The Dream of Peace

Banners snapped in the wind. The Yellow Heaven was due to rise.

Zhang Jiao stood atop a crude earthen platform, watching as more and more people gathered below.

Their faces were sallow, their bodies gaunt, their clothes ragged, yet in their eyes burned a fire he had never seen before.

The Nine-Section Staff in Zhang Jiao's hand pointed toward the dim sky. His voice was hoarse with excitement, yet every word rang like iron, smashing down upon the cracked earth of Ji Province:

"The Blue Heaven is dead! The Yellow Heaven shall rise! The year is Jiazi; all under heaven shall know great fortune!"

The seeds of the Way of Peace, planted in the fertile soil of oppression and hatred, grew wildly at a speed never seen before.

The talisman water and herbs of the Essential Arts of Peace soothed bodies and souls afflicted by illness.

The formation diagrams and secret contact phrases in the Heavenly Book of Dunjia organized the refugees into unit after unit of troops just beginning to understand commands.

And the ideal of "bringing about Great Peace" and the cry that "men have no high or low" within the Book of Great Peace and Purity became the sharpest ideological weapon.

The Taiping Army spread like wildfire across the prairie.

Starving farmers threw down their hoes and wrapped yellow scarves around their heads.

Bankrupt craftsmen raised their adzes and chisels, merging into the great flood.

Garrison soldiers with nowhere left to go turned their spearpoints around and became the vanguard.

They attacked cities and seized territory, executed officials and powerful local tyrants, opened granaries, and distributed grain.

Wherever they went, the old order collapsed like earth crumbling and tiles breaking amid a frenzy of revenge.

In just a few short months, eight provinces shook. Government offices were