During the more than ten years of Li Ze's unification of the world, there were only three people who really caused serious obstacles to his plan.

One is the early Zhang Zhongwu.

Although he was the first one Li Ze beaten, he was also the most difficult one to deal with. When he first started to face-to-face with this strongman, Li Ze was not sure in his heart.

This has been fully demonstrated by leading troops to fight on the Yishui River.

If you succeed, you will be king, and if you fail, you will be enemy. This is Li Ze's mentality at that time.

In that battle, Li Ze took all his wealth and fought to the death. He won by chance, while Zhang Zhongwu went into exile in the Northeast, and was eventually dragged to death by Li Ze.

Before that, Zhang Zhongwu was a nightmare for Li Ze. Basically, when Li Ze was awake, he would think about how to deal with this biggest enemy in his heart.

Li Ze still respects Zhang Zhongwu very much. After all, this man led the border troops to fight for more than ten years in the most dangerous moment of the old Tang Dynasty, and successfully blocked the nomadic peoples from the border. He ensured that although the Tang Dynasty was corrupt in those years, he was still fighting in the nest and did not fall under the iron hoof of the foreign tribe.

Since then, Li Ze has basically never personally stepped onto the battlefield to command any battles.

Commanding the battle is not his own strength. Back then, he stood under the banner by the Yishui River, and when the two battles faced tens of thousands of cavalry charges, his greater function was to boost morale, but to make the soldiers on their own side burn their blood and resolutely die.

The second one is Zhu Youzhen.

The death of Li Ze's mother, Mrs. Wang, was inseparable from him. It was precisely because of this reason that after being captured by Liu Ruyan, he suffered various tortures and almost all of them were ruined.

But when everyone thought that this disabled man would never recover from the sludge, a prisoner exchange between Daliang and Datang made this man regain his freedom.

Zhu Youzhen, who was reborn, changed her appearance and went against the trend as if she had cheated, becoming one of the biggest obstacles for Li Ze to unify the world.

Since Li Ze defeated Zhang Zhongwu, this man has been in dispute with Li Ze until now and finally the end.

Of course, now he is dead.

Unlike Xiang Zhen who finally dismissed his subordinates, who found a way out for his loyal subordinates who had been following him, and who was completely included in the entire Lingnan area without a single shot, Zhu Youzhen really fought to the last moment.

Of course, his fate was also very miserable.

The third one is Xiang Zhen.

Unlike the methods and means of the first two, Xiang Zhen wanted to follow the path Li Ze had taken at the beginning, which was to put himself at a political rationalization and moral commanding heights to restrict his opponents and thus win.

Li Ze walked this path and walked very smoothly.

But Xiang Zhen ignored one thing. When Li Ze was following this path, the entire Tang Dynasty was at the time when the major governors were split the most severely. They fought endlessly, each with their own interests, and each had their own plans, which gave Li Ze the opportunity to go all the way. When Xiang Zhen wanted to take this path, the situation in the world was completely different. Li Ze had changed from a lord who had a sect to a dominant overlord. At this time, if he wanted to take this path, he would be completely seeking death.

Over the years, although Xiang Zhen has united the major forces in the south, under Li Ze's strength, he has basically been defeated in every battle. After many years, the Southern Alliance itself has been no longer stable, and failure is a matter of course.

In the face of absolute power, no fancy will be of any use.

Even if Li Ze did not do those things about Li Dai and Tao Zan after Li Ke ran away, he would not have any impact on the ending. The reason why he spent so much effort to do those things was just to make the new Tang Dynasty more legal in terms of legal principles and better in later history books.

Xiang Zhen was defeated!

Xiang Zhen killed himself.

But Xiang Zhen died with dignity.

He ended his life of hard struggle. After the news came out, the soldiers who followed him out of the Lotus Mountain camp cried loudly, because these people did get real benefits from Xiang Zhen over the years, including their families, so these people thanked him.

Even those civil servants who were more cunning were mostly crying secretly. These typical old-style literati followed Xiang Zhen for many years and learned that this person was a true man who was self-reliant and dedicated to his business and wanted to do a great career, but he was not lucky and eventually lost.

Xiang Zhen’s miserable defeat is also the miserable defeat of these people!

Under the new Tang Dynasty, new governance system, and new cultures, their golden age is gone like a yellow crane.

Xiang Zhen left a letter to Li Ze at the end.

The handwriting is neat, but the content is extremely simple.

First, he congratulated Li Ze on his final unification of the world, and then asked him to return to the ancestral tomb after his death, and asked Li Ze to take good care of Xiang's ancestor Ying.

Li Ze agreed to such a request without any hesitation.

Not only did they solemnly buried Xiang Zhen in the Lingnan ancestral tomb, they also took a lot of effort to find some Xiang's tribe members and ordered them to settle down near the Xiang's ancestral tomb and take good care of them.

This is not only Li Ze respects such an enemy, but also makes it for the people of Lingnan to calm people and gain public opinion. After all, Xiang's family has been passed down for generations in Lingnan, and there are many people who support him in such a family. Moreover, Xiang's family is quite good at managing Lingnan and has a lot of benefits for the people of Lingnan. Otherwise, Lingnan, as a remote place seen by the Tang people, would not become the center of the Southern Alliance.

And Zhu Youzhen was frustrated.

He didn't even die under the swords and guns of the Tang army.

Zhu Youzhen led his last armed forces to carry out a desperate resistance in Chengdu, which made it take half a month for Liu Chenglin and Shi Zhuang to completely break through Chengdu.

Zhu Youzhen finally hurried in the Liang Palace.

Liu Chenglin, who was extremely angry because of the considerable casualties, ordered dozens of cannons to be dragged in, and carried out a carpet-like bombardment on the Liang Palace, and basically bombarded the remaining resistance force inside into a slag.

The Liang Palace was broken.

However, the soldiers did not enter the Liang Palace.

The people who entered the Liang Palace were the local people in Chengdu.

The people of Yizhou have suffered from the suffering of Zhu Youzhen for a long time.

Although Sheng Zhonghuai carried out agricultural reforms, commercial reforms, and political reforms similar to those of the Tang Dynasty in Yizhou, the benefits of these reforms did not fall on ordinary people, nor did they fall on the gentry, landlord scholars in Yizhou, and even those with assets in Yizhou, which were the most exploited by Zhu Youzhen.

Such a policy allowed Zhu Youzhen to accumulate a large amount of wealth in just a few years, build a huge army, maintain the excellent equipment and training of the army, but also made the entire Yizhou people feel like they were living in dire straits.

High-pressure policies and spy rule, everyone is trembling with fear.

So, when he collapsed, he became a real wall and fell. Everyone pushed him.

When Liu Chenglin bombarded the Liang Palace, there was a scene of onlookers of the crowds of people on the outside.

The hatred of Zhu Youzhen made them no longer afraid of the Tang army entering Yizhou.

No matter how cruel you are, can you be more cruel than Zhu Youzhen?

Liu Chenglin was also very understanding. After knocking the Liang Palace into ruins, he let the cordon be released and allowed these angry local people to rush into the Liang Palace.

Unfortunately, Zhu Youzhen did not die under the fire of artillery under the protection of the guards. If he knew his final outcome, he would definitely choose to run to Liu Chenglin and stab himself with a knife, so that he could at least get a burial of all himself and decent.

After all, he was an emperor and was also the opponent Li Ze attached the most. Liu Chenglin and Shi Zhuang would definitely give him treatment that was comparable to his identities.

Or this is exactly what Liu Chenglin and Shi Zhuang want.

When Liu Chenglin and his guards were blown away, they were surrounded by a tide of people before they could fully figure out what was going on.

Liu Chenglin and Shi Zhuang stood on a tall building and witnessed all this with a telescope.

Zhu Youzhen was beaten to death by these people.

Zhu Youzhen was dismembered.

Every piece of meat and bone on Zhu Youzhen's body was stolen.

The two even saw that after some of them had grabbed a piece of Zhu Youzhen's flesh, they actually bite them in front of countless people and swallowed them raw.

Even though Shi Zhuang had done pig killing activities before, the scene made him feel nauseous.

The two looked at each other.

When the excitement crowd completely disappeared, they did not find any of the things left by Zhu Youzhen, and even his wife, eldest son, and guards all encountered similar consequences.

When Li Ze received the joint report from Liu Chenglin and Shi Zhuang, he deleted all the text and the words of the two apologizing, and then ordered Lu Lin to forge a few more texts and add them.

Zhu Youzhen died in chaos and his body was unaware of it, which became the last footnote to Zhu Youzhen's fate.

All Yizhou surrendered and was named Sichuan Province.

Lingnan was renamed as Guangdong Province.

After Rongguan Guiguan was merged, it was designated as Guangxi Province.

After that, the envoy from Chang'an arrived in Nanzhao in a fierce manner. Because Nanzhao opened the passage privately, Hao Ren, Zhu Youzhen's concubine Sun and his youngest son went to Bagan, and Chang'an sent someone to question the crime.

The escape of only thousands of people is certainly not worthy of Chang'an's special envoy and military dispatch. The Lord of Nanzhao certainly understood what the emperor of Chang'an wanted, but he was helpless when he was held in his hands. Finally, after weighing the pros and cons, he completely gave up the power of Nanzhao's rule and led his family Xiaoqi to Chang'an to apologize.

After meeting with his group, the emperor was very happy. Not only did he not ask for any crime, but he comforted him with a gentle voice, he added a title of Hou, gave him a mansion, and lived in Chang'an for a long time.

Nanzhao changed its territory and returned to the river and was named Yunnan Province by the emperor.

The road to unification of the Tang Dynasty was basically completed. In addition to the Southeast Asian region, Li Ze was also seriously examining the pros and cons. Is it necessary to completely incorporate it into the territory? In other directions, Li Ze no longer has any thoughts about military occupation.

In the next few years, what he wanted to do the most was to sow the seeds of Chinese civilization into every corner of the world.
Chapter completed!