As time passed, Zi Cheng was born. Di Yi, king of Shang, was overjoyed and proclaimed a general amnesty. Even the lowly slaves were given wine and meat to eat that day.
Of course, Di Yi, unlike Di Xin, was not his actual name, but a temple name bestowed by later generations after his death.
He had no such title while he was alive.
And the Xin in Di Xin carried several shades of insult.
Xin bore the meaning of punishment by law; its original meanings were a penal blade and crime. This temple name was practically a curse.
But that was only normal. Of all the last emperors of a dynasty, how many ever received a pleasant-sounding title?!
When the sacred vessels of state changed hands, the New Dynasty would naturally disparage the old ruler to the utmost in order to justify the legitimacy of its own rule.
As for whether a person was good or bad, how could a few lines in the history books ever truly make that clear?
A vast nation could never rise because of one person's virtue, nor could it fall because of one person's evil.
Take the Wine Pool and Meat Forest, for instance. To an emperor, that level of expense did not even count as extravagance.
True extravagance was not drinking wine and eating meat, even if the wine and meat were piled into mountains. It was waging war, building wonders...
To ordinary people, however, the Wine Pool and Meat Forest simply seemed more extravagant and wasteful.
And just as history recorded, Zi Cheng was heroic and martial from a young age. In his youth, he possessed the strength of nine oxen and two tigers, and he was quick-witted and eager to learn. More importantly, his heart was open and bright; even