In ancient times, people were very superstitious, believing that everything in nature was controlled by the gods. These gods, like people, eat, drink, and sleep, and marry wives and concubines to continue their offspring. So people sacrificed their best food, clothing, and utensils to the gods, and if the gods wanted to marry wives and concubines, then people would choose young and beautiful women to pay tribute to the gods. Serving the gods so humbly has only one purpose, that is, to pray that the gods will bless people with good winds and rains, health and longevity, and many blessings!
There are intelligent people among human beings, who have long known that the gods are false, but in order to make huge profits with the gods, they still hype superstitions. These wise men took advantage of people's superstitious psychology to make the broad masses of people pay people money to please the gods, but in fact, most of these money and food beauties belonged to the wise and the powerful. At the beginning of the State of Wei, superstitious ideas were very common, and the people of Yi County gathered money to worship the river god every year, and they also provided a young and beautiful wife to the river god every year.
Ximen Leopard visits the people privately
The Zhanghe River is a major river in Ye County, an important tributary of the Yellow River in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. Every year, the Zhanghe River floods or droughts, causing the people to reduce their harvests and make life very difficult. The local gentry, in conjunction with witches, worshipped the river god of the Zhanghe River every year to ask the river god not to launch a flood or drought. The local gentry forced the common people to pay for it, and once a year held a river god sacrifice and a marriage ceremony, each time collecting copper coins of several million taels; it only cost two or three hundred thousand taels to do the wedding, and the rest was divided with the witches. The people also had to provide a young and beautiful girl to pay tribute to the river god as a wife, and the families with daughters fled ye county.
Ximen Bao was a famous scholar of the Fa, and he was appointed by Wei Wenhou to serve as the Taishou of Yi Commandery (邺郡太守), and to implement the policy of changing France by the chancellor Li Wu (李悝) in Yi County. If the work of changing the law has not yet been carried out, Ximen Leopard will have to solve the superstitious problem of Ye County. Because this matter is not resolved, the people have fled, there is no one, who will govern? In the Warring States period, the people could not survive in one vassal state and could flee to other countries.
To break down superstitions, sometimes it is not feasible to reason and lay out the facts, because the people fear ghosts and gods, and no matter how much they say it, the people will not believe it. In addition, the biggest obstacle to breaking superstition is the obstruction of vested interests, who will encourage the people to resist the law in order to ensure their own interests. Many times the people are ignorant, and they will help exploit their magnates against those who are really good to them.
A maiden dedicated to the river god
The strength of Ximen Leopard lies in the "spear of the son to attack the shield of the son", and the Ximen leopard uses superstition to deal with vested interests who advocate superstition, which makes them have no power to fight back. At that time, the river god sacrifice and wife ceremony was presided over by Ximen Leopard himself, and the three elders, officials, haoqiang, and father and elder all met, and there were two or three thousand people who went to watch the ceremony. The witch and her more than a dozen female disciples presided over the specific sacrifice activities, and Ximen Leopard sat in the big tent and controlled the progress of the sacrifice activities.
Ximen Leopard first looked at the girl who paid tribute to the river god this time, he thought that this woman was not beautiful, let the witch go to the river god to inform, and then send a beautiful girl to him as a wife the day after tomorrow. Before the witch could object, she was thrown into the river by the Wei army, and disappeared in a moment. Ximen Leopard waited for a long time, and when he did not see the witch return, he sent the witch's female disciples to urge the witch, and three female disciples were thrown into the river in a row. For a time, the officials and gentry who instigated the sacrifice of the river god were frightened, afraid that they would be sent to ask the witch to return.
Simon the Leopard casts the witch into the river
Ximen Leopard grasped the rhythm in time, he said that the women sent in front of him were all women, and the river god may not be willing to communicate with the woman, when sending a man with status to tell the river god. So Ximen Leopard threw the three elders into the river and asked them to ask the river god, but the result was gone! At this time, the officials and local tycoons were terrified, and they understood that ximen leopard's name was sacrificed to the river god, which was actually breaking superstition. Ximen Leopard saw that the three elders were gone, and planned to send an official and a local tycoon to ask the river god, but the two were afraid that they would be able to prostrate their heads on the ground, bleeding like a note, and their faces were as earthy as earth color and their bowel movements were incontinent.
Ximen Leopard said that the river god left the witches, female disciples, and the three old people as guests, presumably because he did not want to marry his wife again. When the officials and local tycoons heard Ximen Leopard say this, they were so relieved that they never mentioned the matter of marrying the river god again. After that, Ximen Leopard implemented the change of law in Ye County, and the officials and people did not dare to disobey the order; Ximen Leopard organized the gentry to build a canal, introduced the water of the Zhanghe River into the farmland, developed the local land, and made the people rich.
Ximen Leopard threw three old men into the river
Ximen Leopard destroyed the river god sacrifice and wife-taking activities, reduced the economic burden of the people, and saved countless innocent girls. After that, Ximen Leopard requisitioned the people to repair twelve water canals, and the people thought that the repair of the canals was very tiring, and they complained about this. Ximen Leopard's evaluation of this is: the people can be happy, not with the beginning. Although my father and old children suffered from me, the late hundred years of age made my fathers and old children think of me.
In 403 BC, the three families of Wei, Zhao, and Han were officially enfeoffed as princes by the surviving Zhou Tianzi (King Weilie of Zhou), and the state of Wei was formally established. The first monarch of the State of Wei, Wei Wenhou, was a generation of famous monarchs, and he appointed Li Wu, Ximen Leopard, Zi Xia, Zhai Huang, Wei Cheng, and others to enrich the country and strengthen the army, open up a large area of territory, and make the State of Wei leap into the hegemony of the Central Plains.
During the reign of Marquis Wenhou of Wei, Corporal Li Xian, the confucian disciples Bu Zixia, Tian Zifang, Duan Ganmu, and others appointed Li Wu and Zhai Huang as ministers, and Le Yang and Wu Qi as generals. These soldiers, who were born from small nobles or commoners, began to play their role in politics and military affairs, marking the beginning of the replacement of clan politics by bureaucratic politics.
Wei Wenhou emphasized the falun gong Li Wu and promoted the reform of the law in the State of Wei, focusing on the principle of intensive cultivation and meticulous cultivation of the religion of doing everything possible to benefit the land, popularizing the successful experience of agricultural and sideline industries, comprehensively utilizing the fields and mountains and rivers of the State of Wei, and improving the unit yield of cultivated land and the efficiency of land use in the State of Wei. Yecheng was a strategic stronghold to prevent the Zhao state from moving south into the Central Plains to compete with the Wei state for profits, and it was necessary to appoint a minister who could stand alone to take on this important task. Wei Wenhou chose the famous Ximen Leopard.
Wei Wenhou
After Ximen Leopard entered The Imperial Household, he treated him with the way of a human being, skillfully subdued the local Three Elders and the Court, abolished the bad habit of marrying relatives for Hebo, stopped the loss of the people, and saved the people a lot of taxes paid for Hebo's wives every year. In order to solve the problems of flooding and serious salinization of the land, Ximen Leopard dug twelve canals on the south bank of the Zhangshui River.
These twelve canals have done a good job of discharging floodwaters and eliminated the harm of flooding to the land. Water channels were diverted into the fields, irrigating large tracts of farmland, eliminating large areas of saline and alkali land, and greatly developing local agriculture. Yidi was between Zhao and Wei, close to Wei and Qi, and Ximen Leopard took advantage of this geographical advantage of Yidi to encourage the people to engage in commerce and make a lot of profits.
Due to the success of Ximen Bao's rule of Ye, the people of Yi County all supported the rule of the State of Wei, thus successfully curbing the way of the State of Zhao to the south into the State of Wei. Before Wei Wenhou died, he summoned Wu Qi, Ximen Bao, and others, and entrusted the crown prince Wei Zhen to them. After the death of Marquis Wen, he was succeeded by the crown prince as monarch and was the Marquis of Wei.
Wei Wu pawn
The two generations of monarchs of Wei Wenhou and Wei Wuhou were all Ming emperors, and they insisted on changing the law and knowing people and making good use of them, making the State of Wei the first powerful country in the early Warring States period. During this period, the State of Wei seized the land of Hexi of the State of Qin to the west, the State of Zhongshan to the north, the State of Chu to the south, and the State of Qi to the east. The State of Wei became a superpower that ran rampant in the world, making the three old powers of Qin, Chu and Qi feel afraid!