for the people. Wang Zhongsheng really couldn't find the opportunity to do it.
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So Wang Zhongsheng thought of a dirty trick.
He bribed Xing Yanen, the eunuch of the supervisory army, and asked him to go to Kangcheng with heavy gifts to establish relations and find a way to convict Liu Zhan of a capital crime.
Xing Yanen, the eunuch who oversees the army, brought heavy gifts and went to Jiankang City to find Li Fuguo and others.
Taking advantage of it, a group of eunuchs began to whisper in Li Heng's ears that Liu Zhan was Li Mian's accomplice and that Li Mian was killed. Liu Zhan felt uneasy and might rebel in the future.
Hearing the word "rebellion", Li Heng became suspicious again.
After a while of instigation from the eunuchs, Li Heng finally decided that it would be safer to avoid future troubles.
Therefore, Li Heng issued an edict, promoting Liu Zhan to be the capital of Fengyang, and issued a secret order to the original capital Li Long and Huainan Jiedushi Deng Jingshan, asking them to wait for Liu Zhan to hand over his military power and go to Fengyang to take up his post.
On the way, he found an opportunity to kill Liu Zhan.
When this edict was delivered to Liu Zhan, he immediately realized that something was wrong.
My good friend Li Xian was killed, and now he wants to hand over military power. Isn't this a trap?
Liu Zhan first submitted a memorial to Emperor Li Heng to plead for mercy. While expressing his loyalty, he hoped to stay in Songzhou.
Unexpectedly, Li Heng, under the eunuch's persuasion, was completely determined to put Liu Zhan to death.
Under the premise of complete despair, Liu Zhan simply resorted to a trick. He first asked the imperial court for the imperial seal and banners, and then arranged for his cronies to be sent to Suiyang, Fengyang, Shouchun and other places.
When everything was ready, Liu Zhan took away all the 7,000 troops under his command, set out from the Songzhou camp and headed straight to Fengyang along the waterway.
Since he had the seal and banner of the Southern Tang Dynasty, Liu Zhan captured Fengyang without any effort.
Then, he announced that Li Xi, Deng Jingshan, Wang Zhongsheng and others were traitors to the party, and directly raised the banner of eradicating evil and protecting the country.
At this time, in order to prevent the Yan Kingdom from moving south, most of the heavy troops of the Southern Tang Dynasty were stationed in the north, such as Xuzhou, Chenzhou, Songzhou, and Yunzhou.
However, the rear areas of the Southern Tang Dynasty, such as Jiangnan Province, actually did not have many troops. Even if there were troops, most of them had never been on the battlefield, and their combat power was not worthy of the task.
Liu Zhan's 7,000 elite soldiers, together with many of his cronies arranged earlier, attacked from Fengyang in all directions. In just one month, they actually killed all directions, and successively captured Chuzhou, Hefei, Shouchun and other places.
The whole Jiangnan was in chaos because of this army.
The current situation of Southern Tang Dynasty is very embarrassing.
First, Fengyang, where Liu Zhan launched his army, was only a few days away from Jiankang (Nanjing), the capital of the Southern Tang Dynasty.
Second, all the troops capable of fighting in the Southern Tang Dynasty were placed on the northern front line and could not be transferred back to quell the rebellion in a short period of time.
Third, most of the troops under Liu Zhan came from Suiyang (Songzhou). If this army went south, it meant that there was a huge gap in the northern defense line of the Southern Tang Dynasty.
At this juncture, if Li Heng could defend the natural dangers of the Yangtze River while sending envoys to recruit Liu Zhan, then the development of the situation might not be too serious.
However, Li Heng, who was facing the rebels across the river, was completely panicked and issued an imperial edict that could be said to be stupid.
Li Heng issued an order to order the Southern Tang troops on the northern front to rush south to Qin Wang and jointly attack Liu Zhan's rebels.
As a result, the defense line established by the Southern Tang Dynasty in Huainan, relying on the terrain advantages, was completely collapsed.
The Yishui, Feishui, Woishui, Yingshui, Huaihe and other rivers, as the biggest barriers against enemies in the Southern Tang Dynasty, have all been abandoned and lost their role.
In the spring of the third year of Tianyou (760), under the joint attack of Zhang Xun, Lai Yi and other generals, the rebellion started by Liu Zhan and sweeping across the five states was finally suppressed.
However, at this time, bad news came from the front line.
General An Shouzhong of the Yan Army, leading 80,000 elite troops, set out from Chenliu and captured Suiyang.
I remember that in the Southern Tang Dynasty, Zhang Xun defended the south of the Yangtze River. Facing 100,000 rebels, he defended Suiyang (i.e. Songzhou) for a year with thousands of old, weak, sick and disabled.
The war was fierce and food and grass were exhausted. Zhang Xun even killed his concubine and gave her flesh and blood to the soldiers. He also made breasts of tens of thousands of people in the city to use as army rations, thus blocking the Yan army's offensive.
However, the Suiyang defenders who fought against the Yan army now followed Liu Zhan and launched an attack on the Southern Tang Dynasty, but they eventually died under the sword of their own people.
But Suiyang, a city that had never surrendered, faced the iron hoofs of the Yan army, but no one could stand up until it fell...
Sometimes, history is a thing that really echoes the old saying - there is no pure and dirty thing in the world, and there is reincarnation in the way of heaven.