Shen Changchuan took the opportunity of buying things to strike up a conversation with a peddler by the roadside named Zhang San.
From him,
Shen Changchuan learned the truth behind the slaughter of Yang Family Village all those years ago.
Four years earlier, the Battle of Wei River had erupted.
King Wei, Cao Wu, had been grievously wounded by a scheme from the combined armies of Chu, Song, and Wu. His forces suffered devastating losses, and even his eldest son, Cao Biao, had been surrounded and killed after giving his prized horse to Cao Wu.
To vent his fury, bolster the morale of the remnants of his defeated army, and sever Chu's potential for war,
Cao Wu had brazenly ordered the massacre of all Eight Prefectures of Wei River.
The great army ran rampant, slaughtering nearly everyone throughout the Wei River Basin. The Wei River itself had run dry from the carnage.
Yang Family Village
had merely been an insignificant little village within the Eight Prefectures of Wei River.
Against the backdrop of more than a million people being slaughtered until blood flowed like a river, it had been nothing more than an inconspicuous ripple, noticed by no one at all.
At the time,
once King Wei made that move,
the whole world had trembled in terror!
Throughout history, there had been armies that buried captives alive and armies that slaughtered cities which resisted to the bitter end.
But indiscriminately raising the butcher's blade against more than a million commoners, regardless of city or countryside, age or sex, and emptying eight entire prefectures—only Cao Wu had ever done such a thing!
Once this matter came to light,
King Wei Cao Wu's name as a butcher resounded in every direction.
Even now,
when speaking of that king who occupied the five