Bianliang, Tokyo, Kaifeng Mansion, Ancestral Temple of the Song Dynasty
There are many courtyards and pavilions, with hundreds of couplets. It can be said to be the largest building complex in the entire Tokyo city besides the Imperial City.
Today, the Song Dynasty Ancestral Temple, hidden in the wind and snow, looks particularly solemn and solemn.
Thousands of tall imperial guards stood guard inside and outside the Ancestral Temple. Everyone wore the best armor on their bodies. The heavy iron armor was polished to a discernible shine, and the bright red hairpins on their helmets fluttered in the wind. The soldiers' straight waists are more impressive than their armors, swords and guns.
In the Ancestral Temple, drums and music were playing. Chime bells, jade exhaust, Huang Zhongda Lu's palace music, has been spread to a few streets away.
——After the Jin soldiers who besieged Bianliang were all annihilated, the first thing that Emperor Zhao Huan thought of was to pay homage to the Ancestral Temple, offer incense to his ancestors, pay homage a few times, and then send some heads of cattle, sheep, and pigs to the emperor. The ancestor showed off his illustrious martial arts and wiped away the frustration and bad luck he had suffered since he ascended the throne.
Therefore, at this time, he finally took off the Superman tights suit that he had been reluctant to leave for a moment in recent days, and put on a "big fur crown" with black clothes and red clothes specially used for the emperor's ceremony. The crown on his head was also very special. The popular style of the Song Dynasty was to hang twelve strings of bright beads, specifically. These are the so-called "Twelve Crowns" in "The Rites of Zhou"... These are the imperial costumes from the Pre-Qin and Warring States Periods. By the Song Dynasty, they had been completely eliminated. Song emperors in the past dynasties would not wear this kind of clothes, whether in peacetime or in court. Clothes excavated from ancient tombs are only retrofitted when offering sacrifices.
Accompanied by the melodious palace music, Zhao Huan entered first, followed closely by a group of princes and grandsons of the Zhao family. Civil and military officials also arranged their shifts and entered one after another. As soon as they entered the main courtyard, the door opened in front of them. Looking from the distance, the deepest hall of Mingtang was actually half a mile away.
The Mingtang is the place where the spiritual thrones of successive emperors are located, and the ministers who accompany the Imperial Ancestral Temple and the priests of the clans are placed in the side chambers on both sides. The current Mingtang, which was rebuilt by Zhao Ji, Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty, at a huge cost, is twelve feet wide and more than six feet high, with double eaves and brackets, towering gables, and shiny yellow glazed tiles. The front door is also more than two feet high. The thick beech door panel was painted with red paint, and the brass door nails on it were all polished.
The sacrificial Shao music is played one after another. According to the etiquette, none of them are repeated. It takes at least half a day to play all the twenty-four scheduled pieces for one round. In the midst of this elegant music, Emperor Qinzong Zhao Huan walked through the many doors and walked step by step to the Mingtang Hall. The thick green and black fur and the yellow and red clothes inside are embroidered with twelve kinds of patterns, including the sun, moon and stars, symbolizing the end of the world and all things in the world. Following his steps, the twelve beads on the crown swayed slightly, but the imperial behavior trained over a long period of time kept the shaking of the beads as small as possible.
The door of the Mingtang is open, showing everything in the hall to everyone. On the five-foot-wide confession table in the middle of the Mingtang, seven sacred tablets of the ancestors of the Zhao family are lined up: Taizu Zhao Kuang Yin, Taizong Zhao Guangyi, Zhenzong Zhao Heng, Renzong Zhao Zhen, Yingzong Zhao Shu, Shenzong Zhao Xu and Zhezong Zhao Xu...the next Emperor Huizong is now being imprisoned in the deep palace and cannot enter or leave easily.
Standing in front of the door, Zhao Huan couldn't help but think deeply as he looked at the several-foot-high sandalwood god tablets on the confession form.
——It has only been a short year since he took the throne, and he has experienced many storms and turbulence, but it feels like a lifetime ago.
It had only been a little more than a year since the Jinlu invaded and the Supreme Emperor lost his throne, but in the eyes of the Bianliang monarchs and ministers, it seemed as if they had been suffering in a sea of suffering for a lifetime. The fertile land of the Central Plains, which had not been affected by war for more than a century, became the center of the whirlpool of war in this year. Almost all the military power of the Song Dynasty was lost in this tragic meat grinder, and millions of people The people's families were destroyed because of this.
The people of the Song Dynasty suffered more than ten times more disasters in this year than in the previous hundred years combined!
However, this crazy and terrifying nightmare has finally come to an end now.
Although hundreds of prefectures and counties in Henan and Hebei are still dilapidated, although the vast Central Plains is still full of ruins and scorched earth, although thieves have emerged in Hebei and Hedong, although Wanyan Xieye, the nominal supreme commander of the Southern Expedition of the Jin Kingdom, is still in Yan Beijing controlled a powerful field army... But after the 150,000 Jin Dynasty's main army and a large number of Jurchen warriors were completely destroyed under Bianliang City, the great reversal of the Song and Jin Dynasty war situation was quietly doomed.
——The Jurchen Wanyan tribe who established the Jin Kingdom was initially just a small tribe with only 2,000 soldiers and horses. Their knowledge and connections were very poor. Although after Wanyan Agu launched an army to rebel against the Liao Dynasty, he was like a god and established a large empire covering thousands of miles in just over ten years. However, after all, the foundation was shallow and the foundation was unstable. "The war myth can barely suppress the resistance of various tribes.
And how many troops did the Jurchens have at this time? It's very pitiful that even if all the strong men are recruited, there will only be only 60,000 people.
Therefore, after losing most of its direct troops in an instant, this glorious Kingdom of Jin fell to the edge of collapse!
Of course, Zhao Huan did not have such a clear strategic insight at this time. He was just thankful that his ancestors had protected him and the Song Dynasty had escaped another disaster.
——He walked to the table, knelt down on the ground, knelt three times and kowtowed nine times, and saluted gracefully. Then he stood up and read loudly the prayers carefully drafted by the Imperial Academy's attendants, and then burned the prayers bit by bit with candlelight. , the embers were swept away by the wind in a blink of an eye.
Although large swathes of the country still fell, and although the war was far from extinguished, at the very least, the Song Dynasty was barely saved...
In Zhao Huan's mind, he could at least breathe a sigh of relief and feel that he was worthy of his ancestors.
※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※
Just when the Superman Emperor Zhao Huan temporarily suspended the court meeting to pay homage to his ancestors, the court officials had no time to spare.
It is now the end of the year, and it is snowing again in the Central Plains. Compared with the blizzard last month, the snow now is much lighter. However, the old snow has not yet melted, and new snow has arrived, making Prime Minister He Su's hair become much whiter again.
——It is never an easy task to take charge of the government and govern the world, let alone in this tragic time when the country is broken.
With the fall of the Jin soldiers, communication between Bianliang and the outside world was restored. Before the imperial officials in the besieged city had time to celebrate, they were overwhelmed by a series of bad news - after months of war, the imperial treasury was empty, the price of food in the capital had risen to the sky, and the people in the market were complaining. . However, the Bianhe River has long been frozen, and Jiangnan's wealth and grain cannot be transported to the capital by water before spring. As for the land route... Hehe, the Song Dynasty's financial resources simply couldn't afford the huge cost of transporting goods thousands of miles away.
Of course, although the imperial treasury is scarce, there are mountains of rice, wheat, beans and millet in the palaces of nobles in the capital and in the warehouses of grain merchants. But if the imperial court wants to get some out of their hands, it will be extremely difficult... People originally hoped that the price of food would rise to the sky so that they could Making a huge fortune, who would have expected that the seemingly tough Jin soldiers were annihilated so quickly, which has already made these heartless powerful men dissatisfied. If He Su still uses administrative means to force them to open warehouses and release grain, Believe it or not, they can immediately mobilize all civil and military officials to force the emperor to change the prime minister?
To make matters worse, with the destruction of the Jin soldiers in the Southern Expedition and the restoration of smooth roads, hungry people from all directions are pouring into the capital. In the suburbs of Bianliang, the villages and towns where the Jin camp is located have all been invaded by Guo Daxian. The "artifact" burned to a red ground, not to mention crops, people and animals, not even cockroaches and fleas could survive. A little further away, from Luoyang, Zhengzhou to Bianliang, everything was ravaged by the hooves of the Jurchen cavalry, and almost half of the Central Plains' crops could not be harvested. As for Hebei and Hedong, which were repeatedly ravaged by Jin soldiers, there is no mention.
In despair, these people of the Song Dynasty turned their longing eyes to Bianliang, hoping to find a way to survive at the feet of the emperor.
However, the food supply in the capital was already extremely tight, and now that there were so many mouths crying for food, it became even more chaotic... Seeing that the food-grabbing riot was about to break out, Prime Minister He Su's mood could not get better.
What also worries him is the large number of so-called "rebels" active in hundreds of prefectures and counties in Henan and Hebei. These "rebels" are mixed, mainly composed of defeated Song Army soldiers who fled, poor refugees who rebelled, and ambitious people. Made up of local powerful people. Most of these "rebels" are "vibrant social groups" who "claim to be rebels but are actually bandits." Although they basically have no courage to fight against the Jin soldiers, they are very good at burning, killing, looting, and harming the people. The people of the Central Plains suffered another crime, which also posed a serious threat to the ruling order of the Song Dynasty.
According to the mature experience of the past hundred years, the imperial court should recruit the rebel leaders as officials and integrate their troops into the Xiang army to prevent them from causing chaos. But this all costs a lot of money, and the court is so short of money right now that it can't even hold a ceremony to worship the sky in the southern suburbs.
——The so-called southern suburbs offer sacrifices to heaven, and the northern suburbs offer sacrifices to earth. According to Zhou rites, on the winter solstice every year, the emperor had to go to the southern suburbs to offer sacrifices to God Haotian in order to seek peace in the world. However, because the cost of suburban sacrifices is too high, including the consumption and rewards, it often costs millions of dollars. Therefore, in the Song Dynasty, sacrifices were generally performed only once every three years or more. Now that Tokyo Bianliang is out of danger, a catastrophic disaster has been eliminated. Qinzong Emperor Zhao Huan, who has not held any suburban sacrifices since he came to the throne, is so happy that he naturally wants to make a sacrifice to heaven to express his feelings. The emperor did a good job.
But the problem is that with the current situation of Bianliang's treasury being so empty that the emperor can't tolerate such extravagance and waste... So He Su and Qin Hui had no choice but to bite the bullet, talk good and bad to the emperor, and finally sacrifice the southern suburbs. The weather has shrunk to worship the Ancestral Temple, saving this expense.
But how to raise funds and food next, rescue refugees, and repair the city...
Of course, compared with the myriad of chores, there is currently a greater hidden danger that is weighing heavily on the minds of every court official.
He Su sighed, raised his head from behind the tall piles of documents, and looked blankly to the northeast of Bianliang City.
That is Genyue, where the royal garden where the protector of the country Guo Jing currently resides.
The magical Taoism that was once just a legend has now become a solid and shocking fact.
Millions of citizens in Bianliang, Tokyo, will never forget the raging fire that burned all the gold and reached the sky a few days ago.
Therefore, all the traditional Confucian scholar-bureaucrats who claimed to "respect ghosts and gods and keep away from them" fell into unprecedented confusion and fear.
——The arrival of true immortals, Taoist magic, and the destruction of the world with one blow... Is this earth-shattering change in the human world a disaster or a blessing for the currently precarious Song Dynasty?