Though the dog days of summer were gradually giving way, the heat still hadn’t fully lifted. In the study at Yushan Academy, Li Pin poured two cups of tea and handed one to Ning Yi.

“Affairs of state, matters of the realm — sometimes when I see people carrying on with such confident bluster, it strikes me as rather laughable. And yet many ideas do, in the end, emerge from exactly that kind of loose talk — if one only ever buries oneself in work without ever discussing things with others, one’s views inevitably grow lopsided. In the third year of the Jinghan era I went to the capital for the examinations, and passed, ranking eleventh on the imperial list. Unfortunately… my policy essay had been too outspoken, and I offended Fu Ying, the Vice Minister of Personnel. Though I’d passed, I found it hard to secure an actual post, and after several months, thoroughly disheartened, I left the capital and made my way back to Jiangning by a roundabout route.”

Li Pin, recounting this, shook his head with a wry smile over his teacup.

“Some men, having passed the exams, stay in the capital for years chasing after connections; others leave within a few months, and honestly, I sometimes don’t even like bringing it up myself, for fear of being laughed at. But during my time in the capital, seeing the web of interests running between officials really left me with mixed feelings. The capital has quite a different character from Jiangning — you can feel it the moment you arrive. Being where the imperial palace sits, the whole place seems draped in that same particular atmosphere; from around the Imperial Way you can see those towering palace walls every single day, and even where the palace itself isn’t visible, looking in that direction, it feels as though it still looms right before your eyes…”

“Those seeking office, those seeking connections, those discoursing on great affairs of state — carrying on the unbroken teachings of the sages, bringing peace to all future generations… in the teahouses and taverns, in every pleasure quarter, it was all the same talk. Wherever you went, you could see the shadow of officialdom everywhere — full of vigor on one hand, yet stale and weary on the other. In short, everyone was anxious, and no one seemed to grasp the crux of it. But life had to go on, so I tried working various connections myself, thinking of every possible approach — perhaps seeking out some political rival of Fu Ying’s, hoping to gain some advancement through them. In the end, though, none of it amounted to much — perhaps I simply never found the right path. I’d originally thought placing eleventh should have carried some weight, but they never refused me outright, only kept putting me off, offering me positions with no real substance behind them, their arrangements airtight in every way. After a few months, I more or less understood that this particular path simply wasn’t going to open up for now.”

“Why bother trying to squeeze through someone else’s crack when there’s no getting through at all? My family’s circumstances are reasonably comfortable — if I’d truly wanted to stay in the capital waiting for an opportunity, I could have afforded it. But I felt there was no need. Better to use the time to settle my thoughts instead. So I left the capital, wound my way back through Xu, Tang, Shen, and An prefectures, and returned to Jiangning. I encountered the flooding there as well, and saw a great deal along the way. These past few years since returning, I’ve found myself thinking often — how did the world come to this state?”

He took a sip of his tea. “Over the past hundred years, our Wu dynasty has attempted several reforms, large and small, most of them failures. But in principle, they’ve never strayed far from three goals: enriching the people, strengthening the military, and selecting officials properly. If one wants to accomplish anything, starting from these three does make sense. And yet, tracing it to the root — why exactly has our dynasty ended up with both weak soldiery and weak civilians, and a flawed method of selecting officials — that’s the question I keep turning over whenever I discuss these matters with others these days.”

Ning Yi took a sip of tea, then shrugged. “Isn’t the reason for that… rather simple, though?”

Li Pin had been waiting to hear his view, and at this response he paused for a moment, then laughed. “Simple indeed… Liheng once said that everything follows basic underlying rules, has its root causes — that if one can see clearly into that root, one can grasp the course of future developments far more clearly. I found that quite compelling… Looking at our dynasty now, in truth, the causes are fairly clear too — anyone who gives it a little thought could see it…”

He paused briefly, picked up a piece of chalk, and drew a triangle on the small blackboard beside him. “Our dynasty was originally founded on military strength — at its founding, our armed forces were formidable. But several subsequent rebellions made the founding emperor see the dangers in this, and afterward he adopted a policy of suppressing the military in favor of civil governance, strengthening the trunk while weakening the branches, so to speak, as a method of rule. This approach eliminated the roots of internal rebellion, and for a time brought the nation prosperity and a long, stable reign. But by now, it has also produced many flaws, leaving our dynasty ill-equipped to withstand outside threats. Under mounting pressure, in order to keep the trunk strong, the branches have only grown weaker still, as wealth keeps flowing toward the center. Military strength, already suppressed by this trunk-strengthening, branch-weakening approach, has grown weaker still, and the weaker the military becomes, the greater the outside pressure grows, and the greater the pressure, the weaker the military grows in turn — a vicious cycle with no way out…”

Li Pin let out a breath, gazing at the blackboard. “If we could resolve the commercial issues, and give a little more attention to the weakened branches, our dynasty would naturally have more room to attend to military strength — this is the problem any policy of enriching the people must solve. If military strength could be restored, so outside threats no longer dared encroach, our dynasty could likewise gain some breathing room — this is the problem any policy of strengthening the army must solve. Selecting officials properly serves both of these goals, and the longevity of the dynasty besides… but alas, all empty words so far.”

He tossed the chalk aside. “Taken on its own, any single one of these policies seems within anyone’s grasp — even pursuing several together shouldn’t pose any real difficulty. But given how entrenched this trunk-strengthening, branch-weakening pattern has become in our dynasty — like a great tree whose trunk is never quite satisfied, so that even the slightest bit of nourishment gets seized entirely by the trunk, leaving the branches starved. How to guide that trunk so that nourishment flows naturally back toward the branches — that’s the real crux of the problem. What does Liheng think?”

Ning Yi thought it over, then smiled and nodded. “Mm, that makes sense — and what you’re really saying is… getting those who’ve already become the ‘trunk’ — the great landowners, the great merchants, families like ours, the Su family — along with the imperial relatives and wealthy idle nobility, to willingly hand over the wealth they’ve accumulated, returning it to the people…”

Li Pin laughed, not denying it. “There’s admittedly a certain naive scholarly idealism to it, but I see no other way. Of course, the world only moves forward, never backward — everyone says our dynasty flourished under Emperor Heng and Emperor Huizong, with a rich nation and strong people, but going backward simply isn’t possible. The question is how to guide things forward to the next step, getting these people to willingly part with their money, without it becoming an empty, unrealistic cycle — everything needs to be considered as a chain of interlocking steps moving forward. So there needs to be some method to get these people to put their money into the impoverished areas, while ensuring both sides can profit from it, so the process can sustain itself indefinitely — not diminishing the wealth of the trunk, yet easing the plight of the branches… Perhaps the court might need to step in first.”

“Wang Anshi’s reforms…” Ning Yi murmured, frowning slightly. Li Pin turned toward him. “Hm?”

The Wu dynasty had no Wang Anshi, but several decades earlier, a chancellor named Tan Xi, styled Ziyong, had attempted something similar — reforms aimed at having the court intervene directly in various commercial affairs to revitalize the economy. Ning Yi smiled. “Isn’t what you’re saying, Dexin, rather similar to what Chancellor Tan once had in mind?”

Li Pin nodded. “I have indeed thought over Chancellor Tan’s reforms many times — they were quite instructive. What Chancellor Tan envisioned back then was, I suspect, much the same, only he never anticipated just how great the resistance would be — his policies simply couldn’t be enforced, undermined at every level below, so that in the end the most pressing task of governance came down to purging corruption within the bureaucracy itself…”

“That much, at least, is true.” Ning Yi nodded. “But the method itself was flawed — the economy simply can’t be handled that way.”

“Hm? The economy?”

“Er, I mean the commercial system — the circulation of goods, the circulation of currency, the whole system…” Ning Yi explained with a smile. “Any commercial system that lets privilege intervene stops being a normal commercial system. Privilege, in that context, can only act as poison — especially privilege belonging to the court, to the government.”

“Does Liheng also believe the state shouldn’t compete with the people for profit?”

“That’s not quite the reason,” Ning Yi shook his head. “Didn’t you say there ought to be basic underlying rules? The basic rule of economics is greed — merchants pursue profit, and profit alone is their goal; everything else can be treated as secondary. Greed, in many circumstances, is actually a positive force. Say I work in a shop and want to buy myself a piece of clothing — so I work hard, find ways to earn money, or earn the trust of my employer to make more. That’s good greed at work. There are plenty of other ways to get what you want, of course — stealing, robbing — but that lands you in prison, not worth it, so you’re forced to play by the rules of the game instead. I did this much work, it’s worth this much money, which is worth that piece of clothing. Greed that keeps a person playing within the rules of the game — that’s good greed…”

“But the court isn’t part of the game — it’s supposed to be the referee. If you let it join the game too, then eventually no one else can keep playing at all… As I said, merchants pursue profit and nothing else. Show someone profit, teach them greed, and the moment they turn around and find they’re holding an exemption from punishment and a blade in hand — if I can simply take back the gains for myself with no consequence, what reason would I have not to? If this could really work out so ideally, wouldn’t it amount to the same thing as simply having the great landowners and merchants hand over their money directly?”

He paused briefly. “Chancellor Tan’s reforms didn’t fail for lack of sufficiently strict laws — people will always find loopholes to exploit. Greed is simply too powerful a force; once that emotion takes hold in someone, profit becomes the only thing they see. This emotion can drive people to be quite proactive, its motive force considerable — but the one crucial thing is: you must never let those with privilege catch that same emotion. If that privilege isn’t sufficiently restrained, then eventually no one can keep playing the game at all…”

“As long as any small loophole exists to exploit, the rule of law will never be sufficient. When the privileged class enters business, it’s like letting wolves loose among sheep. Rather than considering letting more privilege in, it might actually prove more constructive to eliminate the privilege that’s already made its way in… In short, it comes down to one simple point: once you let the referee step onto the field and play, how is the game supposed to continue? As for oversight, all that does is take something originally simple and make it far more complicated — the damage becomes unavoidable.”

Outside the window, the brother and sister crouched on the corridor beneath the windowsill, eavesdropping. The boy tapped his sister’s shoulder and whispered, “Sister, sister, is he saying we should get rid of our family’s business?”

“That barbarian…” Zhou Pei blinked, looking somewhat annoyed, then glanced at her brother. “Still, what he’s saying does make some sense. You’d best remember it and think it over carefully — don’t believe things blindly, but don’t dismiss an idea just because of who says it either. That’s the only way to accomplish great things later on.”

“Oh.” Zhou Junwu nodded, then untied the pouch at his waist and pulled out a sticky rice cake, taking small bites of it, while Zhou Pei glared at him beside him with the exasperation of someone watching a lost cause.

“Letting the referee step onto the field and play…” Inside the room, Li Pin fell silent for a long while, then laughed, his expression rather complicated. “That line of Liheng’s really does strike right at the heart of the basic principle. If I were the referee, and I stepped onto the field myself, that would indeed be…”

He was a man given to careful thought, and though he might not necessarily abandon his ideas about guiding the economy, Ning Yi’s remark had at least let him glimpse some of the consequences involved. “To think I’ve spent years puzzling over this, and Liheng saw through to the hardest point to resolve at a single glance — perhaps this is simply how differently Liheng sees things.”

“It really is an interesting matter, in the end. Our dynasty pays several hundred thousand in annual tribute silver to the Liao each year, yet earns several million through trade with them. In the end, we still come out ahead. The importance of merchants, the benefits of commerce — it’s not only you who understands this now, Dexin, plenty of others do as well. Our dynasty differs from those before it in that we don’t suppress commerce; Chancellor Tan’s reforms, whatever their flaws, at least reflected the court’s genuine regard for commerce, but…” Ning Yi paused, then suddenly said, “Oh, right, I was just wondering — whatever happened to that Fu Ying fellow?”

Having been discussing commerce, this sudden shift caught Li Pin off guard for a moment, and then he burst out laughing. “Liheng really is something — nothing escapes you. Vice Minister of Personnel Fu Ying was investigated for corruption this past March, and last month the Court of Judicial Review sentenced him to exile. Once this flooding crisis has passed, I’m thinking…” He looked a bit wistful, though ultimately pleased. “I’m thinking of making another trip to the capital, smoothing things over here and there, to see if I might finally secure an actual post. It’s been five years now — Liheng, don’t go thinking I’m too obsessed with becoming an official.”

Ning Yi laughed as well. “In that case, congratulations, Dexin.”

“Too early to say, too early… But how did Liheng ever find out about this?”

“Trade secret.” Ning Yi had simply picked up on something from his expression, and tossed off the question idly, joking now. Li Pin shook his head with a laugh, took a sip of tea. “Back to the matter at hand, back to the matter at hand — since Liheng clearly grasps the stakes involved, I wonder if you’ve considered what middle ground might exist, if the court were only to offer some limited guidance?”

“That… was just idle talk.”

“Idle talk it may be.”

“Fine, since you’re headed for officialdom anyway, might as well discuss it.” Ning Yi smiled and nodded. “Personally, I’d say — there is a way, and there isn’t.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s simple enough, really — have the court get Confucian scholars to consciously elevate the standing of merchants. Then the practice of commerce would naturally flourish further on its own. If you want to guide things proactively without interfering or disrupting them, this is really the only path…”

Hearing this, Li Pin frowned. “Elevating the standing of merchants… this matter… merchants are, after all, driven by profit…”

“It’s not about merchants being driven by profit,” Ning Yi took a sip of tea. “The state is driven by profit too. Over these recent years, as commerce has developed, the standing of merchants has already improved compared to previous dynasties. If it were opened up a little further, commerce would certainly grow — but that’s precisely where it becomes impossible… they wouldn’t dare.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“Those at the top — the court, His Majesty, the Confucian establishment… you, me, everyone — none of us dares to open it up…”

Out in the corridor, crouched by the wall, Zhou Junwu blinked in surprise. “Sister, he’s talking nonsense again — I wouldn’t be afraid to. Our family’s in business too, and Uncle Consort’s family does even more of it…”

“Quiet!” Zhou Pei hushed him in a low voice, then thought it over. “I’m not afraid either… he’s just trying to provoke a reaction.”

Then they heard Ning Yi’s voice from inside, carrying a note of teasing.

“If it were truly opened up — bang — the Wu dynasty, this whole nation… would be gone, just like that.”