Rongding

The old tripod has cracked, but the new tripod has not yet been cast. Who will be thrown into the burning fire? In the first year of Huangxing's reign, I was born as Tuoba Hong, the heir to the Northern Wei Dynasty. There is a piece of broken copper cauldron sewn on the right rib, and an old jade from an auspicious animal falls on the heart. The history books had already determined my fate: I would move the capital to Luoyang and promote Chineseization. I would die from overwork at the age of thirty-three, and my empire would fall apart after my death. Empress Dowager Feng only said: "This son is very destined." I remained silent. Later, I became Emperor Yuan Hong. The world thinks of me: a madman, a sage, a gravedigger of Xianbei, and a man who continues to live in China. Everything I do is criminal: driving millions of tribesmen from their homeland, causing Xianbei nobles to burn their robes, cut off their language, change their surnames, and burn old customs into flames. I heard the old minister coughing up blood and kowtow: "Your Majesty, Xianbeiyu has been crying on the page all night." The prince refused to recognize the Han surname until his death, and the queen died under my will. I know the price very well: the history books will accuse me of cruelty, and the sky will be filled with flames of war and the mountains and rivers will be shattered after my death. But I understand better that if we don't throw ourselves and our ethnic group into the melting pot of civilization, in a hundred years, Xianbei will eventually disappear without a trace like the Xiongnu and Jie tribe. So I burned my body as a sacrifice: I used my thirty-three years of life as my salary, and my father, son, monarch, minister, husband, wife, and clan as a sacrifice. I don't want the Xianbei Wei, I don't want the Han Wei, I just want a new world where Hu and Han merge! On the day of my death, Luoyang Palace towered majestically. Thirty years after his death, rioters burned the city and "a cartload of books" were burned in the fire. The world laughs at my failure and says my cauldron is broken. Little did they know that beneath the ashes, a new civilization was quietly growing. A hundred years later, the giant cauldron that mixed the north and the south and bounded Hu and Han was finally erected. The body of the cauldron was branded with the title of the lonely twenty-three years: Taihe. When the old cauldron is shattered, there will be warriors fighting for the fire; the new cauldron will never forget the first ray of heat.