Water Margin people

Those literati hung their heads in dejection and dared not speak anymore. They did not dare to anger this decisive and murderous emperor.

"Didn't your second sage say that when God wants to give a man a great responsibility, he must first make his mind suffer, his muscles and bones toil, his body hungry and his body empty? Since you are so obsessed with Confucianism, you should behave yourself!"

Sun Lei took out Mencius' classics and said.

Now those literati were completely speechless. They often used Mencius's "Born in Sorrow and Die in Happiness" to persuade others, but they never thought that one day it would be used on themselves.

On the second day after the spring ploughing ceremony, Sun Lei convened a grand court meeting because Xu Guanzhong had returned to the court and brought many chieftains with him. These people came to Liangshan City to meet the emperor and express their submission.

"Your Highness Xu Guanzhong pays respect to His Majesty the Emperor."

Xu Guanzhong, dressed in court robes, bowed to Sun Lei.

"No need to be polite, thank you for your hard work along the way!"

Sun Lei looked at the tanned Xu Guanzhong with some regret. Although Xu Guanzhong's expedition was not far, the environment of the southern rainforest was much worse than that of the western regions.

"I have been loyal to my duty and dare not complain! Your Majesty, this is the surrender letter sent by the southern tribes!"

Xu Guanzhong took out rolls of animal skins from his sleeves. These were the surrender letters written by the chieftains. The chieftains were ignorant and had not used paper until now.

The guards took the animal skins and placed them on the table in front of the emperor.

Sun Lei opened the animal skin in front of him and saw strange patterns painted on it, and a few bloody palm prints at the back.

These are the characters of the Tusi. They are very primitive, many of them still use hieroglyphics, and even use living sacrifices.

"Bring up those toasts."

Sun Lei said with a smile.

Following the guards' shouts, dozens of chieftains dressed in strange clothes came in.

"Duan Yu of the vassal state pays respect to His Majesty!"

Duan Yu, with a fair complexion and dressed in gorgeous robes, took the lead in bowing to Sun Lei.

"Greetings to Your Majesty!"

The rest of the people were different. They were of different shapes and sizes, heights and heights. Almost all of them were tanned and shivered from time to time.

Listening to those strange accents, Sun Lei knew that these chieftains must have learned them on the spot. The accents in the north and south are very different, not to mention that these chieftains have no contact with the outside world.

"Duan Yu? He really looks like him!"

Sun Lei looked at the fair and clean Duan Yu, who looked like a scholar. However, he looked like a Dali noble. Dali was a devout Buddhist, meditating and chanting Buddha's name all day long, just like a scholar studying hard.

"Is that all?"

Sun Lei looked at Xu Guanzhong and asked.

"These are the only larger chieftains. The rest are either too small, with only a few hundred people, or they hide in the mountains and don't come out."

Xu Guanzhong said that the chieftains in the south varied in size and their residences were scattered, making them difficult to find. The biggest chieftain who came this time was Duan Yu, and the rest had to control at least a mountain range and be chieftain kings in charge of dozens of villages and thousands of people.

"Well? There are women?"

Sun Lei looked at several women among the chieftains. These women were completely different from those chieftains. Those chieftains were dark-skinned, but these women were very fair-skinned. They also wore very distinctive ethnic costumes and various beautiful silver ornaments.

"Your Majesty, these are the chieftains' saints. Some chieftains respect women as the highest officials, and it is women who lead the chieftain's affairs!"

Xu Guanzhong explained.

There was an uproar in the court. According to everyone's common sense, women were not suitable to lead a country. In thousands of years, there was only one such woman, Wu Zetian.

"These are your surrender forms. Are you sincere?" Sun Lei asked, pointing at the surrender forms in front of him.

Those chieftains just looked at Sun Lei in a daze. They could hear the emperor speaking, but they didn't understand what he meant.

Xu Guanzhong immediately helped translate. After a while of explaining in the chieftain language, the chieftain kings immediately knelt on the ground, pointed to the sky and spoke in gibberish.

"Your Majesty, they said that some of them immediately swore an oath, pressed their bloody handprints, and the gods witnessed that they would be loyal to Qi forever!"

Xu Guanzhong began to translate.

"Well, good. From now on, you Tusi in the city will begin to teach Qi's writing and language, use Qi's measurement scales, and all customs must be secularized and closer to Qi!"

Sun Lei looked at the chieftains and said that everything else was easy to deal with, but the bad habits of the chieftains must be changed. If they were unwilling, they would rebel sooner or later.

The chieftains were originally prepared to offer beautiful women, gold, silver and jewelry, but unexpectedly the emperor did not want those things. Instead, he wanted to change their habits.

This made the chieftains hesitate. There were some things that were not up to them. The customs of the villages under their jurisdiction were deeply rooted and not easy to change, not even for the chieftains.

"Your Majesty, can you change it? Those habits have been passed down from our ancestors and are difficult to change!"

A chieftain king spoke.

"You don't want to change? So you want me to help you?"

Sun Lei's face turned cold. According to what Xu Guanzhong reported, there were many bad habits among the chieftains. The lighter ones included slavery, the right of virginity, circumcision, etc. The more serious ones included living sacrifices and cannibalism. How could these bad habits not be changed?

"Your Majesty, please spare my life!"

The chieftains begged for mercy, but still refused to give in.

"I just don't believe that you are more difficult to reform than those people on the grasslands and those bearded men in the West!"

Sun Lei said with murderous look on his face.

"I am willing, I am willing!"

Those chieftains finally gave up. They had seen how terrible the Qi army was. If they started a massacre, their chieftain cities would be razed to the ground.

"That's good. When you go back, tell your tribesmen not to live in the mountains anymore. Gather together. I'll have people find a place for you to build a city so that you can live together. How are you going to manage your villages on each mountain?"

Sun Lei said again that concentrated living is also necessary, otherwise who knows whether those bad habits can be changed or whether they will surrender.

"Your Majesty, what about our territory?"

A chieftain king spoke up and said that he owned several mountains and forests.

"Your territory is gone. You are now citizens of Qi and must abide by the laws of Qi. You, like the people of Qi, only have a prescribed share. At most, you are just an official in the new city!"

Sun Lei looked at those chieftains and said that these were his bottom line and he would not allow the existence of a country within a country.

Those chieftain kings finally felt a little comforted when they learned that they could hold official positions. They knew that their status as chieftain kings could no longer be preserved, and those chieftain kings who refused to submit were all killed.

"Okay, if you agree, that's all!"

Sun Lei clapped his hands, and several guards came out carrying trays. On the trays were gold medals with the words "Imperial Chieftain King" written on them.

"These gold medals are meant to honor you, and have no other meaning."

Sun Lei said that he would not come up with anything like a golden medal of immunity from death that would bring harm to future generations.

"gold medal!"

The Tusi King was extremely happy when he saw the gold medal. Even if it had no other meaning, the five words "Imperial Tusi King" were enough for them to worship it as a family heirloom. (End of this chapter)