On the one hand, the incident in Cichan Temple shook the entire Wu Dynasty, and on the other hand, it also gave Yang Wu and others enough reasons to clean up those temples all over the Wu Kingdom.

However, even so, there are still many opposing voices in the court.

"My lord, it is extremely hateful that the Cichan Temple secretly does the act of killing people and overstepping goods; However, Cichan Temple is only a special case after all, and there is no need for the king to expand the matter to all the temples in the entire Wu Kingdom! ”

"The king is wise and martial, leading the country of Wu all the way, so that the people of the south who are in war can share the peaceful and prosperous world, and the name of the king will be passed down through the ages, so why offend Buddhism at this time?"

"Great King, in history, like Emperor Taiwu of the Northern Wei Dynasty, Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, and Emperor Wuzong of the Tang Dynasty, they all had the act of destroying the Buddha, and the final fate of these three people is not good, why should the king take the risk of offending the ghosts and gods?"

"King, although the monks of Cichan Temple can be killed, but the surrounding people rely on it, if the king rashly cleans up the Buddhist gate, I am afraid that it will cause turmoil!"

……

In just a few days, there were hundreds of people from all over the country who opposed the clean-up of Buddhism, and according to Yang Wu's judgment, some of them should have received the benefits of Buddhism, so they were open-minded; Part of it was because of my belief in Buddhism, and I didn't feel the need to expand it to all temples just because of one temple.

Of course, there are still some people who oppose it out of good intentions, for the sake of Yang Wu's personal reputation, or out of the ghost and god theory that "faith is there".

After all, Emperor Taiwu of the Northern Wei Dynasty, Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, and Emperor Wuzong of the Tang Dynasty, who had destroyed Buddha on a large scale in history, were widely criticized in history for destroying Buddha; Even these three people ended up miserable and did not get a good death, and this result was seconded by some people and became evidence of their karma for destroying the Buddha.

Therefore, these people feel that now that Wu is in a period of prosperity, it is better to have more than one thing, and there is no need to rashly take Buddhism to open the knife.

However, Yang Wu felt that the flood of Buddhism to the point where it was now, although it was not as good as the millions of monks in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and even the point that it could threaten the imperial power, but the situation was also extremely serious. If he doesn't exert great courage to rectify the Buddhism now, does he still expect his successors to do this?

Buddhism must be rectified, and it must not be allowed to continue to spread, this is Yang Wu's decision.

As for reputation, such as Later Zhou Shizong, he also carried out a large-scale rectification of the temple, but he is not the same as being revered as the first Ming Jun of the five generations, which shows that the world still knows the merits of the matter, and will not let him only leave infamy because of a move to clean up Buddhism.

As for the claims of retribution, it is even more nonsense.

The period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties was originally the most turbulent period in the world, even if those emperors who did not ban the Buddha but devoted themselves to the Buddha, there were not many miserable ends, and they could not die well, and those who liked to attach themselves to the meeting just stared at the destruction of the Buddha by Emperor Taiwu of the Northern Wei Dynasty and others, which was simply ridiculous.

It's a pity that Yang Wu didn't have to pay attention to the letters of those ministers, but he had a headache with his mother's words, Mrs. Shi.

"Mother, the child is not trying to completely ban Buddhism, let alone destroy Buddhism, the child is just cleaning up Buddhism!"

In the Ci'an Palace, in the face of the questions of Mrs. Shi, Mrs. Wang and others, Yang Wu explained with some headaches.

Mrs. Shi, these pampered women, has nothing to do all day long, except for having fun with other concubines, that is, paying homage to Buddhism, etc., and has a deep belief in Buddhism.

This time, I don't know where I heard the news, saying that Yang Wu was going to destroy the Buddha, which scared Mrs. Shi a lot.

How powerful is the Buddha, if he knows that Yang Wu has the idea of destroying the Buddha, how can he get the guilt when the time comes?

Mrs. Shi, who was panicked in her heart, summoned Yang Wu to the harem for questioning.

Fortunately, although Mrs. Shi respects Buddhism, she is not an assertive person.

Yang Wu carefully explained to him that he did not want to ban the Buddha, let alone destroy the Buddha, but to rectify the Buddha, and Mrs. Shi's face was much better; After Yang Wu told her in detail about the matter of Cichan Temple this time, she no longer opposed it as fiercely as she did at the beginning.

There are so many Buddhist temples in the world, how many of them hide dirt and dirt, how many shady things are hidden, plus those temples do not pay taxes in the first place, and occupy a lot of land, in addition to a large number of ordinary people who attach their land to the name of Buddhism, after explaining these details to Mrs. Shi, she finally accepted Yang Wu's explanation with suspicion.

"As you say, it's good to clean it up. There are so many temples in the world, if there really is a temple like Cichan Temple, wouldn't it be a smear to Buddhism? The old body felt that maybe the Buddha would not tolerate these people to smear his reputation! Mrs. Shi finally said.

However, cleaning up the Buddhist gate, after all, a large number of monks will be impacted, so Mrs. Shi's heart is still a little uneasy, so after agreeing to Yang Wu's rectification of the Buddhist gate, Mrs. Shi immediately took the princess and others out of the palace gate, and went to the Lingyin Temple outside the city to offer incense and ask for sin, so that Yang Wu couldn't cry or laugh after learning about it.

After getting rid of Mrs. Shi, Yang Wu was naturally not so polite to those who objected to it.

Those who were well-intentioned and respectful of Buddhism could say that Yang Wu did not treat them well, but simply let them go after a while; However, for those officials who secretly accepted the benefits of Buddhism, Yang Wu was not so polite.

In addition to cleaning up Buddhism this time, Yang Wu also decided to clean up the officialdom on a large scale and crack down on those who are corrupt.

As a result, before the operation to clean up Buddhism began, Yang Wu issued an edict to first arrest all officials who accepted bribes from Buddhism according to the information provided by Fan Yu.

As a result, overnight, nearly 100 officials were arrested in Jinling City alone, and more than 300 people were arrested in other places; Among them, the higher positions even include some local assassins and the six servants of the court, and the lower status is some local county commanders; What is still gratifying to Yang Wu is that among those high-level officials, none of them accepted bribes from Buddhism.

In fact, this is also normal, Yang Wu's determination to rectify Buddhism, those officials below may not be clear, but how can the high-level officials such as the ministries not be clear? Even if these people oppose the cleanup of Buddhism in their hearts, they will not openly jump out to oppose it, let alone be stupid enough to accept bribes from Buddhism.

In today's sober situation, whoever dares to have a relationship with Buddhism and speak for Buddhism may be unlucky.

Those high-ranking officials slipped away one by one, and naturally they could see the situation clearly.

As for the officials who were arrested, they were unlucky, Yang Wu originally planned to find a time to clean up those corrupt people and rectify the atmosphere of officialdom, but these people dared to commit crimes against the wind at such a time, so didn't they find their own death?

Therefore, Yang Wu unceremoniously ordered that all those who were arrested should be dismissed from office, and sent to prison for strict investigation, and those who accepted bribes more seriously were even directly sentenced to death, and those who were relatively minor were exiled to Yizhou after confiscating their family property.

In the end, more than 70 officials were killed, and the remaining 300 people and their families were all exiled to Yizhou.

This major case, which shocked the entire officialdom of Wu State, made many officials with unclean hands and feet tremble, and one by one it was as if a catastrophe was coming.

In October of the fourth year of Wuyi, Yang Wu issued an order to rectify the temples across the country, and for the temples that are dedicated to worshiping the Buddha and acting more decently, the imperial court will issue a special edict, and stipulate that from now on, all temples must be issued by the imperial court, and the imperial court will send people to audit those temples every certain number of years to check whether they comply with the regulations of the imperial court.

In addition to drastically reducing the number of temples, Yang Wu also ordered that monks in the world who could not recite more than 100 pages of Buddhist scriptures, or read more than 500 pages of scriptures, could retain their monk status after inspection, and the rest of the monks would return to the common people.

At the same time, Yang Wu stipulated that from now on, if the people want to become monks, they must have a degree issued by the imperial court.

And the number of these degrees is limited every year, which fundamentally limits the development of the temple.

Those monks who had passed the examination were to be merged into the monasteries that had received the edict, and the rest were to be returned to the common people, and the land was allocated to them by the imperial court.

Of course, the last point of this clean-up of Buddhism is that except for a small number of Buddha statues that can be preserved, all the temples in the world, as well as the bronze statues of Buddhism in the homes of ordinary people, will be destroyed and re-minted into coins by the state.

As soon as these three decrees were issued, they immediately caused an uproar in the territory of Wu State, and the officials above the court were better after being cleaned up, but the ordinary people did not understand the reason, and there were many opponents.

Temples in various places took the opportunity to encourage the people to make trouble, hoping to use the power of the people to resist the imperial court's action to clean up the Buddhist gates.

However, although the influence of Buddhism is vast, it is too far behind the Wu court.

The reason why Yang Wu did not launch rashly in the past few years was that he wanted to wait for a few years after the situation was stable and the people recognized Wu before taking action.

He has endured it for so many years, and now the two Zhejiang, Jiangxi and other areas where Buddhism is particularly flooded have been included in the rule of Wu for many years, the people are stable, and the people live in peace.

By the end of November, the clean-up of Buddhist gates had basically come to an end.

In addition to 1,800 temples that were recognized by the imperial court and preserved, the remaining nearly 35,000 temples were abolished; In addition to more than 60,000 monks from all over the country who have been approved by the imperial court and can continue to be monks, the rest of the more than 200,000 monks are all lay people.

(The data mentioned above is wrong, the number of monks in various places should be far more than 100,000, and the specific number is estimated by the author Jun based on an average of ten monks per temple, so it is estimated to be 300,000 monks.) In fact, like the destruction of Buddhism during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there were as many as one million monks who were reinstated throughout the country; After Zhou Shizong's ban on Buddhism, the number of monks who remained in the end was as high as 60,000, and the number of monks who were expelled should be several times that. ）