In 208 AD, after Cao Cao pacified the north, he marched south to Jingzhou. Liu Chun, the pastor of Jingzhou, was a cowardly and incompetent mediocre man, and in the face of Cao Cao's army, he surrendered without saying a word, and the Jingzhou area was taken into Cao Cao's pocket from then on. However, due to the fact that the central area of Cao Cao's rule was still in the north, Cao Cao left a garrison soon after and led the army back to Xudu himself. When he left, he also forcibly relocated tens of thousands of people from the Jingzhou area to the north to enrich the northern population.
Among these people was a peasant child less than ten years old, named Deng Ai. Deng Aizu was also a large family of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and later the family fell in the middle of the road, and by Deng Ai's generation, he had become a poor people. When Deng Ai was young, his family was extremely difficult, and in order to make a living, he made a living by herding cattle for rich families at a young age, barely exchanging a little money for subsistence.
Deng Ai's mother, a very far-sighted woman, knew that if Deng Ai wanted to get ahead, she must take the road of studying and becoming an official, so she cut down on food and clothing, cut money out of the gap between her teeth, and let Deng Ai study around and visit famous teachers. Deng Ai was also very contentious, and his hard life did not suppress his eagerness to learn, he used all his time to study hard, and before he was twenty years old, he was already full of poetry and talent, and became a copywriter under the lieutenant who was in charge of Tuntian.
Deng Ai has been in this slight position for decades. It was not until around 240 AD, when he rushed to Luoyang to submit official documents, that he accidentally met Sima Yi, an important minister of the imperial court at that time, that his life ushered in a turning point. Sima Yi's eyes were like torches, and after a conversation with Deng Ai, he immediately determined that Deng Ai was a genius of heaven and earth. Under the promotion and cultivation of Sima Yi, Deng Ai was able to operate from time to time, embarked on the fast lane of life, and successively served as a general who joined the army in the west, The Taishou of Nan'an, the general of Qiaokou, and the Taishou of Chengyang, and became a famous general who was alone in the late Wei dynasty.
In 263 AD, Deng Ai, who was more than sixty years old, ushered in the peak of his life. Together with the Wei general Zhong Hui, he led a large army to attack the Shu state, and the Shu general Jiang Wei was firmly defended at the Sword Pavilion, and the Wei army was sad to insert its wings. With amazing courage and extraordinary boldness, Deng Ai led an elite army to secretly cross the seven-hundred-mile Yinping Trail, crossed the mountains and mountains through hardships, successfully bypassed Jiang Wei's defense line, suddenly appeared under the city of Chengdu, and destroyed the resistance troops of Zhuge Liang's son Zhuge Zhan in one fell swoop, completely putting Liu Chan in a desperate situation. Liu Chan saw that the general situation had gone, so he had to open the city gate and surrender to Deng Ai, and the Shu Han who had condensed the efforts of Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang was destroyed.
Deng Ai entered Liu Chan's palace, looked around and searched carefully, and found one thing: the "Book of Scholars" of the Shu Kingdom, roughly equivalent to the combination of the household registration book and the official roster. It records the population, army, and number of officials in the Shu Kingdom at that time: "280,000 households, 940,000 men and women, 12,000 soldiers with armor, and 40,000 officials."
After Deng Ai looked at it, he thought about it and suddenly understood one thing: the Shu Kingdom once had the blessing of a world wizard like Zhuge Liang, and even after Zhuge Liang's death, he also left Liu Chan with a set of nearly perfect literary and martial talents and governance system, why could he still not save the Shu Kingdom?
Originally, in the "Book of Soldiers and People" of the Shu Kingdom, a problem was clearly reflected: the ratio of military to civilians and the ratio of officials to the people in the Shu State was seriously imbalanced, and there were only 940,000 people in the Shu State, but they had to feed more than 100,000 troops and more than 40,000 officials, which was roughly equivalent to every seven people, who were responsible for feeding a soldier or official. Under the premise of extremely backward agricultural production conditions and low grain production in ancient times, this was an extremely heavy burden for the peasants of the Shu kingdom.
In order to pay a large number of troops and officials for their salaries, the Shu state could only collect extremely heavy taxes on the people, resulting in the people of the Shu state living in hardship, complaining, and changing people's minds, and the Shu state unconsciously fell into a desperate situation of rebellion and separation. Those who win the hearts and minds of the people win the world, and those who lose the hearts of the people lose the world, in this case, even if Zhuge Liang is revived, he really cannot save the Shu kingdom.
References: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Book of Shu