“What?”

The gaunt young emperor had nightmares at dawn and hadn’t been able to sleep since. In the early morning, he sat exhausted behind the imperial desk in the grand hall, his mind clouded and heavy. When he heard Yang En’s hoarse, somber voice mention that “the Empress Dowager traveled incognito to Chu territory in her youth and happened to meet the Lord of Liang, forming a bond of mutual understanding; when Chu faced its calamities, the Empress Dowager secretly entered Chu境 alongside the Lord of Liang, sharing hardships together,” his spine suddenly straightened, his eyes blazing with fury, unable to believe what Yang En—a clan duke of the imperial family—was about to say next.

Shen Yang, Du Chongtao, Zhou Bingwu, Zhang Han, Guo Liang, Gu Zhilong, and Huang Huixiang—every single one of them—were equally incredulous that it would be Yang En who brought up the “past affairs” between the Empress Dowager and the Lord of Liang, Han Qian, at today’s court assembly!

Yang En’s voice was terrifyingly hoarse, like an old, broken bellows leaking air. Standing before the hall, he said, “The realm has been divided and torn apart for so long, and the common people have suffered greatly. The hundred thousand officers and soldiers of Jinling also have no wish to continue fighting. However, to achieve peace without war and gain the trust of Liang’s ruler and ministers, the only way is for the Empress Dowager to marry into their court…”

Qing Yang seemed equally unable to believe Yang En would say such words. She departed with a sweep of her sleeves. The gaunt young emperor, like an enraged young bull, grabbed a jade paperweight from the imperial desk and hurled it at Yang En, furiously rebuking him: “How dare you speak such nonsense! How can you face the Late Emperor or the successive ancestors of the Yang clan!”

The jade paperweight struck Yang En in the chest. He let out a muffled grunt, his body swaying, but he did not step aside, standing there with a pale face.

Zhang Ping saw the young emperor furiously trying to seize the ceremonial sword from the honor guard’s hands and rushed forward to restrain him, but he too looked at Yang En sitting in the hall with utter bewilderment, unable to understand why he had thought of such a terrible idea!

Had Han Qian sent someone to persuade him to take the lead?

But even if Han Qian was determined to possess the Empress Dowager, why would he make things so unbearably awkward?

“Your Majesty, please calm your anger! Marquis Yang is merely anxious about state affairs and spoke rashly in his urgency!” Du Chongtao, Zhou Bingwu, Gu Zhilong, and the others only then stepped forward together to urge the young emperor to calm down.

“You’ve truly become senile with age! What face do we have to meet the Late Emperor in the underworld?” Shen Yang sat in his granted seat, so angry his chest heaved violently. After a long while, he pointed at Yang En and berated him, but then he was seized by a violent coughing fit and spat out a large mouthful of blood.

Had Gu Zhilong not been quick-eyed and swift-handed beside him, Shen Yang would have crashed headfirst onto the stone floor…

…

…

“Look at this terrible idea you came up with.”

Everything that happened in Chongwen Hall was transmitted to Tangyi City on the northern shore that very night. Feng Yi took the secret message that had just been delivered and spread it before Wang Wenqian, saying with dissatisfaction:

“If Shen Yang had died of rage on the spot, and then Yang Bin had taken a blade and stabbed Yang En to death, this joke would have gone too far!”

“Whether it’s a merger of equals or an annexation, the difference is enormous,” Wang Wenqian picked up a chess piece and placed it on the board. “Han Qian’s marriage to Princess Qing Yang is not primarily about solving the Sichuan-Shu problem more easily, but rather about thoroughly eliminating the hidden dangers in Jiangnan…”

“What do you mean?” Feng Yi asked, puzzled.

Their initial plan, after bombarding the Jinghai Gate, was for Fu Gengwen to persuade Gu Zhilong or some other minister to stand forth and advocate surrender.

Feng Yi hadn’t expected that after entering Liyang and meeting Wang Wenqian, the overall plan would include this additional element of “forcing the marriage.”

If it were a matter of Han Qian secretly having something happen with Qing Yang, Feng Yi would definitely have actively stirred things up. Previously, he had more or less felt that this “forced marriage” business was creating unnecessary complications. Now, learning of the Chu court’s reaction in Chongwen Hall, he felt things had actually become more complicated.

Furthermore, he had never had a favorable impression of Wang Wenqian and spoke without much courtesy.

Currently, Han Qian himself remained in Liyang, while the “forced marriage” matter was mainly directed covertly from Tangyi by Feng Liao, Feng Yi, Yin Peng, and others. Before departing, Feng Liao had specifically requested Wang Wenqian to accompany them to Tangyi to offer counsel and strategies.

Facing Feng Yi’s doubts, Wang Wenqian said with calm composure:

“Great Chu has been established for thirty years now. There are few people left in Jiangnan who still remember the previous dynasty in their hearts—they’ve long considered themselves subjects of Great Chu. This is a rather thorny problem…”

Feng Yi’s thinking was more accustomed to meeting soldiers with generals and water with earth. He sat down with considerable thought and asked, “How is this a thorny problem?”

“Since ancient times, unifying the realm has never been bloodless. If the lord were not so magnanimous and benevolent, he could directly drive his cavalry across the river, let a hundred thousand heads roll to the ground, strike such terror into those opportunistic scoundrels that Great Chu would vanish like smoke and mist with no one left to remember it. Following that, when the lord implements the New Policies in Jiangnan, no one would dare test the blade with their heads.”

Feng Liao, sitting to one side, sighed and said:

“However, the lord doesn’t want a single head to roll, while also not wanting to delay implementing the New Policies in Jiangnan—and indeed, he cannot delay. The longer it’s postponed, the greater the difficulty of implementation. This being the case, some unnecessary hidden dangers will inevitably arise. As the saying goes, it’s easy to go from frugality to luxury, but hard to go from luxury to frugality—without heads rolling in a bloodbath, if the New Policies are to be forcibly implemented in Jiangnan, do you know how much resentment and hatred will breed and lurk in the hearts of the old rural magnates and hereditary powers? Furthermore, do you think that just because common people benefit from the New Policies, they will necessarily remember the good of the New Policies and the good of Luoyang? The New Policies will inevitably bring changes to the lives of common people. Even if the vast majority of these changes are good, as long as a small portion are not so good, you should understand best how human hearts will shift.”

“Conferring benefits is not seen as favor; withholding them breeds enmity, nothing more,” Feng Yi said.

“The principle isn’t complicated—human hearts are hardest to grasp. The North has been devastated, with everything waiting to be rebuilt, which is easiest to manage. The several disturbances in Jinling didn’t spread too widely and were quickly pacified. No one will think about how much credit the lord deserves in all this. They’ll only think that the Chu Kingdom brought Jiangnan thirty years of general peace—this on one hand will strengthen Jiangnan people’s nostalgia for their former country, and on the other hand, will superficially weaken the necessity and urgency of implementing the New Policies, thereby forming stronger and more widespread resistance in Jiangnan. When this combines with the so-called nostalgia for the former country, the problem becomes even greater. Not to mention, in the hearts of Jiangnan’s people, there’s still a ‘young emperor’…”

Feng Yi had thought that under the pressure of hundreds of thousands of troops, all problems would be easily resolved. He hadn’t expected Feng Liao and the others to still worry about so many issues.

“There’s another factor: after annexing Jiangnan, the spread of New Learning in Jiangnan won’t be slow, which determines that resolving these hidden troubles cannot be delayed for even a moment,” Yin Peng said. “Take cannons, for example—unless we don’t use them at all, once they’re put into use, as the steel smelting and casting capabilities in Jiangnan and other regions rapidly improve, there will be no obstacles to producing gunpowder and casting cannons anywhere. The Zheng clan, Zhang Chao, Zhang Han, Zhang Xiang, Zhang Feng, Gu Zhilong, even Huang Hua, Yang Zhitang, and Du Chongtao are all being extremely compliant now, seeming ready to defect and welcome us at any moment. Zheng Hui has been very courteous to our secret envoys at the Prince of Xing’s mansion. But once New Learning and new techniques are thoroughly disseminated in Jiangnan, Lingnan, and Qianzhong, whether they’ll remain as compliant as before is hard to say…”

Feng Yi could understand the necessity of truly completing the “unification of the realm” before New Learning and new techniques were fully disseminated, but he still sympathized with Yang En’s predicament.

Shen Yang was a stubborn stone—only Yang En could truly earn his respect. Yet now they had to personally push Yang En into a fire pit. The thought of it filled him with reluctance:

“We shouldn’t have had Cai Chen go persuade Yang En to take this lead.”

“Only Yang En can understand these matters clearly, and only Yang En is willing to sacrifice himself,” Feng Liao said. “Unifying the realm has never been an easy matter. I actually hope the lord could be more decisive and more ruthless! Now that Yang En has stepped forward, we need to make more people understand that if they don’t stand up and join Yang En in memorializing to ‘urge the marriage,’ and the Chu army merely surrenders without resistance, it will be absolutely impossible to avoid all subsequent purges. There’s no such easy advantage to be gained in this world…”

The reason urging a marriage alliance had become the most critical element on the eve of annexing Jiangnan had multiple aspects: on one hand, it clarified the legitimacy and legal foundation that Han Qian’s southern campaign was implementing a “merger of equals” rather than “annexation” of Chu Kingdom; on another hand, it laid the groundwork for subsequently resolving the Sichuan-Shu problem. There was yet another aspect—it required each of Chu Kingdom’s so-called important ministers and veteran generals, if they wished to preserve themselves, to “taint themselves,” to step down on their own from their positions as leaders of various regional clans and powerful families.

In the view of Feng Liao, Wang Wenqian, and others, only this way was there any possibility of truly “peacefully” resolving certain problems. Otherwise, when Liang’s forces entered Jinling City, even if the Chu army chose surrender without resistance, a series of purges would inevitably still be necessary afterward to resolve the numerous hidden dangers and consolidate control over Jiangnan and other regions…