This article is excerpted from my Himalayan audio VIP column "Witty Words on Heroes" "The Vengeful Male God: Lie's Husband Wu Zixu" (6)
In the last audio class, we talked about the many all-powers that Wu Zixu possessed, and how he helped the small state of Wu in the East China Sea to rise rapidly, thus defeating the traditional power of Chu, and in order to avenge his perverse actions, he dug up the grave of the enemy King Chu Ping, leaving behind a highly controversial three hundred whips, but in any case, Wu Zixu finally ended this vendetta that entangled him for the first half of his life. Today we will talk about the enmity and hatred of the second half of his life, and the second half of Wu Zixu's life is even more tragic, because in the first half of his life, his enemies are only the traitors of the Chu Kingdom, and in the second half of his life, his enemies are everyone, because everyone is still alive in the Spring and Autumn Period, but he has come to the Warring States and has the strategic thinking of the Warring States people. Isn't it cool to have ideas that are ahead of its time, you might ask? No, it wasn't cool at all, and it was the greatest tragedy of his life. Please listen to me slowly tell you the specific reasons.
Pictured: Portrait of Wu Zixu
At the beginning, after the Wu army had made a world-shaking situation in the Chu state, seeing that the Chu people were gradually slowing down and supported by Qin foreign aid, Wu Zixu and Wu Wang Lu accepted it when they saw it was good, and withdrew their troops and retreated to the State of Wu. After that, South China entered a decade-long period of relative peace.
But at this time, the death of a person broke this tranquility, the land of southern China was once again plunged into the fire of war, and after losing Sun Wu, the old driver, the fate of Wu Guo and Wu Zixu became an out-of-control train, rumbling in the direction of the cliff.
Originally, wuguo had a neighbor called Yueguo, which was in the area of today's Zhejiang and Fujian, and the capital was in today's Shaoxing. The Yue people are probably of the same origin as the Wu people, not only the customs are similar, and they are all tattoos with broken hair, but after the culture is weaker, they are known as not walking in vain, which means that there are no shoes, which is called barefoot not afraid to wear shoes. Therefore, it always harassed and provoked in the rear when Wu Guo went out on a campaign, and constantly tested on the edge of being beaten, and at this moment, the under-beaten Yue Wang Yun often died, and Wu Wang Lu felt that this was an opportunity, so he ignored Wu Zixu's persuasion and led his army south to attack Yue.
Photo: Broken hair tattoo
It's not good to do this. In the Spring and Autumn Period, the ancient rituals were still observed and the mourning was cut down, which violated the bottom line of the spirit of the times, at least at the time, which was an act despised by the upright gentleman.
What is even more despicable is that Wu Wang lu not only took advantage of the danger of others, but also did not win the battle. It turned out that the newly enthroned Yue Wang Gou Jian was even more shameless and undisciplined than he was, and even sent a large number of death squads to perform suicide in front of the Wu Army. Such a pervert, it is really ruined, Wu Jun has not fought much in the past ten years, as soon as he came up with this kind of tragic and bloody scene, he was suddenly messy, as if he had hit the stun skill in the game "Glory of the King", and entered the sluggish mode. Yue Wang Gou Jian seized the opportunity to wave his army to cover up the killing, and the Wu army was suddenly defeated, and Wu Wang Lu was also cut off by the Yue people in the process of defeat and escape, and the wound infected and died.
Before his death, King Wu created Wu Zixu the title of Xiangguo and entrusted his son Fu Cha to Wu Zixu, asking them to avenge themselves and kill the next three abuses! Fu Cha and Wu Zixu cried and nodded in agreement. Since then, Wu Zixu has fallen into a cycle of enmity and hatred, he simply does not even return home, every day soaked in the Taihu Lake to build ships and train soldiers, waste sleep and forget to eat, every day to live an ascetic life, inspirational revenge; and Fu Cha is more interesting, he sent a person to stand at the door of his room every day to remind him: Fu Cha, have you forgotten that the Yue King killed your father? Fu Cha cried out loudly: Don't dare to forget, don't dare to forget! He insisted on this for three years, answering the same words every day, and he did not feel annoyed.
As a result, the husband was almost bored, and Gou Jian felt annoyed, he felt that instead of being remembered by thieves, it was better to attack the wu state first, so he launched a large-scale attack on the State of Wu, and as a result, there was a big battle on the Taihu Lake, and Gou Jian was almost completely destroyed, so he had to take the last five thousand soldiers to retreat to Huiji Mountain and barely hold on to this last breath.
Wu Zixu took advantage of the victory to pursue, and led an army of 100,000 to surround Jishan and leave him with no breath.
At this point, the Yue Kingdom was basically finished, this was a perfect military victory, The Great Enemy of King Wu saw the retribution, and the Yue Kingdom suddenly began to threaten on the hidden front.
It turned out that Fan Li, the minister of State of Vietnam, was the general person in charge of the intelligence work of the State of Vietnam, and he not only had a powerful intelligence network, but also learned the magic of face-to-face from his teacher Ji Ran, and he could see at a glance that The Dazai of the State of Wu, that is, the Minister of Internal Affairs, Bo Yao, was a traitor who was greedy for money and lustful and had a monopoly on power, so he asked Gou Jian to send money to Bo Yao, and also to send beautiful women, heavy bleeding books, sugar-coated shells, one after another.
As we mentioned earlier, Bo Yao was also a deceased vassal of the Chu State, and Wu Zixu was a fellow countryman, and both of them had a blood feud with the Chu State, and they were friends with the same disease. But Wu Zixu did not expect that Bo Yao would be easily bribed by Gou Jian and Fan Li. Bo Yao was greedy for wealth, second, jealous of Wu Zixu Xianneng, and third, he also felt that there was no need to kill the Yue kingdom, wouldn't it be better to keep it and continue to squeeze money? Therefore, Bo Yao found Wu Wang Fuchai and persuaded Fu Cha to let go of the Gou And allow the Yue state to surrender and become a vassal state of Wu.
However, Wu Zixu, as an avenger and spy master, of course, is well aware of the trick between Gou Jian and Fan Li, so he urges Fu Cha to kill Gou Jian to avenge his father and destroy the Yue Kingdom to avoid future troubles.
But Wu Wangfucha had his own ideas. Instead of avenging his father, he wanted to rush out of Jianghuai, go to China, enter the Central Plains market, and compete with Qi Jin for world domination. If the Yue King's dog is forced to jump off the wall, kill all the beautiful women, and burn the national treasury, wouldn't it be a pity? And the Wu army will also pay the price under the desperate counterattack of the other side, which will take time. This will not be good for future wars of hegemony, and it will also be detrimental to the reputation of one's own hegemony.
Wu Zixu thought that Fu Cha's idea was quite ridiculous, the Chu State and the Yue State were both centuries-old sworn enemies of the State of Wu, although the two were defeated, but the strength still existed, wu Guo did not first completely deal with these two near-elbow scourges, but went far away to the Central Plains to fight for hegemony, is this not a fool's errand? Unfortunately, Fu Cha coveted a false name, but he did not listen, and laughed disapprovingly, saying that if the Vietnamese country is destroyed, in the future, the widows will engage in military exercises, who will be the audience?
It can be seen from this that at the turn of the Spring and Autumn Warring States, Wu Zixu has led the times and come to the Warring States with annexation as the main theme; and Fu Cha, who is a descendant of the Zhou Dynasty, is still living in the Spring and Autumn Period, living in the traditional thinking of hegemony. In the Spring and Autumn Period, most of the traditional wars for hegemony only sought obedience, not occupation, and rarely aimed at completely eliminating the other side. Confucius also advocated "the rise and destruction of the country, and the continuation of the world." "I think it's a great virtue. So Wu Zixu is sad, he is still alive in the Spring and Autumn, but he has the idea of the Warring States, which looks cool, but in fact, it is just a kind of sadness that "everyone is drunk and I am awake". Therefore, he struggled with his lips and tongue, not only failed to say that fu cha was poor, but on the contrary, there was a huge rift between fu cha and him, and Wu Zixu could only sigh: "The more ten years of gathering, and then ten years of lessons, after twenty years, the palace of the Wu kingdom will become a swamp!" ”
Although Wu Wangfu and Bo Yao and others regardEd Wu Zixu's words as crazy jokes, they are not worth refuting. But later history proved that Wu Zixu's prophecy was extremely accurate and could be called a prophet. In 494 BC, the State of Wu defeated the State of Yue, and was able to destroy it but did not destroy it; as a result, exactly twenty years later, in 475 BC, the State of Yue directly destroyed the State of Wu without any courtesy. This was the first first-class great power to be annexed in the history of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, and it was also a major landmark historical event, although historians usually regard the "three branches of the Jin Dynasty" as the historical demarcation point between the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States, but I personally believe that 475 BC, that is, the year of the annihilation of Wu, is the most appropriate year to divide the era.
Well, thank you for listening to this audio lesson. Today we talk about Wu Zixu's tragic experience of being torn apart by the times. In short, as a prophet and foresight, Wu Zixu was abandoned by this era. At that time, the Yue state in the south bowed down to the state of Wu, and the king of Yue personally became loyal and enslaved to the state of Wu; while the states of Chen, Lu, and Song in the north were also subdued by the state of Wu one after another; at least on the surface, the state of Wu was as powerful as the sun in the sky, and domination of the world was just around the corner, and only the nagging Wu Zixu, who vainly slandered the leaders' decision-making every day, and also wantonly spread the theory of subjugation of the country, which was not harmonious at all, naturally no one would like him, and even the vast number of Wu generals felt that Wu Zixu was too worried about the sky and too good at doing it. In the next issue, Wu Zixu, the leader of the strongest agents, will die tragically at the hands of the beautiful spy Xi Shi. The hero's life has ended like this, which is really regrettable.