Chapter 57 towards the end

On the way from Chang'an to Luoyang, Emperor Zhaozong Li Ye looked for opportunities time and time again to send people to the feudal vassals for emergency, and ordered Li Keyong of Hedong, Wang Jian of Xichuan, Yang Xingmi of Huainan and other Jiedu envoys to speed up their troops to serve the king.Zhu Quanzhong found that the emperor had been lingering, knowing that there was a fraud, so he urged him repeatedly.Zhaozong first excused that the queen had just given birth and it was inconvenient to go on the road, and then instructed Si Tianjian to play, saying that the astrology had changed and it would be unfavorable to travel east.

However, no matter what excuse Zhaozong made, Zhu Quanzhong's answer to him was only the same action - to kill someone. Zhaozong said that Zhu Quanzhong ordered the medical officer to be killed just after the queen gave birth.Zhaozong said that there was a change in the astrology, so Zhu Quanzhong ordered someone to kill the Si Tianjian.In the end, Zhaozong had no choice but to bite the bullet and continue on the road. Since Cui Yin was killed, the Sixth Army of the Imperial Guard basically disintegrated, and there were only more than 200 teenagers from Neiyuan who followed the emperor to the east, but they were only playing with the emperor for dispatch, not at all Protect the safety of the emperor.

Even so, Zhu Quanzhong still did not let them go. On the ninth day of the fourth lunar month in the fourth year of Tianfu, Emperor Zhaozong and his party arrived in the outskirts of Luoyang.Zhu Quanzhong set up a banquet in the camp, called more than two hundred teenagers to the banquet together, and then strangled them all to death during the banquet. The reason why they were strangled with a rope instead of being hacked with a knife was to prevent the blood from staining their clothes.Because of those clothes, Zhu Quanzhong is useful.At that time, Zhu Quanzhong had found more than two hundred teenagers who were similar in age and figure to them.Afterwards, he made these people wear the clothes of the dead and serve the emperor as usual.Zhaozong didn't notice it at first, but he didn't realize it until several days later, but he could only pretend not to know.

On the tenth day of the fourth lunar month, Emperor Zhaozong Li Ye entered Luoyang and changed the name to "Tianyou" the next day. At this time, Emperor Zhaozong clearly had a glimmer of hope for the future. However, at this time, Li Tang Zhitian had no one to protect him. The Tang Empire, which lasted more than 280 years, has entered a countdown state... In the following months, Zhu Quanzhong received reports from his ears and eyes, saying that Li Keyong, Li Maozhen, Wang Jian, Yang Xingmi and other feudal towns had extremely frequent exchanges of official documents, and the documents contained words about revitalizing the country and restoring Li Tang.Immediately, Zhu Quanzhong felt a sense of long nights and many dreams.Moreover, in Zhu Quanzhong's view, Zhaozong was older and had been in power for a long time, so it was undoubtedly much more difficult to replace him than the young master.Considering this, Zhu Quanzhong decided to take the final action.

In August of the first year of Tianyou (AD 904), the confidant generals Jiang Xuanhui, Zhu Yougong, and Shi Shucong who stayed in Luoyang to monitor the emperor received Zhu Quanzhong's action order. In the middle of the night on August 11th, Jiang Xuanhui and others led hundreds of soldiers knocked on the door of the emperor's bedroom, claiming that there was an urgent military situation and they had to meet the emperor.As soon as the concubine Pei Zhen opened the palace gate, she saw the murderous soldiers at a glance, and she couldn't help blurting out: "Why do you need to bring so many soldiers?"

Before the words were finished, Jiang Xuanhui's subordinate Shi Tai had already chopped down Concubine Pei in a pool of blood. Afterwards, Jiang Xuanhui and others drove straight in, and ran into Zhaoyi and Li Jianrong again. Jiang Xuanhui shouted, "Where is the emperor?" Zhaoyi and Li Jianrong had already realized what had happened, and hurriedly shouted: "It's better to kill us than hurt the emperor!" At this time, Zhaozong was drunk and fell asleep on the bed, but Li Zhaoyi's deliberate cry still woke him up.Zhaozong hurriedly jumped up from the bed and hid behind the pillars of the sleeping hall.However, Jiang Xuanhui had already rushed in with someone.Li Zhaoyi also rushed in to block the emperor, Shi Tai cut her down first, then grabbed the emperor, and raised the bloody butcher knife high...

At that moment, no one knew whether Tang Zhaozong's fifteen years of unbearable imperial career flashed before Li Ye's eyes?Do you still remember his ambition to save the country and help Li Tang when he came to the throne? Nobody knows. We only know that at this moment Li Ye can finally rest.This single soldier who rushed from left to right and fought hard, this single soldier who was exhausted and desperate and had no applause, this single soldier who had no alliance and no reinforcements, could finally lie down and rest at this moment. He was too tired and needed a long sleep—a long sleep that would never be disturbed by the world.

Once Zhaozong died, what happened next seemed logical. On August 12th, Jiang Xuanhui falsely issued an imperial edict, supporting Hui Wang Li Zuo (the ninth son of Emperor Zhaozong) as the crown prince, changing his name to Li Zuo, and announcing that the crown prince would supervise the country.On the same day, Li Wei, who was only thirteen years old, ascended the throne in front of Emperor Zhaozong's coffin. He was known as Emperor Zhaoxuan in history, also known as Emperor Ai. And when all these things happened, Zhu Quanzhong was not in Luoyang.In other words, he has an alibi for the "Zhaozong murder case".

It was not until October that Zhu Quanzhong "heard" that Jiang Xuanhui, Zhu Yougong and others had assassinated Zhaozong. At the moment when he heard the news, Zhu Quanzhong showed an expression of pain, and cried like a concubine, and then made a dangerous action of "throwing himself into the ground".The whole process is done in one go, real and natural, enough to make the viewer horrified and moved.After the performance, Zhu Quanzhong said sadly and angrily: "These slaves have failed me and caused me to suffer eternal infamy!" On the third day of October, Zhu Quanzhong came to Luoyang, threw himself on Zhaozong's coffin and wept bitterly, and then went to see Emperor Zhaoxuan, swearing that these things had nothing to do with him.On the fourth day of October, Zhu Quanzhong demoted Zhu Yougong to Yazhou (now Qiongshan City, Hainan) and Shi Shucong to Baizhou (now Bobai City, Guangxi) Sihu, and then ordered them to commit suicide.Before he died, Zhu Yougong shouted: "Selling me to slander the world is like a ghost! If you act like this, there is hope for success!" (Volume 265)

However, at this moment, will Zhu Quanzhong be afraid of ghosts and gods, and worry about the future? Obviously not. Because, he still has a lot to do and a lot of people to kill. On the ninth day of February in the second year of Tianyou (AD 905), Zhu Quanzhong hosted a banquet in the Jiuqu Pond of Luoyang Palace, inviting Zhaozong's nine sons (King De, King Di, King Qian, King Yi, King Sui, King Jing, King Qi, King Ya, and King Qiong) attended the banquet.When the Nine Kings were drinking, Zhu Quanzhong ordered them all to be strangled to death, and then threw their bodies into the Jiuqu Pond.

In June, Zhu Quanzhong summoned Pei Shu and other 30 or so prestigious courtiers to Baimayi, and killed them all overnight.Left and right said to him: "This group of people usually call themselves a 'clear stream', if they are thrown into the Yellow River, wouldn't it be a 'turbid stream'!" Zhu Quanzhong laughed loudly, and then threw all the thirty or so corpses into the Yellow River. In November, Zhu Quanzhong was promoted to the position of prime minister and took charge of the imperial government (General Baikui). After finishing these, Zhu Quanzhong wanted to meet him. In March of the fourth year of Tianyou (907 A.D.), Zhu Quanzhong forced Emperor Zhaoxuan to abdicate; in April, Zhu Quanzhong changed his name to Zhu Huang, changed Bianzhou to Kaifeng Prefecture, that is, the throne of emperor, the country name "Daliang", and changed the Yuan to "Kaiping"; Emperor Zhaoxuan was abolished as King Jiyin, and he was executed soon after. This Zhu Huang (Zhu Quanzhong, Zhu Wen) is the Taizu of the Later Liang Dynasty in history. At this point, the Tang Empire, which lasted for 289 years, was declared to have fallen. Although the Tang Dynasty was destroyed, the death and fission were far from over. Because Zhu Wen's usurpation of the Tang Dynasty only completed the transformation of the central regime, and did not rule the world.When he established Houliang, the whole territory of China at the beginning of the tenth century was still a chaotic mess of disintegration and vassal regimes.In addition to the Houliang regime established by Zhu and Wen in the Central Plains, the main separatist forces all over the Quartet include Li Keyong, Li Cunxu and his sons in Hedong, Liu Rengong and Liu Shouguang in Youzhou, Li Maozhen in Fengxiang, Yang Xingmi in Huainan, Wang Jian in Xichuan, and Qian Liu in Zhejiang. , Wang Chao from Fujian, Ma Yin from Hunan, Liu Yin from Guangzhou... In the first half of the tenth century, several generations of troubled warlords entered the Central Plains one after another. You sing and I come on stage, and successively established five central regimes of "Houliang, Houtang, Houjin, Houhan, and Houzhou", which are called "Five Dynasties" in history; At the same time, the vassal towns scattered in the four directions also established separate regimes such as "Front Shu, Later Shu, Wu, Southern Tang, Wuyue, Fujian, Chu, Southern Han, Jingnan, and Northern Han", known as the "Ten Kingdoms" in history. . This is one of the famous troubled times in Chinese history - Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. It was not until 960 A.D., after Zhao Kuangyin established the Northern Song Dynasty, that he began to conquer the north and south, and eliminated the scattered separatist regimes one by one. The chaotic situation that lasted for more than half a century gradually came to an end. (End of the book)