"Thud, thud, thud!"
Hoofbeats shook the earth, dust billowed, and countless cavalrymen thundered past, accompanied by wagon after wagon and throngs of commoners being escorted out of Youzhou, some willingly, others against their will.
After the Yan State rose, its relationship with the Han Dynasty became very subtle. Every year, the Yan State sent envoys to offer tribute, presenting local specialties from Liaodong.
Whenever the court issued a decree, it found excuses to evade it.
Moreover, the Yan State drove the Hu people native to Liaodong westward and southward, wave after wave.
This brought more and more Hu people into Bingzhou and Youzhou, and they continued spreading westward.
How could Great Han, long invincible beneath heaven, tolerate this?
Thus, relations between the two sides gradually grew tense, and armed conflicts broke out one after another.
With relations between the two sides verging on outright hostility, the court naturally could no longer exile people to Liaodong.
They adhered to the principle that if the mountain would not come to them, they would go to the mountain.
And so the Yan State moved south into Youzhou, starting at the border and emptying its population county by county. It truly emptied them, carrying this out as a national policy.
At first, the ordinary people were frightened, but later they left themselves to the Mandate of Heaven.
Apart from being colder, the Yan State was a rising regime and a small country at that. In terms of integrity and organization alone, it surpassed the rotten Han Court of the present.
But to Youzhou's officials and the Han Court's Dukes and Ministers, this was naturally a humiliation.
Yet the present Yan State, having advanced south from north of Liaodong, conquered Liaodong, and occupied some of Youzhou's commanderies and counties, was a very stable country combining