Shen Yan, who was thirty years old, was originally a county school teacher. He was dismissed from his post because he offended the gentry and lived in Lin'an City God's Temple. The streets of the Southern Song Dynasty were prosperous, but 90% of the lower classes were illiterate. He made a living by collecting cinders, and when he saw the beggar Ajiu frozen in the street, he had an idea and started an uprising in a ruined temple.
He took a boatman's son, an orphan from a craftsman's family, and a fisherman's daughter as his apprentices, and started from scratch, teaching poetry, arithmetic, and the art of war. When the nobles smashed the place and the officials searched, he dealt with it with wisdom; when the students were threatened and the temple was about to be destroyed, he led the students to protect their books in the rain.
After three years of silent cultivation, the fire quietly started a prairie fire. Students entered Imperial College, joined the military, and took charge of accounting offices, and grassroots counterattacks shook up the court. There is no golden finger, only belief is like a torch - the pen can carry the Tao, and the people can be the heaven.
