[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-shao-song":3,"chapter-shao-song-shao-song-chapter-469":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","Shao Song",{"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},1558635,2024,"Chapter 469: Tongren 20: The Fall of Jin — Propheta","shao-song-chapter-469",469,"\u003Cp>Tongren 20: The Fall of Jin — Propheta\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Great Jin's Prince of Wei, Fourth Prince Wanyan Wushu, had a dream that night.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the dream, the victor of that battle on the Huai River had become him; the Zhao sovereign fled from Jiankang in panic, scurrying like a rat, while he followed closely south across the river, pressing step by step, chasing all the way to Lin'an, to Mingzhou, and out to sea. Just as the hem of the Song emperor's robe was about to fall into his hands, he still managed to escape! Only he was left, tossed about by seasickness on the waves, gazing at the vast ocean with a sigh... The intense bitterness and defeat in the dream engulfed Wushu, dragging him down, sinking to the bottom of the sea. This even turned into despair.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Even in a wildly fanciful dream, he still could not catch him...\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A force of weeping, like a sudden burst of dawn light, exploded in Wushu's scalp. His eyelids twitched wildly, and he abruptly opened his eyes, finding himself ice-cold all over, his forehead and chest drenched in sweat. In the room, only his rough breathing could be heard.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Outside the tattered window, the night was deep and moonless, yet Wushu's heart was stifled and anxious, like a bottle of wine being poured back and forth at the bottom of his soul. For several nights in a row, he had dreamed of that great banner more and more often, and upon waking, he could often hear the faint sobbing of his personal guards. He had almost become a bird startled by the mere twang of a bowstring, as if in the next moment, that symbol of the Zhao sovereign would surge from the horizon amidst a throng of troops, vast and mighty like black-and-white tides, catching up to him and swallowing him whole.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pitifully, even in his dreams, he had successfully crossed the river at Huai, searched the mountains and scoured the seas all the way, with great prospects ahead, yet he still could not catch up to that Zhao sovereign. It seemed as if... this was fated! The great ambition in his heart to destroy the Southern Song was destined to be a flower in a mirror, a moon on the water.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thinking of this, Wushu could not help but shed tears. It seemed that the cold wind outside the window was also grieving with him. For a moment, even his buttocks began to ache faintly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But he could not possibly know how to express this inexplicable heroic sorrow, this feeling of being at the end of the road, to anyone. In the dead of night, Wushu held his head, feeling only a splitting headache and a restless heart. He thought: The Great Jin, since raising its army, destroyed Liao in ten years, then destroyed Song in two, capturing three successive generations of their emperors as slaves and throwing them into cellars. A grand great dynasty, vast in territory, with a multitude of subjects. The Jurchens, who had never lost a battle, how had they come to this? What was it about them that was inferior to the weak and faithless Song dynasty?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>By now, which step, which battle had he done wrong?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>None of this should have happened. Wushu found it utterly baffling in the dark, and could not help but think wildly: Something must have happened...\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That young Zhao sovereign.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Many years ago, when Wushu first saw the Prince of Kang, who had come to negotiate peace on behalf of the Song, in his second brother Zongwang's camp outside the walls of Bianjing, he felt that he was nothing like a descendant of the Zhao family. Faced with the Jurchens' mighty army, his chancellor Zhang Bangchang had long since been scared into tears, but he remained expressionless and cold-eyed. This angered his second brother Zongwang, who said the Song people were cunning, and that they might have sent a fake prince to deal with them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Then, starting from the Huai River, this Zhao sovereign, unlike his father and elder brother, had opposed him, Wushu, time and time again, stubbornly resisting in every matter. He was nothing like someone surnamed Zhao!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thinking of that Zhao sovereign who had almost fallen into his hands a few years ago but then slipped away, he had now gone from a minor irritation to a major heart ailment. But his Great Jin seemed to have offended a baleful star, its fortunes reversed, plummeting straight down.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And where had his Great Jin actually failed? Why had it risen so violently, and why was it falling so violently?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That night, Wushu covered his face in pain and anxiety. A cold starlight shone on the ground, but darkness swallowed him. What was it about him, Wanyan Zongbi, that was inferior to that Zhao Song sovereign? Was his military strategy inferior to that frivolous man's? Were his fierce generals and Iron Floaters weaker than his? Was the unity of the Jurchen nobles inferior to the scheming court in exile? Or was his reward of wealth and beautiful women to his subordinates insufficient?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In truth, during these days of fleeing in panic by day and unable to rest peacefully by night, Wushu had repeatedly looked around his court, pondering this question, but the more he pondered, the more he could not understand it. He could only console himself with the thought, \"Since there is Yu, why is there Liang?\" — a hero always brought low by another hero.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If Wushu's questions were heard by the Zhao sovereign, he would probably sneer for quite a while.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Zhao Jiu would tell Wushu that the answer was not in the court he looked around, nor in the former \"Emperor's Stockade,\" now the Supreme Capital Huining Prefecture. The real answer lay under Wushu's disdainful feet, on this land beneath him, stained red and then black with blood, and in the countless bones of the common people within it. The answer lay in the fury soaked from the blood of millions of Han people, slaughtered in massacres and war that the Jurchens turned a blind eye to, and in the roaring hatred of the wailing populace.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What Wushu could not see was this invisible force of human will. In truth, not only Wushu, but most people in Zhao Jiu's court also often failed to see this gentle strength.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But Zhao Jiu knew well that it might be scattered time and again into lamentation and tears, but it would not disappear. Instead, it would forever grow in the most humble mud, in the hearts of the most lowly commoners. They too could hate, love, cry, and laugh. This force, after a few years, a few decades, or a few centuries, would stubbornly sprout from the damp, dry yellow or black earth. Those above, like Wushu, like Zhao Jiu's ministers and nobles, might forget that blood, or might disdainfully say that the common people can be fooled but not enlightened. But Zhao Jiu was different after all; he was not a Zhao scion raised in the hands of silk-clad women. He too had once grown out of the mud.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But asking such a question of Wushu was undoubtedly laughable. Wushu was, after all, just a noble born from a barbarian tribe. From the time he was fifteen, when he followed his father Aguda into the army to rebel against Liao, what he saw was the tribe's shamans making drinking vessels from human skulls. The name Wushu in the Jurchen language also meant \"head.\" In his world, people were either two-legged sheep slaves or wolf masters.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But a wolf, after all, must eat meat. And so, a wolf can never see the meat.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That day, when Wushu hurriedly pushed the young monarch onto his horse, he heard Hela, drunk and weeping bitterly, say, \"Imperial Uncle, the Great Jin is about to fall...\" and he nearly fell off the horse. Now, thinking of it in the dead of night, it was even more chilling.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was their monarch. He should have been Aguda's direct grandson, the proud son of the Heavenly Wolf, yet he had uttered words like, \"The Great Jin can never again campaign south.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wushu deeply regretted that if he had not killed Zonghan back then, and let that war god of the Great Jin still live, how could they be in such a sorry state today, and how could the Han people be so arrogant on the battlefield?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He sent a flying dispatch offering thirty thousand gold for the heads of Han, Yue, Wu, and Zhang. Who would have thought that when Yue Fei heard of it, he posted a notice saying, \"Three strings of cash for the head of Jin Wushu.\" Wushu suddenly felt that everyone around him was sizing up his neck, and he could not help but grip his saber tightly wherever he went.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The night was deep. Wushu reluctantly closed his eyes again. In his dream, vaguely, he once again saw himself proudly declaring, \"The search of mountains and scouring of seas is complete,\" burning down Hangzhou city, and returning to Huining Prefecture laden with gold and silver treasures. But the pride in the dream did not last long; it quickly changed, as if it had to reflect the bleak reality of military defeat.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>First, he dreamed of Han Shizhong relentlessly pursuing him, then the Wu brothers breaking the Iron Floaters in the Jingxiang region, then Yue Fei... and then, defeat after defeat at Yue Fei's hands, from Yancheng to Yingchang to Zhuxian Town... No matter how Wushu exhausted himself maneuvering, losing and then fighting again, then fighting and losing again. The suffocating suffering of reality seemed to pierce through the dream... Wushu opened his eyes in terror, like bronze bells. He sat up abruptly, threw on a white robe, and instinctively reached for the saber at his side, but grasped nothing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wushu was momentarily stunned. He remembered that before going to sleep, he had placed the sword, a gift of humiliation from his enemy Yue Fei, on the table. He quickly stood up, reached for it, and held it in his hand, then sat down again, placing the cold blade on his knee.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After a long time of such restless fidgeting, he slowly drew the sword. A single teardrop suddenly fell from Wushu's pale face.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At dawn, on the distant horizon, a vast, blurry shadow of gray and black appeared, like a silent tide, slowly rolling in with the morning glow.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A ray of dawn light broke through the oppressive night sky.\u003C\u002Fp>",1763,"2026-06-06T07:46:32.508Z",1,"Novelzhen Translator","bfa55682ad20256dade731aa10ce8c84e2c8919672154a3570cd2f0ae0b4a15b","shao-song-chapter-470","shao-song-chapter-468",489,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fshao-song-cover.jpg"]