Song Renzong from the Start: I’ll Send the Entire Court of Nobles to Their Graves!

On his first day after transmigrating into the Song Dynasty, Zhao Yan found himself in a nightmare from the start. The army had been wiped out at Sanchuan Pass, Western Xia’s cavalry had smashed through the frontier, yet the court was full of high officials who could only kneel and weep in protest: “Your Majesty! We must not abandon the laws of our ancestors!” He smashed the peace treaty memorial and sneered as he pointed at the censor-in-chief. “The enemy is only eight hundred li from Bianjing. Can your ‘laws’ stop Li Yuanhao’s blade?” But this body belonged to the most frustrating emperor in history, Emperor Renzong of Song. Civil officials could berate him to his face, the Empress Dowager ruled from behind the curtain, and even the hour the palace gates opened was up to the chancellor. Zhao Yan smiled. And so: · When Fan Zhongyan presented his “Ten Proposals in Reply to the Emperor’s Handwritten Edict” and asked for reform, Zhao Yan added three hundred more on the spot: “Too many officials? Cut them! Too many soldiers? Train them! Tribute payments? Starting today, Western Xia will pay the Song!” · When civil officials mocked Di Qing for the tattoo on his face, calling him “a tattooed convict unfit for high office,” Zhao Yan personally removed the general’s armor. “I want four words embroidered on your battle robe: ‘A peerless pillar of the realm.’” · When Liao envoys demanded the lands south of the pass, he tossed down a copy of “The Art of Firearms Forging.” “Trade us warhorses, or I’ll send my iron-armored cavalry to take Youzhou.” Ten years later, at the morning court in the Golden Chariot Hall, Western Xia sent a letter of submission, the Liao emperor sent his son as a hostage, and Japan’s envoys knelt and begged to “become Song territory forever.” The aged Lü Yijian asked in a trembling voice, “Your Majesty… are you really going to change the ancestral laws?” The man on the dragon throne slowly raised his eyes. Outside the hall, the steamship’s whistle tore through the morning mist over the Bian River, while thick smoke from coke-fueled steelworks rose like beacon fires. This was the industrial lifeblood he had forced into an agrarian civilization. The moment I opened my eyes, the laws of our ancestors were already gone.