Chapter 75

"Forcing Li Li Shimin to sign a treaty under the city walls."

"The entire Tang dynasty emptied its treasuries to bribe the Turks!"

"A treaty signed under the city walls—what an unprecedented humiliation!"

"Thus came the second year of Zhenguan, when Li Jing crushed the Turks on a snowy night! In one battle, he wiped away the prior shame!"

Su Qiao watched Commander Commander Jiang Huang silently, then spoke clearly:

"Does Director Commander Commander Jiang know when the next great humiliation for all Han people will occur?"

The moment his words fell,

Commander Commander Jiang Huang instantly shot up from his stool.

"How could I not know!"

"Naturally, it is the Shame of Jingkang!"

The Shame of Jingkang!

This is an unprecedented humiliation carved into the bones of every Han person under heaven!

To a certain extent,

it completely reversed the historical trajectory of Han cultural development.

Since the Song dynasty, the Han people's pursuit of "integrity" has reached an almost pathological degree.

Su Qiao nodded slightly.

"Indeed, it is the Shame of Jingkang!"

"How weak were the two Song dynasties? They conscripted refugees as the Imperial Guard, using conscription as famine relief, making this their national policy!"

"And the result?"

"After the Shame of Jingkang, they were forcibly driven to produce Yue Yue Wumu!"

"One hundred thousand soldiers of the Yue Army, eight thousand Beiwei troops, forcibly fought their way from the Yangtze River to Huanglong Prefecture!"

"Even the Son of Heaven was captured."

"Did the soldiers' morale, fighting spirit, and the people's hearts not collapse?"

"They collapsed!"

"But precisely because the fighting spirit, military morale, and the people's hearts were all shattered,

"Yue Yue Wumu emerged! Thus the Yue Army came into being!"

As soon as these words were spoken,

Zhu Zhu Zhu Zhu Yuanzhang, in the adjacent cell, suddenly found his eyes lighting up.

Even Commander Commander Jiang Huang stared at Su Qiao in stunned disbelief and asked,

"Lord Su, from the very beginning, did you intend to recreate the Shame of Jingkang, to force the descendants of Great Ming into action?"

Su Qiao nodded slightly.

"Yes!"

"When the Han do not know shame, they are invincible once they do!"

What Commander Commander Jiang Huang did not know was that similar events had played out several times after the Hongwu reign.

..... . 0

From the Oirat student to a century of humiliation.

The Han people would absolutely decline.

For no nation remains eternally strong, just as no river maintains a constant flow!

But the Han must never be allowed to feel humiliation.

For this is the most terrifying thing on this planet.

Su Qiao looked at Commander Commander Jiang Huang with iron resolve and declared loudly,

"If Director Commander Commander Jiang does not believe me, I can do nothing about it."

"But I can swear before Director Commander Commander Jiang,

"When those Tartars beyond the pass behead one Prince of Great Ming, they will celebrate by adjusting their caps!"

"The morale and fighting spirit of our Great Ming army will scatter!"

"When they behead two Princes, they will cheer with joy, believing they are about to be elevated into the Temple of Warriors by the blood of the Zhu family!"

"But wait until they have beheaded the twenty-eighth Prince, the twenty-ninth, the thirtieth."

"Just see if they can still laugh!"

"No one knows the terrifying power of the Han better than the Tartars themselves."

"Just watch how all the Han under heaven will treat him!"

"Just watch how the Han soldiers under his command will act!"

"Great Ming is not the two Song dynasties."

"Throughout the entire Song dynasty, they never recovered the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun, nor gained lands for raising horses!"

"Our Great Ming is entirely different!"

"We will forcibly produce a Yue Yue Wumu who commands Shanhai Pass and possesses over one hundred thousand warhorses."

"I refuse to believe those Tartars could advance even half a step beyond the Great Wall!"

Having spoken,

Su Qiao lifted his wine gourd, drained its contents in one gulp, and then, fully satisfied with food and drink, slumped onto the table and fell into a deep sleep.

He did not notice in the slightest that Commander Commander Jiang Huang before him had frozen in place.

The entire Imperial Prison fell into a deathly silence.

76, The Bloody Battle of Xingshan!

Next to the Imperial Prison.

Zhu Zhu Zhu Zhu Yuanzhang sat in the adjacent cell, his face iron-green.

Everyone around seemed as if a pause button had been pressed.

After a long while.

Zhu Zhu Zhu Zhu Yuanzhang finally looked at the chat group before him and sent a message on his own.

Emperor Taizu:

"Defeat in Liaoxi; do not delay, report immediately upon receipt."

Emperor Sizong:

"Your son-subject obeys the imperial decree."

Leaving the Imperial Prison, Zhu Zhu Zhu Zhu Yuanzhang seemed to have aged over a decade overnight.

He stumbled forward with faltering steps into the Hall of Heavenly Purity.

Fu Kong Youde and others knelt silently before Zhu Zhu Zhu Zhu Yuanzhang.

Just as the generals from Huaixi thought Old Zhu would fly into a rage as he usually did.

They saw Zhu Zhu Zhu Zhu Yuanzhang wave his hand and say,

"All of you return; let me have a moment of peace alone..."

The words had barely fallen.

The people present first stared in bewilderment.

Then, each as if granted a great pardon, they quietly withdrew from the Hall of Heavenly Purity.

In the vast Hall of Heavenly Purity.

Only Zhu Zhu Zhu Zhu Yuanzhang remained.

Watching Zhu Zhu Zhu Zhu Zhu Zhu Youjian from another spacetime report on the situation in Liaoxi.

"The Yang Yang Yang Jian slaves have breached the Dalinghe dike."

"The roads are muddy and impassable."

"Heavy snow in Liaoxi."

Having fought a hundred battles and crawled out of piles of corpses, Zhu Zhu Zhu Zhu Yuanzhang knew the moment he saw these memorials.

This battle, the Ming army had already lost.

The dragon sons and grandsons of the Zhu clan were destined to die on the battlefield.

After this battle, every family of the Great Ming's imperial clan would don mourning clothes.