Chapter 356 Xiao Xia’s Choice
In fact, Emperor Yang Guang still had one extremely important and difficult thing to do, which was how to deal with hundreds of thousands of troops. On the one hand, it involved rewards for the soldiers, and on the other hand, it also involved the whereabouts of the troops.

Rewards were not difficult to give. Yang Guang decided to take 5 million pieces of cloth from Guangtong Warehouse as rewards to the soldiers. Basically, each person could get ten pieces of cloth, which was already very good. Then the army was disbanded, and the scattered soldiers returned to their hometowns, and the government soldiers returned to their respective military headquarters.

In addition, the troops guarding the capital continue to remain in the Guanzhong military camp. These are not difficult and can be easily solved.

The difficulty lies in how to deal with his son Xiao Xia’s army of more than 100,000. Yang Guang does not want to leave any hidden dangers, so he decides to have a frank talk with his son.

In the afternoon, Xiao Xia came to his father’s study. He knelt down and saluted, “Your Highness, I pay my respects to you, Father!”

“Get up! Get up!”

Yang Guang quickly asked his son to stand up, and asked with a smile: “Have you returned home?”

“No, there is no one in the mansion, and I am too lazy to go there, so I have been living in the military camp.”

“Your concubine should be here soon! I will give her a status later. It won’t be easy for her to take care of you.”

“Thank you, Father!”

Yang Guang smiled and asked again: “Have you gone to see Miss Cui?”

“We agreed to have lunch together at noon today, and her sister will be coming too. Her father still won’t let her be alone with me.”

Yang Guang nodded, “After all, you are from an aristocratic family. It’s very generous of them to allow you to meet before marriage.”

“Yes! I am also grateful for her father’s tolerance.”

“Let’s get married as soon as possible! I’ve been so busy lately, so let’s put it this way! I’ll let your eldest brother be in charge of the progress later, it’s his responsibility.”

“Thank you for your concern, Father!”

Yang Guang pondered for a moment and returned to the main topic, “What are your plans for the future? Do you plan to be sent abroad or stay in Chang’an?”

“If possible, I want to go to Hexi.”

Yang Guang laughed, “Of course it’s good to go to Hexi, but Hexi is barren and can’t support your army of more than 100,000!”

Xiao Xia shook his head, “I plan to bring some of the recruited soldiers, and the rest will be government soldiers.”

“So how many recruits do you plan to bring?”

This is the core issue that Yang Guang is most concerned about. In fact, recruiting soldiers means private armies. Yang Guang had been eager to recruit more private armies before, but now that he has become the emperor, he hates others having private armies very much, even if it is his own son, he does not want to agree.

Xiao Xia smiled and said, “Thirty thousand people, maybe! This is what the court promised me before. I hope that father will continue to support it.”

Yang Guang immediately breathed a sigh of relief. His bottom line was to recruit 50,000 soldiers, but he didn’t expect his son only wanted 30,000, which made him a little overjoyed.

“Yes! You and my second brother will each have 30,000 recruits. I have approved this. The military salaries and food supplies will be borne by the court!”

“I wonder where the emperor wants my second brother to go?”

“Go to Hedong and rectify the various hidden dangers left by Yang Liang. I intend to appoint him as the governor of Bingzhou, in charge of Hedong and Hebei, and allow him to have 30,000 personal guards. You have not only Hexi, but also Longyou and Shuofang. I will hand them over to you.”

“Thank you, Father!”

“It’s getting late, let’s go first!”

Xiao Xia bowed and retreated.

Yang Guang thought about it, and then sent someone to find Crown Prince Yang Zhao.

Yang Zhao had already moved to the Eastern Palace and was very busy. When he heard that his father had summoned him, he hurried to see his father.

“Your son pays respect to the emperor!” Yang Zhao bowed respectfully. Yang Guang nodded, “Get up!”

Yang Zhao stood up and stood with his hands hanging down. Compared with Xiao Xia, he was much more respectful to his father.

Yang Guang also liked his eldest son very much. He was very pleased with his eldest son’s kindness and benevolence, but he was very worried about his eldest son’s health. His eldest son was too fat. People who are too fat find it difficult to live long. This was what Yang Guang was most worried about.

“I just talked to the third brother. He took the initiative to reduce the number of recruits to 30,000. It was beyond my expectation that the army of more than 100,000 would be disbanded. You should give each of his soldiers an additional three strings of money from the inner treasury as a special reward. Do you understand?”

Yang Guang inherited the throne and also inherited his father’s huge inner treasury, but the inner treasury was not private wealth. It was actually part of the national treasury, but it was not subject to the constraints of the court. It was directly allocated by the emperor. Yang Guang then handed over the inner treasury to the crown prince Yang Zhao.

Yang Zhao said quickly, “I understand, but this three strings of money per person is only for my third brother’s army. Does the emperor agree?”

Yang Guang thought for a moment and said, “Your second brother’s army has no merit, so I won’t give it to you. I’ll only give it to your third brother’s army.”

“My son obeys the order!”

“There are two more things. Your eldest aunt’s money must be returned to her. Although she used it to support us, we don’t need it now. The rest must be returned to her, and the money she used before must be replenished from the inner treasury. This is your eldest aunt’s retirement money, we can’t touch it.”

“I will do as you say!”

“The second thing is your brother’s marriage. Father really doesn’t have time, so you should take care of the last few steps and ask Feiyan to help. After he gets married, I will send him to Hexi and Longyou.”

Yang Zhao smiled and said, “Please rest assured, Father. I will definitely arrange the marriage for my third brother, but Feiyan should also get married with him.”

“Your mother will worry about Feiyan’s affairs, and you should take care of your brother’s affairs. By the way, your mother also asked about your brother’s marriage yesterday. Don’t leave her aside. After all, she is Xia’er’s aunt, and your eldest aunt, she treats the third brother as her son.”

Yang Zhao felt a headache and nodded: “I will report to them!”

“Just these few things, go ahead! Don’t worry about the preparations for the coronation ceremony. I’ll let Prime Minister Yang take charge. Just do your brother’s work well.”

“Your son obeys your order and will take his leave first!”

Yang Zhao bowed and slowly retreated.

After Yang Zhao left, Yang Guang paced back and forth in the room with his hands behind his back. There was still a problem he had to solve, and that was the Guanlong nobles. Before his father died, he told him about the four major crises of the dynasty. The first was the integration of the north and the south. The north and the south had been in confrontation for three hundred years, and now they were only unified on the surface, but they had not completely surrendered in their hearts. The southern gentry and landlords were still very resistant to the north and even the Sui Dynasty.

The second is the confrontation between Shandong and Guanlong. Instead of reconciliation, the Shandong gentry and landlords are even more hostile to Guanlong because the Guanlong nobles have annexed a large amount of land in Hebei.

It can be seen from the rebellion of the National Protection Association that it was a one-call-one-hundred-thousand-people response. In just a few days, hundreds of thousands of people rushed to sign up, and eventually a force of more than 100,000 was selected.

The third is Goguryeo’s expansion into Liaodong. They moved northward and westward recklessly, and had expanded to the Liaohe River, annexing the entire Liaodong Peninsula. The Liaohe River was full of Goguryeo’s ships, and they could even go directly out to sea from the Liaohe River and reach Hebei directly.

This was very dangerous. Even if the Sui Dynasty controlled the Liaoxi corridor, Goguryeo could still attack Hebei by water. It was obvious that Goguryeo had threatened the safety of Hebei.

The fourth crisis was the threat posed by the Guanlong nobles’ dynasty. In this civil war for the throne, except for Li Yuan, all the other Guanlong nobles supported the emperor’s elder brother Yang Yong. In particular, the Dugu and Yuan families spared no effort to support the emperor’s elder brother.

There were basically no Guanlong nobles in the list of people who jointly supported him this time, only one Dou Yan, but he did not represent the Dou family. Dou Wei was the head of the Dou family.

How to resolve these four major crises is a heavy task that Yang Guang cannot avoid.

Yang Guang took out a roll of drawings from the drawer. This was the Luoyang drawings given to him by Yuwen Kai, suggesting the expansion of the Luoyang Imperial Palace.

Yuwen Kai was sent to Luoyang by his father, responsible for improving the Eastern Capital. This hid a deeper idea of ​​his father, which was to move the capital to Luoyang.

This would not only greatly curb the power of the Guanlong nobles in the court, but also win over the Shandong gentry and ease their dissatisfaction with the court, thus killing two birds with one stone.

Unfortunately, my father passed away before he could realize this idea, and this task fell on me.

This time, the Guanlong nobles did not support him, which gave Yang Guang the motivation to move the capital, and he no longer had to worry about Guanlong’s ideas.

(End of this chapter)