Chapter 8

"Kneel down for me..." The gray-bearded man kicked Xia Letian from behind with great force, causing him to kneel on the ground.

"You brat, you killed so many of our brothers. Just beheading you is already a mercy from our king... our leader has a heart like a bodhisattva. Remember this, in your next life, you better stay away from me." As he finished speaking, he raised the steel sword that had taken countless lives. The next second would be Xia Letian's end.

At this moment, Xia Letian was determined. He stared intently at Shi Dakai with wide eyes. "If you kill me, you will regret it, because I am the only one who knows the reason for your Heavenly Kingdom's failure, and I am also the only one who knows how to overthrow the Manchu Qing dynasty..." Xia Letian was now completely determined, knowing that without using this trump card, he would surely die. He almost used all his strength to scream.

"If you kill me, no one will be able to answer your questions, and your doubts will remain unanswered forever..."

"Wait!" Shi Dakai was already overwhelmed by Xia Letian's气势 (momentum). He never expected this young man to be so arrogant. The millions of capable people in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom couldn't find the reason for their failure, and you, a mere foreigner, can figure it out? Wait, a foreigner? A stone from another mountain can polish jade; perhaps he really has something valuable to offer.

When the news of the fall of the capital reached him, Shi Dakai also fell into deep confusion. He didn't know where the Heavenly Kingdom went wrong. Was it wrong to overthrow the Manchu Qing dynasty? Was it wrong to overthrow the slave owners who oppressed all the Han people? Was it wrong to abolish the unequal treaties with foreigners?

Yes, Shi Dakai also knew about the internal strife and severe internal consumption within the Heavenly Kingdom. But to attribute the failure of the cause to internal strife alone? Shi Dakai felt this reason was insufficient. What was missing? He couldn't figure it out.

For countless nights, Shi Dakai sat by a dim lamp, racking his brain to recall the 11-year history from the rise to the fall of the Heavenly Kingdom, trying to find the key to the problem but failing to find an answer. Sometimes he would flip through history books and the classics left by sages, trying to find the crux of the issue, but the sages from thousands of years ago seemed helpless in the face of the current complex world.

Exploration, failure, exploration again, failure again... Shi Dakai's emotions were on the verge of collapse. Just now, this young man, who claimed to be a solitary traveler from abroad, said he knew the answer to the problem?

Shi Dakai grabbed Xia Letian by the collar. "Young man, I advise you not to play with fire. If you can't come up with anything and are just trying to buy time, then your fate will be worse than beheading. A thousand cuts will be a light punishment..."

Xia Letian took several deep breaths. He knew he had now taken control of the negotiation. He had already cut a wound in Shi Dakai's closed heart. Xia Letian didn't care if the wound was bloody; he just wanted to save the lives of the people in the mountain temple.

Xia Letian said firmly, "Release the people in the mountain temple. They are not your enemies. Otherwise, I won't reveal a single word to you..."

"Ha ha, whether those people live or die depends on the value of your answer. Rest assured, I, Shi Dakai, am a man of integrity. The title of Prince of Righteousness is not given lightly. I won't deceive you..."

Xia Letian rubbed his sore wrists and said coldly, "I'll trust you this once. Time is short, and I don't have the patience to play games. With your knowledge, you know that overthrowing the Manchu Qing is an extremely difficult task. If I just told you a couple of strategies to overthrow the Qing, you wouldn't believe me..."

"Let's do this. I can only discuss this issue from a field you are unfamiliar with. Although it's just the tip of the iceberg, it can broaden your thinking..."

Xia Letian thought for a long time, carefully organizing his words. He picked up a branch and started drawing a map in the sand. "This is Britain, France, and here is the European continent, Africa, India, and all the way to our China..."

Xia Letian began by talking about the Second Opium War, from the Arrow Incident and the Father Chapdelaine Incident to the Battle of Baliqiao and the burning of the Summer Palace. He wasn't just recounting the events but also analyzing the interests of the Western powers behind the war.

"After the First Opium War, which was the war when Lin Zexu destroyed the opium at Humen, the British took Hong Kong and forced the Qing to open five treaty ports: Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai. Foreign influence began to penetrate, but this was far from enough. They wanted the entire Qing Empire to open its doors..."

When the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was at its height, the foreigners hoped to gain more trading rights from the capital, but they never expected that Hong Xiuquan and his followers were even more xenophobic. They unilaterally declared the treaties between the Qing and the foreigners invalid and even instigated the Shanghai Small Knife Society rebellion.

From that moment on, the foreigners completely abandoned the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and began to support the Manchu Qing. However, the Manchu Qing, despite losing the First Opium War, still believed they were the Celestial Empire and had not been sufficiently humbled.

Since the Manchu Qing were not enlightened, military force had to be used. So, the war seemed somewhat accidental but was filled with inevitability.

The Qing government lost, and they lost completely. From that day on, China's doors were opened, and Western powers began to fully invade the interior. Their goods would penetrate along the long coastline and countless inland rivers. Their cheap industrial products could be sold at exorbitant prices in China, and over time, China would become weaker while the West would become stronger.

"This is what they want, and it's what they have achieved. To put it bluntly, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, in a certain sense, stimulated the commercial adventures of the Westerners... Prince, don't take it personally. If China was a fat but weak person before, after 11 years of civil war, it is now a fat, bleeding, and severely weakened person..."

"I understand your feelings, Prince. The Qing are bad, and the foreigners who bully China are also bad. Everyone wants China to be strong, but you made a mistake by knowing nothing about the outside world. Perhaps there is a possibility, a hypothesis, that if you had been willing to open your eyes to the world, none of this might have happened..."

Yes, opening your eyes to the world is a mindset, and it is a necessary mindset for a weak nation to become strong. In this regard, the island nation of Japan did much better than the Qing Empire.

In the eyes of the Qing government and the leaders of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, all Westerners were demons. Whether British, French, or Italian, they were all the same. The Russians from the north and the British from the sea were no different.

They didn't understand that Britain and France had fought a hundred-year war, or that Prussia was ambitiously trying to establish a new empire. They didn't understand the Crimean War between Russia, Britain, and France, or that the Russians, after losing the Crimean War, turned their attention to the East.

Xia Letian was now like a teacher enlightening a student, almost hand-holding them. He explained the general shape of the Earth, the composition of the Western powers, and the various grudges and entanglements between them, gradually imparting this knowledge to Shi Dakai and the gray-bearded man.

In the end, even the rough gray-bearded man slapped his thigh. "Oh, so there are so many twists and turns among the foreigners? They fight each other even more fiercely than we do?"

This statement was quite accurate. At that time, the old capitalist countries like Britain and France had not yet completed their global colonial plans, while the emerging capitalist countries were desperately fighting for the remaining scraps, and the contradictions between them were accumulating.

According to Xia Letian's explanation, the timing and extent of industrialization in Western countries were different. Only a few countries could project military power across half the globe: Britain, France, and the United States. As for other countries, they could at most send merchant ships to do a little business. The idea of waging war against the Qing was out of the question.

The Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal, the stars of the Age of Exploration, had already fallen by that time, clinging to a few limited colonies to survive.

"Do you understand now? If your Heavenly Kingdom had taken the initiative to establish contact with foreign countries, especially with the United States and the Kingdom of Prussia, and even the declining Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands... if you had established trade relations with them and, if possible, diplomatic relations, using the foreigners to control the foreigners would have been the right way..."

Shi Dakai looked at the eloquent Xia Letian, and he suddenly had a hallucination, as if the young man in front of him was an all-knowing god.

Xia Letian was very confident. At that time, apart from a few mediocre translators, there were no people in the Qing Empire who could comprehensively study Western politics, economy, and culture. To put it bluntly, the Qing people viewed the Western powers like modern Earthlings view imagined aliens.

Talent, this is true talent! Shi Dakai could already tell from Xia Letian's confident tone that the young man was not lying. He was indeed a great talent with profound knowledge of the West. His identity as a solitary traveler from abroad was genuine, and with his vast knowledge, he was undoubtedly a scholar abroad.

Shi Dakai was not just a common bandit leader; he was a highly educated intellectual, well-versed in traditional Confucian thought. During the years of rebellion, he had also carefully studied the Western world, but no one had explained it as clearly as Xia Letian, and no book had presented it as systematically.

Shi Dakai suddenly laughed, a very sinister laugh. Xia Letian never expected that this highly respected revolutionary in history could laugh so sinisterly. He suddenly interrupted Xia Letian's speech.

"Mr. Xia, you are indeed a great talent. I am already deeply impressed. Releasing the people, that's no problem. I will let the people in the mountain temple go, and I will not seek revenge for the brothers who died in battle last night. The 110,000 silver taels will be considered compensation for our fallen brothers..."

Xia Letian licked his dry lips and bowed to Shi Dakai. "Thank you, Prince. I represent all the people in the mountain temple and thank you, Prince. I will go and tell them the good news..." Xia Letian turned to leave.

"Wait!" Shi Dakai suddenly spoke, his eyes fixed on Xia Letian with a wicked smile. "I haven't finished speaking. I can release the people, but I have conditions... I need a military advisor, and I believe you are the right person for the job. Men, take Mr. Xia back to the mountain..."

Ah? Xia Letian was stunned. How could a messenger end up being taken as well? No, I still want to enjoy the unspoiled beauty of my country, I still want to visit old Beijing, and I still want to marry several beautiful wives. What's the point of being locked up in a mountain?

"Prince, you can't do this, you can't force me. A forced melon is not sweet... Prince, Prince..." Unfortunately, no matter how loudly Xia Letian shouted, it was in vain.

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