The "Shangshu-Shundian" contains: "Like a pawn punishment, exile five punishments." The whip is an official punishment, the pounce is a religious punishment, and the gold is a ransom punishment. The disaster is forgiven, and the thief is punished. Oh yes! Oh yes! But the mercy of the punishment. ”

The mercy of punishment is to develop from barbarism to civilization and from brutality and prudence, and the tyrannical Qin has cruelly passed on the punishment to the world, and for the first time, there are eight categories: flogging, rod, imprisonment, exile, meat, death, humiliation, economy, and strain, and it is no longer guilty and must die, and there is even an additional punishment similar to that of modern society. During the period of the Three Kingdoms and the Two Jin Dynasties and the Northern and Southern Dynasties, even if human life was as cheap as weeds, the palace punishment was still abolished, and the exile was used as a commutation of death; The Northern Zhou Dynasty stipulated that the exile sentence was of the fifth class, with a difference of 500 li for each degree, and 2,500 li for the capital, and a limit of 4,500 li.

The Great Sui Dynasty's "Kaihuang Law" legally divided the death penalty into two types: hanging and beheading, and revised both exile and whipping. Emperor Gaozu Wen clearly stated: "Hanging to death, beheading is a special form, and eliminating the evil body is extremely extreme", all the whipping punishments of "beheading the body" and "stripping the skin" were abolished, and the five basic legal punishments of flogging, rod, imprisonment, exile, and death were established.

It's all for two words, kill carefully. Today, Chang'an City is crowded with people, crowded to the execution ground to see the excitement, because since the opening of the Sui Dynasty, I have never seen this kind of killing, whether it is when Gaozu Yang Jian changed the dynasty, he killed the royal family of the Yuwen clan of the Northern Zhou Dynasty; Or after the establishment of the Great Sui, the rebellious criminals were punished again and again, and the two generations of emperors did not kill like this, and the crowd talked about it, and Wei Xuan went crazy.

Suzaku Street is extremely wide, even 100,000 military horses can tolerate the confrontation, and the temporary execution ground is like a stone, pressing on everyone's heart, the martial law army helmet brightly, and the guns and halberds are shining with cold light; Wei Xuan accompanied Yang Yu, the acting king, to sit on the high prison platform, and the people who heard the news were crowded, and the roads from various prisons to the execution ground were crowded.

As if for the convenience of the audience, the prisoners' procession was led by the officers and soldiers, and a queue was lined up at the crossing, and the long ropes strung around the prisoners' necks made the prisoners lose their former demeanor and be manipulated like livestock. More than 600 prisoners who were escorted to the execution ground cried and shouted, Wei Xuan's eyes were red, and he had a desperate posture of who wanted to open his mouth and who was desperate, except for Gu Yi who stopped in front of Wei Xuan alone, including the general of Zuotun Wei Yin Shishi were silent.

The lively people watched the prisoner carts, the shackles, the criminals, and the shirtless executioners with machetes, and talked excitedly and blankly; Most of the officials' eyes sadly fell on the old acquaintances in the rows of death row inmates, and the dim shadows distorted on the ground, like demons dancing in their hands, cheering that someone was going to hell again. It is said that the vast majority of death row inmates do not even have evidence of rebellion, such a massacre can only be described as a deterrent, who can guarantee that tomorrow they will not be like them, framed and used by people with ulterior motives.

"Yiwu is too guarded by Yang Chong." A shout came from a distance, reaching the ears of the people up and down the execution ground, and then the soldiers standing to maintain order and the monks in the crowd were all saying: "Yiwu Taishou Yang Chong arrived." ”

The voices of hundreds of people are like an unyielding force, stubborn and determined; There were no guards, a carriage slowly drove into the martial law area full of knives and guns, the old man driving the car with white hair fluttering in the wind, looking calm, one hand whipping the carriage, the other hand calmly fanning the wind with a hat. Qi Hui, Yuan Hui and other masters of Lou Guan Dao could see clearly that it was the same senior brother Zhang Guolao, and his heart was extremely tight, and almost all the disciples who knew Zhang Guolao in the younger generation clenched the sword in their hands.

The bigwigs in Chang'an have always paid attention to Yang Chong, who actually controls the two counties of Gaochang and Yiwu, and the 9,000 iron cavalry broke through the Turks by 20,000 again, completely stabilizing the situation in Yiwu, which is much better than the situation in which Yu Zhongwen and Liu Quan are still fighting hard in Tuyuhun. The chain reaction caused by Yang Chong was that the counties of Longyou, which had been shirking without fighting, wrote letters one after another, threatening to go out of the fortress and kill the thieves, as if the Turks had become weak overnight.

Wei Jie, the captain of the Western Regions, wrote in a recital that Yang Chong had been arranged to return to Chang'an, and for more than a month, there was no side report that Yang Chong had moved, and suddenly, after Yang Xuangan's rebellion, Yang Chong had left. Zhou Qian specially came to Shangshutai for a trip, and reported that news came from a special channel that Wu Benlang's general Yang Xuanzong and Yingyanglang's general Yang Wanshuo had escaped in Liaodong, and Li Zixiong, who was in prison, had also miraculously disappeared at sea.

At the same time, the central eight-hundred-mile fast horse reminded Chang'an to pay attention to Yang Chong; Hongnong Yang may be involved in Yang Xuangan, Yang Chong is another general of the Yang family, and Yang Yichen has been dismissed from the military in Liaodong. As the days passed, Yang Xuangan was like a bamboo, and the soldiers were directed at Luoyang, with Yang Hao, the patriarch of the Hongnong Yang clan's Shenmutang, and more and more Yang disciples appeared in the rebel ranks.

Chang'an, and even the entire Zhili, rumors arose, saying that Hongnong Yang fully supported Yang Xuangan's mutiny. The people who connected with Yang Xuangan collected by Zhou Qian were even more shocking, and the number was almost increasing day by day. Wei Xuan couldn't hold back any longer, and ordered people to be arrested, as long as they were slightly related, they were all arrested in prison, and in the end, they could be arrested with just a word from someone else. The more he grabbed, the more he was grabbed, it was by no means the result that Wei Xuan wanted to see, but the layers of official documents were not bad at all, and looking at the surface words, it could be said that everyone should be damned.

On June 4, the Tongji Canal and the Yellow River, the two waterways leading to the Yongji Canal, were finally broken, and Luoyang could no longer transport grain and weapons to Zhuo County, which meant that Yang Xuangan did not even want to leave the last trace of leeway, and wanted to make a real break with the Son of Heaven, who had been with him since childhood, either live or die. Faced with Luoyang's continuous newspapers and Fan Zigai and Li Hun's fiercely worded documents, Wei Xuan sat on Shangshutai for several nights, and finally made up his mind to kill all the more than 2,000 suspects and behead them in batches.

Suddenly, after Yang Xuangan's rebellion, Yang Chong set off and appeared in Fufeng. Wei Xuan and the others couldn't figure out whether Yang Chong chose to return to Chang'an at this time to confess himself, or whether he was preparing to destroy the smoke thrown by the false way. At this moment, no one is criticizing Qu Tutong's comments on Yang Chongxia back then, Chen Qingzhi in the world, Tiele, Turkic, Tuyuhun, including the famous general Li Jing of the Great Sui, all of them were broken into sand; Yang Chong's subordinates rode more than 10,000 iron horses, and it was by no means empty talk for a while.

What Wei Xuan wanted to do was not to make any extraneous branches, and arrange the execution ground overnight; When the hundred officials learned the news, Wei Xuan had already accompanied Yang Yu, the acting king, to the prison beheading platform, although Duhu Yanshou was sent to stop Yang Chong, but Wei Xuan, Duhu and others were not optimistic about the result. Yang Chong really arrived, the time was just right, Wei Xuan's eyes fell on the carriage, sad and lonely.

When the sun was scorching, countless people sweated on their heads, some hot sweat and some cold sweat. The prisoners who were about to be executed all stopped calling out, and most of the more than 2,000 people were the sons and protégés of the Yang family of Hongnong, of course, they knew that Yang Chong was a member of the Yang family, and they knew that Yang Chong would not arrive at this time for no reason. Yu Wenkai twisted his beard and smiled, it was impossible for Yang Chong not to know the current situation of Chang'an, but he still showed up in public, he was not mistaken, Yang Chong has the persistence to fight for his beliefs, although there are tens of millions of people, I will go.

(End of chapter)