Chapter 95: Eye-opening
In chaotic times, reading books easily turns people into one of two extremes.
The former reads books, reads hardship, and while reading, easily slams the table and rises, grabs a sword, and angrily rushes off to save the world and help the people.
The latter reads books, reads of hegemony, and while reading, easily laughs toward the sky, fools a group of people, and excitedly goes off to realize his own imperial ambitions.
As for scholars who don’t develop these two feelings, although there are many, few are remembered by history.
History books like to record peerless heroes and also like to record peerless tyrants; they don’t like recording ordinary people.
Someone like Zhang Min who likes flying around on a bird, E Ji generally calls her ‘Bird Person’. When the Bird Person comes, E Ji likes to hug her puppy and move close, especially liking to point the dog’s mouth at Zhang Min.
The Spirit Seeking Insect hanging from Zhang Min’s waist sees the puppy and curls up its fat body, very much like a lump of poop. The puppy’s interest in it grows even more, sticking out its little black nose and sniffing nonstop.
Zhang Min grabs the puppy, first examines the puppy’s black eye circles, then suspiciously says to Yun Ce: “Dog King Nao Sheng? It shouldn’t be this small, but the Spirit Seeking Insect wouldn’t be wrong.”
E Ji snatches the puppy back from Zhang Min’s hands, kisses its face, and says: “My young master caught this doggy pup for me from the wilderness to make me happy.”
Zhang Min ignores E Ji and says to Yun Ce: “This thing is wrong.”
1 Yun Ce says: “It’s a little thing; as long as E Ji likes it, that’s fine.”
1 Zhang Min laughs and points at Yun Ce: “You might be the best man in the entire Great Han toward his own woman.”
1 Yun Ce smiles: “Wildman, never seen the world. The first woman he saw was her. At the time, she was beating a drum, and she beat it beautifully, so he kept her in his heart and couldn’t take her out.”
1 “Do you know that women on the wasteland beat drums for the purpose of seeking a mate?”
1 “Found out later.”
1 “You found out and still didn’t care?”
1 “Care about what?”
1 “She was seeking a mate.”
1 “Oh, so she got me. I’m what heaven gave her; heaven is the greatest.”
1 Zhang Min muses for a moment and says: “Why not say Divine Dragon?”
2 Yun Ce shakes his head to indicate he doesn’t know.
2 Chuyun Prefecture is finished. The Great Han refuses to accept Chuyun Prefecture as a protectorate prefecture; this land might be enfeoffed to a certain prince as a fief.
2 Chuyun Prefecture spans three thousand li and has two hundred cities under it. How could it completely collapse just because of a little chaos? After the chaos, it will surely be greatly governed. Don’t say these things in front of me.
2 Your friend Miss Hong has now gained power. Before, she could only rely on wooden sticks and bamboo poles to fight the government officials. Now, she has built an army with cavalrymen, armored soldiers, and knife-and-shield soldiers, numbering no less than thirty thousand. Along the way, she has attacked cities and seized territory, winning every battle and taking every fort without fail. In this period, she has already captured sixteen cities in a row.
2 I heard a centurion of the Black Armored Army say that the neighboring Cong Prefecture is also in chaos.
2 Hearing this, Zhang Min pauses, frowns, and says: “A centurion of the Black Armored Army?”
2 “Oh, it’s said he’s the one with the lame leg who was driven out by Zhou Chengming. Surname Cheng.”
2 “Cheng Xiang?”
2 “Looks like what he said was right. Zhang Min, when you ruled this prefecture or that prefecture, besides taxation and robbery, did you really not consider the people’s welfare at all?”
2 Zhang Min glares at Yun Ce and sneers: “You, a wildman from the wilderness, shouldn’t you approve of the governing strategy of the Huang Lao School of Thought like ‘governing by non-action, keeping purity and abiding by the law, letting the people rest’?”
3 Yun Ce says in astonishment: “You use the Huang Lao School of Thought to govern the country?”
3 Zhang Min says: “The Great Han began with the Yellow Emperor and prospered under King Huo. What else should we use if not the Huang Lao School of Thought? Moreover, King Huo said that the wise kings of the Great Han used the Huang Lao School of Thought to govern the country, and once governed the ancestral land so that ‘the money in the capital piled up in the tens of millions, with strings rotting and unable to be counted; the grain in the grand granary grew old layer upon layer, overflowing and piling up in the wilderness outside, rotting to the point of being inedible.’
3 This set of methods for governing the country made the Great Han strong for twelve hundred years. What qualification do you have to criticize the Huang Lao School of Thought?”
3 Yun Ce frowns: “You used the same set of things for over a thousand years without any changes?”
3 Zhang Min glares angrily at Yun Ce: “Why change it?”
3 Yun Ce is speechless. Indeed, Huo Qubing’s highest cognition of social governance was ‘the rule of Wen and Jing’. As for the evil consequences of ‘governing by non-action’—the landlord strongman class growing powerful, the vassal lords’ forces expanding—in Huo Qubing’s eyes, these were minor issues. Once the evil fruits appeared, just send troops to suppress the rebellion.
3 This is indeed very Huo Qubing. Such a broken policy was actually used for over a thousand years. It’s just that he lived long enough; the previous rebels of the Great Han were suppressed too harshly by him alone, which allowed this decaying policy to persist on this land for twelve hundred years.
3 From this, Yun Ce can infer from the chaos in Hekou Village, Pingyuan City, Sheyang City, and Chuyun City that today’s Chang’an and Luoyang must be the two most prosperous, most flourishing, and most civilized cities in the world.
3 Because all the blood of the Great Han has been sucked away to sustain these two places.
3 Yun Ce dares not imagine what a city that has been prosperous for over a thousand years looks like.
4 “Have you been to Chang’an or Luoyang?”
4 Hearing Yun Ce ask this, Zhang Min also shows a yearning expression and gently shakes her head: “Panxing Tower is in Chang’an, but the training ground is in Jingzhao, six hundred li outside Chang’an. I wanted to go to Chang’an but never made the trip.”
4 “Chang’an is so good; why not go?”
4 Hearing this, Zhang Min’s face flushes red. After hemming and hawing for half a day, she says indignantly: “Do you think I didn’t want to go? I wasn’t qualified.
4 I challenged three times, failed three times. They didn’t want to waste the money they’d spent on me over the years, so I was sent to serve on the Iron Enclosure Pass defense line. Luckily I didn’t die. Then they thought I was useless, eating for free at Iron Enclosure Pass, so they sent me to Chuyun Prefecture as an envoy to lord it over here, to compensate for the injuries I suffered and the blood I shed at Iron Enclosure Pass.”
4 Hearing Zhang Min say this, Yun Ce’s regard for Chang’an rises even higher.
4 “Zhou Chengming has been to Chang’an, right?”
4 “He has, and served in the Imperial Forest Army for three years. Six years ago, he went to the Iron Enclosure Pass front line as a centurion of cavalry. In the Black Water Forest battle, his subordinates were all but wiped out. He escaped back. He was supposed to be beheaded, but the general pitied him, and with Iron Enclosure Pass having heavy losses, he was sent to Chuyun Prefecture to rebuild a Black Armored Cavalry unit and take it back to Iron Enclosure Pass to atone.”
4 “So, that Black Armored Cavalry of three thousand in Chuyun City is qualified to enter Iron Enclosure Pass?”
4 The mocking expression on Zhang Min’s face disappears, replaced by a look of dejection.
5 “Not qualified. Give him another three years, and perhaps he can bring out a true Black Armored Cavalry. If this current Black Armored Cavalry goes to Iron Enclosure Pass, within three months, if a hundred cavalry remain, that counts as Zhou Chengming atoning with merit offsetting fault.”
5 “So, that ten million in tribute was taken by Zhou Chengming, right?”
5 “He took thirty percent to equip the three thousand Black Armored Cavalry with the best armor, the sharpest weapons, and the strongest, most obedient Thunder Smoke Beasts. The rest was handed to us.”
5 “Huh, you’re not even pretending to hide it anymore?”
5 “The court doesn’t want Chuyun Prefecture anymore; even the title of protectorate prefecture has been stripped. Unless Chuyun Prefecture becomes prosperous again and pays all the overdue tribute at once, the court will consider whether to give Chuyun Prefecture protectorate prefecture status.
5 Chuyun Prefecture without protectorate prefecture status deserves to be robbed.”
5 “That’s not right. When Zhou Chengming robbed the tribute, Chuyun Prefecture still had protectorate prefecture status.”
5 “Time is Chang’an time, not Chuyun Prefecture’s own broken time. When the tribute was robbed, the court’s decree had already been issued. Besides, Zhou Chengming robbed the tribute from Miss Hong’s hands, not from Chuyun Prefecture soldiers’ hands, so that’s his spoils from fighting bandits.”
5 Yun Ce says puzzled: “Then what is Chuyun Prefecture?”
5 Zhang Min laughs: “The Great Han has three hundred military prefectures and two hundred protectorate prefectures.”
6 Hearing this, Yun Ce rolls his eyes to look at the sky. In his view, Chuyun Prefecture with two hundred cities, though not a great place, this thing is all about comparison. He was born in Gansu, grew up in Gansu, and was assigned in Gansu. Though most of that place is Gobi Desert or wasteland, it does have scenic mountains and waters. But places like Longnan and Tianshui have many high mountains, towering into the clouds; without flying, one can’t live well.
6 Whereas Chuyun Prefecture, though mostly wasteland, has that wasteland full of grass, and it grows many wild Yi Trees that can be woven into cloth, plus various grains that don’t need planting—just harvest when mature. Most importantly, Yun Ce has never seen a place more suitable for grazing than Chuyun Prefecture. They just say they don’t want it and discard it?
6 All the previously unreasonable things suddenly make sense to Yun Ce. No wonder Chuyun Prefecture is like this; they have a hundred or eighty such places, and Chuyun Prefecture is the most unremarkable one.
6 Gansu, in remote antiquity, at least served as a place to pasture horses for the Zhou Son of Heaven, while this land, far better than Gansu, doesn’t even qualify to pasture horses for the Great Han.
6 “So, what kind of existence is Iron Enclosure Pass? What kind of existence are the enemies you’re resisting there? What kind of existence is it that even such a powerful Great Han can only rely on fortified cities for defense and can’t proactively send troops to annihilate them?”
6 Hearing Yun Ce’s question, Zhang Min shakes her head: “An outstanding person of the Great Han like you will sooner or later be sent to the Iron Enclosure Pass front line. You’ll know then naturally. Telling you now isn’t good for you.”
6 “At least tell me the enemy’s name.”
6 “Gui Fang! The land we live on now is theirs. It was taken with blood and lives, inch by inch, by the Divine Dragon, the Yellow Emperor, King Huo, and our generation after generation of ancestors.”
6 “Gui Fang is very powerful?”
6 “Not powerful before; easy to kill. Later, several sons of Xuan Yuan Shi the Human Emperor all wanted to become Human Emperor, so they fought. One won. For some reason, he didn’t kill the losers but exiled them to Gui Fang.
7 Thought the Gui Fang people would kill them, but unexpectedly, they didn’t kill; instead, they used them for breeding. This was already a huge joke. Gui Fang people are extremely ugly, with four arms, and impossible for Great Han people to produce offspring with them, like dogs and horses.
7 Who would have thought, others couldn’t, but Xuan Yuan Shi’s descendants could…”
7 “When did this happen?”
7 Zhang Min purses her lips and says: “Three thousand years ago.”
