Legend has it that when Zhang Jiao was very young, he and his two younger brothers went up the mountain to collect medicine, perhaps it was fate or maybe it was a great task from heaven, and an old man in white clothes and white hair, fairy wind and bones, blue eyes and childish face, and holding a quinoa cane appeared in front of them.

"These little brothers, I see that you are talented and intelligent, and your bones are amazing, and you are a genius once in a century, and now the evil demons are in charge, the world is in chaos, and the people are not happy, I have three volumes of the legendary book "Taiping Taoism", which can save the people from fire and water, I will grant it to you, you need to study it well in the future, and the responsibility of saving the world will be handed over to you."

Before the three brothers could have any doubts, the old man drifted away. In this way, the three Zhang Jiao brothers obtained the "Taiping Taoism", and from then on they began to study hard, and finally succeeded in their studies and embarked on the road of saving the world. (Don't dwell too much on it, legends are passed on and on, and it becomes what the author wants to say.) ）

Of course, of course, this is a legend, and there may be a slight difference from the real situation in history.

Historically, some people think that the author of the "Taiping Sutra" is the Taoist Yu Ji, and the "Taiping Sutra" is also called the "Taiping Qingling Book", and now it is generally believed that it is the "Taiping Sutra" in the current "Taoist Collection", which was born in the Western Han Dynasty when the Qi people Gan Zhongke's "Tianguan Calendar Bao Yuan Taiping Sutra", and then became a banned book, secretly circulated among the people, and the passage was deepened over the years.

But in history, no one knows whether Yu Ji handed over "Taiping Taoism" to Zhang Jiao, after all, although Zhang Jiao is very famous in the official history, he is a very mysterious figure. Before 168 AD, Zhang Jiao was not recorded in history, so we still don't know about Zhang Jiao's parents, life experience, and age, as if a person suddenly appeared. All we know is about the short 16-year history of Zhang Jiao before he prepared to launch the Yellow Turban Uprising and died of illness.

Let's go back to 168 A.D., perhaps it is a historical coincidence, in the previous year Emperor Heng of the Han Dynasty had just died of illness, and in the first month of that year, Liu Hong arrived at the Wanshou Pavilion in Xiamen outside the city of Luoyang with the welcoming procession, and was greeted by Dou Wu and hundreds of civil and military officials. The next day, Liu Hong succeeded to the throne, he was the famous Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty in history, and changed his name to Jianning, which was the first year of Jianning.

At the same time, there was a pair of three brothers in Jizhou in the far north, they were skilled in medicine, and they were also good at teaching, in Jizhou, where the disaster was serious at that time, they could not only cure the patient's body, but also maintain the patient's psychology, and the reputation of the three brothers spread rapidly in just a few years, they were Zhang Jiao, Zhang Bao, Zhang Liang three brothers.

In fact, in the first few years, the three Zhang Jiao brothers did not show a very obvious reactionary consciousness, and they only treated the victims in Jizhou at the beginning, by the way, to promote his Taoist ideas, and to maintain their mental health while curing the bodies of the sick. It's a pity that it was a bad era, the demons were in power, and the people were struggling to make a living. In those days, there were many excesses and miscellaneous taxes, heavy military service, and frequent famines; Those who are officials are either lackeys under the eunuchs of their relatives, or they are members of the family of gate lords who take care of themselves. Natural disasters and man-made disasters, the people really have no way to live, eat grass roots and gnaw tree bark, and even the tragedy of cannibalism often occurs.

After several years of medical career, Zhang Jiao finally understood that it is useless to save people's lives alone, and if you want to save this country, you can't heal people, you can only heal the country!

Zhang Jiao was deeply influenced by Taoism, and with religious salvation as his mission, he decided to overthrow the Han Dynasty. During the reign of Emperor Ling Xiping (172-178), he founded the Taoist sect Taiping Dao, using the Taiping Sutra as a classic doctrine.

The program, objectives, doctrines, titles, diocesan organization, slogans, religious ceremonies, content of activities, and missionary methods of the Taiping Tao are all based on the Taiping Sutra. Taiping Taoism is not the same as the mainstream Taoism in history, in essence, it is closer to the monotheism of the West.

Zhang Jiao regarded the Yellow Sky as the supreme god, believing that the Yellow God opened the world and created human beings. He also believed in the Yellow Emperor and Lao Tzu, and believed that the world at the time of the Yellow Emperor was a peaceful world and the most beautiful thing for human beings. In this peaceful world, there is no exploitation and oppression, no hunger, cold and disease, no fraud and theft, and everyone is free and happy. On this basis, Zhang Jiao put forward the ideal of "to Taiping". This is also the basic doctrine and religious ideal of Taiping Dao. Taiping Dao claims that there are ghosts and gods in the heavens to monitor people's behavior, and increase or decrease their lifespan according to the good and evil of people's behavior, requiring people to do more good deeds and less bad deeds, oppose exploitation and accumulation of wealth, and advocate equality and mutual love, which is deeply supported by the poor people.

At that time, the preaching method of the Taiping Sect was "the teacher holds the nine-section scepter as a blessing, and teaches the sick to kowtow and think, because he drinks the water of the charm, and if he is sick or cured by the day, then the person believes in the Tao, and if he does not heal, he does not believe." To put it simply, those who believe live and die if they don't believe.

At that time, the politics were dark, the economy was withering, and there were years of famine, the life of the people was miserable, coupled with the flood of feudal ideas, the popularity of "Huang Lao" thought, so that Taiping Dao was widely recognized among the poor people, Taiping Dao absorbed a large number of believers, and Zhang Jiao cultivated many disciples.

Zhang Jiao, a self-proclaimed "great sage and good teacher", regarded himself as a prophet, and his two younger brothers, Zhang Liang and Zhang Bao, called themselves great doctors and jointly ruled the Taiping Dao. After Zhang Jiao gained a firm foothold in Jizhou, he then sent his disciples to all parts of the country to preach the teachings and develop the Taiping Dao. After more than a decade of development, the Taiping Taoist sect has reached hundreds of thousands, and its influence has spread to most of the prefectures and counties in the country, among which poor farmers and handicraftsmen are the mainstay, but there are also a small number of officials, even including eunuchs. In order to facilitate management, Zhang Jiao divided the believers into 36 parties (diocesan organizations), with more than 10,000 people in the large party and 6 or 7,000 people in the small party, and each party was responsible for the canal marshal.

Zhang Jiao made strict preparations for this uprising according to the theory of the five elements of mutual growth and restraint in Jiazi Day, that is, the first year of Emperor Ling Zhongping (184) March 5 to hold a great uprising, and then Zhang Jiao further put forward the slogan of "Cangtian is dead, Huangtian should stand, the age is in Jiazi, the world is auspicious", that the Later Han Dynasty is Huode, that is, the sky, and the Taiping Road is the earth, that is, the Yellow Sky. Huode will be replaced by Tude, so Taipingdao will replace Houhan. At the beginning of the first year of Zhongping (184), the leaders and believers of various parties began to prepare, and they used lime to write slogans such as "Jiazi" on the walls of the city gates and state and county offices in Luoyang. Ma Yuanyi, a generous commander of the canal, went to the capital Luoyang many times to make an agreement with the eunuchs Feng Zhen and Xu Fengxiang, preparing to meet with the outside world and revolt together on March 5.

Everything is in place, a storm is coming.