Chapter 201: Political Tsunami

Lin'an, the Hall of State Affairs.

When Shi Miyuan placed the manifesto intercepted from Jiankang Prefecture on the table, his fingers were steady. He had spent a lifetime in office, climbing from Vice Minister of Rites to the position of Grand Councilor of Military and State Affairs, experiencing Han Tuozhou's arrogance, the frenzy of the Northern Expedition, the bloodshed of the coup, and the humiliation of the peace treaty; each event alone was enough to shatter a person of weak will. He did not shatter. But this sheet of paper made the fingers that had remained steady for forty years curl slightly within his sleeve.

He had read the contents of the manifesto no fewer than ten times. He knew every character, but combined, they produced a power he had never seen in official documents, censors' impeachment memorials, or even the treasonous writings of rebels and traitors—it was not intimidation, not abuse, not that kind of literary cold mockery. It was a cold, knife-like logic. It stated that the Southern Song imperial house were vassals of the Jin state, a definition more fatal than any insult. Shi Miyuan could refute accusations of "selling out the country" in the court, could package "joint defense against the grasslands" as "allies bound by lip and teeth" in the gazettes, and could mobilize censors to write a hundred congratulatory memorials praising the sage to prove that Zhao Kuo was still destined by Heaven. But he could not refute a single factual statement in the manifesto. Had the annual tribute doubled? Yes. Were Tangzhou and Dengzhou ceded? Yes. Was Han Tuozhou's head sent in a box to the Jin? Yes. Did the state letter admit to "causing harm to the nation and opening hostilities"? Yes. Was the "military aid" of three million taels written into the treaty? Yes. Was the Yangtze waterway opened to the Jin? Yes. None of these things were fabricated.

What was even more terrifying than the manifesto itself was its method of dissemination. It did not travel the official roads, was not posted at city gates, nor was it openly sold in teahouses. Instead, like mercury pouring into the earth, it seeped along the rice sacks of the Yangtze canal boatmen, along the needlework boxes of dye-house female workers, along the bamboo carrying poles of dock porters, drilling into places the court's hand had never reached and never thought to reach. Shi Miyuan's advisors suggested immediately ordering the seizure and destruction, but how to seize? A rough sheet of paper in a rice sack, half a log in a stove, a few mantras passed from mouth to mouth by dye-house workers—how to seize? Arrest all hundreds of thousands of boatmen along the Yangtze? Raid the homes of all millions of weaving households in Jiangnan? It could not be done.

The advisors then suggested ordering a ban on speech, executing the nine relations of anyone spreading demonic rumors. Shi Miyuan remained silent for a long time. He knew that executing nine relations could not frighten those who could no longer live. He could not plant spies in every rice sack, station secret agents in every dye house, or erect firewalls on every Tian Geng. The organization calling itself the "Jiangnan People's Revolutionary Committee" was using a logic he had never read in Confucian classics to tear the situation he had painstakingly maintained to shreds.

Zhenjiang, the south bank of the Yangtze.

Xia Zhen, the Deputy Commander of the Palace Guards stationed at Zhenjiang, received a military order sent from Lin'an; the content was simple—immediately seize all privately held writings within the army, strictly forbid discussing current politics, and punish violators according to military law. Xia Zhen read the military order twice, then placed it on the desk. He was the one who had personally arranged the assassination of Han Tuozhou outside Yongjin Gate on the day of the coup, one of Shi Miyuan's most trusted commanders of the Imperial Guard; he knew what lay behind this order. The slogan spreading from the southwestern mountainous region of Jiankang had already seeped into the major camps of the garrison along the river like a plague.

The content of the manifesto had already spread privately within the Zhenjiang camp. It was not the version written on paper, but one orally adapted—removing the flowery parallelism and allusions, retaining only the most critical definition: "The Song Shi are the Jin people's dogs." This sentence struck the deepest pain in the hearts of the Zhenjiang garrison. Their comrades had died under the walls of Lingbi, contracted plague under the walls of Suzhou, and suffered frostbite under the walls of Dengzhou, only for the court to say the Northern Expedition was "causing harm to the nation and opening hostilities." The dead received no pensions, the wounded received no medical care, and the living had their military pay withheld. Yet the annual tribute had doubled, and the indemnity had collected an extra three million taels; they knew better than anyone where that money came from.

While seizing documents within the army, a Commander under Xia Zhen found a crumpled piece of paper under an old soldier's pillow, on which a few lines were scrawled crookedly; it was the ending of the manifesto—"First, oppose the Song; second, resist the Jin; third, establish independence. Do not bow as vassals, do not pay tribute, do not arrange marriages, do not cede land." The Commander handed this paper to Xia Zhen and asked if he should punish according to military law. Xia Zhen looked down at the paper, sat behind the desk in silence for a long time, then folded the paper and put it into his own sleeve. He spoke a sentence: "This is demonic rumor; seize and destroy it. Considering this is your first offense, no further pursuit. You may go out." The Commander was stunned, and in the end dared not ask anything.

The lamp flickered in the river wind. Xia Zhen sat behind the desk, gazing at the unseen opposite bank in the night outside the tent, and began to repeatedly ponder a question in his heart—whose cause were the dry bones under the walls of Lingbi fighting for? He had never thought this question before; soldiers do not ask why, only how. But now he began to think. And once he began to think, he could not stop.

The south bank of the Huaihe, Guangzhou.

The headquarters of the Jingdong Pacification and Expedition Office was shrouded in a gloomy silence. A demobilized veteran of the Northern Expedition stood under the old locust tree at the village entrance, reading a passage from the manifesto to a group of conscripted civilians being mobilized to build the defense line, his voice hoarse.

"The dry bones under Lingbi are not yet cold, the bloodstains in Dengzhou are not yet dry, yet the teahouses of Lin'an have already switched to talking of romance and wind."

The civilians did not applaud, nor did they cheer. They were too poor, too poor even to have the energy to be agitated. But their eyes changed. Before, their eyes were gray, like the muddy flats of the Huaihe frozen in winter. Now, there was something in their eyes—not hope, but hate. Hate is something harder than hope. Hope will be worn smooth by reality; hate only becomes sharper the more it is ground. At the Jiankang docks, a boatman carrying packages told his companions about the manifesto; the companions told the captain of the canal boat; when the captain rowed to the opposite bank, he told the Han merchants running goods within the Jin Territory.

The north bank of the Huaihe, Sizhou, the Jin army's southern line camp.

He Shi Lie Zhizhong saw a copy of the manifesto during a routine military council. His advisor had translated the manifesto into Jurchen, and the wording had been made as mild as possible, but the core slogan could not be softened—"The Jin barbarians are the eternal enemies of Huaxia; for all our people, driving out the Tartar barbarians must be our duty." When he said this, his voice was very light, as if speaking of something unrelated, then he put down the manifesto, raised his head, and swept his single eye over the generals seated there.

"This manifesto is not Han Tuozhou's Northern Expedition manifesto. Han Tuozhou wanted land and merit. This organization wants the lives of all of us, the life of our entire Great Jin. They call the Song Shi dogs, not because they hate the Song Shi, but because they intend to fight two enemies at once—us and the Song Shi. Not a single word in this manifesto is written for the Lin'an court; every word is written for the tens of millions of starving poor in Jiangnan. The poor are more terrifying than any army. Armies will scatter; the poor will not. Once they believe, they will never kneel again."

His final deployment was this: "Send people into Song Territory to spread the news: the Jiangnan base is the political enemy of Shi Miyuan. Let the Song Ren kill the Song Ren themselves." This was the most effective response strategy he could think of as a soldier, but he knew clearly in his heart that what the manifesto said was not political rumor, but fact. And fact is the only thing that cannot be eliminated by any strategy.

Shanyin, by the Jinghu.

Lu You had been ill for a long time. After the failure of the Northern Expedition, his body was like an old tree drained of sap, withering day by day. Lying on his sickbed, he listened to his grand-nephew read the full text of the manifesto, then he closed his eyes and remained silent for a long time. When he opened his eyes again, he spoke two sentences. The first was for his grand-nephew: "Put away my poems. Do not burn them—put them away. In the future, if someone asks what the Northern Expedition was like, show it to them. Tell them that some wrote poems for it, and some died for it." The second was a murmur to himself, his voice extremely faint, as if speaking only to himself, his lips moving slightly: "But I grieve to see the nine provinces not united—the nine provinces are not the nine provinces of one family or one surname. I wrote this sentence sixty years ago; only today do I understand what it truly means."

He had his grand-nephew help him up and sit by the window. Outside, the winter scenery of Jinghu remained unchanged; thin ice covered the lake surface, the reeds were withered and yellow and lying flat, and the distant mountain shadows stood silent in the twilight. He picked up his brush and wrote a line of characters on the low table before his sickbed. It was not a poem, just a sentence—"The red flags roll wildly in the west wind. Today I finally know: this wind is not the west wind, but the east wind." This became the last line he left in the world.

Yanshan, Piao Spring.

Three days after the manifesto reached Yanshan, Xin Qiji put on his armor and went out.

He was already sixty-two years old; his graying hair stuck out from under his iron helmet. He held the fifty jin heavy iron spear in his hand; the spearhead no longer had the cold light of his youth, but the spear shaft was still as steady. He walked a circle in the courtyard. Tian Hu stood at the courtyard gate, daring not to stop him, yet daring not not to stop him. Xin Qiji stopped at the courtyard gate and gazed at the winter sky over Yanshan. He said, "I am going to Jiankang." Tian Hu's throat tightened; he said, "You are sixty-two." Xin Qiji turned to look at him: "What about sixty-two? Jiang Ziya was appointed prime minister at eighty. I am sixty-two; I can still kill a few more Jin thieves." Tian Hu knelt down and kowtowed.

Xin Qiji did not look at Tian Hu kneeling on the ground. He leaned on his iron spear, standing in the cold wind, gazing at the northern horizon. He did not speak any heroic words; he simply stood there silently. In the distance, at the edge of the sky over Yanshan, the clouds hung low. The wind blew over, carrying the scent of pine resin and winter grass. Xin Qiji squinted his eyes. At the end of his gaze, it seemed a red flag was rolling in the wind—that red was not the red of the setting sun, but the red of fresh blood, the red of new life, the color of the fierce fire that burns away the entire old world.

Zhongdu, Daxing Prefecture.

When the manifesto reached the Jin central government, Jin Zhangzong Wanyan Jing was reviewing memorials to the throne in the side hall of Daxing Hall. The memorial came from the border, stating that a demonic rumor had recently appeared within Song Territory, and a copy was attached. Wanyan Jing unfolded the copy and read it character by character. When he read "If the Jin people exist, the Song are servants; if the Jin people perish, the Song are sacrificed," his hand stopped. The judgment of this manifesto matched his fear exactly—he did not fear the Southern Song; the Southern Song was a donkey with its neck tied, pulling the mill until death, too afraid to kick. But this manifesto was not written by the Southern Song court; it was written by the organization calling itself the "Jiangnan People's Revolutionary Committee," which feared no Jin, recognized no treaty, and viewed both Song and Jin as enemies.

Wanyan Jing slowly put down the manifesto and said a sentence to Wan Yan Guo, who stood by: "We just signed a peace treaty, thinking the southern line would be stable for at least five years. Now it seems we may not even have five months."

Lin'an, the Hall of State Affairs.

Shi Miyuan finally made his decision. He read that manifesto, which he had already read no fewer than ten times, once more, then pushed his chair back, stood up, walked to the window of the Hall of State Affairs, and turned his back on all his advisors. His voice was low, but clear.

"Declare the Jiangnan base as 'demonic rebels.' Anyone spreading their words shall be punished as a traitor, with execution of nine relations. From today on, ban private discussion of current politics among the people. Order the Jianghuai circuits to strictly guard against infiltration by demonic rebels; any intercepted demonic documents must be immediately burned, not a single character to be kept."

The advisors bowed and accepted the order. No one raised an objection. But after accepting the order, one person asked in a low voice: "My lord, if the demonic documents are like a wildfire sweeping the grasslands, impossible to burn out, impossible to guard against, what then?"

Shi Miyuan turned around and looked at the advisor who had asked. His face was calm, but his eyes were like lead. He did not answer. Because he knew the answer—if the wildfire truly started, this rotten wooden dam of the old era could not stop it at all. But he had no choice. He was the prime minister of this old era; he must stand on the dam of the old era until the day the flood swept him away.