Supreme Golden Palace

Chapter 3: Kaihuangshi
The second year of Kaihuang in Northern Sui, the fourteenth year of Taijian in Southern Chen, and the twenty-first year of Tianbao in Western Liang,
The situation was turbulent and wars were frequent this year. At the beginning of the year, the Northern Sui attacked the Southern Chen and plundered towns such as Zengshan and Yukou. In the middle of the year, the Northern Sui led troops to fight against the Turkic Khan Datou in a fierce battle at Keluoqi Mountain, severely damaging Datou. At the end of the year, the Battle of Zhoupan broke out, and the Turkic invaded, leading to a series of bloody battles.

During this year, many generals of the Northern Sui Dynasty emerged one after another. The most dazzling one among them was Daxi Changru, a Xianbei man. Daxi Changru led two thousand Sui soldiers in Zhoupan to fight against the 100,000 troops of the Turkic Khan Shabolue. After three days of bloody battle, the Turks were terrified and regarded him as a ghost or god.

After this battle, Da Xi Changru officially became a famous general. Emperor Yang Jian of the Sui Dynasty appointed him as Shang Zhuguo and selected one of his sons as an official. All the soldiers who died in the war were posthumously awarded the third level of official rank, and their descendants inherited it.

After the Zhoupan Battle, the morale of the Northern Sui soldiers was greatly boosted, and at this time the Sui Emperor Yang Jian turned his attention again to the Southern Chen.

Unification of the North and the South!
This has been something that all capable rulers since the reign of Sima Jin have been thinking about.

Especially during the Northern Wei, Western Wei, and Northern Zhou dynasties, each monarch aspired to conquer Jiangling, end the chaotic North-South era, and restore the rule of the Yan and Han dynasties. Now, to this must be added Yang Jian, the founding emperor of the Northern Sui Dynasty, who had fully accepted the Northern Zhou regime.

Who doesn’t want to become an emperor of all ages like the Qin Shi Huang and the Han Dynasty, with achievements recorded in history?

What's more, Yang Jian came to power in an illegitimate way. He seized the throne as the father-in-law of the emperor. It took him only nine months to go from being the father-in-law of the emperor to a powerful minister, and then from a powerful minister to the emperor. It was too easy for him to come to power, and his foundation was not stable. In the process of seizing power, he was eager for quick success and his methods were too cruel, which was criticized.

Therefore, Yang Jian urgently needed a great victory, a victory that surpassed that of Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou, to consolidate his empire and endorse the legitimacy of the Sui Dynasty.

"Attack Chen,"

"Jingbian,"

In the Daxing Palace, Yang Jian, who had just entered the stage of being free from doubts at the age of forty, was quietly looking at the picture of the country under his feet in the flickering candlelight.

This scroll of Jiangshan Shehe was drawn during the reign of Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty. Officials of the Northern Wei Dynasty said that it was the result of the efforts of several dynasties and the ambition of the universe, and it took fifty years and countless manpower and material resources to complete.

The mountain and river divinations it depicted were the most detailed, complete, and accurate of all the dynasties. It was later passed down to the Western Wei Dynasty, which in turn passed it down to the Northern Zhou Dynasty. Finally, when Yang Jian usurped the Zhou Dynasty, the divination fell into the hands of Yang Jian, who treasured it as a treasure.

This is a national treasure that only the Son of Heaven can control. On the map of the country, the northern and southern countries, prefectures, towns, counties, rivers, canals, dangerous peaks and bad roads are all at the fingertips. The political and military significance itself is beyond words.

Since Yang Jian proclaimed himself emperor, he ordered the palace servants to place this map in the center of the Daxing Hall. Every morning, after rising and going to court, and after handling government affairs, he would stop for a while in front of the map of the country to take a break.

"I don't know when I will be able to complete this great cause of unifying the world!"

Yang Jian slowly scanned the Southern Dynasties' prefectures and counties on the Jiangshan Sheji map with an almost greedy gaze, muttering, "If I can end these three hundred years of chaos and achieve achievements no less than the Qin Emperor's unification of the world, I will surely have a place in the glorious annals of history."

Yang Jian, now the Emperor of Sui, cared little about Empress Dugu and her legitimate sons and daughters, and only a small measure of his posthumous reputation. After all, he had gained power through unfair means, and with the Sima clan's example not far away, Yang Jian naturally wanted to leave a secure empire for his descendants.

However, this is easier said than done. The North-South War has lasted for three hundred years. During these three hundred years, countless heroes have wanted to unify the North and the South, unify the world, and end this chaos that has lasted for hundreds of years. But in the end, they all failed and their ambitions could not be fulfilled.

The Southern and Northern Dynasties saw successive successions in power, but no one could achieve the grand ambition of unifying the country. The Southern Dynasty, though weak, had the natural barrier of the Yangtze River to defend it, while the Northern Dynasty, though strong, still had the Turkic presence at its side, who frequently raided the border and harassed the country, tying down a considerable portion of its national strength.

Therefore, after Emperor Yang Jian of the Sui Dynasty ascended the throne, he made pacifying the border a major national policy. In the military, he built the Great Wall and stationed troops in the northern border. In diplomacy, he adopted the strategy of Changsun Sheng to divide and disintegrate the Turkic Khans Shabolue Khan, Datou Khan, Apo Khan, Tuli Khan and others.

You have to know that the Turks have never been a united front. There have been frequent infighting between uncles and nephews. Rather than viewing them as a country, it would be more appropriate to regard them as a tribal alliance.

The so-called Great Khan of the Turks was only the nominal supreme leader and could not truly control all the power of the Turkic headquarters. The power structure of the Turkic upper class was composed of the Great Khan and several small khans, and the small khans had considerable autonomy.

Because of this system, the Turkic elites engaged in fierce conflict, with the khans of both factions engaging in war several times. Changsun Sheng, forced to remain in the Turkic empire for a year, befriended the nobles, and gained a deep understanding of the animosity between the khans of the various Turkic tribes, which led him to devise a plan to divide them.

After all, the Turks did not have a strong figure like Maodun. Otherwise, with the powerful strength of the Turks, the potential for war that would erupt after they were fully integrated would be beyond the ability of the Northern Sui and Southern Chen at that time to contend with.

"In five years at most, I will have made it impossible for the Turks to threaten the northern border. Without them, I can focus on conquering the Southern Chen. The Yangtze River was able to stop Fu Jian's million-strong army, but it could not stop the ambition of the Great Sui Dynasty to quell the chaos and unify the world."

Just as Yang Jian was imagining the future when he would ride his horse to Jiangling and trample upon the southern capital, a burly old man with a face as white as powder, yellow eyebrows, a height of nine feet, and a waist as big as ten feet, gently pushed open the gate of Daxing Palace.

This burly old man was full of vigor and strength, and there was an awe-inspiring aura in his every move. When he looked around, there seemed to be a gleam of divine light in his eyes, as if he could see through good and evil and distinguish right from wrong. Anyone who came close to him was terrified.

The old man was none other than the half-brother of the previous Duke of Sui, Yang Zhong, and Yang Jian's youngest uncle. He was rumored to be the mortal form of Jidu, one of the eleven great stars of the Upper Pure Realm. He was the foremost general of the Northern Sui Dynasty, his wielding of the Dragon Prisoner Staff having smitten countless heroes. Yang Jian relied on him as his backer, earning him the title of Backer King.

King Yang Lin, with a stern expression, strode into the hall, his steps carrying a hint of thunder and lightning. He approached Yang Jian and spoke directly, "The Secretariat has just received a secret report from a spy from the Southern Chen Dynasty. The false emperor, Chen Xu, is gravely ill. No medicine can cure him, and his death is not far away."

When Emperor Yang Jian of the Sui Dynasty first ascended the throne, he established three departments and six ministries, with the Secretariat governing the Ministry of War. He also asked Prince Kaoshan Yang Lin to take charge of the Secretariat. Therefore, after receiving secret reports from the Southern Chen Dynasty, the Secretariat first handed them over to Prince Kaoshan, who then presented them to Emperor Yang Jian of the Sui Dynasty.

"Chen Xu? No medicine works?"

Yang Jian was a little surprised by what King Kaoshan said. He said, "I remember that Chen Xu is only fifty-three years old this year."

"It seems that God is not on Southern Chen's side. Ever since Chen Baxian, each generation of Southern Chen has been worse than the previous one. Brothers kill their brothers, uncles kill their nephews. After Chen Xu's death, Southern Chen will inevitably be in chaos for a while."

Yang Lin said calmly, "Chen Xu had forty-two sons. Three of them died young, leaving thirty who reached adulthood. If this situation gets out of hand, I'm afraid there won't be any need for our Great Sui army to attack. The Southern Chen Dynasty will perish from internal strife."

"I'm afraid the Southern Chen dynasty won't be defeated. Chen Xu is a man of some talent. When he first came to power, he took over the lands north of the Yangtze River and the Huai River and Si River. He then fought consecutive battles with the Northern Qi and Northern Zhou dynasties. Without his heavy losses to the Northern Qi, the Northern Zhou dynasty might not have been able to unify the north so quickly."

As the heir to the largest portion of the Northern Zhou legacy, Yang Jian said slowly, "Even outsiders like us can see the hidden dangers of the Southern Chen Dynasty. How could Chen Xu, the emperor of the Southern Chen Dynasty, not see these things? He must have made arrangements before his death to prevent those rebellious sons from causing chaos."

Yang Lin clapped his hands and sneered, "If it is really the Crown Prince Chen Shubao who ascends the throne, given his cowardly, weak, extravagant, arrogant, indecisive, and licentious character, if he becomes the ruler of the Southern Dynasty, he will surely lose the country. The day when our Great Sui Dynasty unifies the world will not be far away!"

If the Southern Dynasty had a wise ruler who maintained its power, and the entire nation had been united, relying on the natural barrier of the Yangtze River to defend itself, the Northern Sui Dynasty might not have been able to gain an advantage even if it had mobilized all its forces. However, if the Southern Dynasty had a tyrant and corrupted its government, even the most strategic passes would not have been able to defeat a single individual who wanted to retreat.

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Duke of Qi's Mansion,

Lu Shang lazily lay in the rocking chair, rocking while boredly reading the court newspaper.

"Oh, is this Chen Shubao who has succeeded to the throne?" Until he saw that the new emperor of Southern Chen had ascended the throne, his body suddenly froze, and then he looked up at the sky thoughtfully, and finally sighed.

Since Emperor Chen Houzhu has already taken the throne, then how far away can Emperor Yang of Sui be?
Although the Sui Dynasty unified the north and the south and ended the chaotic times, the ultimate winners were not Yang Jian and his son Yang Guang. Who could have imagined that the powerful and arrogant Sui Dynasty would repeat the mistakes of the pre-Qin Dynasty and perish in the second generation. In the end, Li Yuan and Li Shimin replaced the Sui Dynasty with the Tang Dynasty.

According to the "Shuo Tang" (Tang Shuo), this was destiny: Li Yuan, the reincarnation of the Golden Dragon Star, and Li Shimin, the reincarnation of the Purple Star, were destined to be the gravediggers of the Sui Dynasty. Lü Shang knew that in the mythical world, the secrets of heaven were like a net, weaving together everything, and what should not be touched must never be touched.

If one of the gods patrolling the three realms noticed and reported it to the heavens, the gods would be furious and accuse them of disobeying the heavens. Almost no one could withstand it. The last monkey who was accused of disobeying the heavens is still being pressed under the Five Elements Mountain.

However, as the eldest son of the Duke of Qi, Lu Shang really did not want to see the fall of the Sui Dynasty. As long as the Sui Dynasty was still there, he still had some weight in the eyes of others, and everything he did would be much easier.

But if the Sui Dynasty fell, his status would immediately fall into disgrace. Apart from immediately seeking refuge at sea, he could only hide in ancient caves in the mountains to avoid the eyes and ears of the new dynasty. Otherwise, his status as a relative of the previous dynasty might not necessarily mean his death, but he would definitely be under constant scrutiny.

This is very detrimental to Lü Shang's pursuit of the Tao and immortality.
"Well, we need to hurry up. Time waits for no one. Since we can't find any immortals in these famous mountains, why not go to Zhongnan Mountain and have a look? I don't believe that my fate with immortals is so shallow that there is not a single immortal willing to teach me the way to immortality."

"If Mount Zhongnan doesn't work, I'll visit Mount Tai. If Mount Tai doesn't work, I'll go to Mount Emei. I'll explore all the fairy mountains in the world."

(End of this chapter)