[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-overthrowing-the-ming":3,"chapter-overthrowing-the-ming-overthrowing-the-ming-chapter-42":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","Overthrowing the Ming",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2289269,4476,"Chapter 42: Mao'er Dam","overthrowing-the-ming-chapter-42",42,"\u003Cp>Mao'er Dam is not very high, and since horse bandits have traveled this path for years, the road is not difficult to traverse; they slowly ascended the mountain.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>By the time Wu Zhuge and his party were halfway there, several horses had already run out to greet them; the person who came was the horse bandits' second-in-command, Liu Jianchen, which showed that there were still some hidden sentries in these woods.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Oh my, I haven't seen Master Wu in a while, and your physique has become increasingly robust!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Liu Jianchen was not tall and was riding a large jujube-red horse; this horse was extremely tall, with a shoulder height of about five feet, its coat lustrous as if coated in grease, its chest broad, its hindquarters rounded, and its four legs slender and powerful—truly a majestic sight.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"You thieving dog, what nonsense are you spouting while holding your tongue? Your grandfather here has never relied on his physique to make a living; I rely on my brains to get by. Do you think my reputation as 'Wu the Strategist' was blown here by a strong wind?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wu Zhuge laughed and scolded.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Oh, look at my mouth, I’ve buttered the horse's leg instead of its rump; what the master is scolding is...\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Hahaha...\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Hehehe...\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Liu Jianchen was a classic smiling tiger who knew how to talk; these words, combined with his gesture of slapping his own mouth, caused both sides to burst into laughter.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The group merged into one and headed together into the mountain valley; when Liu Jianchen turned his horse around, he noticed Li You, who looked like a scholar, and took a few extra glances at the bow case on his back, though he did not ask further.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Most people's gazes along the way were fixed on Liu Jianchen's jujube-red horse; this horse was named \"Nine-Spot Leopard\" and belonged to the Hequ breed—it was indeed a rare, prized steed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In this era, men loved good horses just as they loved luxury cars in a past life; the difference was that horses in this time were often far more expensive than the luxury cars of that era, not to mention a Hequ prize horse like Liu Jianchen's.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Whenever good horses are mentioned, most people always think of the various blood-sweating horses from Europe, the Soviet Union, or Japan; in any case, China is never included.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yet Li You knew that the horse breeds of our country during the Han and Tang dynasties, and especially the Great Song period, had always looked down upon the surrounding nations; there was a record in Dunhuang from the Han dynasty of a stallion king that stood six feet three inches tall.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A Han-era six feet three inches is about 1.45 meters; such a horse, which was recorded in the annals of the Han dynasty, would only be considered a third-rate horse by the standards of locally bred horses in the early Song dynasty.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>According to the \"History of Chinese Horse Breeding\" and the \"History of Ming,\" the Ming dynasty had 700,000 official horses at its peak, mainly concentrated in Hebei, Henan, and the Jiangzhe region; by the mid-to-late period, the situation was turbulent, the horse administration was neglected, and the number of horses had dwindled significantly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>During the Tianqi reign, there were only about 40,000 to 50,000 official horses, but the number of horses among the common people was at least double that of the official ones, only they were all used by roving bandits and peasant armies.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>During the peak of the Qing dynasty, there were 800,000 horses in Henan and Hebei provinces alone, and by 1935, the number reached 1.4 million.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>However, the later generations' perception that China lacked horses stems from the narrative of the 1980s that touted the Great Song economy; the root lies with the Japanese, whose main point was that if even the wealthy, prosperous, and civilized Great Song could not raise good horses and could not resist the barbarians, then what was the point of resisting Japan, which was countless times more powerful than the barbarians?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Then these people fantasized that the Central Plains were fundamentally unsuitable for raising horses, citing the contradiction of having many people and little land, concluding that only England and France were suitable for raising horses; this kind of fallacy is similar to the \"China is oil-poor\" theory that was rampant in the early days of our Party's founding of the nation.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The famous early 20th-century Japanese historian and political commentator Naitō Konan, one of the founders of the \"Kyoto School,\" had his \"Theory of the Movement of the Cultural Center,\" \"Theory of the Eastward Shift of Earth's Qi,\" and \"Theory of the Song Dynasty as the Modern Era,\" while Miyazaki Ichisada had his \"Theory of Simple Peoples\"—the ultimate theme of all these was that it was Japan's destiny to conquer China.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>We young people must deeply understand what it means for imperialism to never give up its heart to destroy us.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Putting aside these wild thoughts, Li You soon followed the group to the outside of the mountain stronghold...\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Mao'er Dam bandits were, by nature, water bandits; the leaders, named Liu Jianbao and Liu Jianchen, were cousins. They were originally fishermen who occasionally ferried people, but they mostly engaged in the simple business from \"The Tale of River Heroes\" (Water Margin) of \"reaching the middle of the river and asking if you want to eat board-knife noodles or wontons.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Later, as the world became too chaotic, they specialized in lurking by the river to plunder, and as they grew larger, they gradually gained influence; in short, they had committed almost every crime in the \"Great Ming Code\" except for the cover page.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In recent years, they also began to plunder land routes and slaughtered the entire household of a provincial graduate in Da'an, which provoked a suppression campaign by the government; after losing many of their own brothers, they fled to the border of Mianxian to establish themselves.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Because they dared to fight and struggle, and many of their men had become hardened, veteran bandits, they relied on their ruthlessness in this area to slowly grow in the land and water routes around the Ju River, Da'an River, and Yang River, becoming the third-party force after the Longmen Stronghold and Flagpole Mountain.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Furthermore, they were in cahoots with the Qingyang postmaster Xing Youdao, and in daily life, they were the best informed; they also frequently went out to plunder and split the spoils with Piggy Boss and Wu Zhuge.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Most mountain bandits at the end of the Ming dynasty were not a major threat, mainly focusing on robbing wealthy households and harassing commoners, and there were also many internal feuds and skirmishes among them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As the saying goes, one mountain cannot hold two tigers, but there were no fewer than twenty mountain bandit groups of various sizes at the intersection of the three southwestern counties of Hanzhong Prefecture; besides the Guanzi Mountain group, the larger ones were Piggy Boss and Wu Zhuge. Both sides had long looked at each other with mutual disgust, but since their strengths were evenly matched, they had been enduring each other.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>With the arrival of the Liu Jianbao brothers this summer, these unreasonable newcomers, a delicate tripartite balance was formed; both sides wanted to win over Liu Jianbao to wipe out the other.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As they gradually entered the stronghold, the Mao'er Dam mountain fortress gradually appeared in Li You's field of vision.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Mao'er Dam stronghold was situated on a river beach deposited on the northern bank of a river channel framed by two mountains; it was not strategically dangerous, and there were watchtowers with wooden sheds on both ridges, but fortunately, this area was extremely flat.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Compared to Longmen Stronghold and Flagpole Mountain, Mao'er Dam was the most inhumane; what they loved most was slaughtering villages. Longmen Stronghold and Flagpole Mountain generally left villagers alive to \"shear the sheep.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But Mao'er Dam would leave not even a chicken or dog alive; women and children were all killed, and the able-bodied men were usually sold to Cao Er, so relatively speaking, Mao'er Dam made the people of Mianxian turn pale at the mere mention of its name.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After passing through the rather strict wooden gate, a pungent smell of horse urine hit them; Li You rode his horse and looked over. On the south side were two rows of low thatched huts, and in the middle was a brick and earth house, gray and drab, which looked like it had been there for some years; judging by the eaves and roof tiles, it was likely a small Taoist temple in the past.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At the east end was a stable, and at the west end, there was cooking smoke, which was likely the kitchen. The ground in front of the door was trampled flat, and there were messy items like dirt piles, horse obstacles, firewood piles, and arrow targets, which were likely used as obstacles for daily horse training.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The layout was very simple; after all, the total number of people at Mao'er Dam was no more than thirty or forty.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wu Nai and Wang Qiong were clearly not here for the first time and were extremely familiar with the road conditions; they led their horses to the stable on the west side, and a Mao'er Dam bandit quickly came over to take them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Go, go, go, the weather is good today, and the 'Top Beam' is currently sifting through people.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Liu Jianchen invited Wu Zhuge, then glanced at Li You and interjected: \"This brother looks unfamiliar? Does he look like a scholar?\"\u003C\u002Fp>",1608,"2026-06-20T03:32:06.992Z",1,"Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite","8b974fd13ce318d4a77e3955246e921f1d6f4cea1087e50e3ddbc65418510004","overthrowing-the-ming-chapter-43","overthrowing-the-ming-chapter-41",71,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Foverthrowing-the-ming-cover.jpg"]