The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 410: The Celestial Empire Sets Off Again

November 1778, 11. September 3, the nd year of the Guangzhong reign of the Great Yu Dynasty, the rd year of the Qianlong reign of the Qing Dynasty.

The retired emperor Mo Tianci and his wife, his daughter-in-law Queen Zheng Shishi and others, who were in Guangzhou, arrived in Nanjing on a three-masted fast cruiser.

Mo Tianci stood on the site of the Zhengyang Gate of the former Forbidden City in Nanjing of the Ming Dynasty, trembling with excitement.

Mo Zibu looked at his father's flushed face and was really afraid that he would faint in the next second.

Seeing that there were no ministers around and they were all his family members, Mo Tianci suddenly looked at Mo Zibu and said, "You are definitely not my son, you are not my son!"

"Ah!" Mo Zibu was shocked. What's the matter? Have you practiced some magic recently, old man? How can you see through me?

Empress Dowager Chen and Empress Zheng Shishi, Duke of Qiong Mo Zihuang, Duke of Cai Mo Zitang, and Princess Danyang Mo Hui all looked at Mo Tianci in horror, wondering what was going on with their husband/father Mo Tianci?

Mo Tianci didn't even look at the horrified eyes of his wife and children around him, but said to himself:

“I, Mo Tianci, feel that I am already a promising leader, but my life’s goal is nothing more than to help my father-in-law take back Jiading and build a great Tiannan country belonging to the Mingxiang people.

But you, my son, how could you accomplish such a great thing? With my level, how could I possibly teach a Hongwu Master! "

"Huh!" The group breathed a sigh of relief. Luckily, they weren't possessed by madness, but rather, the surprise was so huge that their brains were completely bewildered and they couldn't quite process it.

"Leave the task of rebuilding the Forbidden City to me. I'll be supervising the work in Nanjing. Build the palace for my son as quickly as possible!"

After a brief moment of self-doubt, Mo Tianci became excited again.

The retired emperor has always been an avid fan of palace architecture, and the Hue Palace at that time made him feel that his life was worth it.

Mo Zibu disliked the place because it was small and gloomy, but Mo Tianci had no intention of leaving if Mo Zibu hadn't chased him away.

"When you were in Guangzhou, you used a small general's mansion as your imperial palace. Even now, I am terrified when I think about it. Now that you have become the second Zhu Hongwu, you must build a proper imperial palace."

Okay, Mo Zibu had no objection. The Qing Dynasty had severely damaged the Forbidden City in Nanjing, so it would be good to rebuild it properly.

Although some things may seem extravagant, they represent strength and face, and creating a spectacle is not necessarily a bad thing.

"However, father still has to go to Taiping Prefecture with me." Mo Zibu laughed, and Mo Tianci also knew why.

Because the Mo family has another identity. Their ancestors were Lingnan tyrants who followed He Zhen, the Earl of Dongguan in the Ming Dynasty, to the north. After arriving in Yingtian Prefecture, the Mo family was settled in Jianyangwei as deputy captains.

The Jianyang Wei of the Ming Dynasty is now the Taiping Prefecture, and the Dangtu County of Ma'anshan City in later generations.

From this perspective, the Mo family can also add the attribute of being from Nanzhili to their identity as Cantonese.

"My son has thought it through. We can also use this identity to win the hearts of the people of Nanzhili."

Empress Dowager Chen blinked, but Mo Tianci didn't see it at all. She could only sigh in her heart.

Mo Tianci will have to be brought back to Guangdong in the future. This old man is not prepared at all to be the emperor's father.

On September 22, Mo Zibu brought his entire family and led 10,000 elite soldiers upstream to Dangtu County, Taiping Prefecture, to worship their ancestors.

Although the traces of the Mo family here had long been erased by time, Mo Zibu still built a grand ancestral temple on the site of the former Jianyang Guard.

The word "Xingtang" was added before Taiping Prefecture, and it was called Xingtang Taiping Prefecture. Like Xingtang Hexian Prefecture in Nanyang, the highest official was at the same level as the Shuntian Prefecture Governor, both called Prefecture Governors, not Prefects. They were of the third rank and were directly managed by the court.

This trick really worked. The gentry in Jiangnan originally thought that the Mo family was from Guangdong and spoke Cantonese, which they could not understand, and they did not feel close to them.

However, when Mo Zibu went to Dangtu County to pay homage to his ancestors and uttered a few sentences of Nanjing Mandarin, which was somewhat different from the Beijing Mandarin that had already been established at that time, he immediately won back the hearts of the people in the entire Jiangnan region.

Before Mo Zibu finished his ancestral worship, most of the gentry in Anhui, except for Yingzhou, Fengyang and Sizhou in northern Anhui, came to Dangtu County to pay him a visit.

Min Eyuan, the governor of Anhui Province in the Qing Dynasty, also brought more than 8,000 Anhui Green Camp soldiers to Dangtu County to express their loyalty to Mo Zibu.

Mo Zibu also immediately sent Ryan Stein to lead 5,000 Xing Tang troops and 10,000 auxiliary troops to station in Anqing Prefecture, an important city on the Yangtze River, to assist Min Eyuan in settling in the area and prepare to attack Jiujiang, and together with Yin Chengfang and Ye Xianchun, take over the entire Jiangxi Province.

He returned to Nanjing with his team. Since the restoration work of the Forbidden City in Nanjing had just begun, Mo Zibu could only temporarily live in the Governor-General's Office of Liangjiang and treat it as the imperial palace.

On the 27th day of the ninth lunar month, Mo Zibu officially raised the yellow dragon flag symbolizing the emperor at the Governor-General's Office of Liangjiang.

An imperial decree was issued to first repair the Taimiao, Taishe and Taiji Temples in the Forbidden City in Nanjing, as well as the Temple of Heaven, Temple of Earth and Temple of Mountains and Rivers outside the city.

All of these were used for ceremonies held in Nanjing.

He also ordered the officials of Dayu in Gia Dinh, Hoi An, Thang Long, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, and Hangzhou, as well as representatives of gentry from various provinces, to arrive in Nanjing before the 20th day of the 12th lunar month.

Afterwards, Mo Zibu brought the Jiangnan gentry who had gathered in Nanjing to pay him a visit, crossed the Yangtze River and arrived in Yangzhou.

At this time, Yangzhou had already been recovered by Zhao Yi. This man was not only a great writer of the School of Nature and Spirituality, but also had a strong ability to govern the local area.

Although he was not good at military affairs, with the prosperity of Dayu at that time, he no longer needed too much military force in Jiangnan, but instead needed reputation.

Zhao Yi crossing the river is the best arrangement.

Therefore, after Mo Zibu arrived in Yangzhou, not only was there almost no unrest in Yangzhou, but representatives of gentry from Huai'an Prefecture were also waiting in Yangzhou to pay him a visit.

After Mo Zibu briefly met with these people, he took them to Meihualing outside the city, where Shi Kefa's cenotaph is located, and there is also a martyrs' shrine built here.

"How can a Han hero be commemorated by a barbarian? Such hypocrisy is disgusting!"

After arriving at the entrance of the Martyrs' Shrine, Mo Zibu personally picked up a large gun, took two steps, and with one shot, he picked off the plaque "Praise and Comfort the Loyal Soul" on the Shi Kefa Martyrs' Shrine.

Then, he took the short-handled axe handed to him by his personal guard Lin Ayu, and chopped the plaque into pieces with his own hands, and had someone take it to the side and burn it.

Because this thing was written by Emperor Qianlong himself in the 1772th year of his reign ().

After chopping the plaque into pieces, Mo Zibu ordered Lin Ayu to use a sledgehammer to smash the stone tablet with the elegy that Qianlong had made for Shi Kefa, and to take out the elegy written by Qianlong himself from the Martyrs' Shrine and burn it.

"Let's turn this place into the Yangzhou Loyal Ministers and Righteous Citizens Memorial Hall. I don't think Shi Zhongjing would mind.

"These loyal ministers and righteous people were inspired by him to die for their country. If they could gather here and watch the revival of the Han Dynasty, it would be a wonderful thing." With this, Mo Zibu had someone bring a piece of rice paper and personally wrote the four characters "Qi Zhuang Shan He" to be used as the new plaque.

I, Emperor Mo Da, have been traveling through time for thirteen years. Although my calligraphy is still average, at least it is not so ugly that it cannot be seen by others.

Afterwards, Mo Zibu personally handed the brush to his father, Mo Tianci, and said to him with a smile:

"Qianlong is known for his love of poetry, but in reality, he is not as good as the elementary school students. Your father is a great writer from the south of China. Why don't you improvise a couplet to mourn him and let the world see that the Han Dynasty has its own literary master."

Mo Tianci took the pen, feeling both happy and unhappy.

The good news is that not everyone has the qualification to write mourning couplets for a loyal minister and national hero throughout the ages, especially if you want to surpass Emperor Qianlong, you are destined to leave your name in history.

What made him unhappy was that this had been arranged long ago. Mo Tianci was so excited that he wrote many elegiac couplets, but in the end they were all rejected by Mo Zibu.
What he was going to write now was actually what Mo Zibu had written for him to memorize.

As someone with some literary talent, Mo Tianci was very unhappy as he had written the lines, "A straw raincoat covered with frost, the sound of bamboo oars condensing the water's light. Drifting on the ocean, I laugh at myself, wanting to attach myself to the fish and dragons but failing."

He had a strong feeling: who the hell was the father and who was the son?

Throughout history, there has never been a case of an emperor always arranging or ordering the retired emperor to do things as a tool.

Do you know how to be filial? You are really going against the will of heaven!
However, as a person who, like Qianlong, claimed to be a literary master and was fond of poetry, calligraphy and painting, he really could not resist this temptation.

So after pretending to think for a while, Mo Tianci picked up his pen and wrote the first couplet.
He respected Zhang Suiyang as his friend and Zuo Zhongyi as his teacher. His great integrity will shine through the ages, and his biography will be recorded in history.

The second line is:

"Born in the dream of Wen Xin, died in the memory of Wu Xianghou, revenge after nine generations, Shenzhou finally saw the Han Dynasty's clothing."

If Mo Zibu remembers correctly, this elegiac couplet was written by the calligrapher Wu Yu for Shi Kefa in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China.

The reason why Mo Zibu remembered it clearly was because the elegiac couplet was so beautifully written.

Before traveling through time, Mo Zibu had visited Yangzhou twice. Every time, he would go to the Shi Kefa Memorial Hall to pay his respects and specifically memorize this elegiac couplet.

"Well, Your Majesty, your majesty is very talented in writing!"

This elegiac couplet was indeed well-written. As a literary friend of Mo Tianci, the great writer Zhao Yi was the first to praise it, and naturally, flattery followed like a tide.

Mo Tianci was flattered and soon forgot about the slight dissatisfaction and became extremely happy.

After these guys finished flattering him, Mo Zibu said to Zhao Yi, "During the Yangzhou disaster, hundreds of thousands of people, including Shi Wenjing, died for their country. The governor can order a monument to be erected in this shrine of loyal ministers and righteous people as a memorial. The names of all those who can be found should be engraved on it."

Mo Zibu vaguely remembered that when Yangzhou City was broken, countless civil officials, military generals, Confucian scholars, martial artists, volunteers, doctors, painters, boatmen, fishermen and others died in the battle and martyred their country. Many of them had names.

Zhao Yi certainly knew the emperor's habits. This overseas emperor who came from Southeast Asia always liked to trace the deeds of those small people in history books who refused to surrender to the Tartars. In every memorial temple for a great loyal minister, he would always write a few words for many small people.

After giving the order, Mo Zibu looked up at the statue of Shi Kefa in the Martyrs' Shrine and felt a little uncomfortable.

Shi Kefa and his teacher Zuo Guangdou were not without talent, but they were both overwhelmed by the atmosphere of excessive emphasis on righteousness and justice in the late Ming Dynasty.

In fact, many literati in the late Ming Dynasty, represented by Gu Xiancheng of the Donglin Party, claimed to be righteous and upright, but in fact they were just using this banner to form cliques and attack dissidents and make profits for their own small groups.

Using justice as a tool for party struggles and a banner to attack political enemies, naturally there was no justice. In the end, they had many righteous people in the court, but their governance ability was not as good as that of Wei Zhongxian, a greedy eunuch. It was ridiculous!
It's a pity that if they had not been influenced by this trend in history, Zuo Guangdou, Shi Kefa and others might have had more means and ways to serve the country and the people.

Instead of being unable to change anything, in the end he died bravely and loyally, but did not do much useful to the entire nation.

After the memorial service in Yangzhou, Mo Zibu led these ministers to Jiangyin, where they prepared to pay tribute to Yan Yingyuan, Chen Mingyu and Feng Houdun, the three officials who fought against the Qing Dynasty.

However, when Mo Zibu walked to the outside of the Sanzhong Temple, he did not go in. With his current status, it was not appropriate for him to be the main priest.

So Mo Zibu sent out his eldest son Asen, who was wearing a small prince's dress.

Mo Zibu now has three sons. The eldest son, Asen, is born to his cousin Chen Yizhen and is almost seven years old this year.

The second son was born to Zheng Shishi, who is four years old this year. He seems to be the definite crown prince, but in fact he was born to Wu Qian and is registered under Zheng Shishi's name.

Wu Qian was actually a Siamese. His father was Phraya Chanthaburi, who was overthrown by Mo Si Bu and Taksin. Therefore, it was difficult for this second son to become the heir.

As for the third son who was only two years old, it was even worse. He was born to Su, the second daughter of General Suki, the prince of Lower Burma. He had already decided to marry Huang Zhen's daughter and return to Dancheng to be king.

Therefore, the only one Mo Zibu can take with him now is his eldest son Asen. In fact, in the eyes of many people, Asen is already the confirmed heir.

Arsen is also very smart. The little guy, with his chubby figure, presided over the worship ceremony in a proper manner surrounded by a large group of people. He is less than eight years old, but he looks like an adult.

After the worship, Mo Zibu posthumously named Yan Yingyuan as a loyal hero, Chen Mingyu as a loyal and chaste man, and Feng Houdun as a loyal and steadfast man. He also built a temple and erected a monument for the martyrs of Jiangyin.

It was also stipulated that August 21st of each year would be the day when the people of Jiangyin died for their country, and a prince must be sent to preside over the sacrifice.

Afterwards, Mo Zibu returned to Nanjing. At this time, civil and military officials from all over the country had begun to gather in Nanjing. So Mo Zibu recruited soldiers in Jiangnan for the first time and got 20,000 volunteers.

On October 15th, Mo Zibu personally led 30,000 naval and land troops to attack Jiangxi.

This time, the Qing army in Jiangxi could no longer hold on. Even though Jiujiang was the throat of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and the city walls were high and thick, it was of no avail.

In early November, the army captured Jiujiang, and Jiangxi Governor Hao Shuo and others fled to Huangzhou Prefecture with the help of the Qing army in Hubei.

The army then returned and captured the city of Nanchang, basically eliminating the Qing army forces in Jiangxi.

On November 20th, Mo Zibu's personal expedition was a complete victory, and he captured thousands of prisoners, including three members of the Manchu royal family with yellow belts and red belts.

This personal expedition was actually a show to add points to Mo Zibu's upcoming sacrifice to heaven and earth and Emperor Hongwu.

In fact, he did have great military achievements, completely taking over Jiangxi and obtaining three high-quality sacrifices.

Mo Zibu was finally able to pay tribute to Zhu Yuanzhang and declare that he had truly revived the Han Dynasty and established a brand new Celestial Empire.

(End of this chapter)