Vol 2 Chapter 2594: Liu Bian died and Liu Yu succeeded to the throne
Chapter 2594 Liu Bian died and Liu Yu succeeded to the throne
Chapter 2590: Liu Bian died and Liu Yu succeeded to the throne
After the First Hanzhong Battle between Qin and Shu, under Su Qin's persuasion, Liu Yu had decided to depose Liu Bian, proclaim himself emperor, and carry the banner of the Han Dynasty.
The reason why Liu Yu did not proclaim himself emperor before was that he was afraid that he would be retaliated by Qin if he proclaimed himself emperor, and he did not have the confidence to proclaim himself emperor yet.
After Liu Yuyin's death and Liu Ji's death, he relied on political struggle to seize power, and his fundamentals were far less solid than Ying Hao's.
Even though Liu Yu is now in sole control of the military and political power of the Shu Kingdom, and the officials all seem loyal to him, the actual situation is only known to him. Many people are just forced by authority. They obey him on the surface but are not convinced on the inside.
If Liu Yu only served as his regent, these people would naturally not dare to openly oppose him, but if they kicked Liu Bian away and proclaimed himself emperor, they would definitely encounter great resistance.
It is precisely because of this that Liu Yu has never been in a hurry to proclaim himself emperor. After all, although he is a king, he is no different from an emperor, and Liu Bian is just a puppet he supports.
But now, as the Qin Dynasty becomes stronger and stronger, the trend of unification becomes more and more clear under the will of the people. If the Shu Kingdom cannot break out in silence, it can only perish in silence.
In fact, for Liu Yu at this time, even if he became emperor, nothing would change.
It can neither increase the national power of Shu nor weaken the power of Qin.
Perhaps the only thing that can be done is to inspire people, give hope to those who are still loyal to the Han, and strengthen their determination to continue to fight against the Qin.
But this is enough.
The banner of the Han Dynasty is about to fall and needs a strong man to carry it.
Liu Bian was too weak and couldn't bear it at all.
Liu Xiu can handle it, but the location of Chu's Fourth War is too awkward. If he proclaims himself emperor, not even Liu Yu will admit it, let alone other surrounding countries.
At present, only Liu Yu can carry the banner of the Han Dynasty.
Although Liu Yu was determined to proclaim himself emperor, he also knew that if he proclaimed himself emperor, it would inevitably cause some turmoil, so he had to make sufficient preparations before proclaiming himself emperor.
The first step is to win over Xing Tian and other generals from the original Liu Ji line.
Because Liu Ji died of serious injuries, Chen Ping was defeated in the political struggle. In order to prevent the Shu Han from internal strife again, the former civil and military ministers of Liu Ji's line could only be forced to serve Liu Yu, but it did not mean that they would support him. Liu Yu proclaimed himself emperor, especially Xing Tian.
As the most powerful general of the Shu Han Dynasty, Xingtian has a very high prestige in the army. He is loyal to the Han Dynasty, but he is loyal to the blood of Liu Hong, not to the Han clan clan members such as Liu Yu.
If Liu Yu cannot get Xing Tian's approval and forcibly proclaims himself emperor, it will be great fun if Xing Tian rebels after becoming emperor. Even if the rebellion can be suppressed in the end, the Kingdom of Shu will be in ruins, let alone with the Da Qin is fighting for the upper hand.
Hence, Liu Yu must be cautious about proclaiming himself emperor.
In order to understand Xing Tian’s thoughts, Liu Yu specially sent Peng Yue to test his attitude.
Peng Yue and Xing Tian had a very good personal relationship and talked about everything in private. After the two drank, Peng Yue used his drunkenness to ask Xing Tian how Xing Tian would react if Liu Yu wanted to depose the emperor and establish himself. As a result, Xing Tian exploded on the spot. .
Through this trial, Liu Yu also understood that Xing Tian could not be persuaded by reasoning. This kind of foolish and loyal person was like a stone in a pit, smelly and hard, and it was impossible to make him switch sides with just a few words.
Liu Yu encountered a problem with Xing Tian, but it was very smooth to win over other Liu Ji's old men. After all, the big men had already reached this point, and there were not many people as stupid and loyal as Xing Tian.
The support from others made Liu Yu feel relieved, but in addition to Xing Tian, there were also objections from Shen Shiqi, Zhou Bo and others.
It would be fine if it was just Xing Tian, but if so many military generals objected, even Liu Yu would not dare to forcefully proclaim himself emperor, because that would be courting death.
The path to proclaiming himself emperor by force was not feasible, and Liu Yu had no choice but to save the country through a curveball.
Liu Yu originally didn't want to get rid of Liu Bian. After all, if there were any mistakes left, it would not only be criticized and damage his reputation, but also intensify the internal conflicts in Shu. But now he had to deal with Liu Bian.
Liu Bian has no children. As long as he dies of illness normally, Liu Yu can legitimately succeed to the throne. In this way, even Xing Tian and others will not find any reason to object.
But Liu Bian was still so young, and although his health was not very good, he did not look like he would die prematurely, so he could only use chronic poison.
But Liu Bian was guarded by Wang Yue, and it was naturally not easy to get past Wang Yue and poison Liu Bian.
In order to transfer Wang Yue away from Liu Bian, Liu Yu did not hesitate to re-enable Wang Yue and gave him some powerful authority.
After Wang Yue was transferred out of Chengdu, the guard force behind Liu Bian became much weaker. However, just when Liu Yu was about to take action, he was persuaded by Su Qin.
Su Qin's reason is also very simple. Even chronic poisoning is a bad idea. It is easy to think of Liu Yu.
Liu Yu understood what Su Qin meant. After all, the hint was obvious enough.
Since poisoning can easily be suspected, he used an accidental method so that people would not associate him with him as much as possible.
Not long ago, someone in Chengdu was suddenly infected with the plague.
After Liu Yu learned about it, he immediately ordered the entire city to be sealed off and an isolation area was set up to prevent the epidemic. Although the risk of infection was reduced to a minimum, the eunuchs who went out to purchase brought the plague into the palace and infected most of the people in the palace. Disease, including Emperor Liu Bian.
Although the imperial doctor diagnosed and treated him as soon as possible, Liu Bian's health was not good to begin with. After the infection, his condition worsened rapidly, and he eventually died in the palace. Poor Liu Bian, he has been a puppet for Dong Zhuo, Liu Ji, and Liu Yu all his life, and in the end he did not escape the fate of being plotted to death.
As soon as the news of Liu Bian's death came out, the whole country of Shu was shocked, but it was not because of Liu Bian's death, but because they were worried that the plague would spread from Chengdu.
With Liu Yu's vigorous fight against the epidemic, the damage of this plague was also minimized.
Since so many people died from the plague, including more than two thousand eunuchs and eunuchs in the palace and tens of thousands of people outside the palace, not many people associated Liu Bian's death with Liu Yu.
After all, Liu Yu was a Buddhist, and his behavior in the past had always been very decent. No one thought that he would be so crazy that he would only kill one Liu Bian but let tens of thousands of people be buried with him.
In addition, after controlling the plague, Liu Yu's performance was equally remarkable. He did not rush to pave the way for his rise to power, but instead tried his best to trace the origin of this sudden plague.
In the end, under the investigation of Da Shehe, it was found that he was one of Lu Yue's apprentices. He practiced Kung Fu secretly in Chengdu, but suffered the backlash of the Kung Fu and died. After his death, the plague was produced on the corpse and passed to the people. There is this problem.
Most people in Shu can accept this explanation. After all, in addition to being a disciple of the Shangqing Sect of Taoism, Lu Yue is also the former leader of the Five Poison Sect.
The reputation of the Nanzhong Five Poison Cult has long been a problem in Yizhou. They have used living people to make poison and poisoned a village or even a town. So it is not surprising that it causes any kind of trouble.
Most people in Shu, including those who opposed Liu Yu's proclaimed emperor, accepted Liu Bian's death as an accident, but there were a small number of people who couldn't accept it, such as Xing Tian.
Xing Tian naturally found it difficult to accept Liu Bian's death. He always felt that it was not that simple, but there was no evidence, and Liu Bian was already dead. So what if he didn't accept it?
One morning at court, Zhang Song took the initiative to propose that the country should not be left without an owner for a day, and proposed that Liu Yu should succeed the throne.
As soon as this proposal came out, 70% of the officials in the DPRK expressed support. Although the remaining 30% did not express support, they did not oppose it, including Xing Tian.
Seeing that Xing Tian had no objection, Liu Yu secretly breathed a sigh of relief, and then righteously rejected the ministers' request to proclaim himself emperor, and stated that the late emperor's body was still cold. Although the culprit was dead, the cancerous Five Poison Sect was still there, and the plague was still there. It has not been completely resolved, so I will not consider proclaiming emperor for the time being.
Liu Yu's statement still failed to impress Xing Tian, but it also changed his image in Xing Tian's mind a lot.
Liu Yu then ordered to recall Wang Yue, the commander of Da So He, and ordered him to lead Da So He's hundreds of masters to go south to Nanzhong to encircle and suppress the Five Poison Cults in order to avenge the late emperor.
Seeing this, Xingtian took the initiative to ask for orders to go with him.
Liu Yuzheng was worried that he could not find a chance to win over Xingtian. Naturally, he could not refuse Xingtian's request and decisively agreed to go with Xingtian.
The Five Poison Sect, also known as the Five Immortals Sect, was founded by the Five Poison God Lord. It has a history of nearly a hundred years and has been passed down by thirteen generations of sect leaders, and was carried forward by the previous leader Lu Yue.
The contemporary leader of the Five Poison Sect, He Tiexin, is also Lu Yue's disciple. Because his master Lu Yue was invited to serve as an official in the Song Dynasty, he took over the position of leader. Unexpectedly, he resigned before his position was firmly established. I heard the news that the master and his junior brothers died in the battle in Guanzhong.
The master died in the hands of the Qin Dynasty. He Tiexin naturally did not dare to take revenge, and he was worried about the Qin Dynasty's revenge, so he could only seal the mountain to hide the sect and keep a low profile as much as possible.
But I didn’t expect that when people were sitting at home, the pot came from the sky.
The missing junior brother suddenly died in Chengdu, and the Five Poison Sect was inexplicably charged with regicide.
How can the Big One be an intelligence organization second only to Black Ice Platform? How can the Five Poison Sect be able to compete with it?
What's more, among the people who came this time were the great master and the most powerful general of the Shu Han Dynasty.
In less than an hour, four to five hundred members of the Five Poison Sect, which had brought harm to Yizhou for a century, including the leader He Tiexin, were all killed in the encirclement and suppression by He He. Nearly half of them were killed by Xing Tian and Wang Yue.
After the Five Poison Sect was annihilated, the epidemic in Chengdu was basically under control, and Liu Bian had been buried. So the officials of the Shu Han Dynasty once again proposed the matter of proclaiming themselves emperor, but Liu Yu still refused.
However, the officials of the Shu Han Dynasty were not disappointed. After all, it is common practice to ask for three invitations and resign three times when proclaiming emperor. Didn't Ying Hao do the same thing?
After the second rejection, Liu Yu took the initiative to approach Xing Tian, Zhou Bo and others, pretending to be eager for talents, and humbly asked their opinions, which was actually to win over them.
Liu Ji died, Chen Ping ran away, Liu Ying became Liu Yu's adopted son, and now even Liu Bian died. The people who were originally sent by Liu Ji had no other choice but to be loyal to Liu Yu.
Zhou Bo, Shen Shiqi and others directly expressed support for Liu Yu.
Xingtian did not express his position on the spot, obviously he still had grudges, but it was impossible for him to leave Shu. Liu Yu had plenty of time to let this fierce general return.
After completely taking over Xing Tian, Shu Han will have three top generals: Xing Tian, Kong Peng, and Liu Er. Liu Yu will have more confidence to face Da Qin.
At the morning court meeting a few days later, Zhang Song brought up the old matter again, and Liu Yulai succeeded to the throne, and received unanimous support from within the Shu Han Dynasty.
This time Liu did not refuse and agreed to succeed to the throne as the new emperor. He followed what Ying Hao did when he became emperor and invited all countries, including Da Qin, to come and watch the ceremony. The date of his enthronement was just one month later.
After the news that Liu Bian died of the plague and that Liu Yu would succeed to the throne came out, all countries were naturally shocked. Obviously, they did not expect that Liu Yu would be so tough and dare to proclaim himself emperor at such a sensitive time when the Qin Dynasty was expanding its army.
Many people admire Liu Yu's courage, but many people think Liu Yu's move is irrational.
If you, Liu Yu, want to proclaim yourself emperor, can't you do it secretly? Why do you need to make it known to everyone and openly invite other countries to watch the ceremony to deliberately provoke the majesty of the Qin Dynasty?
Since Shu Han has already taken action, it depends on the reaction of other countries and Great Qin.
Although neither King Liu Xiu of Chu nor King Yang Guang of Sui were willing to be overpowered by Liu Yu, they also knew that neither of them had the qualifications to become emperor. Liu Yu was indeed the only one who could carry the banner of the Han Dynasty, so they both made it clear that they would send The messenger came to watch the ceremony.
(End of this chapter)