Li Shimin held onto Wei Zheng's arm, looking every bit like a ruler and minister in perfect harmony.
Wei Zheng, however, felt somewhat unaccustomed to it.
After all, if he truly became close with His Majesty, how was he supposed to open his mouth to scold him in the future?
He struggled slightly, but nothing changed. In terms of raw strength, he was simply far inferior to this emperor who had won the realm on horseback. There was no comparison at all.
So he could only say:
"This minister is overwhelmed with fear and gratitude."
Since he could not resist, he could only submit for now. After all, the later generations had said that among the listed pairs, there were those who were not door gods. It might very well be him and His Majesty.
Thus, for the first time, Wei Zheng sincerely hoped that the later generations would reveal the answer as quickly as possible.
[Lightscreen]
[Before revealing the answer, let us take a slight detour and casually talk about the history of door gods.
From current research, as early as before the Xia, Shang, and Zhou, ancient people already had the tradition of hanging something during festivals to pray for blessings.
Tu was originally a type of herb. Because it had the effect of clearing heat and resolving phlegm, and because its pungent smell could repel insects, Xia people would hang tu grass on their doors to ward off plagues. This tu grass evolved into the door god Shentu during the Eastern Han.
Yulei most likely originated from river snails. During the Shang dynasty, there were still practices of worshiping animal spirits. Snails were thus revered by Shang ancestors for their symbolic meaning of "tightly closed doors." In excavated Shang tombs, large numbers of buried snails have been found near the tomb gates. Some scholars speculate this may have been a kind of protective witchcraft based on symbolic meaning. The character "Lei" is, according to oracle and seal script analysis, shaped like three snail shells stacked together. In the end, it was also anthropomorphized and evolved into the door god Yulei.
After the fall of the Eastern Han, the Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties ushered in centuries of ethnic upheaval. During this process, the immortal-like, flowing-robed images of Shentu and Yulei were quickly abandoned by the common people. Door gods in armor and helmets, martial general types, began to circulate. Guan Yu and Zhang Fei also first appeared on the people's doors.
In the Tang dynasty, on one hand, military achievements were outstanding, so the people's dependence on door gods was not particularly strong. On the other hand, the Tang court had extremely strict regulations regarding door rituals. Emperors and nobles could use red doors. Chancellor residences could use yellow doors. Commoners were required to paint their doors black. Decorative and painted styles on doors also had strict hierarchical regulations. A single mistake could bring deadly disaster.
By the mid-Tang, corrupt officials ran rampant and the people suffered greatly. With pent-up resentment everywhere, Zhong Kui, who "sweeps away all demons and monsters under heaven," was created accordingly and hung on back doors.
The Song dynasty was more interesting.
During the reign of Emperor Zhenzong of Song, following precedent, a Martial Temple was established. Some idle and overly pedantic scholar-officials filed a complaint against the statues in the Martial Temple.
Wu Zixu flogged the corpse of the King of Chu. Zhao Yun, when rescuing Ah Dou at the river crossing, also once berated Lady Sun. Both were acts of insubordination and rebellion, offenses of subordinates against superiors, and were not suitable to be enshrined in the Martial Temple.
Emperor Zhenzong may have felt this was too outrageous, but also did not dare to completely ignore the scholar-officials' opinions. In the end, he proposed a compromise. The two statues were moved out of the Martial Temple and placed for worship at the temple gates.
This action was quickly interpreted by the merchants of Bianliang as the emperor appointing new door gods. That very year, door god New Year prints were made based on their images.
Thus, the most utterly unrelated pair of door gods in history was born.
However, the combination of Wu Zixu and Zhao Yun was still not the most absurd.
In the mid to late Northern Song, externally there were repeated peace treaties in the Song-Xia wars. Internally there were the uprisings of Song Jiang and Fang La, as well as the great northern uprisings during the Xuanhe era. It could be said that the situation was precarious.
After two disastrous defeats in the Song-Liao wars, Song and Jin formed the Maritime Alliance to jointly destroy Liao. As a result, this move instead caused Song and Jin to directly border each other, losing strategic buffer space.
After Liao was destroyed, Jin Taizong did not even pause, and in the same year launched a campaign to destroy Song. Two years later, Jin troops swept in, capturing the two emperors Huizong and Qinzong, Zhao Song royal clan members, and over a hundred thousand men and women. The Northern Song perished.
And during those two years of the Song-Jin war, the door god images in Bianliang also quietly changed. They were neither Shentu and Yulei, nor Buddhist guardian deities, nor Zhao Yun and Wu Zixu.
"Door gods were repeatedly changed, wearing tiger-head helmets. And at the palace gates, they were even decorated with solid gold." This is a record left from the first year of Jingkang of the Northern Song.
The enemies of war instead became door gods who protected the household.
One can only say that the fall of the Northern Song was simply too inevitable.
In the Yuan dynasty, Emperor Wuzong of Yuan was addicted to alcohol, leading to taverns filling Dadu. The Warring States Four Lords, famous for drinking and entertaining guests, took turns becoming door gods.
During the Ming and Qing, storytelling and opera became the main forms of entertainment for the common people. The famous figures portrayed within them easily became choices for door gods during the New Year.
The Romance of Sun and Pang fictionalized the magical duel of Sun Bin and Pang Juan. The fictional scene where Sun Bin became a door bolt and locked the house allowed this pair of mortal enemies to smoothly become door gods.
The Romance of the Western Han made Xiao He chasing Han Xin under the moon widely known. Combined with their revered status, they were also smoothly painted onto doors.
The Investiture of the Gods created the strange door god pair of Zhao Gongming and Randeng Daoren.
In Journey to the West, the scene of Wei Zheng beheading the Jing River Dragon King in a dream became widely known. Thus, in some regions during the Qing, people also pasted images of Li Shimin and Wei Zheng on back doors as door gods to ward off ghosts and evil.
In addition, door gods varied slightly by region. In the Nanyang area of the Central Plains, Zhao Yun and Ma Chao were pasted as a pair. In Changshan, Hebei, Ma Chao and Ma Dai were pasted as brothers, successfully stealing Zilong's hometown. In Shu and Sichuan, people pasted Zhuge Liang and Deng Ai, and so on.
In short, by later times, pasting door gods was no longer that complicated.
Believe in what you want, buy what you want, paste what you want.
If you really wanted, pasting Liu Bei and Cao Cao as door gods was not impossible either.
And all those listed in the earlier question were door gods.]
Inside the imperial palace of Bianliang.
Whether it was the matter of Emperor Zhenzong, or the later defeat by Xia, Liao, and Jin leading to the eventual fall of the Northern Song, these were all relatively distant for Zhao Pu and Zhao Guangyi.
Yet hearing them, they also felt intimately connected to those events.
However, what they knew was far too little.
For example, Western Xia could roughly be guessed to be the Tangut state. Liao was not unfamiliar. Everyone knew that the Khitan founded Liao.
But what exactly was this Jin state?
Thus, Zhao Pu and Zhao Guangyi subconsciously turned their gazes toward the Emperor.
It was because both of them did not know when His Majesty had obtained the secret of the light screen. Presumably, he should know far more than they did.
Zhao Kuangyin wanted to put on a calm smile.
But in the end, he failed.
The muscles of his cheeks had completely stiffened. The forced smile he squeezed out after two twitches looked no better than crying.
In the end, he could only say in a deep voice:
"As for this Jin dynasty, I also do not know."
Whether the two believed him or not, Zhao Kuangyin was telling the truth.
However, when his eyes once again swept over the later generations' listing of Northern Song battle records, he felt a faint pain in his stomach.
Song inherited Zhou's systems, and Zhao Kuangyin himself had risen from the Palace Front Army. He was a textbook product of the military and had always considered himself knowledgeable in warfare. He was even more intimately familiar with the condition of the Imperial Army.
In his view, things like the loudly boasted Liao southern and northern administrations, the Khitan seven tribes, and the Southern Court Grand King's Six Armies were all nothing but clay chickens and straw dogs.
Whether in organizational structure or soldier quality, they were far inferior to the Imperial Army.
It could be said that in the era of warlord struggles after the fall of Tang, the Imperial Army did not suffer from inability to fight. What it suffered from was whether it could remain loyal and restrained.
After all, after all, he himself… cough cough.
Zhao Kuangyin coughed loudly, drawing side glances from Zhao Pu and Zhao Guangyi.
He waved his hand, then fell into deep contemplation over whether he should abolish harsh miscellaneous taxes and allow the people to recover and breathe.