Who killed the Ming Dynasty?

An old scholar stood beside Zhang Xianzhong, holding a document in his hand.

He was thin and gaunt, but his eyes were as sharp as an eagle's.

His gray beard trembled slightly, and his gaze swept over Song An's neck, as if measuring the angle at which to strike.

"Can't you see I'm judging a case? Get out of my way and wait."

Zhang Xianzhong didn't even look up, his tone full of impatience.

The soldier trembled upon hearing this and immediately pulled Song An aside.

Song An staggered two steps before regaining his balance. Only then did he see clearly that more than thirty people dressed in red were kneeling in the shadow of the palace pillars.

Their once splendid clothes were now soaked in mud and blood, and their arms were tied behind their backs like sacrificial animals.

The man at the front had a deathly pale face, and the marks on his neck from the strangulation had turned purplish-black.

The hemp rope, soaked in well water, dripped continuously, falling onto the blue bricks in front of Zhang Xianzhong's feet and spreading out a small water stain.

Where were we?

Zhang Xianzhong finally looked up, his calloused fingers crushing a walnut.

"Benevolence and righteousness—"

He asked himself the question and answered it.

"Oh, I remember now, the King of Shu just mentioned 'benevolence and righteousness'."

King of Shu!

Song An was startled and immediately realized the identity of the man with the bluish-purple neck band.

It was none other than the Prince of Shu—Zhu Zhishu.

It turns out that after Zhang Xianzhong captured Chengdu, he wiped out everyone in the Shu King's mansion, and was now carrying out the final reckoning.

A chill ran up his spine. This was no ordinary interrogation; it was the ultimate judgment and humiliation of the victor over the vanquished.

Zhang Xianzhong seemed to thoroughly enjoy this crushing pleasure; he let out a cold snort:

"Hmph! You all preach 'etiquette' when you're eating people, but now that it's your turn to be eaten, you suddenly remember 'benevolence and righteousness'?"

Zhu Zhishu's hoarse voice, tinged with blood, still clung to his last shred of integrity:

"The Ming Dynasty governs the country with propriety and cherishes its people with benevolence, a glorious and legitimate dynasty for two hundred years. You cannibalistic monsters... cough... how could you know the words of the sage are as resounding as a great bell..."

"Ha ha--"

Zhang Xianzhong burst into laughter, then began to recount past events:

"When I was ten, I followed a peddler to sell dates. By the time I was fourteen, I could carry a forty-pound basket of dates over the Qinling Mountains."

He suddenly smashed the walnuts, and the flying shards of shell grazed Zhu Zhishu's eyelids.

"That year, when we delivered tribute dates to the Prince of Qin's residence, the corrupt official insisted that the date pit had shattered the prince's gold tooth. Three jujube wood carrying poles were all snapped off my spine."

He grew angrier as he spoke, grabbed an inkstone from the table, and smashed it against Zhu Zhishu. The inkstone hit a pillar with a bang and shattered.

"In the sixth year of the Tianqi reign, I became a constable in the prefectural government."

"When I was guarding the granary of the prefectural government, the corrupt official replaced 30,000 shi of disaster relief grain with Guanyin clay that was peeled and stuffed with straw. When the starving people smashed the granary door, they dumped the blame on me for 'stealing from my own post.'"

Zhang Xianzhong suddenly ripped open his robe, revealing more than a dozen scars on his back.

"Did you see that?"

"This scar was earned while collecting debts for the charcoal seller, and this brand was left from the wrongful release of a prisoner. Your Ming dynasty official seals are used to stamp on the backs of the poor."

A faint noise came from the shadows inside the hall. Song An looked in the direction of the sound and saw two generals standing on the left and right.

The general on the left has a sword at his waist, and the two characters "Ping Dong" are faintly discernible on the yellow silk wrapped around the hilt.

That was the mark of Sun Kewang, the vanguard of the Great Western Army, known as "A Wall".

The general on the right coughed lightly, and the wax seal of "Anxi" on the military report in his hand was clearly visible.

This man was none other than General Li Dingguo of Anxi.

Zhang Xianzhong became increasingly agitated as he spoke, and suddenly grabbed a gold-inlaid knife from the table:

"Back in the day, I was a soldier in Yansui Town, eating his rations."

"When a colleague committed a crime, a corrupt official tried to punish me by association and even threatened to chop off my head. General Chen Hongfan risked his life to vouch for me, and only then was my sentence reduced to one hundred lashes as a warning."

"He practically dragged me back from the brink of death—I'll remember this debt of gratitude for breaking my spine until I die."

He suddenly crushed the walnut in his palm, the brown shell fragments falling from between his fingers to Zhu Zhishu's knees, then gritted his teeth and said:

"In the third year of Chongzhen's reign, Shaanxi suffered a severe drought, and the dog emperor even levied additional taxes on Liaodong."

"I led my brothers from the eighteen villages to eat tree bark and chew horse dung, and in the end, we couldn't even get a hot piece of clay."

Zhang Xianzhong swung the back of his sword at the throne, slicing off half of the sun and moon pattern with a "crack," and demanded in a stern voice:

"How could this dragon throne stand without devouring the flesh and blood of the poor?"

He suddenly turned around and took three steps closer.

"Your Zhu family's benevolence, righteousness, and propriety are just things that were stewed in a human oil lamp."

The end of the hilt pressed against the King of Shu's Adam's apple.

"Back in my day, I was a law-abiding citizen. I just wanted to make a living. What bastard would risk their life to rebel?"

With a sudden burst of force, the tip of the knife pierced the front of the Shu King's python robe, creating a tear about an inch long.

"It was your Zhu family who branded the word 'rebellion' into every crevice of my bones."

Walnut shell fragments flicked out from between his fingers, splashing into the pile of "prisoners" and causing a gasp.

Blood trickled from the corner of Zhu Zhishu's mouth as he struggled to lift his head:

"You... are nothing but a vindictive brute!"

He suddenly coughed violently, and blood splattered onto Zhang Xianzhong's boots.

"The emperor guards the nation's gates, and the monarch dies for the country; this is the true spirit of the Ming Dynasty."

He struggled to straighten his back, trying to maintain the last vestiges of royal dignity.

"Even if you have a thousand grievances, they are nothing more than personal grudges. But you massacred the city, set fire to it, and harmed the royal family. This is making an enemy of the world."

"The common people may turn to bandits because of hunger and cold, but when the royal army arrives, you will be nothing but stray dogs dressed as monkeys."

Zhang Xianzhong leaned down, almost touching the face of the Shu King:

"Finished talking? Is this all the Zhu family has left with their empty words?"

Zhu Zhishu shouted with his last breath:

"History will remember this, and posterity will surely record it—"

"You, Zhang Xianzhong, are a jackal who devours his master and is an enemy of the world. Even if you wear a python robe, you are nothing more than a beast in human clothing who drinks rotten rats."

Before he could finish speaking, the rope suddenly tightened.

"Ha ha--"

Zhang Xianzhong suddenly burst into a deafening laugh.

"To be an enemy of the world?"

He bent down and grabbed Zhu Zhishu's blood-stained python robe.

"Your Zhu family's empire was acquired by exchanging 70% of the land belonging to the people of Sichuan."

"While your crown prince is picking his teeth with a gold-inlaid date pit in the warm pavilion, an old woman outside Chengdu is grinding her own grandson's bones into powder to fill her stomach."

"This world has long been a place where man-eating wolves are dividing up the spoils."

Song An's cuffs were soaked with cold sweat. He stared at the bloodstains in the cracks of the blue bricks when he suddenly heard Zhang Xianzhong's thunderous roar:

"Secretary Wang!"

"Bring up those scraps of paper of yours."

The old scholar stepped forward in response and took out a yellowed book from the wooden box beside him, his movements as respectful as if he were offering a sacrifice.

Song Anxin was slightly shaken; it turned out that this chilling old scholar was Wang Zhaolin.

—Rumor has it that this man was so eloquent that he tricked the Eighth Prince into recognizing him as his son-in-law.

As Wang Zhaolin's withered fingers turned the pages, a thin sheet of paper suddenly drifted down from his sleeve.

The two characters "Three Strategies" annotated in cinnabar on the paper are the outline of the insidious plan to "take Shu" (feign surrender, spies on the enemy, and massacre the powerful) that shook Sichuan.

Looking at the sinister smile on Wang Zhaolin's lips, Song An felt a chill run down his spine.

Suddenly, I recalled the story of the fisherman at the Jiangjin ferry crossing who saw a ghostly figure in a scholar's robe standing in the blood-soaked waves, reciting poetry, on the night Chongqing fell.

At this moment, Wang Zhaolin's demeanor gradually overlapped with the rumored image of him clapping and singing while watching executions and skinning people, which was chilling.