There is a story that goes like this:
Jin Shengtan is a typical talented person in Jiangnan. His reputation and morale are still talked about by people today. After Ming Taizu's death, he wanted to take an exam and wrote a composition on the topic "This moved you". At the end of the article, he dared to write:
In the empty mountains and valleys, there are two thousand gold, and there are beautiful women outside. Is the master tempted? Yue: Move, move ... He wrote 39 words "move" in one breath, so it is naturally impossible to get such a paper. There were such a group of literati in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. It seems that national subjugation has nothing to do with them. They just do nothing all day, reading and writing. It is said that Jin Shengtan likes Qu Yuan best. On weekdays, he regards Li Sao as a snack. He read aloud and drank to his heart's content. When he is drunk, he will be embarrassed. When he met your official, he found it a pleasure to laugh and scold. Jin Shengtan's writing style is free and easy, which is unique in the prose of Ming and Qing Dynasties. The "Six Talented Books" approved by Jin Shengtan, namely Li Sao, Zhuangzi, Historical Records, Du Shi, Water Margin and The West Chamber, are unique in the history of China's literary criticism.
However, the rulers will not pay attention to Jin Shengtan's word tricks. Scholars in the south of the Yangtze River are proud of their talents, and the Qing emperor has long been impatient. Jin Shengtan's involvement in the Wailing Temple case was completely passive, and he was not among the 11 principals who were initially arrested. Seeking truth from facts, the Wailing Temple case is indeed suspected of causing trouble. Jin Shengtan is not the mastermind at all, but since he wants to punish you, there is nowhere to escape. For whatever reason, he was taken to Nanjing. First, I ate two sticks, then I ate thirty boards, and immediately my skin was raw. When things came to this, he knew that he would not live, so he wrote a letter to his family, saying:
It hurts to behead, but not to get married. Isn't it unusual to sigh unintentionally? If there is a pardon from the court, we may meet, otherwise, we are dead!
Jin Shengtan lost his head in a daze, and he still remembered his humor when he died. It is worth noting that the two bad kings who stood on opposite sides in the wailing temple tragedy did not come to a good end. After Zhu Guozhi came to Yunnan to carve and strip rations, the soldiers were very angry. "They ate for a long time and there was no skeleton left." . Ren was also sentenced to beheading for committing other cases, and the place of execution was exactly the same as Jin Shengtan, which was Sanshan Street in Nanjing. There are two paragraphs in Jin Shengtan's notes before execution. First, he used to want to approve Buddhist scriptures. The monk said, I'll make a couplet. If you can match, I'll show you the Buddhist scriptures right away. The monk's first couplet is "2: 30 in the middle of the night". When Jin Shengtan heard it, Jiang Lang was exhausted, but he couldn't remember the second couplet. As a result, it was the Mid-Autumn Festival before his death, which reminded him of an absolute "Mid-August Mid-Autumn Festival". He quickly asked his son to tell the monk, but unfortunately the couplet was correct and he didn't have time to approve the Buddhist scriptures. The other is even more amazing, saying that the executioner's knives are all raised. He suddenly shouted slowly and said he had something to say to his son. His son ran to him, and he whispered, "Dried bean curd and shrimp are chewed together, which smells like ham." Say that finish, his baby son thought for a long time, don't know what this means.
Someone also invented a poem that Jin Shengtan occupied before his execution. Although it is fabricated, but also with a somewhat sarcastic tone:
God lost his mother,
The mountains and rivers in Wan Li are all white.
The sun will rise tomorrow,
Tears flow under the eaves of every family.