Aixin Jueluo Huang Taiji, an uncle who is almost fifty years old, as an officer of the Royal Guards of the Great Liao Empire, actually has a delicate girl's heart under the rugged appearance.

On the eighth day of the third month of March, the Qingming Festival, he and Ning Wan, the plenipotentiary ambassador of the Liao Empire to the Xia Kingdom, attended the commemoration of the 450th anniversary of the end of the Liaoxia War held in Kangcheng (Samarkand). Cannes is a great and ancient city, and the Greek king Alexander the Great once praised it: "Everything I have heard is true, only Samarkand is underestimated." Samarkand was also the last capital of the Khorezm Empire under the continuous onslaught of the Xia people, and the city was finally liberated peacefully, and the inhabitants of the city were spared from butcher's knives, also because of the efforts of the Buddhists in the city.

In this great city, Buddhist temples, Confucian Confucian temples, Orthodox onion-topped churches and Tianfang temples coexist, and in addition to these large sects, there are many small religions or tribes in this million-strong city that live together in peace and quiet - of course, this is mainly because of the supremacy policy of the Xia Kingdom, no matter what religion it is, no matter how noble the leader, if anyone dares to use the followers to stir up trouble, then be ready to be excommunicated by the Xia King.

Huang Taiji attended the memorial ceremony, and watched the six major religions (Han Buddhism, Shamanism, Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, Tianfang Religion, and Huang Sect) send their representatives around King Xia's brother Kang Hou to pray for the blessings and souls of the victims of the war, which made him suddenly have an inexplicable sense of time and space. This big man suddenly had an irrepressible urge to roam the so-called Zhaowu Nine Kingdoms in his mind.

After the event, he told Ning Wan that he was going to recuperate here for a while, and Ambassador Ning didn't want to have him, so he returned to Tianzhong City with his attaché.

Kang Hou is the younger brother of King Xia, but he has no right to inherit the throne according to the law - brother to brother and this kind of thing has caused an unknown number of troubles in history. Therefore, according to the provisions of the "Great Xia Kingdom Clan Bill", the next generation of Xia kings must be the direct male descendants of the previous generation of Xia kings, if the Xia kings did not leave a son until the death of the Xia, the five most noble Buddhist temples in the Xia Kingdom will hold a net bottle lottery in front of the sacred Buddha statue. The scope of the draw is limited to the adult sons of all the Xia King's own brothers. However, this law has not been in operation until now, because each generation of Xia kings can be said to be the reincarnation of King Jing of Zhongshan, leaving behind as many sons as the sand of the Ganges. Fortunately, there is also a provision in the "Clan Act" that after King Xia succeeds to the throne, he should give his brothers a high courtesy in a timely manner - that is, to become a monk.

In fact, the first thing that each generation of Xia kings did after succeeding to the throne was to find a temple for their brothers and arrange for them to become monks in it. Brothers can be arranged a little better, and those who don't like it will be kicked far away, or even arranged to go to the Tianzhu River or the top of a snowy mountain to guard a ruined temple, which is a very miserable cultivation - but the person who is assigned has nothing to say, because it is often the place where a certain master left footprints a long, long time ago, where a high level of cultivation can be obtained.

And the dear brothers of King Xia can sit in a big temple with tens of thousands of acres of fertile land and pastures in a paradise on earth like Hezhong or Anxi, while practicing Buddhism, while consecrating female believers, eating beef and mutton and drinking wine, it is also a very beautiful thing.

Kang Hou is more special, with his background, he could have gone to Anxi or Beiting Jinren Temple, Longxing Temple, Jinding Temple, Yinding Temple and other big temples to be an elder. However, because of his love of astronomy, he was moved by the Xia king, and agreed to let him stay in Samarkand and serve as the superintendent of the famous Cannes University here. Cannes University was founded in the era of Xia Tongzong (1989-1997. 1438-1446. The first governor was the Turkic nobleman Taragai, who was known for his astronomy and calendar and was known as a man of erudition. He successfully predicted the periodic motion of solar and lunar eclipses, and made Cannes University a center of astronomy for a hundred years under his leadership, and based on his stargazing data, the Royal Astronomical Academy of Liao successfully deduced the formula for planetary motion. In recognition of his outstanding contributions to mankind, the Royal Astronomical Academy of Liao named a crater on the moon Earl of Ulu (Ulu means great author in Turkic).

Huang Taiji visited this university politely, and there were really some unexpected discoveries - in many places, it is very difficult to get people of different nationalities together to make them obediently stand in line - Huang Taiji was an officer of the Liao Empire, and he naturally had deep feelings about the melting pot of his own army - if he did it well, he could become a melting pot of different nationalities and religions, and if he did not do well, it could become a powder keg.

Under the leadership of the young Kanghou, at the University of Cannes, Jewish professors taught both Christians and Celestials, and Buddhists and Celestials could be good roommates – Buddhists incense their Buddha statues every day, Celestials prayed in the direction of Mecca, boys in breeches and girls in short skirts walked around the campus, and the whole world seemed to be the same.

Huang Taiji breathed the sweet and free air, and felt that this beauty was a little unreal.

So he decided to go out and see what the real Samarkand was like.

On the first day, he left the upper part of the city, where dignitaries and wealthy people lived, and asked his servants to buy a set of local civilian clothes at a pawnshop, and went to a ...... in the lower part of the city with only a few copper plates and a pistol I think it's called a slum place.

In fact, strictly speaking, this is not an absolute slum, just a place where some unlucky ghosts live, such as poor ghost students who can't afford to pay school accommodation fees, bankrupt businessmen who fail to do business, and drunks who are cheated out of their last bit of capital. Originally, it was supposed to be a residential house, and the street was supposed to be five or six meters wide according to the plan, but after so many years of haphazard construction, and the concerted efforts of generations of neighbors, the road surface has become so narrow that even a donkey can squeeze it.

As for the road surface, it is no longer possible to see the color, and Huang Taiji came here in response to an ancient saying: Noble feet step on cheap ground. He casually walked into a tavern, and in less than thirty seconds he was smoked and fled. For people like him, in the past, the banquets and drinks were all "talking and laughing, and there was no vain." In a silk and bamboo orchestra, the singers showed their graceful singing voices, the dancers danced, and everyone improvised poems. And here, there may be a drunkard who was drunk last night at the door or under the table, and no one can tell what the strange-smelling puddle of mud under the doorway window is.

As for those women who rely on selling their bodies for a living, in the eyes of Huang Taiji, they are simply the most terrible devils. They didn't seem to care if they could get money from him or not—if he invited them for a drink, they could do whatever they wanted—whether they could be anyone or not!

Of course, their lack of appearance was also one of the reasons that frightened Huang Taiji, and the most surprising thing for him was that there were still little babies who could grow up in such a hellish environment. This reminded him of a serialized novel "The Legend of Deer and Ding" that he had read not long ago, and the scene depicted in the novel seemed to be much better than here.

Speaking of thieves in the lower city, heh, that's the home base of thieves all over the world. Huang Taiji had nothing to steal from him, but with the keen instinct of an officer, he found that he had been surrounded by several pickpockets—from children to women with babies, from monks to students—and that they might not have been him, but he felt that he might have come to a den of thieves.

All in all, Wong's trip to the lower city ended when he was frightened away by a group of women who sold meat for a living. But this small setback did not bring down Huang Taiji, as a military commander, he deeply believed that it was far more important to know the real social conditions of his neighbors than to hold a glass of wine and mingle with those who were high-ranking people, who were all equally stupid, and did not differ according to nationality. But low-level characters are often easy to create miracles, such as Liu Tingchang, Guo Queer, and Zhu Baba.

After a short day, Huang Taiji brought a little more money, bought a thin pony, and then took two servants and set out on the road. As soon as he went out, he met a family crying and shouting funeral procession, and before he had time to think about whether it was not suitable to go out today, there was a pair of wedding greeting teams on the side of the road, crying on one side, and jubilant on the other.

Huang Taiji sighed with emotion about the twists and turns of life, but remembered the story of the Buddha's monkhood, the world is impermanent. He rode out of Samarkand on a thin horse.

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