The cry of the hero's end
"Kill the thief! Kill the thief! "In the late autumn of 1207 A.D., the sycamore leaves of Lin'an City were falling into the moat. The 68-year-old Xin Qiji suddenly stood up from the sickbed, his thin fingers clenching in the air, as if he was about to grasp the sword that had slashed the rebel more than 40 years ago. Outside the window, the lanterns of the Prime Minister's Mansion swayed into vague red dots in the autumn wind, like the fire that ignited in the granary of the Jin Army in his memory. Who would have thought that this old man, who was still shouting "crossing the river to kill thieves" before he died, would write the gentleness of "the lamplight" in "The Qingyu Case"? When the imperial physician shuddered and closed his eyelids, the pages of the "Ten Treatises on Mei Qin" on the desk were lifted by the wind, and the word "revenge" before the ink was dry came into view—this was the pathetic footnote he had written all his life.
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Chapter 1: A teenager who grew up on a blade
On the third day of the fifth month of 1140, the city walls of Jinan Licheng were shrouded in gunsmoke. The sound of Jin Bing's horse's hooves startled the cicadas on the plane tree, and the swaddling Xin Qiji was tightly protected in his cloak by his grandfather Xin Zan. This old Han minister, who was an official in the Jin Dynasty, always climbed to the top of the city every day after retreating from the court, and pointed to the south with his cane: "Do you see that cloud?" Under the clouds is the iron tower of Bianjing, and under the tower is buried your great-grandfather's quiver against Liao. When he was five years old, Xiao Qiji rode on the back of the ox to recite the "Historical Records of Wei Huolie", when he read "The Huns have not been destroyed, there is no home", the ox rope suddenly slipped from his hand - his grandfather stood behind him, his eyes flashed with tears.
The fifteen-year-old "Yanjing Examination" was his first real "battlefield". Hidden under the green cloth robe was my grandfather's secret sheepskin map, and in the sleeve was a charcoal pen mixed with gold dust, which was used to dot the cuff with gold dust for each section of the city wall. Jin Bing, who was invigilating the exam, once lifted his shirt, but only saw a few volumes of "The Book of Filial Piety". Staying at the post house at the foot of Yanshan at night, he used the glimmer of the bonfire to draw a map of the Jin Army's defense, and the sparks in the fire pit splashed on the cuffs, and burned into a "scar" that could never be washed away. While the other examinees were singing the wind and the moon in the inn, the young man was lying on the dirt slope behind the mass grave, counting the number of times the grain convoy passed, and even the depth of the rut marks pressed out by the wheels was filled with three pieces of straw paper.
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Chapter 2: Thousands of miles alone to capture the rebel general
In 1161, the Huai River ferry was covered with goose feathers and heavy snow, and the 21-year-old Xin Qiji tightened his hair towel to the corners of his forehead, and the iron spears of two thousand villagers reflected the cold light behind him. Geng Jing looked at the scholar with "The Art of War" hanging on his waist, and casually threw a pair of broken string bows: "Will you use it?" The boy took the bow, drew three broken arrows from his quiver, and tied them, drew them, and released them—and the three arrows were driven into the stump of a tree a hundred paces away, like an iron serpent. That night, he sat on the grain and grass pile and told Geng Jing about "encircling Wei and saving Zhao", and the moonlight fell on his cuffs full of battle strategies, and those small dots of gold dust lit up like stars.
The most thrilling night raid took place on the 23rd day of the lunar month. The camp of the golden soldiers in Jeju City was wafting with the smell of wine and meat, and Zhang Anguo was drinking with his arms around the singer and his face was flushed. Suddenly, there was a shout of "transporting New Year's goods" outside the tent, Xin Qiji opened the tent curtain against the falling snow, and the soft sword under the sheepskin jacket was already three inches out of the sheath. When the rebel's wine bowl "clicked" to the ground, the cold tip of the sword was already against his throat: "I'm Xin Qiji, come to take your head." Fifty dead men suddenly drew their swords, and all the candles in the tent were extinguished, and only the screams of the golden soldiers and the sound of horses' hooves on the snow could be heard. When he ran eight hundred miles south, the rebel in his arms had already wet his trousers, and his cuffs were still stained with half of the felt fur of the golden army tent - the spoils of war left when he swung his sword and slashed the flag.
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Chapter 3: The General Trapped Between Pen and Ink
When Emperor Xiaozong took over the "Ten Treatises on Mei Qin", there was a copy of Qin Hui's "Shaoxing Peace Conference" on the desk. "Why don't I want to restore the Central Plains..."The emperor's fingertips crossed the words "judging the situation" and "investigating the situation", and suddenly sighed, "It's just this pile of old account books..." "
When he was rebuilding the city wall in Chuzhou, he saw the people gnawing on the bark of trees, so he ordered to open the official warehouse and cook porridge, and he only ate two wheat cakes a day. An old woman gave him wheat cakes mixed with wild herbs: "Lord Xin, you are blacker than our crops. He touched the rough bread sent by the people and smiled, but when he wrote a letter to a friend in the middle of the night, he cried: "A certain life is clumsy and self-confident, and he has not been tolerated by everyone for many years. When the Flying Tiger Army was formed in Hunan, in order to gather the barracks tiles, he personally went to the kiln to move bricks, and the kiln workers saw this adult in official uniform rolling up his trouser legs and mud, and thought he was a new craftsman. Until one day, when the rainstorm washed down the kiln shed, he threw himself on the half-fired tiles to protect him, and his back was hit by a wooden beam with blood marks - the scar later became the appearance of a tattoo on the chest of the Flying Tiger soldiers.
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Chapter 4: The Sword in the Words under the Goose Lake Mountain
Under the trellis at the Lake Estate, 50-year-old Xin Qiji is showing a gardener how to use a trebuchet to shoot down wild birds. "Look, this trigger should be as steady as pulling a bowstring." He rolled up his sleeves, revealing the unfading arrow scars on his forearms, while the little scholar next to him stared at the jade jue around his waist—the token that Geng Jing had stuffed into him before he died. Every Mid-Autumn Festival, he will invite Chen Liang and Zhu Xi to come to Goose Lake to discuss swords, and the three of them will compete with swords under the pine tree after they are drunk, and the sword light reflects the moon in the lake, shattering into pieces of silver armor.
"Lao Xin, why do you always write sword in this word?" Chen Liang pointed to the "Breaking the Array" he had just written and laughed at him. Xin Qiji took a sip of wine and tapped the stone table with his scabbard: "What do you know?" I'm not writing about a sword, I'm writing about Jeju Fortress twenty years ago. "Once, when he was drunk and lying by the stream, he stuck his sword beside him as a crutch, and when he woke up, he found that the hilt of the sword was wrapped around the wild rose, and he was so angry that he wanted to draw his sword and cut the flowers, but at last he sighed, and let the pink blossom on the scabbard into a stubborn flower. The people didn't understand why this "Jiaxuan layman" always spoke to the pine trees, but they remembered that when he taught the children to read "Eight Hundred Miles Away", his eyes flashed brighter than torches.
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Chapter 5: The Last Glimpse of the Beigu Pavilion
In Beiguting in 1205, 64-year-old Xin Qijian held a compass for surveying and mapping, and suddenly coughed violently. Jiang Feng lifted his official uniform, revealing the old white-washed robe inside—it was the dark color battle suit of Geng Jing's righteous army. He knocked on the city wall bricks with a compass: "There should be a beacon tower here, and Liu Yu crossed the river from here." The entourage wanted to help him back, but he threw him away: "Let me take another look, look again..."
Three days before he died, he asked people to put the sword next to his pillow and rub his fingers against the word "abandon disease" on the hilt of the sword, which was engraved by his grandfather's hand. There was a shout from the window selling apricot blossoms, and he suddenly laughed: "It turns out that spring has arrived..." When the messenger rushed into the door with the edict in his hand, he heard the old man shout with his last strength: "Kill... thief..."The voice dissipated in the spring breeze with the lake, and startled the sparrow under the eaves who had listened to him read words all year round.
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Conversations through time and space
Re-reading "Jiaxuan Ci" today, I can always feel the smell of rust between the lines. When he wrote "I saw Wu Hook", did his fingertips still have the shock numb from when he slashed the enemy? When he sighed "the railing was patted all over", did the temperature of the city bricks still remain in the palm of his palm? During the epidemic, the nurses of Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital wrote "Jin Ge Iron Horse, swallowing thousands of miles like a tiger" on the protective clothing; When the Shenzhou spacecraft was launched, the console played "Ride the wind and go well, the sky is thousands of miles" - it turned out that the sword qi of 800 years ago had never cooled in the blood of Huaxia.
If Xin Qiji was born today, he may be a cross-border wizard: he can not only draw drawings in the laboratory, but also guard the country on the frontier; You can not only write battle strategies in code, but also warm people's hearts with poems. But no matter how the times change, the young man who "watched the sword fall" and the general who "picked up the lamp and watched the sword" will always ignite the beacon of civilization with blood in the long river of national spirit.
Xin Qijian in your heart, is it the general of "Jin Ge Iron Horse", or the lyricist of "Bright Lights"? Welcome to share your favorite Jiaxuan words and phrases in the comment area, and pay tribute to this "word flying general"!
Historical basis:
1. "History of the Song Dynasty: The Biography of Xin Qi"
2. Deng Guangming "Xin Jiaxuan Yearbook"
3. Gong Bendong "Xin Qi Disease Commentary"
4. Xu Hanming's "Proofreading of the Complete Works of Xin Qiji"