However, the shock of Zhu Yujian standing in front of Delhi City quickly disappeared after entering the city. When he was brought into the city by the officials of Delhi, a group of Indians were being escorted out of Delhi by a team of guards, and he couldn't help but ask the Mughal officials around him curiously: "Are these people criminals?" Where are they being sent? ”

The Mughal official still had enough respect for him, the king of the Ming Dynasty, and he quickly told Zhu Yujian through an interpreter: "Yes, they have offended our lord by trying to repair the temples of the pagans, and my lord has decided to send these people to the quarry to collect stones for the construction of the city of Delhi to atone for their sins..."

After the explanation of the translator around him, Zhu Yujian knew that these so-called criminals were actually just believers in a certain god. In order to consolidate his rule over India, the third Mughal emperor Akbar implemented a policy of cultural integration and religious tolerance within the empire, which laid the ideological foundation for the strength of the Mughal dynasty.

But from the fourth emperor, Jahangir, this policy of cultural integration and religious tolerance began to be tightened. And now in the hands of the emperor Shah Jahan, many policies related to religious tolerance have been abolished.

In order to complete the construction of the city of Delhi as soon as possible, after the center of the empire was moved from Agra to Delhi, the old city of Delhi was obviously not enough, so the whole of Delhi was starting to build again. Delhi was once occupied and rebuilt by a number of different kingdoms and rulers, and this is the seventh reconstruction of the city of Delhi.

Although there was no need to rebuild the city, building materials in the Delhi market became extremely scarce in order to enlarge the city walls and build various official residences and palaces. For this reason, Shah Jahan decreed that no religion should build new temples or repair old temples until the construction of the city of Delhi was completed, except for the construction and renovation of the mosque.

Before the Mughal invasion of mainland India, there was no religion called Hinduism on the continent, but there were countless followers who worshipped various gods and goddesses. The three main gods Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma are the most popular believers, but there is little in common among these devotees other than their approval of the caste system.

These fragmentations of faith are also compatible with the multiplicity of princely states on the Indian continent. It wasn't until Babur invaded the Indian continent and spread the teachings to the interior of the continent that the followers of these gods began to slowly unite, eventually forming a broad anti-religious alliance.

It should be said that because of Akbar's policy of religious tolerance, this anti-religious alliance was once close to untenable. However, under the partiality of the two emperors Jahangir and Shah Jahan, this alliance was revived again.

As a supporter of the Great Unification Dynasty, Zhu Yujian did not have much affection for the deity believers to ignore the emperor's orders to repair the temple. But just because the temple was being renovated, he had to drag the whole family of these believers to quarry stones, which he felt was too much.

So before seeing this Shah Jahan emperor, Zhu Yujian's impression of this Mughal emperor was a little poor. The city under construction is about one-sixth the size of Beijing, but it is much more sparsely populated than Beijing, so you can see tree-lined gardens and wide loess avenues.

The climate in Delhi is similar to Nanning, with very hot summers, short winters that are not extremely cold, rainy springs, and autumn being the most comfortable. When Zhu Yujian arrived in Delhi, it was the most comfortable autumn of the year.

For the envoys of the Ming Emperor, Shah Jahan still attaches great importance to it. He was an avid architect and jeweler, but he also had the same vanity as most kings. As a descendant of Timur, he naturally did not know anything about China.

In fact, if it weren't for Timur's death on the way, the king of the river would almost have a showdown with Ming Chengzu Zhu Di. With Timur's death and the shattering of the vast empire he had built, Timur's coveting of China vanished.

But as a descendant of Timur, Shah Jahan naturally knew how high the status of the Ming emperor was in East Asia. In particular, the news brought by the emirs who had fled from the Yarkand Khanate made him realize that China, which had not moved for a long time, was expanding towards the Western Regions, and even the Golden Family had submitted to the current Ming Emperor.

Shah Jahan means ruler of the world in Persian, and the Mughal monarch was not actually the emperor of Hindustan when translated into Chinese, but the king of kings.

Of course, whether it is the king of kings or the ruler of the world, Shah Jahan at this time still understands very well that the world he rules cannot include China. And the Ming Emperor didn't care about his title as the ruler of the world, but the Uzbeks who stole the Timurid Empire were perhaps more fearful of the Chinese monarch among the two.

As a monarch who wants to become the ruler of the world, Shah Jahan doesn't really want to deal with Chinese monarchs. But the Chinese emperor had a bad habit of saying that no matter what the purpose of foreign envoys went to China, they would always say that the monarch of a certain country had sent tribute to the Ming Emperor on a certain day in such and such a year.

As a monarch with a high level of vanity, Shah Jahan naturally would not do such a move to discredit his face. But in turn, the Ming Emperor sent the season to greet him, which was undoubtedly a great success for Shah Jahan.

His ancestor Timur unified the Transoxiana region, captured the Ottoman sultan, and no one dared to recognize him as a great monarch. The second is Babur, who established the Mughal Dynasty, and Akbar, who laid the foundation of the Mughal Empire, and their cultural and martial arts can also be flaunted for a while.

And Shah Jahan wants to be on a par with these ancestors, and he naturally wants to gain the approval of powerful martial arts and powerful foreign monarchs. In Shah Jahan's eyes, the only powerful foreign monarchs were the monarchs of China, the Ottoman Empire, and the Persian Empire, and the British monarchs and Bukhara monarchs were secondary.

Among them, the highest status monarch is probably only the Ming Emperor. After all, his ancestors had defeated the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire, but they had not yet had time to fight the Ming Dynasty. Enemies that have not been defeated should always be looked at in high esteem.

The Ming Emperor sent a member of the royal family to visit Delhi, undoubtedly putting the two sides on an equal footing. For Shah Jahan, this is even more comforting than the Persian general who forced down Kandahar this year.

In addition to satisfying his vanity, Zhu Yujian's arrival also attracted the attention of the king of kings to the expansion of the Ming Dynasty to the Western Regions. As a descendant of Timur, how could he tolerate his homeland being invaded by the Ming Kingdom.

Shah Jahan and the Persian Safavids fought over Afghanistan not for the sake of Afghanistan itself, but as a gateway to recapture the Transoxiana region. However, at such a moment, the power of the Ming Kingdom actually extended into the Western Regions, which naturally made him a little uneasy.

So after welcoming the Ming delegation into the city, Shah Jahan quickly arranged a grand welcome ceremony and met with Zhu Yujian and others in the ancient fort of Salingar.

At this welcoming ceremony, Shah Jahan not only recruited the princes and important ministers of Delhi, but also dressed his guards in elaborate Persian armor to show off the wealth and power of the Mughal dynasty to the Ming envoys.

Zhu Yujian and the British accompanied Reed, and they were about startled by several teams of armored elephants that greeted them in front of the castle. But for the few young Ming military attachés around Zhu Yujian, the cold weapons and war elephants still used by the Mughals made them feel that the country's armed forces seemed to be a little backward.

These young Ming military attachés all graduated from the Army Military Academy, and from the moment they entered the school, the tactics and command art they were exposed to had almost completely abandoned the combat concept with cold weapons as the core.

Although army generals still emphasize the importance of hand-to-hand combat, this kind of hand-to-hand combat is completely different from the cold weapon combat concept of the past. Even midshipmen who have just left school know that hand-to-hand combat must be preceded by concentrated firepower to disrupt the line of enemy troops, followed by hand-to-hand combat with bayonets.

For the officers of the Ming Dynasty, hand-to-hand combat was not the way the army fought, but the way the army used to end the war. The army's conventional mode of combat is medium and long-range strikes in which muskets and artillery are coordinated with each other.

Therefore, in front of these young Ming army officers, showing off the sturdiness and beauty of Persian armor, and the sharpness and beauty of the swords made of Uzi steel, it is undoubtedly a pretty eye to show the blind. However, the officers felt that the armor and Uzi steel swords were very suitable for collectibles.

Shah Jahan's meeting with Zhu Yujian was neither good nor bad. As the vassal king of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yujian naturally refused to pay full salute to Shah Jahan, which made Shah Jahan quite disappointed.

However, the Chongzhen autograph he carried did not distinguish between Shah Jahan's greetings, showing the equal status of the two, and it could be regarded as allowing Shah Jahan to save some face in front of his subordinates.

However, in the formal talks after the welcoming ceremony, Zhu Yujian refused to admit that Shah Jahan had any power over the land in the river, but out of respect for his ancestor Babur, if the Ming army did enter the Ferghana region, it would not destroy Babur's former residence and ancestral tomb.

Shah Jahan's second son, Aurangzebu, the deputy king of the Deccan, couldn't help but interject after listening to Zhu Yujian's statement: "According to Your Excellency's meaning, does the Ming Dynasty have any ideas about the Hezhong region?"

So I would like to ask, where is the western border of the Ming Empire? Is it Samarkand? Bukhara? Tabriz? Or Istanbul? ”

Zhu Yujian glanced at the young and vigorous Aurangzeb, and then replied tepidly: "Our Emperor His Majesty is not very high in terms of territory, but we will never allow any hostile forces to exist on the border of the Ming Dynasty.

If such a hostile force exists, it does not matter whether it is in Samarkand, Bukhara, Tabriz, Istanbul, or at the end of the world. Wherever the king goes, everything is in ashes..."