Bringing the Railway to Daming

Chapter 200: Serving the Country with Loyalty! Journey to the West and Water Margin! [Subscription Request]

Liu Kuan took the tablet computer and ascended the imperial throne.

Below, Zhu Di, Zhu Su, Zhu Zhen, Zhu Gui, their princesses, and Zhu Chong and his wife, who were attending such a banquet for the first time, all became curious when they saw this.

Zhu Di came up to Zhu Ying and asked, "Third brother, what does father want Liu Kuan to do?"

Zhu Ying felt strangely proud and said, "Didn't you hear me? Play some music."

"What song is playing?"

Zhu Ying chuckled, "Of course it's songs from later times—Liu Kuan's computer not only has movies and videos, but also songs, and they're amazing. You'll be in for a treat this time, but you have to keep quiet."

Later songs?

Zhu Ying spoke in a loud voice, and when the others heard his words, they all became inexplicably looking forward to the song they were about to hear.

Deng came up to the Princess of Jin and asked, "Third sister-in-law, is this Liu Kuan really from the future?"

Princess Jin was more demure, she smiled and nodded, saying, "That's true, but please don't spread rumors outside."

"Oh, I won't tell you."

Deng responded and then cast a curious look at the emperor.

The same was true for Guanyin Nu next to him, with a hint of worry in his eyes.

"With miracles like the Immortal Bridge and the railway appearing in the Ming Dynasty, and with the assistance of a virtuous man like my third brother-in-law, I'm afraid the Yuan Dynasty will be completely destroyed."

Your Majesty.

Lao Zhu smiled and asked, "Liu Kuan, what songs have you prepared this time?"

Liu Kuan said, "Your Majesty, I don't have many suitable songs, so I have only prepared two new songs this time. The other four are songs you have heard before."

Old Zhu was slightly disappointed and said, "They're just songs, so why bother about whether they're suitable or not? Just play new songs next time."

Liu Kuan smiled helplessly and explained, "Your Majesty, there are some new songs in the future that you really won't like. I'll play a couple of them in private later and you'll understand."

"Are you willing to play music for us in private? That would be great." Old Zhu laughed happily.

Liu Kuan thought to himself: What you said is, you are the king and I am the minister. How can I not play the song if you want to listen to it in private?
But he said, "Your Majesty, I have placed the two new songs at the beginning and end of the video collection."

After that, play the edited song collection.

Then he bowed and threw it in - he still had to eat.

Zhu Yuanzhang and Empress Ma looked at the video, and saw four large horizontal simplified Chinese characters at the beginning - Serve the country with loyalty and patriotism!
Zhu Yuanzhang fell in love with the song title and said with a smile: "This song title is good, it must be a good song!"

Then a passionate prelude dominated by drums and harmonies sounded, and the video screen showed a series of majestic palace buildings, which looked like today's imperial palace, but a little different.

Then the scene shifted to the Great Wall and the grassland, with artillery fire continuing and the Northern Tartar and Han cavalry charging and fighting!
The majestic singing voice also sounded——

"Wolf smoke rises, the mountains and rivers look north, the dragon flag unfurls, the horses neigh, and the sword energy is like frost!"

"My heart is as vast as the Yellow River. Who can resist me in the past twenty years..."

Your Highness, Zhu Di, Zhu Su and others who were waiting expectantly were stunned for a moment - although they were princes of the Ming Dynasty, they had never heard a song with such a good coordination between singing and music.

Not to mention, the style of music and singing is completely different from what they have heard before. It contains a majestic spirit of war and iron horses, which makes people's blood boil.

Especially for Zhu Di, who participated in the expedition against Nahachu this year, the scene of him leading the cavalry guards galloping and charging on the grassland immediately emerged in his mind.

Even Zhu Biao, who had listened to songs from later generations many times, was quite surprised. He did not expect that there would be such powerful men's songs in later generations.

Among the songs they had heard before, only "The Storyteller" was sung by a man, but it did not have such a powerful and majestic voice.

In the early Ming Dynasty, people were influenced by Hu Feng and had a strong martial arts background. Therefore, both men and women subconsciously preferred majestic and grand songs.

On His Majesty's side, Old Zhu looked very happy and even couldn't help humming along.

When the song reaches the end, a person who looks like the Emperor of Ming Dynasty sits high on the dragon throne, and envoys from various countries go up to the palace and kneel down to pay homage. Thousands of soldiers in the square outside the palace shout "Long live the emperor". On the vast grassland, the army marches in formation with big flags with the word "Ming". On the blue sea, huge treasure ships with big flags with the word "Ming" are hoisting sails like clouds!
This video, combined with the song, made Zhu Yuanzhang feel an unprecedented sense of pleasure.

Although he had experienced some of the situations in the video, he had been the emperor for more than ten years and had been troubled by solving various problems of such a big country most of the time. There were definitely things that made him happy, such as the great victory in the Northern Expedition this year, but these happy things were generally few, and they would not be concentrated together like in the video.

"Great China deserves congratulations from all sides!"

After the first song, Zhu Yuanzhang paused the video and smiled at Empress Ma, saying, "This song is really good, not inferior to the original Red Turban Army song. It would be even better if the 'China' in the last line was changed to 'Da Ming'."

Empress Ma laughed and said, "Look at your little tricks. In the song, 'China' represents all dynasties. Isn't it better than a Ming Dynasty?"

Zhu Yuanzhang chuckled and did not refute.

He said this, knowing full well that when this song was written in later generations, the Ming Dynasty had been gone for hundreds of years, so it would not be written as "Da Ming".

However, if he were to introduce this song into the army, he could change the lyrics.

Zhu Yuanzhang continued to play the video and found that the second song was indeed the ancient style pure music he had heard before, so he shifted his attention and had dinner with Queen Ma.

Below, although Zhu Biao and others had heard this music before, they didn't mind listening to it again.

As for Zhu Di, Zhu Su and others who heard these songs for the first time, they almost listened with their ears perked up.

Especially after the two pieces of pure ancient music were played, when two more ancient songs were played, Zhu Di and his companions listened to the brand new female singing voice and wanted to climb up the imperial steps and get close to Zhu to see what the later generation woman singing in the tablet looked like and whether she would be as beautiful as a fairy.

More than ten minutes later, the video played the last song. Zhu Yuanzhang and Empress Ma immediately stopped eating and focused their attention on the tablet.

However, on this video, there was a message in simplified Chinese characters from later generations written in horizontal lines: "The suona sounded, setting the whole audience on fire", and the subtitle was "Accompanied by the music "Suona Yin"".

The picture shows a snowy sky, and a completely human-shaped monkey, wearing tattered armor and holding a stick, is walking step by step towards the ruins of a mysterious temple.

Then, scenes of various monkeys walking in the ruins of ancient temples, snow and other scenes appeared one after another.

Zhu Yuanzhang and Empress Ma were both confused for a moment, wondering, "A monkey is the protagonist of the video? What kind of song is this?"
At this moment, the video suddenly audibly reveals a conversation between an old man and a child. The child asks, "Master, do you think there are more good people or evil people in this world?"

The old man said: "There are many good people."

Child: "Then why is there never any peace in the world, and why evil people always run rampant?"

The old man said, "Because kindness that doesn't distinguish between good and evil is not good, it's an accomplice to evil. Everyone knows that immortality is good, but they can't forget fame and fortune. Where are the generals and ministers of the past and present? Their graves are covered with grass."

When the dialogue reaches this point, the sound of suona suddenly starts, and immediately both the picture and the music in the video become uplifting.

In the video, the monkey fights with all kinds of monsters and demons. The scenes are bizarre, but the fights are extremely fierce.

Empress Ma was fine, but Zhu Yuanzhang, as a man, was so moved that his eyes almost popped out of his head and he wanted to stick the video to the tablet screen to watch - the fighting scenes in this video were very attractive and shocking to people in later generations who had been baptized by many games, not to mention that it was the first time for Zhu Yuanzhang to see it.

After watching it, Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to watch the video again, but didn't want to start from the first song. He didn't know how to operate it, so he waved to His Highness.

"Liu Kuan? Come up here."

At this moment, everyone below widened their eyes, especially the dozen or so princes and grandchildren.

Although they did not see the video, they indirectly felt the appeal of the video through the passionate suona music and various dialogues.

Liu Kuan walked up to the imperial throne under the gaze of everyone.

At this point, Lao Zhu wasn't in a hurry to replay the video anymore. He asked, "What's up with the monkey in this video? Which mythical legend is it from?"

Empress Ma said, "He looks a bit like the Monkey King from the folk storytelling 'The Great Tang Monk's Journey to the West to Obtain Buddhist Scriptures'. Could he be related to him?"

Although Journey to the West was written by Wu Cheng'en in the Ming Dynasty, the story originated from a storybook about Tang Sanzang's journey to the West that existed in the Song Dynasty.

This type of vernacular novel had been enriched and widely circulated during the Song and Yuan Dynasties and the early Ming Dynasty. It was not surprising that Empress Ma had heard of it.

Liu Kuan praised, "Your Majesty has a keen eye. This video was taken from a popular domestic game called Black Myth: Wukong, which I played before and after my time in the Ming Dynasty."

"And 'Black Myth: Wukong' is adapted from 'Journey to the West'."

"Journey to the West was written by the novelist Wu Cheng'en during the middle of the Ming Dynasty. It was later listed as one of the Four Great Classical Novels and has been adapted into various TV series, movies, anime, and games, making it almost world-famous."

Zhu Yuanzhang laughed when he heard this. "I never thought that such a famous novel would be born in the Ming Dynasty. It seems that although the martial arts of the Ming Dynasty declined, the literature was still good."

Liu Kuan also laughed, "Your Majesty, when future generations summarized the literature of the past dynasties, there was a saying: Pre-Qin Book of Songs, Han Fu, Tang poetry, Song Ci, and Ming and Qing novels."

"Poetry reached its peak in the Tang Dynasty, ci reached its peak in the Song Dynasty, qu was the most popular form of writing in the Yuan Dynasty, and novels dominated the Ming and Qing Dynasties."

"Of the four great classics of ancient novels selected by later generations, three were from the Ming Dynasty and only one was from the Qing Dynasty."

Old Zhu was even happier when he heard this, and said with a beaming smile, "Three books from our Ming Dynasty? And the Qing Dynasty only had one? Hahaha, the barbarians are just not good at literature!"

Seeing that Old Zhu was so happy, Liu Kuan couldn't help but feel excited when he thought about the fate of the three famous Ming Dynasty classics in history.

It was just a small matter, so he was not afraid of spoiling Old Zhu's fun.

So he said, "Your Majesty, the emergence of famous novels is indeed a symbol of the prosperity of literature. But historically, both the three famous novels of the Ming Dynasty and the one of the Qing Dynasty have not fared well."

Old Zhu asked, "Why is it bad?"

Liu Kuan said: "All of them have been banned by the emperor."

"It's listed as a banned book?" Old Zhu was puzzled. "Why?"

It's no wonder that Zhu Yuanzhang couldn't understand it - as mentioned earlier, since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, there has been no regulation on book publishing, and there has not even been much interference.

The publishing industry is extremely free, and no one has ever been so stupid as to write an article or novel to publicly satirize Lao Zhu.

In other words, Lao Zhu has never been provoked or annoyed by the writings of literati.

Liu Kuan didn't elaborate on these empty words. Instead, he gave an example and said, "The earliest of the Four Great Classical Novels is called Water Margin, written by Shi Naian."

"He lived in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. He seems to have been a Jinshi in the former Yuan Dynasty. Later, he served as an aide to Zhang Shicheng. After Zhang Shicheng was eliminated by Your Majesty, Shi Naian retired to write 'Water Margin'."

"This book is set in the late Northern Song Dynasty. It tells the story of a group of ruffians who, for various reasons, gathered at Liangshan, Water Margin, to fight against the Song Dynasty court. In the end, they were recruited, and the ruffians either died or dispersed."

Zhu Yuanzhang frowned when he heard Liu Kuan say this. "According to what you said, this book is nothing special. Why would we ban it?"

Liu Kuan shook his head. "I can't remember exactly. Some say it was because Shi Naian was once an aide to Zhang Shicheng and refused to surrender, so Your Majesty hated him and his letter."

"Others say that Your Majesty was dissatisfied with the book's depictions of powerful and unscrupulous people banding together to fight against the imperial army, and even of the army's generals rebelling against the imperial court. He believed this content could lead the people to rebellion and encourage generals to be disloyal, and therefore banned it."

Zhu Yuanzhang pondered for a moment and said, "If that's what you said, we might actually be able to ban it."

"As for the first reason you mentioned, it's probably just a rumor. We haven't even heard of Shi Naian, so how could we possibly not be able to recruit him?"

"By the way, do you know where this Shi Naian is from? Is he still alive?"

Liu Kuan shook his head, "I don't know."

Zhu Yuanzhang said, "This man was able to write one of the four great classics later on, so he's quite talented. We can definitely recruit him. We'll have the Imperial Guard find him later. If you're interested, you can meet him then."

Liu Kuan really wanted to meet this early Ming novelist, so he immediately smiled and bowed, "Then I would like to thank Your Majesty in advance."

After a pause, he couldn't help but say, "Your Majesty, in fact, 'Water Margin' has the lowest evaluation among the Four Great Classics. Later generations also disagreed with some of the ideas expressed in the novel. Listing it as one of the Four Great Classics is mainly to affirm its literary value."

"Therefore, if Shi Naian had already written this book, Your Majesty would probably be greatly disappointed after reading it."

Old Zhu was curious and asked, "Why do you say that?"

　First update.

　　Something happened, update is late.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)