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Chapter 959: Chapter 399 Yuzhou Zheng Kingdom_3 Chapter 959: Chapter 399 Yuzhou Zheng Kingdom_3 The governor Zheng Chan reported to the Emperor of Zheng, accusing Yang Shouguo of neglecting his royal duties by presenting inferior and fake goods as state gifts, which was a crime that insulted the national prestige.

He also requested the removal of Yang Shouguo’s title as the Lord of Taiqiu County, stripping him of his fief, to uphold national law and clarify reward and punishment.

The Emperor of Zheng agreed to this request…”

Wen Shu continued to narrate the political upheaval in the Zheng Kingdom, sparked by the gifting of presents to Chu State.

As Zheng Chan’s proposal was permitted by the Emperor Zheng Lian, the news spread quickly, causing a huge uproar.

The local lords in Xinzheng City jointly petitioned the Emperor to revoke this punishment.

They believed that Yang Shouguo was guilty of insulting the national prestige by using subpar goods as state gifts, and executing him would suffice.

But the fief of the Lord of Taiqiu County was the Yang Family’s own enterprise, won by their own efforts, not a grant from the state.

Therefore, the Emperor had no right to take it away.

If the Emperor could take away the Yang family’s ancestral lands today, wouldn’t he be able to take ours tomorrow?

The fiefdoms of these lords were not granted by the Emperor but were originally brought by their ancestors with their territories, owned by their families from the start.

These lords and the royal family were not in an absolute monarch-subject relationship, but more of a partnership.

Now that a partner wanted to take away their shares, how could this be accepted by the many lords?

So many lords jointly petitioned the Emperor to withdraw this decision.

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As one might imagine, how could the Emperor possibly accept this proposal?

Therefore, the decree to confiscate the fief was forcefully implemented.

However, when the messenger who was sent to proclaim the decree was en route to Taiqiu County, halfway there, he heard that the Lord of Taiqiu County, Yang Shouguo, had led his three counties in rebellion with an army of thirty thousand.

In this situation, peacefully confiscating the Yang family’s fief was obviously impossible.

So the messenger returned to the court and reported the matter to the Emperor.

Emperor Zheng became furious, and the governor Zheng Chan pressed even more strongly for a severe suppression to quell this rebellion.

Many members of the royal family also agreed.

On the other hand, the lords in the court continued to persuade, suggesting that if the Emperor could retract the decree to confiscate the fief of the Lord of Taiqiu County, they could make Yang Shouguo commit suicide to apologize to the state, hoping to prevent further conflict.

But the Emperor still refused.

The army of fifty thousand sent out by the court to suppress the rebellion was quickly assembled and dispatched to Taiqiu County.

This immediately became the catalyst for further unrest.

Seeing that the Emperor and the royal family were relentless and determined to severely punish the Taiqiu Yang family, other lords in Zheng Kingdom who were friendly with the Yang family of Taiqiu also began to rebel.

Within a short span of half a month, two county men, one county lord, and one marquis in the Zheng Kingdom raised the banner of revolt.

It seemed that the royal family had anticipated this, and when the various families rebelled, the local armies that had already been prepared were quickly dispatched.

It wasn’t long before the hastily mobilized lords were eliminated, with three families extinguished.

The eradicated families were uprooted, with thousands executed in collective punishment.

This act of brutality, together with the royal family’s hostility towards the local lords, caused great fear and indignation among other lords who were still watching from the sidelines.

Therefore, after their request to the Emperor to withdraw the military order was rejected again, the representatives of the lords in Xinzheng City finally recognized the bleak reality.

Headed by the Grand General Zhang Shou, the lords, realizing there was no turning back, directly abducted the third prince Zheng Ze, who had failed an attempt to seize the throne and was under house arrest, and took the opponent back to their fief, Yongqiu.

“After taking Zheng Ze away, Zhang Shou gathered the many nobles within the Zheng Kingdom and held an alliance meeting where he listed the crimes of the current ruler, Emperor Zheng Lian of Zheng.

Then, he offered sacrifices to Heaven and declared he no longer recognized him as his lord but instead supported Zheng Ze as emperor, establishing a separate court in Yongqiu.

Thus, on the fourteenth day of the seventh month in the twenty-fifth year of Shenwu, within the land of Yuzhou, there were two Zheng Kingdoms.

One was located in the north, supported mainly by numerous local nobles, who crowned Zheng Ze as their lord and set their capital at Yongqiu, known as Northern Zheng.

The other was in the south, mainly backed by the imperial family’s power, holding on to the original Emperor Zheng Lian as their lord and establishing their capital at Xinzheng, known as Southern Zheng.”

Wen Shu said this with a somewhat dry throat, but he continued, “Now, Northern Zheng holds five provinces in the northern part of Zheng, and Southern Zheng holds five provinces in the southern part, each side possessing armies of a million men and no less than ten people with inborn strength.

Both sides were shrouded in the clouds of war and had already come to blows.

In a short time, no outcome showing victory or defeat seemed likely.

The entire land of Yuzhou also split into three after the division of Zheng.

Southern Zheng, Northern Zheng, and Jin Country each seized five provinces, dividing the entire Yuzhou evenly.

Although these Three Nations are all not weak and can be called powerful countries in their own right,

they are but minor tyrants within the state, unable to compare to the Supreme Dominators dominating a single state.”

At this point, Wen Shu paused and showed a trace of pity on his face, “Originally when Zheng was united, it dominated Yuzhou, and thanks to its bulk as the Supreme Dominator, it naturally could fend off the coveting other great nations of the world.

Therefore, Tang Kingdom in Jingzhou in the north of Yuzhou and Xu State in Liangzhou, even though coveting it vehemently, dreaded Zheng’s strength and did not dare to invade rashly.

But now that Zheng has split in half and Yuzhou is divided into three, they are no longer a unified entity and thus can no longer stop the ambitions of the two countries.

Before I left, I heard that Northern Zheng had already colluded with Tang Kingdom of Jingzhou, and Jin Country had colluded with Xu State of Liangzhou, both having made concessions of their northern territories to draw the armies of the two countries southward, ready to join forces to annihilate Southern Zheng.

Thus, compensating the north with gains in the south, Northern Zheng and Jin Country, through such means, temporarily avoid the strike from Tang Xu and with the help of the two countries, seek benefits for themselves in the south.

Alas!

If this comes to pass, the once overlord of Yuzhou may well vanish.

And once it is gone, how could Northern Zheng and Jin Country, who dealt with the tiger for its skin, survive alone?

The land of Yuzhou will inevitably fall into the hands of Tang Xu.”

With a sigh, Wen Shu seemed to be mourning for the dominator that was about to vanish.

Having served as an envoy to the Zheng Kingdom and receiving extreme courtesy from Emperor Zheng Lian, one couldn’t have anticipated such an outcome; it was indeed lamentable.

The other people in the hall who listened to Wen Shu’s narration were also looking at each other, finding the internal chaos of Zheng Kingdom, triggered by the envoy mission from Chu State, utterly preposterous.

Lu Yuan was also somewhat distressed.

He had sent messengers to the Zheng Kingdom with the sincere intention of fostering trade and good relations, never aiming to cause trouble.

Who would have thought that Emperor Zheng Lian of Zheng would use the pretext of repaying Chu State’s gift to weaken the feudal lords, and yet his methods were so crude that not only did he fail to handle matters properly, he ended up scattering his vast empire.

Now, it was done.

The feudal reduction was not achieved, but the Zheng Kingdom was on the brink of extinction.

If word of this got out, those uninformed would assume Chu State had done something to split a great empire.

Lu Yuan could already imagine how the monarchs and citizens of the Nine Provinces would secretly denigrate him.

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From now on, envoys dispatched by Chu State to other countries would likely suffer disdain for a long period.”

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