Guan Yu's True Teachings and the Folk's Fight Against Japanese Pirates

The oppressive darkness of the studio receded rapidly like a tide.

Zhu Dijun slammed his hands on the holographic control panel, and the large screen suddenly burst into an extremely dazzling golden-red light, illuminating his face, which was filled with a frenzied fighting spirit, in every detail.

"Family members, there are always unofficial historical anecdotes every year, but this year there seem to be more than usual!"

Zhu Dijun's voice was no longer filled with grief and indignation, but instead revealed a sense of cathartic satisfaction, like a knife cutting through flesh. "Some are just pedantic literati from Jiangnan who profit from human suffering, writing erotic smears and malicious slander. They're utterly disgusting! But there's another kind: folk tales adapted from true battle records!"

He grabbed a black marker and wrote four large characters on the whiteboard with great force.

【Three Arrows of Longshan】!

"Let's go back to the Battle of Longshan that we mentioned earlier!"

Judy Jun slammed the pointer in her hand hard onto the whiteboard.

"In official history, it's true that Qi Jiguang killed three charging Japanese chieftains with three arrows. But in the folk tales of Cixi area, how did the people of Jiangnan emulate this story? They turned it into a fantastical martial arts drama!"

On the holographic screen, an extremely wild Ming Dynasty folk painting was highlighted and magnified.

In the scene, Qi Jiguang, clad in gleaming armor, resembles an ancient war god. His great bow is drawn taut like a full moon, and three heavy steel arrows, leaving visible afterimages, pierce the air!

"The people of Cixi tell the story: On that day, eight hundred Japanese pirates charged into the enemy lines, and tens of thousands of Ming soldiers fled in disarray. At that critical moment, General Qi, alone on horseback, immediately rode to the front lines!"

Zhu Dijun kicked the edge of the podium and roared.

"Three arrows were fired in quick succession! Each arrow pierced through the Japanese pirate leader's forehead, penetrating his skull a full three inches deep! Firmly embedded in his bone!"

The special effects on the big screen exploded instantly. Three Japanese pirate corpses wearing ronin armor, with heavy arrows stuck in their foreheads, were frozen in place as if they had been frozen in place by a spell.

"What's the most outrageous thing?! The locals say that after these three Japanese chieftains were shot through the forehead, their bodies just stood there stiffly in the mud for half a day without falling over!"

Judy burst out laughing.

"Rumor has it that this is called...? It's said that Qi Jiguang received the true teachings of Guan Yu, the God of War! It's the malevolent aura of the God of Wealth, which has even nailed the souls of the Japanese pirates to death!"

The live stream chat was instantly ignited, with the screen filled with exclamations of "Awesome!" and "Possessed by the Martial Saint!" scrolling wildly.

"This is what a ridiculous war drama should look like!"

"Compared to the disgusting mess of Wang Cuiqiao, I much prefer reading the awesome, masculine novels written by our ancestors!"

"Three inches into the skull, standing frozen for half a day! The people have been suffering for too long, they desperately need a war god to cleanse their mess!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

The air inside the Fengtian Hall finally came alive from its extremely oppressive silence.

Xu Da and Tang He, two veteran generals who had helped Zhu Yuanzhang conquer the vast land, stared intently at the virtual projection of Qi Jiguang drawing his bow and nocking an arrow on the screen, their tiger-like eyes suddenly flashing with a piercing light.

"What a brilliant three-arrow strike! What a powerful shot, penetrating three inches into the skull!"

Xu Da abruptly stood up, his simple clothes unable to conceal the boiling aura of killing intent emanating from him. He made a bow-drawing gesture with his hands in the air, his knuckles cracking.

"To remain calm in the face of a rout and consecutively hit three fleeing bandit leaders—such strength and eyesight would make him an absolute top-tier archer even in our Hongwu era!"

"It's a pity he's a person from hundreds of years later!"

Tang He slapped his thigh, his beard bristling, "If I could live in the same era as such a fierce general, I would definitely have a contest with him on the training ground to see if his archery, passed down from Guan Yu, was more accurate, or if my hard bow was more powerful!"

Not only them, but all the founding generals in the hall were eager to fight. They were bloodthirsty wolves at heart, and seeing the Ming army being chased and hacked down by dozens of Japanese pirates had nearly made them vomit blood. Now, finally seeing courageous soldiers in the Ming Dynasty, they could barely restrain themselves from drawing their swords.

Zhu Yuanzhang sat upright on the dragon throne, and a very pleased smile finally appeared on his lips.

"Standing frozen for half a day, the true disciple of the Martial Saint..."

Old Zhu's fingers tapped lightly on the broken imperial desk.

"The common people may not understand military strategy, but their eyes are sharp. They know who the good-for-nothings are and who the true heroes are. The people of Jiangnan have suffered terribly at the hands of those incompetent officials, and they are using these rumors to tell the court—as long as the Ming Dynasty has a general who dares to fight, the common people are willing to entrust their lives to him!"

On the backdrop, the studio spotlight shone intently on Zhu Dijun's face.

He suppressed his smile, and his eyes became extremely sharp.

"Family members, please don't treat this as an ordinary folk tale."

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his knuckles clapping loudly against the podium.

"After the legend of the Three Arrows of Longshan spread like wildfire throughout Jiangnan, it had an extremely powerful, nuclear-level effect—it laid the most solid foundation of popular prestige for Qi Jiguang's later recruitment of soldiers in Yiwu!"

The red laser pointer drew a sharp circle on the map.

"Qi Jiguang proved to the people of the world with three arrows: the Japanese pirates were not invincible gods and demons! They were also made of flesh and blood; if an arrow pierced their foreheads, they would die too!"

Zhu Dijun roared out.

"This 'God of War' effect is like a torch that ignites a prairie fire, directly setting fire to the fiercest fighting spirit within the hearts of the oppressed and slaughtered people of eastern Zhejiang!"

On the big screen, several extremely tattered fragments of local diary entries crashed down.

"The regular army is trash, but the common people aren't cowards!"

Zhu Dijun wrote several large characters on the whiteboard in an extremely violent manner: "[A Tale of a Commoner's Counterattack]!"

"You think we can only rely on the government troops? Wrong! When the common people of the Ming Dynasty are pushed to the limit, they can be crazier than anyone else!"

The holographic image suddenly changed. In the dark, deep forest, a storm raged.

"The first strange tale of eastern Zhejiang!"

Judy Jun slammed a stick into the screen.

"An ordinary peddler from Shaoxing, carrying goods up the mountain, sought refuge alone in a cave. In the middle of the night, seven lost Japanese pirates, soaking wet, stumbled into the same cave!"

On the screen, seven menacing Japanese pirates are starting a fire. In a dark corner, a peddler grips a rusty wood-chopping knife tightly, his eyes bloodshot.

"These are seven professional pirates armed with knives! In the past, the common people would have been terrified!" Judy Jun pressed his hands firmly on the podium.

"But the peddler remembered the legend of Qi Jiguang killing the Japanese pirates. He didn't run away, nor did he shout. He just stayed there, stubbornly holding on!"

"Later into the night, the seven beasts fell into a deep sleep. The peddler, carrying his wood-chopping knife, crept up on them. With swift strokes, the knife fell! With swift strokes, the knife fell!"

Judy Jun suddenly swung her pointer, her voice carrying a suffocatingly bloody undertone.

"A peddler who couldn't even kill a chicken did it in one night in a cave, using only a wood-chopping knife, and single-handedly chopped off the heads of seven Japanese pirates!"

The live stream chat exploded with comments.

"Holy crap! That's a real man!"

"Don't mess with the Chinese people; if you push them too far, they'll turn into killing machines!"

"Those were seven Japanese pirates wielding real swords! Their mental fortitude is incredible!"

The scene kept switching rapidly. The camera cut directly to the turbulent East China Sea.

"Let's explore the wonders of Zhoushan again!"

Judy grabbed a laser pointer and pointed it sharply at a swaying awning boat.

"An old boatman from Zhoushan, whose entire family was ravaged by Japanese pirates, disguised himself as a boatman delivering supplies to the pirates and rowed his small boat to them!"

On the screen, an old boatman with a wrinkled face, hunched over, fawned over as he served several jars of fine Jiangnan wine. Dozens of greedy Japanese pirates snatched the jars and drank them down in a frenzy.

"The Japanese pirates were addicted to alcohol, but this old boatman secretly added a whole pound of high-purity sleeping potion to their drink!"

Judy Jun let out an extremely chilling cold laugh.

"Half an hour later, the entire ship of over thirty vicious Japanese pirates lay sprawled on the deck, eyes rolled back and foaming at the mouth!"

The old boatman instantly dropped his disguise and grabbed a hemp rope as thick as a baby's arm.

"This old man alone bound those thirty-odd Japanese pirates, who were like dead dogs, tightly together like dumplings, and dragged them, boat and all, to the government gate!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his fist on the control panel, producing a dull thud.

When word of this reached the village, the old boatman was immediately revered as a local hero! Even the county magistrate had to come out and kowtow to him!

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

Beneath the old crooked-necked tree on Coal Hill, Zhu Youjian stared blankly at the old boatman dragging more than thirty Japanese pirates to the government office in the sky.

"The peddler beheaded seven Japanese pirates...the boatman bound thirty thieves..."

Emperor Chongzhen's withered fingers trembled violently in the mud.

He suddenly threw his head back and burst into an extremely mournful laugh, laughing so hard that tears streamed down his face.

"Hahahaha! The Ming Dynasty's 120,000 regular troops remained locked up in Nanjing, while several thousand garrison soldiers were chased and slaughtered by eight hundred Japanese pirates! In the end, those who dared to kill the traitors were all the lowest-ranking commoners of our Ming Dynasty!"

Emperor Chongzhen frantically tore at his dragon robe, blood dripping from his eyes.

"What a terrible mistake I've made! What use are those bloated, fat generals I've kept around?! The martial spirit of the Ming Dynasty has long been found in these lowly scoundrels!"

On the backdrop, all the dark gold lights in the studio went out, leaving only an extremely dazzling blood-red spotlight shining on Zhu Dijun's tall figure.

He threw the pointer he was holding onto the podium and looked quietly at the camera.

"Family members. These folk tales have been passed down not for entertainment. They are a blood-stained ruler!"

Zhu Dijun's voice was extremely suppressed, "It tells us that although the Ming Dynasty's military system was utterly rotten, the fighting spirit of the Chinese people at the bottom of society has never been extinguished!"

He slowly turned around and smoothed out the map on the holographic screen.

"Qi Jiguang looked at the heads of the Japanese pirates being chopped off with machetes, and at the pirates bound like dead pigs with ropes. The plan in his mind had completely matured."

Zhu Dijun picked up a red pen and drew an extremely large outline of a giant military formation on the blank space of the map, exuding endless killing intent.

"A few hot-blooded civilians can't save this dilapidated defense line in Jiangnan by simply throwing sticks at it."

He lowered his voice, each word like a heavy hammer striking a war drum.

"What these civilians lack is a special set of equipment to arm them to the teeth, an invincible formation capable of crushing hundreds of thousands of people, and a commander with an iron will who will live and die with them and never embezzle a single penny of military pay!"

"The thirty-eighth year of the Jiajing reign."

Judy Jun turned around abruptly, his eyes blazing with fury:

"Qi Jiguang kicked aside the bunch of incompetent officials in the Ministry of War and headed straight for Yiwu, Zhejiang, the powder keg with the most notoriously volatile social atmosphere in the Ming Dynasty at the time!"

"The strongest heavy infantry regiment of the Ming Dynasty is about to be born in this barren and treacherous land, nourished by iron ore and blood!"