At noon, the sun hung high, like a white dangling bun.
In Yongzhou, Yinpan Yiting (Lintong, Shaanxi), a group of soldiers looked nervous and sat against the wall. They were tired and hungry, and the spears in their hands pierced a white light.
Trapped for several consecutive days, they all couldn't stand it anymore, and invariably threw their expectant glances at General Guo Zishu.
Guo Zishu lowered his head, he looked down on himself a little. After so many years of conquest, countless unjust souls died under the knife, but for the first time, he could not take the opponent inside the wall. Not only was there no way, but there was also some fear.
At the thought of this, his forehead and palms sweated.
It was not the way to always stalemate, and everyone was waiting for him to come up with an idea. He bit the dry skin on his lips and glanced at the vice admiral next to him.
This is the order to assassinate the wall.
It was not that he was suddenly brave, but just now, he got a report that the besieged people inside the wall had failed to dig a well, and it was said that after digging for more than ten meters, there was no water source. Extrapolating, the people inside the wall have not eaten or drunk for several days in a row, and at this time, it is the time to perform.
He looked at the heads of the people who had gathered, pulled up the brim of his hat, turned and quickly climbed over the wall.
The people inside the wall did not look panicked when they saw the sergeants suddenly surrounding them, as if they had known that this day was coming. Their faces were sallow, their lips were chapped, and their faces were tired but could not hide the indignation of the explosion. Directly behind them, in the middle of the room, sat cross-legged an old man in his fifties.
He stood up quickly, his eyes unusually sharp, like a ball of ink that spilled out, so thick that it could not be dissolved, enough to swallow any living being, which was daunting. The old man shouted loudly, and a gush of anger followed.
Despite the psychological preparations, the sound of drinking still frightened Guo Ziwei. The soldiers who came in through the wall were soon piled up behind Guo Zishu, and everyone looked at each other and did not dare to move.
The air was so quiet, and the old man's angry scolding was like thunder, and a whole stream of brains poured into the ears of the soldiers, and then tore in the depths of their souls.
Guo Zishu couldn't stand it anymore. He was ashamed of his cowardice for days. With a loud cry, he rushed forward and cut off the old man's head.
Encouraged, the soldiers slashed and killed others, and for a time, the blood in the pavilion was spilled on all four walls, and the blood stained the yellow sand.
On that day, Guo Zishu will soon be forgotten as a name in the history books, but because of his minions, an iron-boned official prematurely ended his brilliant life. Later generations would pay homage to his name, Li Daoyuan, in middle school Chinese textbooks, because he left behind a magnificent geographical work, The Notes on the Water Classics.
On that day, li Daoyuan was killed along with his two younger brothers and two sons.
On that day, this premeditated murder of the imperial court official was reported to the imperial court by Kuaima Chuanshu, and Emperor Xiaoming wept silently, and the real ruler of the imperial court, Empress Dowager Hu, and her younger uncle Wang Yuanyue of Runan, instead breathed a long sigh of joy. For the dim-witted ruler, the lack of a loyal soldier in the world is to throw off a burden, but for the people of the world, it is a collapse of the sky. Of course, the superficial efforts of the imperial court still had to be done, and in order to appease the people of the Li clan, they posthumously recognized Feng Yi Daoyuan as the official Shangshu, the Jizhou Assassin History, and the Anding County Man.
Male is the lowest title in ancient China, inherited from the Zhou Dynasty. It can be seen from the glyph that the man is related to farming. After King Wu of Zhou destroyed the Shang, he divided the world, and the male was the one who planted the land for the king, which can be understood as a small landlord. During the Zhou Dynasty, it was Dian who was one level higher than the baron's title, which can be understood as a large landlord. Their main difference was the size of the acreage and the number of slaves under their jurisdiction.
However, this does not matter, because such a cold ruler and his dynasty are about to collapse.
The following year, Empress Dowager Hu felt that she was not addicted to listening to the government, and poisoned her 19-year-old son, Emperor Xiaoming, Yuan Zhao, and established Emperor Xiaoming's 3-year-old cousin Yuan Zhao as emperor. Under the pretext of avenging Emperor Xiaoming, the pillar general Erzhu Rong, who was stationed in Jinyang, led a large army south and captured Luoyang, and Empress Hu and the young emperor Yuanzhao were thrown into the Yellow River together to feed the fish.
Erzhu Rong also established the son of Yuanxun the Prince of Pengcheng, who was highly prestigious at that time, and the yuanzi of the Changle King, as emperor, and was historically known as Emperor Xiaozhuang. In order to prevent the counterattack of the hostile forces, Erzhu Rong ordered that all the humble nobles who remained in Luoyang and the Han tycoons who had left the Northern Wei regime be killed, creating the horrific heyin revolution in history. Luoyang became a ghost town.
Since then, the Northern Wei qi has dissipated, the sunset has set on the Western Mountains, and various warlord forces have taken turns to capture Luoyang, and then, the Northern Wei throne has changed four times in a row like a marquee. After six years of devastation, the Northern Wei Dynasty fell.
This dynasty, which has lasted for more than 140 years of fourteen generations of monarchs, this dynasty that has been painstakingly managed by the two Ming emperors before and after the Emperor Daowu and Emperor Xiaowen, who has painstakingly operated for half a century to implement the Hu-Han co-rule and has achieved initial results, this branch of the Xianbei tribe that is ignorant and backward on horseback and oppressed by others, has spent a century of time, all the way to the best of its ability, fully embraced the sinicization and innovation and degenerated into a civilized state, and grew into the first Northern Wei Dynasty after the Eastern Jin Dynasty to unify Northern China, but in the last 35 years, it squandered all the good luck accumulated by its predecessors. Grind away all traces of its former glory.
And as a witness to all this, if Li Daoyuanquan knew about it, he should also issue a helpless sigh.
From the limited records in the history books, it is difficult to know the exact date of birth of Li Daoyuan, and there are different theories at present, but we believe one of them, roughly in 470 AD.
Li Daoyuan was born into a family of northern officials and eunuchs, and his great-grandfather Li Shao served as a Taishou (太守) in puyang Commandery (濮陽郡, in present-day Heze, Shandong) in the Later Yan state of The Xianbei Murong Clan, and after Later Yan was destroyed by Northern Wei, their family surrendered to Northern Wei, Li Shao was appointed as the overseer of Yanzhou, and his grandfather Li Song served as the Taishou of Tianshui Commandery (天水郡, in present-day Tianshui, Gansu).
The official fortunes accumulated by the two generations were not in vain, and by the time of Li Daoyuan's father Li Fan, his talents were deeply appreciated by Tuoba Tao, the third emperor of Northern Wei, Emperor Taiwu, and he was appointed to the post of Shi Donggong, responsible for waiting and educating the crown prince. After the crown prince ascended the throne, Li Fan was promoted to viscount, and thus ushered in the highlight of his career.
First, he was promoted to the title of Qingzhou Assassin (that is, the first leader of Qingzhou) for his outstanding political achievements, and later because of his outstanding political achievements, he was promoted to the central government and served as the right minister of Shangshu Province, equivalent to the vice premier of the State Council, and then was named the Duke of Fanyang. The Northern Wei Dynasty was a dynasty founded by a steppe people, and the duke was the highest title that the Han Chinese could obtain at that time in the Northern Wei court.
At this time, Li Fan and his family had begun to penetrate deep into the power center of the Northern Wei court, but because of this, Li Fan was involuntarily wrapped up in the racial contradictions and power struggles between the Tuoba clan and the Han people. Within a few years, Li Fanheng was framed by the Tuoba nobles, saying that he had deep roots in Qingzhou, cultivated forces, and intended to rebel. Although Li Fan's loyalty was approved by the reigning Emperor Xiaowen at the time, in the end he could not survive the engulfment and consumption of him by political and public opinion disputes. Only five years after being created Duke of Fanyang, in 489 AD, Li Fan died of depression.
The fate of the Li family was a microcosm of the fate of Han officials at that time.
As a steppe nation, the Northern Wei Dynasty immediately won the world, but it could not rule the world immediately. Governing the Central Plains must rely on the Han political system and the civilian bureaucracy.
The question is, why do they have to rely on the political system of the Central Plains? The steppe peoples have never formed a unified state form like the Central Plains, like the Northern Wei Dynasty established by the Tuoba family, which can only be regarded as a military alliance of steppe tribes, and the Tuoba family is only the big leader. The dynasties created by the steppe peoples of successive dynasties are all like this, and they cannot assume that because they have become emperors, they can take it for granted that the emperor can really count, and the substantive decision-making power is still in the hands of the chiefs of various military tribes, just like the "eight kings deliberating on the government" model implemented before the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, and the dynasties they established are far from centralized autocracy.
In order to achieve the goal of centralizing power, they had to reform, adopting the political organization form of the Central Plains Dynasty, appointing a large number of Han officials, while weakening the power of other steppe military aristocrats. Emperor Xiaowen Tuoba Hong went the most extreme and thorough in this regard. During his term of office, two thorough sinicization policies were implemented: moving the capital and changing his surname.
In 494 AD, in the name of leading an army to the south, he even coaxed and deceived the capital from Pingcheng to Luoyang, and the tribal leaders were also far away from their military territories, and it was difficult to rebel. Immediately after, two years after the capital was moved, the Xiaowen Emperor Tuoba Hong took the lead in changing his surname, changing the Xianbei surname Tuoba to the Han surname Yuan, and henceforth called Yuan Hong. The descendants of the Tuoba clan could only change their surnames.
The Northern Wei Dynasty's Hu-Han co-rule was promoted by a strong monarch, which masked the fierce confrontation between hu and Han, but also sowed the seeds of racial hatred that affected the overthrow of the dynasty.
Soon, Li Fan's fate was copied to Li Daoyuan's body.
When Li Fan was alive, Li Daoyuan was still just a small role running errands for people everywhere, for example, before moving the capital, Li Daoyuan, as an accompanying scholar, followed Emperor Xiaowen to investigate the geomorphological characteristics of the middle reaches of the Yellow River. At that time, he was already writing the Notes on the Water Classics. The original "Water Classic" is divided into three volumes, recording one hundred and thirty-seven rivers in ancient China, with only more than 10,000 words. Li Daoyuan was not the kind of official who sat in the courtroom to hold meetings and listen to lawsuits, and every time he went, he would go around to investigate local customs and folk customs, and after reading more, he found that there were many errors and omissions in the records in the ancient book "Water Classic". Therefore, with the convenience of traveling around, he searched for various books and literature, and combined with his own observations, supplemented and annotated the records of the "Water Classic", and when he became a book, the single annotation reached more than 300,000 words, which was more than thirty times larger!
Writing books and saying that it was only his duty as a scholar, but then he seized the opportunity to fully display his political and military talents in countering rebellion and violence. In 524, during the reign of Emperor Xiaoming, Li Daoyuan was appointed as the governor of Henan (equivalent to the current mayor of Beijing), when a rebellion broke out in the north and the emperor sent him to raise military food for the front. Having just sent the military food back to the front, Li Daoyuan rushed back to Luoyang to report, and as a result, he was appointed by the emperor as the commander of the armies on the Southern Jiedu Road halfway. At that time, the southeastern border of Xuzhou stabbed Shi Yuan's monks to rebel, with Pengcheng as the capital, and established himself as king, and Li Daoyuan led his army to go three times and five divisions to quell the rebellion.
Just after the rebellion was put down, the emperor took the opportunity to rectify the bureaucracy. At this time in the Northern Wei Dynasty, corruption and shortcomings had penetrated deep into the marrow. The Northern Wei nobles who entered the Central Plains were treated with dignity and superiority, did not produce, did good and bad work, and did not do serious things all day long, and Emperor Xiaoming had long wanted to find a stubble and rectify his work style. Everyone knew that this was a hot job, and the courtiers avoided it.
The emperor thought of Li Daoyuan. Previously, when he was a local official, he had outstanding political achievements because of his fierce style. He has not been soft in investigating and dealing with bandits and evil forces; he has not been soft on the rectification of the powerful and inferior gentry. Soon he established his prestige among the people and won praise, and the people called him Qingtian, and people with ulterior motives falsely accused him of being a cool official. He didn't shirk it, he laughed at it all. At this time, the emperor found him, and it was the duty of the courtiers to share the worries of the imperial court, and he readily agreed. The Emperor promoted him to Lieutenant Of the Imperial History.
Under the supervision and promotion of Li Daoyuan, a nationwide anti-gang crime and anti-corruption working group was established. All kinds of demons and foxes and ghosts heard the wind and shuddered, and they all stopped beating their flags. Wang Yuanyue of Runan, believing that he was the brother of Emperor Xiaowen of the Former Emperor and the uncle of Emperor Xiaoming, bullied men and women, was arrogant and unruly, and had no intention of giving up, and he also ordered his subordinates, but it was only a movement to enforce the law and pat flies to appease the people's hearts. Perhaps this was the original intention of the imperial court, but as everyone knew, the chief political officer this time was Li Daoyuan, who had already set his sights on Yuan Yue, the big tiger.
Li Wei fights the tiger first. After Li Daoyuan's painstaking investigation, he found that Yuan Yue had a favored male prostitute Qiu Nian. One of the bad things that this man did was to control the election power of local officials for many years, and the local officials all asked for him, and it was too late to bribe and flatter him, and even if they dared to offend him. The people stole all the stolen goods, beat the dog first and beat the leg first, and Li Daoyuan issued an arrest warrant for Qiu Nian.
Yuan Yue panicked and immediately went to ask the empress dowager. Who knew that Li Daoyuan was determined to go through to the end, and publicly executed Qiu Nian before the pardon order arrived. The people all clapped their hands and applauded! This was not the end, Li Daoyuan then joined Yuan Yue with the empress. The empress dowager was furious, and her heart said that if you don't give me face, you will dare to report Yuan Yue to me, is this not punching me in the face? However, Li Daoyuan was ultimately meritorious to the state, and he could not clean him up at this time, and this tone was still swallowed hard.
There is no reincarnation in the heavenly path, and good people suffer a lot. Not long after, the imperial court received news that Xiao Baobao, the king of Qi County, was plotting a rebellion. Xiao Baoyu was originally a clan member of the neighboring Southern Qi Dynasty, and in order to avoid royal disputes, he avoided disasters in northern Wei. In order to attract people's hearts, Northern Wei not only entertained him with high-ranking officials Houlu, but also married princess Nanyang chang to him. Who could have predicted that this person's military ability was exceptionally good, taking the opportunity to suppress rebellion everywhere, he accidentally became bigger and stronger in the Northern Wei Dynasty, and since then there have been signs of rebellion, and the imperial court has become more and more uneasy about him. After receiving the news, the emperor wanted to send a capable minister to explore the truth, and if it was true, then directly execute Xiao Baobao. But who to send? The emperor couldn't make up his mind. Yuan Yue took the opportunity to recommend Li Daoyuan. The emperor greatly appreciated it, and boasted that his uncle was broad-minded and did not care about personal grievances, where did he know that this was a plan designed by the empress dowager and Yuan Yue to kill people with a knife.
Xiao Baoxi's side also received news that the imperial court was suspicious of him, and since this was the case, there was no need to hide it, directly declared himself king, and sent the general Guo Zishu to kill Li Daoyuan, and then the scene at the beginning of the article occurred.
It is worth mentioning that near Li Daoyuan's hometown of Li Ting is the Yishui River, and before Jing Ke assassinated the King of Qin, he bid farewell to Prince Dan of Yan at the edge of the Yishui River. Since the land of ancient Yan Zhao, there are many generous and tragic people, leisurely and easy to pass by rivers, it seems that Li Daoyuan's loyal and upright character background has been predicted.