Later Zhou

This game takes the real Dynasty in Chinese history as the background, and tells the conflict between religion and regime at that time.

At the beginning of the game, the player loses memory and is involved in a mysterious task by a master. This task requires the player to gain the trust of a key character. After triple assessment, the player becomes the guard of the key character. In the escort, players learn about the changes that are taking place in the city. All kinds of shabby streets need to be demolished and rebuilt, random graves need to be removed, and cities need to be expanded. He defeated malicious enemies in the escort and gained the initial trust of the key character.

In the subsequent process of the game, the player will find that the key character is the emperor. And the player follows the emperor to the north to recover the lost land. Here, the player finds that his master and a general of the emperor are having a secret conversation. The player sneaks into the general’s house and finds that they are discussing historical Buddhist conflicts in the letter and plotting something.

When the recovery of the lost land in the north is half completed, the player gains the complete trust of the emperor. At this time, the player will be informed of the contents of his amnesia by the master. It turns out that he was a monk himself. After Chai Rong became emperor, he issued a series of decrees on Buddhism. Chai Rong ordered to melt Buddha statues and demobilized a large number of monks. Among them, Chai Rong melted the Buddha statue that originally belonged to the temple where the player was. When the player wanted to stop the emperor’s behavior, he was injured by the emperor’s guard, which led to amnesia.

The angry master hands the player a bottle of poison and asks him to poison it in the wine. Whether or not poisoning here depends on the player himself, because in the previous process, the player could know that the emperor is a person who loves people like his children.

Whether poisoned or not, the player will have a conversation with Chai Rong about Buddhist conflict. At this time the player understands the emperor’s consideration. After the Tang Dynasty, China was divided for a long time and was invaded by neighboring countries. In the Later Zhou Dynasty, the number of Buddhism and monks increased to an exaggerated level. Temples occupy a large number of farmland, statues of Buddha occupy a large number of copper mines. So, coins lack of material and the inflation is serious. Monks occupy a large amount of labor, and social production is seriously insufficient. In addition, monks and temples do not need to pay taxes, which greatly reduces the country’s fiscal revenue.

Now comes the most important theme of this game, how to look at the problem from different perspectives. From the perspective of monks and Buddhist believers, the emperor’s policies were cruel and inhumane, depriving the people of their freedom of belief. From the perspective of the emperor, he must restrict the development of Buddhism so as to reduce social inflation, improve people’s living standards, enhance the comprehensive national strength, recover lost land and unify China. So we can say that they are both right and wrong. The key lies in how we look at the problem and how we find different perspectives.

Finally, the player who chooses to poison in the wine wants to get the antidote through master, and even if the player kills master, there is no antidote. The player who chooses not to poison in the wine can not avoid such an end. The general who had been discussing with master poisons the emperor in the end.

Because this is history, we cannot change Chai Rong’s fate.

We don’t know if the general poisoned the emperor in the history. But he eventually replaced his children to become the emperor after the death of Chai Rong, inherited the achievements of Chai Rong’s development, and realized the unification of China. He is Zhao Kuangyin, the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty.