The Ming Dynasty began from Sarhu

Chapter 749 Asking for the Wudang Mountain

Junzhou, Wudang Mountain.

The road is lined with mountain flowers, which are extremely beautiful. In the valley, houses are facing each other, and rice fields are lined up along the river.

Leaving Junzhou and heading west, you will approach Taizipo. There are few pedestrians and you can occasionally hear the roar of tigers.

The scenes of the past years with huge incense burning and crowds of tourists are no longer seen.

In the fifth year of Guangde, Liu Kan issued an edict to abolish Buddhism and Taoism, and a vigorous movement to destroy Buddhism and Taoism was launched across the country.

Wudang Mountain, renowned as "the best mountain in the world," naturally received special attention from the imperial court—despite its annual incense offering of 1 taels—but Emperor Guangde ordered the sacred road (Note ) leading to the Golden Summit to be sealed, the various Taoist temples closed, and the Taoist priests of the temples ordered to return to secular life. Ten thousand Taoist officials, Taoist monks, artisans, and garrisons from all mountain regions were evacuated, leaving only a small garrison to maintain the palace.

Tens of thousands of statues and ritual implements made of gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, jade, pearls, and stone, which had been offered by emperors of all dynasties and believers from all over the world on the mountain, were all dismantled, packed, and shipped to Nanjing.

In terms of plundering wealth, Emperor Guangde is second to none, and no emperor dares to claim to be first.

He even proposed to dismantle the wood and stones from the Taoist temples and transport them to various provinces for sale. Liu Kan gave up the idea only after Kang Jingxiu, Shen Mo and others strongly persuaded him. A more credible reason was that the task of transporting the wood and stones down the mountain was too arduous, which discouraged Emperor Guangde.

The so-called killing the chicken to get the eggs probably refers to Liu Kan.

Mountains are not high, there are immortals and spirits.

All the magical instruments in the Taoist temples were snatched away, the Taoist priests returned to secular life, the gods left sadly, and naturally the pilgrims stopped coming.

The pilgrims who used to crowd the Caodian Wharf and throw themselves off the cliffs in order to get the dragon head incense have disappeared in the past two years. As a result, the wine shops, brothels and gambling houses in Junzhou City have become deserted. The entire Wudang Mountain and even Junzhou have fallen into a great depression.

Fortunately, this abnormal state did not last long.

When the imperial court first implemented the policy of abolishing Buddhism and Taoism, it was swift and decisive. However, compared with other new policies, this unpopular policy did not last long and became ineffective.

The reason is naturally simple.

Because the people who supported Emperor Guangde's new policies were the devout believers who knelt before the God of Zhenwu. When it came to praying to the gods and Buddhas to ward off disasters, this group of people had an obsession that was difficult for ordinary people to understand.

If you have no guilty conscience, you don't need to worship gods.

Unfortunately, most of these people have committed extremely evil deeds, and calling them local tyrants and evil gentry is an exaggeration. Take the land annexation in the past two years as an example. All the gentry who suddenly became rich after the fifth year of Guangde had their money not clean at all, and almost all of them had several or even dozens of lives on their hands.

In the social environment of the late Ming Dynasty and early Qi Dynasty, the pilgrims who still insisted on believing in the Zhenwu God and came from thousands of miles away to Wudang Mountain to pray for blessings were either rich or noble, and were not ordinary people.

The implementation of Emperor Guangde's new policies relied heavily on this group of people. In other words, in local prefectures and cities, these local tyrants and evil gentry were the basic foundation of the Great Qi's rule - at least that was the case during Liu Kan's reign.

Some of these dignitaries who knelt before the Zhenwu God to pray and fulfill their vows circumvented the ban, seized the land of the Taoist temple, performed sacrifices privately, employed Taoist priests to perform rituals, and even had ambiguous affairs with Taoist nuns...
Even if these prohibited behaviors are discovered, the authorities will simply turn a blind eye and not pursue the matter.

"Today I met that sister-in-law from the Zhen Palace. She's amazing. She makes delicious tea and vegetarian meals. She's also amazing in bed. Very smooth, hahaha."

Taizipo Fuzhen Temple is backed by Lion Mountain, with Tianchi Waterfall on the right and Eighteen Bends Plank Road on the left. From a distance, it looks like a lotus emerging from the water, and from a close distance, it looks like a magnificent city.

The red wall is quite dilapidated, and there are pillars outside the wall. The red paint on the wall is mottled, and the moss reveals the invasion of wind and rain over the years.

The ground was paved with square stone slabs, some of which were no longer flat due to being stepped on.

Suddenly, a shameless and obscene laugh was heard from this quiet and ancient place.

Two fat, big-eared, ruddy-faced gentlemen sat on a sedan chair, one on the left and the other on the right, surrounded by a group of servants. The huge crowd went down the mountain along the sacred road, pouring down like a mountain torrent.

"Brother Tianxing, it's because you're so generous. You spent thirty taels at once, disrupting the market. How could the nun not be tempted by so much money? I heard that those Taoist nuns are the daughters of tenant farmers living down the mountain. They came up the mountain because they couldn't pay the rent... Brother Tianxing, you came to Taihe Mountain today to pray for a child. If you tell your wife when you go back, I'm afraid she might..."

Brother Tianxing quickly signaled his companions to stop talking, but the chubby Jinshen ignored him and continued to tease:
"You said you were praying for your wife to have a child, and in the end the son was born in the wild girl's belly. Brother Tianxing, your trick of using a substitute for a dead person really grasps the essence of Sun Tzu's Art of War. I admire you! I admire you!" Brother Tianxing grinned and turned to his servant and said:

"Don't tell anyone about what happened in Yu Zhen Palace today. If my wife hears about it, I'll break your legs!"

All the servants nodded in agreement.

Nearing Taizipo, the mountain became steeper and the sedan chair bearers moved slowly on the sacred path, panting like buffaloes.

"Brother Tianxing, it's all your fault. You finally got married, but you married a woman like this. Like me, I go to Laoying Street every now and then to find my lover. Who at home dares to control me? The last time you went to Caodian to see Xiaocui, were you beaten by Madam Ling?"

"Humph! Isn't this bitch meddling too much? I'm not just looking for prostitutes in Laoying Street, even though I'm giving her enough face. But she's still meddling in Yuzhen Palace!"

My companions laughed so hard that the sedan chair creaked under their buttocks.

"Haha, you're just being stubborn in front of me. Would you say anything back? But you think you can mess with the He family in Junzhou?"

When Brother Tianxing heard about the He family, he became like a pimp in a brothel, dejected and completely without the bravery he had just had.

"When I married her, I was hoping for a marriage between our two families. Her uncle is a clerk in Junzhou, in charge of land distribution. If it weren't for her, how could my family have taken over the thousand acres of farmland in Meizigou? I thought that with the Emperor Emeritus away and the young Emperor implementing new policies, good times would be here. I didn't expect that just after escaping a hungry wolf, I would fall into the mouth of this tigress..."

When Jiang Tianxing was moved, his eyes were filled with tears, like a scholar who failed the imperial examination.

His companions knew that Tianxing had been succumbing to the tyranny at home for a long time, so they did not want to tease him anymore and comforted him:
"Forget it, brother, you don't have to be sad. Just bear with it for a while. Wait until the Mid-Autumn Festival when Madam Ling returns to her parents' home in Junzhou. No one will bother you anymore. Let's go to the mountains and have some fun. I'll treat you. It's not like my sister-in-law will fly away..."

"Okay, it's a deal!"

The two were talking and laughing when they suddenly heard the sound of bells and chimes coming from the gable above their heads.

"There are nuns in this Taoist temple?" Jiang Tianxing asked in surprise.

"What nun? It's the eldest princess! She was exiled to Junzhou by the emperor!"

"Wait!" Jiang Tianxing hurriedly asked the sedan bearer to stop, raised his head and looked towards the Taizipo Mountain Gate. From afar, he saw that the archway of Fuzhen Temple had long been dilapidated, and the words on the plaque had faintly fallen off.

"This witch is still alive! What a disgrace!"

Jiang Tianxing stood up and got out of the sedan chair. With a righteous look on his face, he pointed at the Fuzhen Temple where Liu Yufei lived and cursed loudly:

"Damn it! Such a peaceful and tranquil place, a blessed place, a perfect place for spiritual practice, how could this traitor be allowed to defile it? What a bummer!"

"Brother Tianxing, what you said is absolutely right! This witch, back then, instigated the retired emperor and nearly divided up my family's land... The emperor issued an edict to exile the eldest princess, precisely to make her suffer. And that warrior Qin Jianxun actually placed her here. It's simply outrageous! Go talk to your uncle tomorrow and make sure this witch is driven away. Don't let her disrupt the reputation of the Crown of the Five Mountains."

Note:
1. Shinto: In the tenth year of Yongle (1412), Emperor Chengzu of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Di, sent people to build a large-scale construction project on the site of the Yuan Dynasty, and built 33 temples including the Nine Palaces and Nine Pavilions. Every spring between February and March, many places in Jiangnan organized large-scale Wudang pilgrimages.

The imperial court allocated funds to build many pilgrimage routes. Because these official roads were dedicated to pilgrims, they were called "Shinto".

Among the four sacred roads, the East Sacred Road is located on the east side of Wudang Mountain. It refers to a mountain road of more than ten kilometers from Yanchihe Town, Danjiangkou City to Wudangkou Village. It has been an important passage for pilgrims to travel to Wudang Mountain since ancient times.

Nanshendao is located on the Guanshan line of Danjiangkou at the southwestern foot of Wudang Mountain, only 5.7 kilometers away from the Golden Summit of Wudang Mountain.

The West Divine Road is located on the west side of Tianzhu Peak. It passes through Liuliping and other places, and passes by the Monkey King Temple, Wazipo, the ruins of Quanzhen Temple to Quanlong Temple. It is about 15 kilometers long, and then passes through Taihe Palace and other places to reach the Golden Summit.

The starting point of the North Divine Road is Sunjiawan Haokou, passing through Lujiazhai and Renwei Temple to reach Wulong Palace, along Huayang Rock, passing Qingyangjian and ending at Nanyan Beitianmen.

(End of this chapter)