[Lightscreen]
[There is one more matter worth mentioning.
Without question.
Peasant uprisings.
We spoke before of Huang Chao, whose rebellion crushed the great clans in body. We spoke of Wang Xiaobo, who went further and raised the banner of equalizing wealth.
After the Humiliation of Jingkang, the Central Plains became like oil thrown onto open flame. And from that blaze rose yet another peak of peasant revolt.
In 1130, Yue Fei and Han Shizhong joined forces to drive back Wanyan Wuzhu's campaign of searching mountains and scouring seas. Both men thus earned the favor of the eunuch emperor, Zhao Gou.
That same year, Yue Fei was practically turned into a traveling fire brigade. Dispatched to Jianghuai, he suppressed Li Cheng, Zhang Yong, Cao Cheng, Kong Yanzhou and a string of other roaming forces. Cleanly. Efficiently. With results that even the court could not deny.
But those were minor troubles.
What counts as major trouble?
A full-scale peasant uprising.
As we mentioned earlier, although the Southern Song did not fully inherit the Northern Song's territory, it inherited every last bit of its oppressive taxation.
And after Jingkang, Zhao Gou had the audacity to add an "anti-Jin tax." Whether that silver ever reached the generals fighting the Jin is anyone's guess. What can be confirmed is that Zhao Gou's own lifestyle grew ever more refined.
When the emperor prospers, the people choke.
So raising a banner in revolt became less a choice and more a single-answer question. And after studying Wang Xiaobo's example, uprisings across the land erupted in endless succession. Press one down, another rose. Stamp one out, two more flared up.
The people of the Southern Song were poor. They were not fools.
When the options are starving quietly at home or going out to strip a landlord's estate bare, even a child can do the arithmetic.
The famous Southern Song minister Li Guang once said it plainly:
"If the people do not turn to banditry, they will simply sit and wait for death."
Among these uprisings, the rebellion of Zhong Xiang in 1135 was especially striking.
First, the location.
Zhong Xiang gathered his followers at Dongting Lake. From there, upstream lay Xiangyang. Downstream lay Jiangxia. Continue further, and one reached Jiangnan, where Zhao Gou had tucked himself away in uneasy peace.
It was as if someone had chosen to plant a spear directly against the emperor's chest.
Second, its nature.
Having learned from Wang Xiaobo, Zhong Xiang pushed the slogan further along class lines and swiftly gathered vast numbers of bankrupt refugees. The slogan was simple, direct, impossible to mishear:
Equalize wealth. Level noble and lowly.
In less than a year, nearly five hundred thousand people rallied to him. Under Zhong Xiang and his son, they captured nineteen counties, established a regime named Great Chu, and proclaimed Zhong Xiang King of Chu.
In the lands they occupied, officials and landlords saw their properties liquidated. Contemporary accounts described those regions as having no taxes, no corvée labor, no official courts.
For a brief moment, it looked like another world was being tested on the banks of Dongting.
But the rebel ranks were uneven. Spies slipped inside. Zhong Xiang and his son were soon captured and executed.
By common logic, that should have been the end. A head removed, a body scattered.
It did not happen.
Yang Mo, one of the leaders, took up the banner and continued the resistance with surprising skill. The flames did not go out simply because the torch changed hands.
In the end, Zhao Gou had no choice but to recall Yue Fei from the anti-Jin front. Only then was the Zhong Xiang and Yang Mo uprising finally crushed.
And here lies the most bitter truth.
If one looks closely, Zhong Xiang, Yang Mo, and Yue Fei were not so different. All three saw the suffering of the people clearly.
Zhong Xiang was born into a merchant family. As a young man, he joined the Manichaean faith and followed its teachings by giving alms in his village. Having witnessed the people's hardship, whether out of devotion or compassion, he not only gave wealth but promised that when the faith flourished, noble and lowly would be leveled and wealth equalized.
He lived this way for twenty years.
Then came Jingkang.
Zhao Gou bent his knees outward and clenched his fists inward. Bandit leaders who accepted amnesty were allowed to ravage the countryside unchecked.
Eventually, Zhong Xiang raised his banner.
Yang Mo was even more familiar. Poor in youth, stubborn in study, he earned a living ferrying goods across Dongting Lake. He knew the price of grain. He knew the look in a man's eyes when there was no rice left at home.
When obedience led only to starvation, he too chose revolt.
In the end, Yue Fei absorbed nearly half of Yang Mo's men. Some were relocated to Xiang-Han to live in peace. Others were incorporated into the army and marched north against the Jin.
Men who might have stood shoulder to shoulder found themselves forced into opposite ranks, all because of the Song court.
It is difficult not to sigh.
We cannot use today's sword to judge yesterday's officials.
Yue Fei had no choice. He needed the Song court's grain and troops to carry out his northern campaign and rescue his homeland from beneath Jin hooves.
Zhong Xiang and Yang Mo had no choice either. They were driven to the brink by a regime that devoured without restraint.
In the end, all perished under the Song.
It was the tragedy of an age.
How to resolve such a knot?
No one then knew.
More than eight hundred years later, when the eight hundred li waves of Dongting had long since settled, a teacher ground ink upon the annals of history, took the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors and the heroes of ages as his brush, and wrote a poem titled "Reading History."
Perhaps that was one answer.
Across five thousand years, only the common people truly deserve to be called the romantic heroes.
The song is not yet finished.
In the east, the sky grows pale.]
…
In the Han court at Chang'an, no one spoke for a long time.
Even Zhang Fei felt the weight of it. He scratched his head, glanced left and right, and finally said with complete sincerity,
"I understood about three words. Military Advisor, explain the rest?"
For once, the strategist did not respond immediately.
The man who never seemed at a loss.
The man who always held another plan in reserve.
The man who could watch future marvels unfold without blinking.
Now stood silent, brows tightly drawn, eyes lifted toward nothing in particular.
Actually thinking.
Zhang Fei turned slowly toward Liu Bei.
Liu Bei did not pretend otherwise. He spread his hands openly.
"I can taste some of the sorrow," he said. "But as for most of its meaning, I grasp perhaps one or two parts out of ten."
Zhang Fei slapped his thigh and laughed.
"So Big Brother understands about as much as I do. That makes me feel better."
Liu Bei did not argue. He carefully copied the poem down and read it twice more. In the end, he exhaled softly.
"I may not understand the poem," he said, "but Zhong Xiang and Yang Mo are easy to understand."
That part required no explanation.
Had the future not already said it? Ji-Han was filled with men forced by circumstance.
They were not taxed to death like the people of the Two Songs. But they too had felt the walls closing in.
Liu Bei himself was proof.
If he did not step forward and shoulder the banner of restoring the Han, who would?
Liu Zhang, guarding Yi Province as if history might forget to knock?
Han Sui, forever calculating how to survive another season?
Cao Cao, holding the Son of Heaven hostage while lecturing the realm about loyalty?
Or perhaps the King of Wu, bowing for titles so frequently that one wondered whether his spine had permanently adapted to the angle?
Zhang Fei snorted.
"Who doesn't understand? That eunuch emperor doesn't care about the people. Does he expect the people to carve his name into ancestral tablets with gratitude?"
He folded his arms, warming up.
"What virtues are they supposed to remember? His creativity in inventing new taxes? His expertise in strategic retreat? His talent for recalling the only general actually fighting the enemy just to clean up his own mess?"
No one interrupted him.
Even Liu Bei remained silent.
Zhang Fei shook his head as if trying to fling away ill fortune, then suddenly brightened with reckless enthusiasm.
"It's a pity that method of time travel the youngster mentioned is probably nonsense."
"Otherwise we could negotiate."
He began counting on his fingers.
"Give them Zhang Jiao. Take Yue Fei."
He paused, reconsidered.
"No. That's unfair to us."
"I'll go to Xu Chang myself, drag Cao Cao out by the collar, and offer Prime Minister Cao in exchange for their Young Protector Yue."
He grinned broadly.
"One overqualified usurper for one loyal general. Seems like the Southern Song would be the one getting a bargain."
Liu Bei closed his eyes briefly.
For once, even he did not know whether to correct his third brother or simply let history deal with the consequences.