About Chapter 78 Story Introduction: Liu Bobo, the lord of Hu Xia, continued to win in the battle against Later Qin, so he ordered to build the capital city of Tongwan City under extremely harsh conditions, making the fortification of Tongwan City more ancient, Liu Bobo also changed his surname to Helian and established himself as the emperor, Hu Xia also became strong, and then Qin Emperor Yao Xing in order to block Hu Xia's continuous attacks, befriended the Eastern Jin Dynasty, returned the land occupied by the twelve counties, and increased taxes in the country, expanded the army, which intensified the domestic contradictions in Later Qin. Just when Helian was the emperor, the bald Wei Tan, the lord of the Southern Liang State, attacked the Northern Liang in order to save the country's decline, but was defeated by the Northern Liang, and the Northern Liang lord Fuqu Mengxun took advantage of the victory to pursue, but the attack on the capital of the Southern Liang City was blocked, and the Fuqu Mengxun was afraid of the harassment of the Western Liang, so he had to retreat and return, and predicted that the Southern Liang would die.

In this story, the Hu Xia regime, which competed for hegemony in the Guanzhong region, and the Northern Liang regime, which competed for supremacy in the northwest region, gradually became stronger among their opponents, while their opponents, the Later Qin Empire and the Southern Liang regime, gradually declined as a result. Especially in the Later Qin Empire, in the face of the pressing of the Hu Xia regime, the Later Qin Emperor Yao Xing was sick and rushed to the hospital, not only returning the land of the twelve counties that had occupied the Eastern Jin Dynasty, but also increasing taxes and expanding the number of soldiers in the country, which deepened the domestic contradictions in the Later Qin Empire and laid the groundwork for the demise of the Later Qin Empire.

Comparatively speaking, the actions of the bald Wei Tan, the lord of the Southern Liang State, are relatively reasonable, but it is a pity that the national strength of the Nanliang regime has begun to decline from the heyday after the occupation of Guzang, and the personal ability of the bald Wei Tan is not comparable to that of the Northern Liang Lord Fuqu Mengxun, although the bald Wei Tan tries his best to save the crisis of the Nanliang regime, but there are strong enemies such as the Northern Liang State Lord Fuqu Mengxun and the Western Qin State Lord Qi Fu Chipan, and there are hidden worries about the sinicization of the tribes inside, so it is difficult for the bald Wei Tan to make a difference.

Like the decline and demise of the Nanyan regime, I think the decline and demise of the Nanliang regime also have little to do with its last monarch, the bald Wei Tan, as the king of the Southern Liang regime, what he did is still remarkable, and the personal ability of the bald Wei Tan even surpasses that of Murong Chao, the lord of the Southern Yan State, but in the face of the historical law of ethnic integration during the Sixteen Kingdoms period, he cannot be reversed, in fact, the Later Qin Emperor Yao Xing is not like this, in the first half of Yao Xing's reign of the Later Qin Empire, the Later Qin Empire was extremely prosperous, But Yao Xing also failed to grasp the historical law of the sinicization of the main tribe, and finally in the later period of his rule of the Later Qin Empire, the Later Qin Empire went into decline, Yao Xing and the bald Wei Tan are rulers with certain talents, their sad fate lies in the fact that they were born in the troubled times of national integration, and were born in nomadic peoples, these two rulers were placed in any unified dynasty after the Sui and Tang dynasties, and they were very qualified kings of success. However, history has played tricks on these two emperors, and the historical torrent of national integration will destroy their country, and these two can only sit and wait for death, without the power to parry, so during this period, Yao Xing and the bald Wei Tan can't get rid of the decline and demise of their regime no matter how they try to, and at the same time, they can't stop their tribes from entering the historical stage of finally completing Sinicization.

In the same way, after the Northern Liang regime and the Hu Xia regime continued to gain control of the Liangzhou region and the Guanzhong region, they were bound to decline and perish in the process of sinicization, of course, the rulers of the Northern Liang regime and the Hu Xia regime, Fuqu Mengxun and Helian Bobo, were both capable heroes in this period, and the time of the decline of their regime naturally had a lot to do with their lifespan, so the Beiliang regime was the lucky one, because the Fuqu Mengxun lived longer than Helian Bobo, so, The Northern Liang regime also had to exist for some more time than the Huxia regime.

In fact, in the middle and late stages of the Sixteen Kingdoms period, especially after the Battle of Weishui, among the regimes established by many nomads formed in the northern land, there were situations in which the main tribes basically completed the sinicization and the national cohesion was lost. As a result, these regimes, without exception, have seen signs of declining national strength and continuous civil strife. The Xianbei Tuoba tribe, which had just entered the Kwantung region from the Mongolian steppe in the north, still maintained a certain ethnic identity, so the Northern Wei Dynasty established by the Xianbei Tuoba tribe became the nomadic tribe with the best chance to unify the northern region during this period. Of course, the later Northern Wei Dynasty unified the north and opened the historical process of the Northern Dynasty also illustrates this.

Let's go back and talk about what Liu Bobo, the lord of Huxia, did when the Huxia regime was strong, because this is crucial for us to understand the development of the nomadic people in the history of the Xiongnu Tiefu and even in the entire history of our country.

First of all, when Liu Bobo began to become stronger, he changed his surname to Helian, and Liu Bobo became the more famous king of Helian Bobo in the history of our country. As the national surname of the Han Dynasty, the surname Liu is very important to the main ethnic group of the Xiongnu, which is a very important signboard for the legitimacy of their feudal statehood in the Central Plains, but Liu Bobo changed the surname Liu to Helian, which fully shows that the relationship between the Xiongnu Tiefu Department and the Xiongnu main tribe is not deep. And we can also see that at the end of the Sixteen Kingdoms period, new Han ancestors began to form, and the influence of the Western Han Dynasty and the Eastern Han Dynasty weakened, and the dignity of the surname Liu also became worthless.

Secondly, when Helian Bobo gradually became stronger, he began to build the capital and cast weapons, which was not only to show his martial arts excellence, but also to see that at this time, the Xiongnu Tiefu Department had given up the primitive nomadic life mode and began to enter the advanced settled life mode.

As for Helian Bobo's casting of the Tongwan City, we people today can still know some of it in some historical stories, because it is recorded in the history books that Helian Bobo used contradictory cruel methods to treat the city builders in order to build an impregnable capital. Again, this brutal paradoxical method was applied to craftsmen who forged weapons and shields. I don't think such accounts are necessarily true historical facts. It may also be a writing technique used by later historians to discredit the nomadic regime. Of course, it takes a lot of manpower and material resources to build the capital and forge weapons. There will inevitably be craftsmen who will die in these vast works, but it is somewhat out of touch with self-contradictory methods to brutally treat these craftsmen, because the number of craftsmen in a regime is limited, and skilled craftsmen are even rarer, and using paradoxical and brutal methods to kill craftsmen will only make the regime unpopular and make the regime fall into a state of destruction soon, while the Huxia regime did not appear to have perished quickly. There were no riots even during this period. This is enough to show that although the series of projects carried out by Helian Bobo cost people and money, there was absolutely no murder of craftsmen with contradictory and cruel methods. As for this description of the historical books, I believe that later historians made up the source of the idiom of self-contradiction in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period in order to explain the illegality of the Huxia regime established by the Xiongnu Tiefu Department in the Guanzhong region. In the realities of history, the probability of such a scenario is too small. In fact, the attitude of the dynasties in history towards craftsmen is actually very high, especially the attitude of nomads towards Han craftsmen is very respectful, we can see the clues from the historical records of the Mongols slaughtering the city, because the Mongols who dominated Eurasia slaughtered the city, there are two kinds of people they do not kill, one is a child who is shorter than the wheel, and the other is a craftsman. It can be seen that the nomads are well aware of the contribution of craftsmen to society. I think that Helian Bobo, as a nomadic hero, would never have even understood this, and if Helian Bobo used such a bad method to murder the craftsmen who built the city and forged weapons for him, then the existence of the Huxia regime would be against the trend of history, and it would inevitably be rapidly destroyed.

There are very few weapons left in the Huxia period to this day, and similarly, Helian's famous sword Daxia Dragon Sparrow has also disappeared in the long river of history, and our people today can no longer see the true face of Daxia Dragon Sparrow. However, the ruins of Tongwancheng are still standing on the land of northern Shaanxi after thousands of years of wind and frost, and we can also get a glimpse of the style of the Huxia regime when it was prosperous from the ruins of Tongwancheng.

We started from the Xiongnu Tiefu Department, which established the Huxia regime, to forge refined steel to make weapons. We can also see how much importance the nomads attached to iron tools. In fact, we see that in the historical process of nomads, many nomadic ethnic names or country names have a lot to do with steel and even metals, for example, after Rouran, the Turks who ruled the northern Mongolian steppe, the meaning of Turkic is helmet, and the main tribe of the Turks, Ashina, is relying on the iron for Rouran to develop and grow. The Khitan, which replaced the Turks and re-emerged as the overlord of the Mongolian steppes in the north, also contained the meaning of iron, and the Khitan rose in the Liao River Valley, which is still a source of steel, so we can also speculate that the Khitan may also rely on iron for the Turks to develop and grow. And the Jurchens who defeated the Khitan nation and established the Liao Dynasty also took Jin as their country name. It can be seen that the casting and use of iron and even metal tools is a very important element in the development and growth of nomadic peoples. However, if they want to obtain the casting method of iron and metal ware, they must learn from the advanced Chinese culture, which is also an important reason why the nomads yearn for sinicization.