Dominate the Country

The winter of the fourteenth year of Chengtian is about to pass, and the new year is about to begin.

Of course, Chen Ming could not have returned to Nanjing. He just returned to Yili from Lake Balkhash. Walking in the hall, Chen Ming was playing with a huge gem in his hand. He looked at the diamond called the "Mountain of Light" in the sunlight. It has a history of more than 200 years and was found in the Kollel Mine in the Golconda region of India.

At this time, it was not the "round diamond" that Chen Han was familiar with in his memory, but a charming rose.

But when the envoy of Timur Shah of Afghanistan knelt at Chen Ming's feet and told him the origin of the diamond, and then compared it with its appearance, Chen Ming immediately knew that the diamond he was playing with at this time was the Mountain of Light that could be inlaid on the crown of the Queen of England in later generations, and the other red diamond presented by the envoy at the moment was the equally famous Sea of ​​Light.

After it was born, this rare treasure, which is said to weigh 800 carats, fell into the hands of the Mughal emperor of India. Like the Sea of ​​Light, it was kept in the Mughal palace for nearly a hundred years. It was taken to Isfahan, Persia, when Nader Shah of Persia captured Delhi 50 years ago.

And just eight years later, the tyrannical and bloodthirsty Nader Shah was assassinated by his guards who broke into his resting tent.

The peak of the Persian Empire collapsed overnight.

When Isfahan was in chaos, the Persian noble Ahmed Shah Durrani attempted to fight for the throne, but failed. He only robbed a batch of treasures and traveled east to Kandahar, but here he became the monarch of Afghanistan. And opened the first independent dynasty in the history of Afghanistan-the Durrani Dynasty.

After Ahmed Shah's death, his successor Timur Shah ascended the throne. At the same time, the then governor of Kandahar proclaimed himself king with the support of the nobles, so Timur Shah launched an army to attack him and easily quelled the rebellion. Then Timur Shah moved the capital from Kandahar to Kabul. This was a mediocre king who had been in office for fifteen years and had not done much.

Now Timur Shah has entered the twilight years of his life, and Afghanistan, which was once prosperous, has been in turmoil with his aging.

But Chen Ming did not expect that Timur Shah would suddenly send an envoy to give him a big gift.

A mountain of light and a sea of ​​light. God knows how Timur Shah got the latter. You know, the sea of ​​light in the original time and space plane has always been kept in the hands of the Persians. When the King of Iran got married in 1958, the "Sea of ​​Light" was once again cut into a 60-carat giant round diamond, inlaid in the middle of the king's crown, and renamed "Eye of Light".

But now they have fallen into the hands of Timur Shah, and the pair of treasures were sent to Chen Ming by Timur Shah's envoy.

Chen Ming retracted his gaze on the Mountain of Light and once again focused on the envoy. This man must be Timur Shah's confidant and loyal minister, otherwise Timur Shah would not let him take these two treasures abroad.

"Your Shah has given me a real gift. What does your king want?"

He only sent people to pay tribute to him, but he did not want to be a vassal. Just looking at the envoy's posture, he doesn't look like he is here to be a younger brother. What does Timur Shah want to do?

Chen Ming has no good feelings for diamonds. How many men have been cheated by diamonds in their previous lives. And because of the traditional cultural origins, he prefers jade, and jadeite is also fine. In his eyes, although diamonds are not really worthless, they are second-level treasures like rubies and sapphires.

"Your Majesty, these gifts are a little bit of our Shah's heart, just to express Afghanistan's sincere respect for you."

The envoys did not dare to raise their heads when they spoke. Was this to show Afghanistan's submission? But wouldn't it be better for them to directly submit to the emperor?

That place is the land that Chen Ming has always coveted. The current Afghanistan, no, it is Afghanistanstan, and its territory includes the later Afghanistanstan, northeastern Iran, Pakistan, and the Punjab region of India. This is a very large territory!

"This Timur Shah seems to be worried about me?"

Chen Ming turned back to the back hall, stroking the Mountain of Light in his hand. He didn't like the pink Sea of ​​Light. It would be beautiful if it was blue, but Chen Ming really didn't like pink.

"Your Majesty. Timur Shah is old, and he has more than 20 sons, and they are fighting fiercely. Local tribes have different tendencies. Once he dies of illness, his sons will fight each other, and Afghanistan, as big as a country, will immediately collapse."

The reason why Afghanistan has such a large territory is that it bit off a piece of meat from India. Timur Shah himself does not have the military and political skills of his father, but he is also a ruler who can maintain the status quo. But if his sons start to make trouble themselves, the vast territory of Afghanistan will be a pool of mud in an instant.

This is how Persia ended, and it is a lesson for Afghanistan.

And the most important thing is that Afghanistan will almost certainly be in chaos after Timur Shah's death.

Because he is a ruler who can maintain the status quo, many of the concubines in the harem have a background, and the remaining sons of those concubines all have roots. Many of them have large armies and the support of the tribes behind them, so how can they obey the new king?

"Are you saying that Timur Shah wants to ask for insurance for his descendants?"

"Your Majesty, the Mountain of Light and the Sea of ​​Light originated in India and were obtained by Nadir Shah. Now they are both world-famous treasures. Timur Shah presented these two treasures to your Majesty, which left a bit of affection. If their descendants are in danger and ask for help from our dynasty, your Majesty can't turn a blind eye."

The Mountain of Light and the Sea of ​​Light have a great influence in India, especially the former. Even in the Hindu scriptures, there is such a passage: "Whoever owns it owns the whole world. Whoever owns it must bear the disaster it brings. Only God or a woman who owns it will not suffer any punishment."

Wang Huizu didn't believe it at all. What kind of bullshit is this?

He even suspected that these Indian charlatans deliberately made it up to fool people. Although looking at the origin of the Mountain of Light, it is indeed quite bluffing at first glance.

More than 200 years ago, Babur, the founder of the Mughal Dynasty in India, became the first monarch to own the "Mountain of Light". After he got the "Mountain of Light", he hid it in the Peacock Throne, which symbolized power, and announced to the world that he had obtained a priceless treasure, which was "equivalent to the daily rations of all people in the world".

However, not long after getting the "Mountain of Light", Baber's biological son launched a coup, put Baber in a cage, and ascended the Peacock Throne himself. Baber became the first king to suffer misfortune after getting the "Mountain of Light".

As time passed, Shah Jahan, the fifth emperor of the Mughal Dynasty, who was famous for building the Taj Mahal, became the new owner of the "Mountain of Light". From then on, the palace became a battlefield for power struggles. More than a dozen of Shah Jahan's sons fought each other for the throne and this priceless diamond. The final winner forced Shah Jahan to step down from the Peacock Throne with a sharp blade stained with the blood of his brothers. Shah Jahan was then placed under house arrest in the "Red Fort", the palace of the Mughal Dynasty in Agra, and never saw the sun until his death.

Then there was Nader Shah, the Persian ruler who stole the gem. He also met with misfortune just eight years later.

But this legend is simply nonsense when you think about it carefully.

Babur died young in Delhi of malaria, not because his son killed him. It's just that he died too quickly, leaving room for fabrication. This is just like the throne of Yongle's fourth son was the fourteenth son, and it's exactly the same as the allusions of "passing the throne to the fourteenth son" and "passing the throne to the fourth son".

Facts have proved that speculating on the secrets of the court, fabricating and spreading a rumor, and ruining people's reputations are not only the talents of Chinese scholars, but there are such people everywhere. It's just that the identity of the initiator is different.

And Shah Jahan, the king of the heyday of the Mughal Empire, was not a fool. But his fate was bad. Before he could pave the way for his eldest son and prince, he fell ill with a nearly fatal disease and lost his power.

There are also special reasons for this.

Including Nader Shah, looking at his ending, it was all self-destruction. Feeling that his nephew was uniting with the Persian generals to rebel, and driven by faith, Nader summoned his Persian generals to Mashhad, and at the same time privately reached an agreement with the Uzbeks, Turkmen and Tatars to massacre the Persian generals. As a result, there was a ghost around him, the matter was leaked, and he was assassinated. Isn't this old and confused.

If the king is not discreet, he will lose his ministers, if the ministers are not discreet, they will lose their bodies, and if a few things are not discreet, they will become harm.

How could these things happen in China?

No one would compare the emperors who were strong and strong and "sealed overseas" with the above emperors and monarchs.

Those countries have their own reasons. Overall, faith has mixed a lot of things in it. But in China, many factors no longer exist.

So, eliminating the negative effects of the gem "Mountain of Light", will the positive influence of this gem help China enter India?

Wang Huizu, including Liu Wu, Chen Ding and others, all didn't know why the emperor gave India the nickname "Asan", and didn't know what this nickname meant. But the Asans were very firm in their beliefs. How this "Mountain of Light" could be combined with China's powerful strength, these confidants who knew Chen Ming's urgent desire to enter India had to think about it in a positive way.

Chen Ming didn't think this thing was very meaningful.

Did Wang Huizu and others think that the "Mountain of Light" was a small imperial seal? That's impossible.

However, for a king of a country of faith, sitting firmly in his position in such a complicated place, he really couldn't easily pay tribute to a pagan. So, did Timur Shah only pay tribute but not pay tribute?

The Mountain of Light was thrown to Chen Ding by Chen Ming. He sat on the big chair in the middle, turning a ring on his thumb in his hand. He thought about it again and again, but he couldn't remember the specific modern history of Afghanistan.

He only knew about the three Anglo-Afghan wars and the Russians’ invasion of Afghanistan. According to gossip, on the night of the coup, more than 30 members of the Afghan president’s family were killed, leaving only a little granddaughter. The coup troops also massacred the captured or surrendered former presidential guards, police forces and other security forces. A conservative estimate is no less than 2,000 people.

At the same time, many senior military and political officials were killed.

Then, a question arises, when was the king of Afghanistan abolished? Is the king still a descendant of Timur Shah?

Chen Ming thought about it over and over again, but still couldn’t remember. In front of him, a group of civil and military officials were standing respectfully.

"In this case, I feel that this gift is a bit hot to the touch." But he couldn't refuse it. If he didn't accept it, wouldn't it mean that he had ambitions and intentions for Afghanistan? This was something he just thought of.

Damn it! He felt like he was being tricked.

Today, the Sunni sect is in power in Afghanistan. Although there are some followers of the Ten-Leaf sect, the Sunni sect has a great advantage. And in a sense, Afghanistan is still the leader of the Muslim sect in this generation in the Central Asian region.

The Khanate of Kokand once sought help from Afghanistan. The latter is now a lean camel that is bigger than a horse. It has certain connections with Habra, Khiva, and Kokand, because there is still Persia between them and the Ottoman Empire. The Persian people are playing the Ten-Leaf sect.

A single move can affect the whole body. Chen Ming can't show his ambitions for these territories. Now he really has to accept this gift.

This Timur Shah really gave him a difficult problem.

So much so that Chen Ming even suspected that this Timur Shah was deliberately testing him. But does a mediocre ruler like Timur Shah have such profound political wisdom?

Compared with this sudden problem, the Sino-Russian war and domestic problems are easier to solve.

Chen Ming agreed with what Liu Dezhao reported. 50 million? He, the great emperor Chen, is rich and doesn't care. The French helped him a lot.

War reports from the northwest and northeast have also come one after another, with good news and bad news. The good news is of course the Guryev victory report just received. The Mongols and the Kazakhs have ruined the Russians in the Ural River Basin. Guryev's Russian army can defend the city and fight field battles, but it can't fight mobile warfare and mobile warfare.

The Kazakhs and the Mongols avoid the real and attack the virtual, don't play hard, and only take advantage without losing. They got a lot of good things from outside the Guryev Fortress. Just doing the business of labor export companies can make them a lot of money.

The defeat was that the Northwest Army launched another attack on Omsk, losing more than 300 people, so it was naturally a failure. In addition, the Northwest Army sent a battalion of cavalry across the Ob River and entered the west bank of the Ob River for reconnaissance, but they were almost wiped out.

Even if they killed as many Russians as they did themselves, but 500 people went in and less than one-third returned, it was a real defeat.

"Rumyantsev should not be underestimated." Chen Ming only made this comment.

"Is there anyone in the remnant Qing willing to surrender?"

"I said, as long as they are willing to surrender, I will never kill them."

Chen Ming seemed to know that he was talking nonsense, so he waved his hand and shifted the topic to Ceylon. In addition to the empire's control and development in Ceylon, he also asked about the spread of Chinese Buddhism in Ceylon.

As a place that cannot be ignored in the history of Buddhism, Ceylon, an island country on the edge of the subcontinent, can be said to be a gathering place for major beliefs in the 21st century. All major beliefs in the world are spread there. Of course, Buddhism will be the main belief there in the future, and three-quarters of the people in the country believe in Buddhism.

But who knows that this place, which can be called a Buddhist country, once did not hear about Amitabha Buddha in history. Historically, in the late 16th century, Rajasthan I unified most of the land of Ceylon, converted to Indian Shivaism, and tried his best to destroy the scriptures of temples and pagodas and kill monks, so that there was no monk left in Ceylon. Although many kings after him tried to revive Buddhism, it was difficult to achieve results.

After the Dutch replaced the Portuguese, they ordered the people here to convert to monotheism. It was not until more than 30 years ago that Buddhism was brought back to Ceylon by Thai elders such as Upali. But this Thai system of Buddhism only interacted with nobles and rich people. Therefore, another group of monks inherited the Burmese Buddhist system and established a new sect.

Chen Han had a better understanding of the situation in Ceylon, because Chen Han had been eyeing it for many years. Therefore, once Ceylon was transferred from the Dutch to Chen Han, Chinese Buddhism also entered Ceylon in a big way.

How has it developed so far?

Faith has been very meaningful since ancient times. Even in the 21st century, the influence of faith cannot be ignored in world political issues.

Chen Ming did not expect China to rule Ceylon forever, nor did he intend to convert it to Chinese culture, but if Chinese Buddhism could penetrate into Ceylon's society on a large scale with strong support, it would be very helpful for China's colonization.