The Legend of the Condor Heroes: From Being Expelled from Peach Blossom Island

Chapter 275 The Real Jin Kingdom

A day later, Wu Chengyu went to the Taoist temple again, and sure enough, the old Taoist priest Zhenxiang had disappeared without a trace. This guy lived for over a hundred years and was Wang Chongyang's master in a real sense.

When Wang Chongyang failed to resist the Jin dynasty, he received guidance from the Taoist priest Zhenxiang and became a Taoist monk.

Therefore, this old Taoist priest had already reached a level of profound skill, and Wu Chengyu did not know how high his martial arts level was, nor could he find any reference point.

Unlike the masters in novels who teach Wu Chengyu any divine skills or pass on their life's work, the old Taoist priest made Wu Chengyu serve him diligently for a month.

Since it is Quanxing, everything is sought internally. Why should one pass on the internal strength that one has painstakingly accumulated to others?

When this guy taught Wang Chongyang, all he gave him was a copy of the Quanxing Daojing version of the Xiantian Gong (Innate Skill).

Wu Chengyu touched the mirror in his arms. It really was just a thought; the old Taoist priest had no demands on him, he had only enlightened him.

Why bother with cultivation? Even if the nameless divine skill cannot be mastered in the end, it has nothing to do with cultivation. What the old Taoist meant was that Wu Chengyu was simply stupid.

After returning to Chongyang Palace, Wu Chengyu hid in his guest room for a day and a night, recalling his last conversation with the old Taoist priest.

"Senior, you have taught me so much. Now I am at peace, but I still haven't found my own path."

"You should first learn to be a Quanxing. No one can teach you this. You've been saying these past few days that you want to see the world and all living beings, but that's all nonsense. You should first see yourself."

Since you don't know what to do, you must have thought about where to go next when you first came to the Quanzhen Sect, right? Then go for it! But at least you're not getting stuck on this now. Maybe you'll understand as you go along. Why worry so much?

What a carefree old man! He left so gracefully. But it was time for Wu Chengyu to leave the Quanzhen Sect. This place held no meaning for him anymore.

When Wu Chengyu was about to take his leave, Ma Yu and the others came out to see him off. Ma Yu handed Wu Chengyu a secret manual, which was the reward he had promised. It was the Seven Star Array Diagram that Wang Chongyang used to create the Big Dipper Formation.

In addition, Ma Yu also presented Wu Chengyu with several Taoist scriptures handwritten by Wang Chongyang as a memento, hoping that Wu Chengyu would find the true meaning of Taoism in them.

Wu Chengyu readily accepted the Seven Star Array Diagram, but he declined all the Daoist scriptures. He no longer wanted to read any Daoist scriptures, nor would he deliberately seek the Dao everywhere. These Daoist scriptures were like fleeting clouds before his eyes; Wu Chengyu could already see the clear sky through the clouds.

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After leaving Zhongnan Mountain, Wu Chengyu chose to travel westward, gradually leaving the area of ​​Chang'an City. It was at this time that he truly witnessed the lives of Han people under the rule of the Jin Dynasty.

From the moment he crossed the Dasanguan Pass, Yan Chunyu dragged him to the Qinling base. Later, he played the role of running away from his arranged marriage and searched for Feng Mofeng along the way. Wu Chengyu passed through some villages along the way, all the way to Weinan and Chang'an. There was nothing different along the way.

The common people were poor, but they could still make ends meet. Compared to the prosperous Jiangnan region, their lives were certainly more miserable, but this was still within Wu Chengyu's expectations.

The reason for this is that the area along the way is relatively prosperous, especially Chang'an, which is an ancient city with a long history and a wealthy area. Its influence is wide, and the people have more ways to make a living, at least enough to make a living.

But the further west he went, the more different the scene became, as if he had entered another world. Wu Chengyu walked for a whole day without encountering many living people.

There were some villages along the way, but they had long been abandoned. The broken walls and ruins of these villages still showed signs of past destruction, and occasionally one could see fragments of bones gnawed by wild animals. Bones exposed in the wild, not a rooster crows for miles, only one in a hundred of the people survived—the thought of it breaks one's heart.

In Wu Chengyu's memory, when the Jin Dynasty destroyed the Northern Song Dynasty, they themselves did not expect it to be so easy. They were just raiding in the south, but they inexplicably reached the gates of Bianliang (Kaifeng), the capital of the Song Dynasty. Finally, due to the blunders of Emperor Qinzong of Song, they easily entered the capital.

At that time, Emperor Qinzong of Song was acting strangely. Faced with the siege of the city by a large army, the 300,000 soldiers and civilians inside the city were determined to fight to the death. The city walls of Bianliang were practically indestructible, and the food and supplies were plentiful. The reinforcements from other places were rushing to the capital, and the Jin cavalry were not good at attacking cities.

Under these combined conditions, it would have been very difficult for the Jin people to capture Bianliang.

If it were anyone else, they would have desperately stalled for time under the guise of peace negotiations while simultaneously boosting morale and ensuring the entire army fought with all their might to defend the city.

As time went on, the loyalist army approached, and these Jin people plundered countless gold and silver treasures everywhere. They became so fat and bloated that they lost all will to attack the city and eventually dispersed.

Emperor Qinzong of Song, who was historically known for his extreme incompetence, engaged in some bizarre practices and promoted feudal superstition. He listened to slander and created the "Six Jia Divine Soldiers," using paper figures to disguise heavenly soldiers, believing that divine soldiers would descend from the sky.

Afterwards, they took the initiative to open the city gates and had some so-called golden-armored warriors perform a grand ritual at the city gate. At first, this intimidated the Jin soldiers, who dared not come forward for a long time. In fact, it had a bit of the flavor of Zhuge Liang's Empty City Stratagem.

But history often changes from a chance occurrence. A Jin archer, growing impatient with what he was seeing, suddenly shot an arrow toward the door, killing a strongman on the spot.

The remaining strongmen were all charlatans who pretended to be gods and tricked people everywhere. When they saw their own men being suddenly shot dead, they were so frightened that they all ran away, leaving the huge gates of Kaifeng wide open, quietly waiting for the Jin army to enter.

The final outcome is beyond doubt: the humiliation of Jingkang is an indelible scar in the history of China.

The Jin dynasty abducted Emperors Huizong and Qinzong, members of the Northern Song imperial family, high-ranking officials, and their families, totaling tens of thousands, to the north. They also took away the endless wealth that the Song dynasty officials and ministers had painstakingly accumulated over a century.

But at the time they were bewildered. These nomadic peoples couldn't understand how they had won, let alone how to govern the territory they had conquered.

Later, a brilliant strategist proposed that the Song people should govern the Song, and supported two puppet regimes, the pseudo-Qi and pseudo-Chu, to manage the people and continue to plunder wealth.

But after the Jurchens left, the nightmare for the people of the Northern Song Dynasty began. Historically, traitors are always more vicious and cruel towards the people they have betrayed, using extremely cruel methods and treating the people as less than human.

In order to complete the task of levying taxes assigned by the Jurchens before they left, they actually sent their yamen runners with broadswords and spears to go down to the countryside to collect money and grain and conscript men.

This wasn't the end of it. The people had been driven to the point of resorting to cannibalism and selling their children, and the puppet regime had a sudden inspiration to introduce a new tax—a tax on cannibalism and selling children.

When the Jin people returned with a large number of Jin people, they were shocked by the huge amount of gold and silver treasures offered by this puppet regime, which was like a sycophant. They were also furious at the desolation and near extinction of the ghost kingdom in the north.

They immediately dismantled the puppet regime and ordered efforts to restore the bleak northern territories. Of course, the lives of ordinary people did not improve, but the mindless looting and burning that followed was no longer rampant.

In large cities like Chang'an, the lives of people around the city are gradually recovering, but how can other regions recover from the damage so quickly? What Wu Chengyu is seeing now is the true face of the Jin Dynasty's rule.

(End of this chapter)