The first: Zhu Yuanzhang passed away
In the thirty-first year of Hongwu, on the tenth day of the intercalary fifth month (May 10, 1398), in Nanjing, the capital of the Ming Dynasty, the Forbidden City...
The sunset spills golden light from the edge of the sky, quietly shining on the walls of the Forbidden City.
The long shadow of the city wall was heavily pressed on the entire Forbidden City, suppressing the carved railings and glazed tiles of the palace, the crimson walls, the golden dragon flags... The whole imperial court lost its color. Even the palace courtyard paved with green bricks was made more gloomy by this dark shadow, revealing a desolate and solemn atmosphere.
At this moment, the Forbidden City is filled with a melancholy atmosphere, which radiates from the Forbidden City to cover the entire capital city and then spreads to every inch of land under the rule of the Ming Dynasty.
The reason is very simple...
The founding emperor of the Great Ming Dynasty, the magnificent and wise Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, has reached his final moments...
In the Qianqing Palace, 71-year-old Zhu Yuanzhang lay on his dragon bed, surrounded by a group of eunuchs. By his bedside knelt his designated heir, Zhu Yunwen. As for his many consorts, they did not even have the qualification to enter the Qianqing Palace and could only wail outside the human wall formed by the imperial guards.
"Good grandson... you are gentle, kind, and shy... a good person, but not the ideal candidate to be an emperor... handing over the Great Ming Dynasty to you... I am really worried." Zhu Yuanzhang, who was already on his deathbed, said with difficulty: "However, your father is my eldest son with Empress Ma, and the eldest son inheriting the country is the best way to maintain the orthodox succession of a nation. Zhu Biao has died, so I can only hand over the Great Ming Dynasty to you... don't disappoint me... make sure the Great Ming Dynasty, which was established by our joint efforts, remains stable for generations to come..."
"It is..." Zhu Yunwen knelt down and responded with a single word, quietly listening to his grandfather's last words. However, he knelt for a long time, but didn't hear another word from Zhu Yuanzhang. By the dragon bed, a dry, wrinkled old hand slowly fell down...
"The Emperor has passed away..." The eunuch's loud cry, tinged with sobs, echoed far and wide.
In just a few days, this sentence spread throughout the Great Ming... The entire country was shaken by it...
People can't help but wonder: Without that wise and great emperor, without those firm and steady hands at the helm, can the Ming Dynasty really be stable and prosperous for generations to come?
……
In the vastness, Zhu Yuanzhang felt himself floating in mid-air. He was dead, but his soul did not ascend to become a Buddha, nor did it fall into the underworld. With his deep love for the Ming Dynasty, he lingered on, leaving his soul behind. Unfortunately, he could do nothing, and could only float in mid-air, quietly watching as time passed by...
Not long after, he saw the "Jianwen Reform", Zhu Yunwen relaxed many of the severe laws and regulations that he had established. At first, he felt very angry - I'm dead, and my descendants are changing the laws I set?! This is outrageous! However, as time passed, he found that the "Reform" had achieved quite good results, and the people benefited greatly.
He couldn't help but ponder in the sky: Is severe punishment and law really better than lenient law? Will I also make mistakes someday?
One year later, the fierce Jingnan Campaign began. The Prince of Yan, Zhu Di, rebelled and his army marched straight towards Nanjing...
Zhu Yuanzhang was furious again, that Zhu Di, I've only been dead for a year and you're already rebelling against the legitimate heir, completely disregarding the system of succession by the eldest son that I established. You're putting the dynasty's legacy at risk! You're simply a scoundrel, even if someone like you were to gain control of the empire, you'd never be able to hold onto it securely.
Four years later, the Jingnan campaign ended, Zhu Yunwen was defeated, and Zhu Di became emperor. He transformed from a rebel to a great ruler, personally leading five expeditions against Mongolia, sending Zheng He on voyages to the Western Ocean, compiling the Yongle Encyclopedia, dredging the Grand Canal, and moving the capital to Beijing... Everything he did proved his ability, with remarkable civil and military achievements, and heroic vision no less than his father's.
Zhu Yuanzhang was shaken again, and he couldn't help but think: Does the system of succession by the eldest son really make the country stable? It seems that it's not necessarily so.
Floating in the sky to watch the mundane days, his vision became wider than when he was an emperor. Slowly, Zhu Yuanzhang's mentality began to calm down, no longer getting angry over trivial matters, nor insisting on his own views. He started quietly watching the development and prosperity of the Ming Dynasty, appreciating the prosperous country he created, becoming a bystander, a thinker, a learner...
He saw many things...
Because the salary he set for officials was too low, it led to widespread corruption among officials, and even the cruel punishment of skinning and stuffing with grass could not stop it; He also saw that his own invention, the military household system, had become more and more powerful, and the millions of great Ming dynasty's strong army, who had cultivated the land for hundreds of years, had all become farmers; He saw that the imperial guards, eastern and western factories and other special organizations were rampant, making the Ming dynasty a dark and gloomy place; He also saw that due to the sea ban, Zheng He's achievements in sailing to the Western Ocean had disappeared, and Europeans were driving large ships that could sail thousands of miles, bringing wealth back to Europe continuously...
He saw the smoke of peasant uprisings rising, and also saw the Manchu iron cavalry staring fiercely; He also saw the strange emperors of the Ming Dynasty playing with crickets, learning carpentry, not attending court for decades, fighting for fame and fortune with their fathers and mothers, and ministers engaging in water battles, proclaiming themselves as great generals, practicing Taoist techniques wearing Taoist robes, eating too much poison and dying...
Those ridiculous, strange, foolish, and numerous reasons... caused the Great Ming Empire he had established with his own hands to collapse in March of Chongzhen 17 (1644 AD), turning into flying ashes and disappearing!
Watching the dynasty he had painstakingly established being destroyed, Zhu Yuanzhang's emotions, which had not been stirred in anger for many years, were once again agitated: Don't be complacent! You Manchu Tartars will end up like the Mongols, and after a mere decade or so, you'll be driven back to the grasslands! Look, how many righteous men are still rising up against the Qing and restoring the Ming on this sacred land? My great Ming dynasty will never fall in such a manner...
He coldly looked down from the sky at the Manchu conquest of China, watching as the Manchu people nervously managed the country, worried that they might be driven back beyond the Great Wall at any moment. However... what he had hoped for and what the Manchus feared would happen never occurred. In the blink of an eye, three hundred years passed... The Ming loyalists who had sought to restore the Ming dynasty were all dead, the Qing dynasty's rule began to solidify, then it went through a process of prosperity, corruption, and decline just like the Ming dynasty before it... Then the Western powers arrived, and the entire Chinese nation trembled under the guns and cannons of foreign tribes. The Qing dynasty, which had stood for three hundred years, collapsed in one night, ending another cycle of dynastic change...
So that's how it is...
"I've had an epiphany!" Zhu Yuanzhang looked up at the sky and sighed: "I don't want to be a bystander anymore, Heaven, please let me become a Buddha!"
"Becoming a Buddha? It's not that easy. Since you don't want to be an onlooker anymore, go back into the bustling world and experience it again... become a maker of history, how about that?"
A white light burst forth in the sky, shining on Zhu Yuanzhang's body, transforming his soul into a shooting star that flew backwards at high speed against the trajectory of time...
The clock flew back quickly, the calendar turned page after page forward, 1900... 1850... 1700... 1627... The meteor suddenly stopped shuttling at this point and jumped under the blue sky with a swish.
In 1627, Zhu Yujian, the woodworker emperor, died from taking "immortal medicine", and Zhu Youjian, the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, ascended to the throne. The peasant uprising at the end of the Ming Dynasty will erupt in full force next year...
A meteor streaked across the sky above a rugged mountainous region, Zhu Yuanzhang recognized this mountainous region, it was Baisui County in Shaanxi Province. When he drifted in the sky before, he had been here more than once. The land here was relatively barren compared to other places, with complex terrain and fragmented topography. Three mountains (Yanmen Mountain, Huanglong Mountain, and Wulong Mountain) were entrenched, five plateaus (Dayang Plateau, Shiguan Plateau, Yaohe Plateau, Beijingtou Plateau, and Leicun Plateau) undulated, two rivers (Baisui River and Kongdong River) flowed along the border, and 1,178 gullies crisscrossed.
In this county, there were no vast fertile fields, only undulating mountain gullies. The people were poor and struggling to survive. Coincidentally, at the end of the Ming dynasty, a severe drought occurred. Under these circumstances, the imperial court did not reduce taxes for the local people, but instead increased them, leading to widespread discontent among the people, ultimately resulting in the outbreak of peasant uprisings.
Zhu Yuanzhang felt a slight sense of curiosity in his heart, what did the meteor bring him here to do? Was it to let him witness the outbreak of the peasant uprising at the end of the Ming Dynasty with his own eyes? What's so good about that, he had already seen it once before, although the details were no longer very clear, but the general development was all known.
Just as he thought of this, a meteor suddenly plummeted downwards at high speed, carrying Zhu Yuanzhang towards the ground...
The ground was a small hillside, with lush green grass and wildflowers blooming everywhere. An old yellow cow was leisurely eating the grass, while a ten-year-old boy lay beside it on a nearby rock, his body thin and frail from malnutrition. A gash on his forehead was slowly oozing fresh blood, suggesting that he had tripped and fallen onto the rock while herding the cow in this area, knocking himself unconscious.
He had lost a lot of blood and it seemed he wouldn't survive... Within a radius of one or two miles, there was no one in sight, so no one found out that he had hit his head and thus didn't receive any medical treatment. Even if someone had discovered him, given his poverty, he still wouldn't have been able to afford the necessary medical expenses, and would have ended up dying anyway.
At the moment when Zhu Yuanzhang's soul, transformed into a shooting star, descended from the sky and poured into the young man's heavenly cover, the light rotated and changed colors. The cowherd boy who had just died suddenly opened his eyes and slowly sat up from the grass.
"The Great Ming Dynasty, I'm back!" The young man sighed and said: "It's actually a cowherd again! In my previous life, I was a cowherd. I didn't expect to be reborn as a cowherd... Never mind, in the past, I was able to rise from being a cowherd to build a great empire with nothing. Now, even if I have to do it again, what's the harm?"
At the end of the Ming dynasty, in the seventh year of Tianqi (1627 AD), a cowherd boy named Zhu Chongba was reborn in Baishui County, Shaanxi Province.
