The Elixir of Immortality #Classic of Mountains and Seas #Zhao Tuo
In Emperor Xian of Han's plane.
Cao Cao looked at Zhong Yao and teased, "Yuan Chang, you almost became a founding emperor yourself!"
Zhong Yao wanted to say, You're the real founding emperor! In the future, the realm will belong to the Cao family!
No one had expected Zhong Hui to be Zhong Yao's son, born when Zhong Yao was seventy-four or seventy-five. No wonder they had never heard of him before.
Zhong Yao said, "Chancellor, there will be no Zhong Hui in my Zhong clan."
The Sima Clan, who would one day usurp the throne and murder their sovereign, had already been utterly disgraced. Their entire clan would probably be killed.
Zhong Hui would also rebel one day. In name, he would be rebelling against Sima Zhao, but Sima Zhao had not yet usurped the throne at that time, so he would be rebelling against more than just Sima Zhao.
If Zhong Hui had succeeded in his rebellion, eliminated Sima Zhao, replaced Cao Wei, and established an entirely new dynasty, and the sky screen had not exposed it, he would have been Zhong Yao's qilin son without a doubt!
But he had failed! And everyone in the realm knew it!
For the Zhong clan to continue, it would be better if his youngest son, Zhong Hui, were never born.
In another plane.
Zhong Hui, who occupied Shu, saw why his rebellion had failed.
The main reason was that morale had collapsed. He had failed to win the loyalty of the armies of Wei and Shu.
But he had no way back. Rebellion was his only option.
Besides, the Sima Clan were no good either. The future War of the Eight Princes, Disaster of Yongjia, and Uprising of the Five Barbarians would not only plunge the realm back into war, but also bring the northern barbarians invading south. With Sima Yi breaking his word and Sima Zhao murdering his sovereign in the street as well, the Sima Clan had now completely lost the support of the people.
"Boyue, I think I understand you now!" Zhong Hui murmured to himself.
Zhong Hui was no fool. Although the sky screen had not stated why Jiang Wei had incited him to rebel, he gradually guessed the truth from the comments of later generations.
Jiang Wei wanted to be the oriole waiting behind.
"That's Zhong Hui? He's so young despite his white hair, and he doesn't even have a beard!"
"This is another one of those things later generations call anime, isn't it?"
"There's no reason the realm can't belong to the Zhong family!"
"There's no reason the realm can't belong to the Zhang family!"
"There's no reason the realm can't belong to the Wang family!"
"Are you all mad? Aren't you afraid of losing your heads for saying that?"
Zhong Hui's Sanguosha appearance, paired with the DJ version of Mountain Pass Wine and those domineering lines, left many commoners shaken.
Unlike the background music in other short videos, the music in this one was especially loud.
When generals and soldiers throughout the dynasties heard the DJ version of Mountain Pass Wine, they felt an urge to charge straight onto the battlefield.
Zhong Hui, depicted as a handsome young man with a head of white hair, became a favorite among many women throughout the dynasties.
This proved that being handsome could attract attention and affection in any era.
[The First Emperor of Qin sent people to search for the elixir of immortality #Classic of Mountains and Seas]
"Why does this have to do with Ying Zheng again?"
"Does this so-called elixir of immortality refer to him sending Xu Fu out to sea?"
["The Classic of Mountains and Seas says that among the great mountains in the south lies the Feathered People Country, and that the Immortal People live to its east."]
["For thousands of years, these two statements were like a code that no one could decipher."]
["Gradually, we came to think of the Classic of Mountains and Seas as nothing more than a book of myths."]
["The Feathered People Country and the Immortal People were all legends too."]
The emperors throughout the dynasties had all read the Classic of Mountains and Seas.
Even if they had not read it, they had heard the stories in it.
Fools were the exception.
To them, the Feathered People Country and the Immortal People were indeed legends, just like the stories of myths.
["But just over thirty years ago, archaeologists opened an ancient tomb, and the artifacts unearthed inside seemed to tell an ancient story about the Feathered People Country and the Immortal People."]
["Let's go back to 1983. The government of Guangzhou designated Xianggang Mountain for a construction crew and authorized them to build a workers' dormitory there."]
["At noon the next day, the crew unearthed a large stone slab. Beneath it, they could make out an underground chamber. This was clearly an ancient tomb."]
["It seemed Xianggang Mountain had long had a resident, but which dynasty did the tomb below belong to?"]
["The geomancy master went on to say that decades earlier, when Guangzhou's city walls were demolished and roads were built, Xianggang Mountain and Yuexiu Mountain across from it had been split into two. Originally, they had been joined as one, all part of Yuexiu Mountain. Farther north from Yuexiu Mountain was Baiyun Mountain."]
["These two mountains formed a hollow in Guangzhou, and in the First Emperor of Qin's time, this hollow had emitted red, yellow, and purple qi. The alchemists of the time said this meant that an elixir of immortality had appeared there, and that an aura of the Son of Heaven was also taking shape."]
Hearing this, the emperors throughout the dynasties could no longer remain calm!
An elixir of immortality, with an aura of the Son of Heaven taking shape as well! Was it true?
["At the time, the First Emperor of Qin had just unified the six states. His main threats were the Xiongnu in the north and the Baiyue in the south. Which should he deal with first?"]
["As it happened, an aura of the Son of Heaven appeared among the Baiyue, so the First Emperor of Qin made up his mind. He sent Prince Fusu north to build the Great Wall and defend against the Xiongnu, while sending Tu Sui south with five hundred thousand Qin soldiers to dig a canal and conquer the Baiyue."]
["This was, of course, Tu Sui's historical campaign against the Baiyue. But in fact, at Tu Sui's side was a twenty-year-old young man named Zhao Tuo, a personal guard of the First Emperor of Qin and also his secret envoy."]
["On the one hand, he monitored Tu Sui's military operations. On the other, he was to help the First Emperor of Qin search for the elixir of immortality."]
"Hm? Zhao Tuo is indeed my guard! But when did he become my secret envoy? How come I don't know about it?" the First Emperor of Qin asked in bewilderment.
Ying Zheng thought this was another invention of later generations, a mixture of truth and falsehood, though not as far-fetched as unofficial histories.
The emperors of later generations who knew how long Zhao Tuo had lived thought otherwise!
"Could Zhao Tuo really have found the elixir of immortality? Otherwise, how could he have lived for over a hundred years? And he even became an emperor! That fits the claim that the elixir contained an aura of the Son of Heaven!"
["In the Three Kingdoms era, Cao Cao had tomb-raiding officers known as the gold-touching commandants. In fact, Sun Quan's tomb-robbing forces were even more ruthless than Cao Cao's. At the time, Sun Quan sent a tomb-robbing force several thousand strong all the way to Guangzhou to dig up a tomb."]
["Their target was none other than the tomb of Zhao Tuo, the First Emperor of Qin's guard mentioned earlier."]
"An army of several thousand tomb robbers?"
"Just how many tombs did Cao Cao and Sun Quan rob?"
"My tomb won't be robbed by later generations, will it?"
"Even emperors are taking the lead in robbing tombs. Does that mean we can do it too?"
"Sun Quan seems to have lived to seventy, or maybe seventy-one. Could he have found the elixir of immortality?"
"If he'd found the elixir of immortality, he couldn't have lived only to seventy. He'd have lived past a hundred at least, like Zhao Tuo."
["Zhao Tuo came to Guangzhou with the army and secretly helped the First Emperor of Qin search for the spirit medicine. Then, like Xu Fu, he never returned."]
["It wasn't that he feared being killed if he returned without finding the spirit medicine; the First Emperor of Qin held him in especially high regard."]
["He later replaced Tu Sui as commander of the Qin army. Later still, Liu Bang and Xiang Yu marched into Xianyang, and the Qin dynasty suddenly collapsed."]
["At that point, as a Qin general, Zhao Tuo still had an army of five hundred thousand under his command. By rights, he should have returned to help, but instead he blocked the roads between Lingnan and the Central Plains, declared himself king, and became emperor of the Kingdom of Nanyue. What happened next was even stranger: Zhao Tuo actually lived to be 103."]
"What? Zhao Tuo lived to be 103! Did he really take the elixir of immortality?"
Ying Zheng was astonished!
For the moment, he overlooked the fact that Zhao Tuo had declared himself emperor and failed to return to save Qin despite having an army of five hundred thousand.
["In ancient times, living past sixty was already considered a ripe old age. Even the First Emperor of Qin lived only to fifty, so how did Zhao Tuo manage to live to 103? Did he really find the spirit medicine of immortality?"]
["This spirit medicine was hidden in his tomb. Whether that was true or not, Sun Quan certainly had high hopes for Zhao Tuo's tomb, but in the end, his army spent more than half a year digging in Guangzhou without ever finding it."]
["It was said that the troops who built Zhao Tuo's tomb dug dozens of decoy tombs in the mountains around Guangzhou. On the day of the funeral, all the city gates were opened, and eight funeral processions left Guangzhou at the same time. This was all to confuse tomb robbers of later generations. But now that this ancient tomb has been unearthed on Xianggang Mountain, could it be Zhao Tuo's?"]
"So what if there were dozens of decoy tombs? Later generations still dug it up!"
"Where is this Xianggang Mountain? I've stayed in one place for a long time. I'd like to look around elsewhere."
["Judging by its structure, this must also be an imperial tomb from the Han dynasty. But what Han emperor would have come to Guangzhou?"]
["Obviously, it could only be the emperor of the Kingdom of Nanyue, who declared himself king in Guangzhou at the time."]