Chapter 357 The Abruptly Halted Offensive Plan

No one knew what brilliant strategy Gao Long had received that night; they only knew that his temper improved significantly afterward, and he became much more low-key, spending his days either handling memorials or reading books.

Occasionally, he would seek out great scholars to ask for advice, and his attitude was so remarkably good that rumors spread throughout Luoyang that the Crown Prince had become much more composed after suffering a crushing defeat.

Gao Hu, on the other hand, did the exact opposite. During the New Year holidays, he hosted banquets all day long, meeting with important court officials and befriending generals who held military power, clearly posturing to build his own faction in advance.

The Emperor, Gao Wu, naturally saw the actions of both brothers, but he did not intervene in any way. As for his thoughts or attitude, that was something no one could know.

Seeing that Gao Wu was now over sixty and, combined with the injuries accumulated from years of campaigning, his health was visibly declining, those beneath him began to have their own thoughts.

The merit of assisting a new ruler to the throne had always been one of the greatest accomplishments. Who wouldn't want the prince they supported to sit on that throne, so they could rise to prominence and bring honor to their wives and children?

Suddenly, all the officials in Northern Liang, big and small, began to take sides, gradually forming two factions. Only the remaining six members of the Twelve Protectors of the Gao Family Army, including Gao Yi, Gao Bing, and Gao Ding, remained neutral.

As generals holding great military power and absolute confidants brought up by Gao Wu, they would only be loyal to the Emperor and would not choose to side with any specific prince; that was a path to destruction.

Meanwhile, Northern Yan was currently undergoing a massive upheaval. The Emperor, Lu Kuan, was critically ill, lying on his sickbed throughout the entire New Year.

Ever since he developed dissatisfaction and wariness toward his son, Lu Heng, Lu Kuan had begun actively trying to conceive more children, carefully grooming his younger sons in the hope of finding a more suitable successor.

Lu Kuan was already in his sixties, and to reinvigorate his virility, he had to take some potent medicines. The combination of day-and-night toil and the depletion of his potential by these drugs caused this Northern Yan Emperor to fall ill.

This panicked certain people. One must know that it was they who had been running about, inciting discord between the father and son, Lu Kuan and Lu Heng, and Lu Heng naturally saw it all.

If Lu Kuan were to kick the bucket now, without leaving any imperial edict, Lu Heng, as Crown Prince, would be the legitimate first-in-line successor, and what awaited them would be certain death.

For a time, the entire Northern Yan began to seethe with undercurrents. Everyone's attention was focused on Lu Kuan's condition, and some impatient ones had already found ways to pledge their loyalty to Lu Heng through various channels.

However, just as Lu Heng was smugly accepting the loyalty of numerous officials and generals and vigorously expanding his own influence, Lu Kuan suddenly recovered at the beginning of the second month.

And upon his recovery, Lu Kuan immediately made arrangements that left people bewildered:

Lu Heng, the Crown Prince, was ordered to station himself in Liaodong City to deal with Goguryeo. Furthermore, aside from a small number of Personal Guards and two or three thousand men, no one else, including Zhang Su, was allowed to accompany him.

Anyone with a discerning eye knew that this amount of military force was useless. Lu Heng would have to rack his brains just to hold the existing territory, let alone defeat Goguryeo.

Additionally, those officials who had been eager to pledge loyalty to Lu Heng during Lu Kuan's illness were all transferred away from core positions, while many people from the Yan family faction were instead given important roles.

By now, even a fool could see that the Crown Prince's restless maneuvering had incurred the Emperor's displeasure. As for whether this arrangement was merely a warning or if Lu Kuan had already considered changing the heir, no one could be quite sure.

But for Lu Heng, all of this was a bolt from the blue. His military power was stripped, his right to participate in government was stripped, and he was exiled to the frontier; he felt that he was not far from being deposed, or even death.

It is no wonder that Qin Hui and Cai Jing were clever men. The situation in Northern Yan was different from Northern Liang. In Northern Liang, neither Gao Hu nor Gao Long were pushovers.

Furthermore, the ones who truly held military power were the Twelve Protectors of the Gao Family's direct line. Therefore, it made little difference to Gao Yuan whether Gao Long or Gao Hu became the Crown Prince, so Cai Jing's focus was to incite internal strife.

But here, it was different. In all of Northern Yan, no one could surpass Lu Heng when it came to commanding large-scale military operations. Therefore, Qin Hui's focus was to drive a wedge between Lu Kuan and Lu Heng, making them suspicious and resentful of each other.

If Lu Heng could be discarded, it would be a great boon for Gao Yuan's unification of the world.

As the new intelligence from both countries reached Panyu, Gao Yuan suddenly called a halt to the military plans for after the New Year.

If he were to launch an attack at this moment, regardless of which side he hit, it would cause the opponent to wake up immediately. They would quickly set aside their internal conflicts to face the outside threat, and the other side would likely learn from it and resolve their own internal strife.

Now that the conflicts had begun to surface, what Gao Yuan needed to do was to watch coldly and let them cause their own chaos. Of course, development could not stop.

After summoning Gao Yao, Yu Qian, and Yue Fei to discuss, Gao Yuan adjusted the war target to the west:

In the Southwest, the "wealth-dispensing boy" Mughal was currently suffering under the ravages of the Persian iron cavalry. He could just go and get involved to help them end their suffering quickly, so they wouldn't have to endure it any longer.

In the Northwest, he would have Yue Fei and Gao Xianzhi join forces; presumably, entering two or three prefectures in the Western Liang territory should not be difficult.

Incidentally, Gao Yuan also planned to promote high-quality grain seeds and the promising work of planting sea buckthorn in the desolate Western Liang region as quickly as possible.

In his original timeline, Gao Yuan had traveled to the Northwest and had a deep impression of how the locals used low shrubs like sea buckthorn and saxaul trees, combined with desert poplars, to combat deserts and Gobi landscapes.

When he saw the Mu Us Desert, which was green everywhere at the time, Gao Yuan could hardly believe his eyes. Who had ever seen a desert without a single grain of sand?

Now that the living standards of the people in Great Qian were getting higher and higher, he figured that sweet and sour dried sea buckthorn berries should be very popular.

It was nothing more than planting sea buckthorn in exchange for grain. He believed that as long as there was sufficient profit, the merchants would rush to do it without needing any push.

For this reason, Gao Yuan overruled objections and proposed a plan: for the common people living near deserts and barren beaches who planted sea buckthorn, not only would they be exempt from taxes, but the government would also set a guaranteed floor price for the sea buckthorn they sold to ensure the people's income.

To be honest, whether it was absolute confidants like Gao Yao and Yu Qian, or local bigwigs like Song Yehong and Zheng Ting, none of them understood why Gao Yuan liked the sea buckthorn plant so much.

There were even rumors in the streets that the Prince of Tang, Gao Yuan, particularly loved eating sea buckthorn, so he wanted to plant it all over Western Liang.

This caused many Confucian scholars to whisper, "When those above have a preference, those below will indulge in it even more." Some even wrote articles criticizing Gao Yuan's behavior, but Gao Yuan just laughed it off.

As for the women in his household, although they didn't really understand it either, they didn't raise any objections and all chose to silently support Gao Yuan's decision.

In the end, it was Yang Xin and Chu Yue who joined forces to explain Gao Yuan's intentions:

The land in the Northwest is barren. Forcibly reclaiming land to grow grain not only yields no harvest but also leads to soil erosion and desertification, and may even cause disasters in the lower reaches of the Yellow River due to silt accumulation.

Planting sea buckthorn can not only improve the soil and water environment and prevent wind and sand, but also provide the people with another food option and increase their income.

To this end, Yang Xin and Chu Yue collaborated with Princess Consort Huang Yueying to create a sand table simulating soil erosion to demonstrate the dangers of soil erosion.

Ever since they saw this sand table, not only did the women no longer doubt him, but even Song Yehong and Zheng Ting, who had been vehemently opposed, stopped speaking and instead began to mobilize their family descendants to start making preparations.