These past few days, things had been acting up again, and my wife and I had been taking turns visiting graves. Let me get myself sorted out—double update tomorrow.
Sun Shaozong had originally planned to flex his muscles when the two sides entered negotiations, using the Later Jin ruler and ministers' challenges as an opportunity.
But who would have thought that for several days straight, Wu Pu Duan Heng would summon only Xu Furen, refusing to let him accompany Xu into the palace? All his previous plans had come to nothing.
Fortunately, Sun Shaozong had already established considerable prestige in Jianzhou City around the New Year, and with Xu Furen's veteran cunning, one man was more than enough for the verbal sparring and battle of wits.
Of course, whenever Xu Furen returned to the Official Residence each day, he inevitably gave Sun Shaozong a brief account of the negotiations.
For now, both sides did seem sincere about peace—at least temporarily. On the very first day, they had reached a consensus on the fundamental premise of ending the war and making peace.
However, they remained deadlocked over several additional terms.
For instance, Great Zhou hoped the two sides could exchange prisoners of war and release the civilians being held captive.
Yet most of the Jurchens captured by Great Zhou had already been executed according to the law. This so-called exchange was merely a pleasant-sounding pretext; in truth, Great Zhou wanted Later Jin to unilaterally release all Han slaves.
Naturally, the Jurchens could not accept that.
For another, Later Jin hoped to establish several trading sites near Xingcheng where both sides could conduct mutual trade.
Trade itself was not a problem, but besides demanding that Great Zhou place no restrictions on the import of ironware, the Jurchens also demanded that the Great