Mid-fifth month, Fuzhou.
The sun rose slowly from the direction of the harbor. The fishing fleets had long since set out to sea, and along with the shouts of the dockworkers, the city’s streets, markets, squares, and construction sites were already crowded with bustling activity.
Plainly dressed people ate breakfast at roadside stalls before hurrying off, while children selling newspapers dashed through the crowds. Once-worn brothels, teahouses, and taverns had, in recent times, begun renovating even while still open for business, and within these half-old, half-new buildings, men of letters gathered together, while merchants who had traveled from afar began a day of socializing and negotiation…
The massive influx of refugees and Fuzhou’s status as the new court’s temporary capital had brought this kind of prosperity to the city. A similar scene had once played out in Lin’an over a decade earlier, lasting several years — but compared to the chaotic prosperity of Lin’an back then, with refugees dying in droves and all manner of crimes rampant, the seemingly chaotic bustle of Fuzhou now carried within it a faint but discernible thread of order.
Over these past few months, a great many court clerks had divided their work into several main directions. On one hand, they encouraged Fuzhou’s local residents to engage as much as possible in commerce related to daily livelihoods — those with houses could rent out lodging, those skilled in cooking could sell breakfast, those with shop capital could expand their businesses. With the massive influx of population, demand across every market sector related to daily life had surged dramatically; even a small street vendor selling breakfast could see their daily earnings multiply several times over.
Alongside guiding and encouraging local residents to expand their livelihood-related businesses, new docks were being built to the east of the city, shipyards expanded, technical workers resettled, and residential and workshop districts expanded in the north and west of the city. The court used policy directives as resources to encourage merchants who had fled from other regions to build new factories and shelters here, absorbing refugees who had lost everything into work-for-relief programs, at least ensuring that most refugees would not end up wandering the streets and could find something to eat.
At the same time, surplus soldiers were deployed for patrols, working with lower-level officials to handle public security issues strictly and swiftly. Almost every day, criminals were escorted to the vegetable market to be executed, drawing large crowds to watch. As a result, although many criminals were executed and some innocent people were inevitably wronged in the process, the overall effect served as a warning to deter others, and for the time being, outsiders and locals did not erupt into major conflict.
Broadly speaking, the new sovereign’s capacity for handling the fine details of governance here in Fuzhou far surpassed, by an enormous margin, that of his own father, who had governed Lin’an over a decade earlier. But viewed from another angle, Lin’an back then had drawn nourishment from half of the former Martial Dynasty’s realm and the entire Central Plains, whereas the sustenance Fuzhou could now attract fell far short of what Lin’an had once enjoyed.
By the fifth month, a great upheaval was sweeping across this city that had only just begun to show signs of prosperity.
For an ordinary citizen uninvolved in court affairs, what could be seen was the shock caused by the court’s announcement, on the second of the fifth month, of the results of the southwestern campaign, and, behind that shock, the boldness and magnanimity the new sovereign had displayed. During this period, there were certainly those who cursed the Huaxia Army, but alongside this came a flood of new information and new things that filled people’s attention.
Li Pin’s newspaper began interpreting the ideas behind the study of natural principles based on the results at Wangyuan Bridge in the southwest. Day after day thereafter, the newspaper extended the concept of natural science back to the ancient craftsman Lu Ban, and further to the Mohist school. Storytellers in taverns and teahouses began discussing Lu Ban’s wooden kite that could supposedly fly for three days without landing, and the wooden oxen and flowing horses of Zhuge Liang from the Three Kingdoms period — subjects the common people found thoroughly delightful.
Alongside the study of natural principles came discussions of Li Pin’s New Confucianism — ideas somewhat more distant to ordinary people, but among the lower and middle tiers of scholars, discussions concerning the centralization of power and loyalty to the sovereign began to increase. By mid-fifth month, stories from the Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals concerning Guan Zhong and the Zhou Son of Heaven began appearing frequently in scholarly discussions, and the core idea underlying these stories ultimately came down to four characters:
— Honor the sovereign, expel the barbarians.
Even as the aura surrounding natural science’s marvelous inventions continued to expand, most people still had not yet perceived the undercurrents stirring beneath it. On the fifth of the fifth month, the Fuzhou court removed the old Minister of Works, Li Long, from his position, and subsequently reorganized the Ministry of Works — this seemed merely a continuation of the new Emperor’s consistent emphasis on craftsmen’s thinking. Occurring alongside this were a series of actions such as the Beiwei Army’s assault on Quanzhou, while privately, rumors spread like wildfire that the new sovereign Jun Wu and the Grand Princess Zhou Pei had once studied natural science and mathematics under that demon of the southwest, Ning Yi.
In the past, Ning Yi’s killing of the emperor and rebellion had certainly been an act of great treason, but no one in the current realm could deny how formidable his abilities were. After Emperor Jinghan died and Emperor Jingping, Zhou Ji, was captured and taken north, the assembled nobles of Jiangnan had chosen the unremarkable Zhou Yong from among the many imperial clan members — in truth, this was because they were counting on this brother and sister pair, having inherited Ning Yi’s mantle, to potentially turn the tide someday. Toward this end, the Grand Princess’s residence in Jiangning and Consort Kang Xian had, back then, done a good deal to push things along, hoping that one day, this brother-and-sister pair might accomplish something remarkable…
These half-true, half-fabricated rumors created a peculiar atmosphere among the common people, but indirectly also dissolved some of the negative sentiment people might otherwise have felt about their own side’s problems upon hearing news of the southwestern campaign.
On the ninth of the fifth month, aided by inside collaborators within the city, the Beiwei Army captured Quanzhou in just four days. When the news arrived, the entire city was jubilant.
These were the developments in Fuzhou visible to ordinary people — but if one looked higher up, one would find that a tremendous storm had already been roaring across the skies of Fuzhou for quite some time.
Broadly speaking, whenever there is a change at the top of any court, a phenomenon of “a new emperor, a new set of ministers” naturally follows — nothing unusual there. What kind of temperament and principles the new emperor holds, whom he favors and whom he distances himself from — these are things people must always pay attention to and adjust to during any normal succession of rulers.
With Zhou Yong’s departure from Lin’an, the Wu-Jianshuo court had effectively existed in name only. The Crown Prince who followed, Jun Wu, had remained throughout at the very center of the chaos and turmoil of war. His “Revival” court, established after his ascension, had only just managed to gain a tenuous foothold amid brutal fighting and desperate flight. Though the Martial Dynasty’s national strength had already declined, in terms of legitimacy, he could still be said to be the most rightful new sovereign of the Martial Dynasty — once he stood firmly established and issued a rallying call, even now, half the great clans of Jiangnan would likely choose to support him. This was the power of legitimate title.
Overall, the Martial Dynasty was indeed, by now, a broken ship — but even a broken ship still has three parts of its nails intact, and given that this ship had originally been of enormous scale to begin with, this fundamental base of legitimacy remained, on the present stage of contending for the realm, exceedingly substantial — far greater, overall, than what Tie Yan and Wu Qimei possessed in Lin’an, greater than Liu Guangshi or Dai Mengwei, and even greater than that bunch of bandits in Shanxi.
Countless great clans were waiting for this new emperor to sort out his thinking and make his intentions known, so they could judge in what manner to offer their support. Among the various forces that had gathered toward Fuzhou since February and March, quite a few were, in fact, representatives or envoys of these still-powerful regional factions — some were even the power-holders themselves.
In the fifth month, the Emperor finally revealed his true intentions and formally made his position known — and the moment this happened, it proved to be a calamity that caught countless great clans entirely off guard.
Honor the sovereign, expel the barbarians!
Since the second half of last year, this new emperor named Zhou Junwu had been fighting for survival in the most brutal of circumstances the entire time. At Jiangning, surrounded by a million troops, he had personally taken the field in a desperate, do-or-die stand, managing to drive Zongfu back somewhat. After repelling him, he had ascended the throne at Jiangning, only to be forced, not long after, to abandon Jiangning and flee in constant retreat across Jiangnan, with countless people being slaughtered in his wake. He had reorganized the army, at one point choosing to consolidate power, organizing surveillance units and military law enforcement squads made up of low-ranking soldiers whose families had been destroyed — all of these actions were, in their way, understandable given the circumstances.
People had been waiting for him to calm down and take a broader, more holistic view of the overall situation. In essence, many were waiting for official appointments and rewards to be handed out; many families were waiting to distinguish themselves and earn merit within the new political framework — these families had resources, strength, and talent, talent that had, after all, been cultivated within the old system’s framework. As long as the new emperor showed sufficient magnanimity, the entire broken ship of the Martial Dynasty would still remain one of the largest and most formidable vessels on this ocean.
Since February, countless people had been submitting one proposal and suggestion after another to the Fuzhou court from a grand, overarching perspective: with the Jurchens gone and the storm subsided, it was time to patch up this broken ship and begin repairs. Achieving perfection in this direction would certainly not be easy, but merely achieving a passing grade was something even the most ordinary political competence could accomplish.
But those at the top were astonished to discover that this seemingly foolish emperor appeared to be trying to smash the ship apart entirely, preparing instead to build a ridiculous little rowboat from scratch.
After three months of waiting, arriving at this result, opposition began almost immediately. Some great clans’ forces began attempting to drift away; at court, all manner of veiled or explicit proposals and objections poured forth without end. Some began painting for the Emperor a picture of the miserable possibilities that lay ahead; others began hinting that certain great clans harbored deep resentment, and that the Fuzhou court was about to lose the support of certain regions. The new Emperor showed no anger; he patiently persuaded and reassured them, but he absolutely refused to loosen his commitments.
At this point in the Fuzhou court, the Emperor’s control over the situation was nearly absolute; officials could only threaten or plead, but could not, in any substantive way, check his actions. Especially after news broke that Jun Wu and Zhou Pei had old ties with Ning Yi, the court’s own dignity had taken a hit, but the Emperor, in a way, regained some standing of his own through it. When someone submitted a memorial petitioning that such rumors damaged the imperial family’s reputation and should be suppressed, Jun Wu deflected it with a single line: “Rumors die with the wise — I have no wish to punish the common people over mere talk.”
Officials, deeply worried, began quietly organizing among themselves, preparing to raise a large-scale protest later on — but news of the Beiwei Army’s capture of Quanzhou arrived shortly after, and combined with the prevailing public sentiment within the city, effectively suppressed the grumbling among the officials with a decisive one-two punch. By the fifteenth of the fifth month, a long-brewing piece of news quietly emerged:
In order to change the two-hundred-year-old pattern of the Martial Dynasty’s military weakness, the Emperor would have Han Shizhong, Yue Fei, and others take the lead in establishing the “Jiangnan Military Academy,” to train military commanders and officials for the army. The academy would emphasize education in loyalty to the sovereign, replacing the past self-emasculating system of civil officials supervising the military. Selection of candidates was already underway.
This news spread through the court and, though not yet formally implemented, left people increasingly certain that the new Emperor’s commitment to “honoring the sovereign and expelling the barbarians” had become all but a settled matter.
In times of peace, one weakens the power of military men, and even the sovereign’s power must be checked and balanced. But when the nation faces existential crisis, power must be centralized, and the military revitalized. Such thinking sounds simple enough, but in substance, it represented an abrupt reversal of two hundred years of governing philosophy. To “honor the sovereign and expel the barbarians” was fundamentally incompatible with “governing the realm together with the scholar-officials”; pursuing the latter would inevitably conflict directly with the former.
By late fifth month, the Emperor’s overall reformist resolve had grown increasingly clear, and countless remonstrations and lobbying efforts continually surfaced throughout Fuzhou city — sometimes brought directly before Jun Wu, sometimes before the Grand Princess Zhou Pei. Some old officials of fiercer temperament came to endorse the new Emperor’s reforms, and among the lower and middle ranks of literati and scholars, quite a few expressed approval of the new Emperor’s boldness and resolve. But on a much larger scale, the aging, broken ship began to show the first signs of its collapse…
By the end of the fifth month, Ning Yi, at Jiange, had come to learn, roughly, the series of developments concerning the reforms the Fuzhou court had launched at Lin’an — no, rather, within their own territory. On this particular day, as it happened, an envoy delegation from the Zuo family passed through Jiange, and Zuo Xiuquan, the second-most senior figure of the Zuo family and leader of this delegation, requested an audience with Ning Yi.
Following Zuo Duanyou’s death, the current head of the Zuo family was Zuo Jiyun, but Zuo Jiyun’s abilities extended only to maintaining what already existed. In recent years, it had been Zuo Xiuquan, a collateral member of the Zuo family, who had managed most of the family’s affairs — effectively the true heir to Zuo Duanyou’s legacy and intentions. He was a man in his fifties, dignified and elegant in appearance, with the temperament of a traditional, refined scholar, a lock of white hair hanging over his right temple. Upon meeting Ning Yi, the two exchanged information concerning Lin’an.
With their locations separated by over two thousand li, even though the channels of information among the upper echelons had begun to flow more freely since the Jurchens’ withdrawal, much of the first-hand information that arrived was often unreliable — only by cross-referencing multiple sources could a relatively clear picture emerge.
“…This scheme of the young emperor’s — pressing forward while extending an olive branch at the same time — is rather unexpected.” With the information at hand extending only up to the rumor about the Jiangnan Military Academy having been released, Ning Yi remarked this after comparing notes, with a note of genuine admiration in his tone. “Earlier, when Yue Fei pressed against Quanzhou but held off attacking, he must have privately been coordinating with people inside the city, making contact with turncoats and building alliances — who would have thought his attack on Quanzhou was actually meant to prepare the ground for public opinion back in Fuzhou? Interesting — good thing he took the city in time…”
Zuo Xiuquan smiled. “I hear that Mr. Ning once had a teacher-student relationship of sorts with the new sovereign back in Jiangning — hearing this news today, does it bring you some comfort?”
“These past years, he and Zhou Pei have had a rough go of it,” Ning Yi said. “Back when the Jurchens invaded south, we kidnapped Liu Yu and pinned the blame on the Martial Dynasty; he managed, through the Xuzhou side, to throw the problem right back at us — that was actually well handled. As for the desperate last stand at Jiangning, he truly grew into a man who could stand tall in that battle… Actually, back then, his sister had the stronger, more forceful temperament, while Jun Wu’s was comparatively weaker. It hasn’t been easy for him — he’s worked hard…”
For a long time now, owing to Zuo Duanyou’s influence, the Zuo family had maintained good relations with both the Huaxia Army and the Martial Dynasty simultaneously. Through his many past discussions with that old man, Ning Yi also knew that although Zuo Duanyou had strongly supported the Huaxia Army’s resistance against the Jin, at his core, in his very bones, he had remained a Confucian scholar devoted to the Martial Dynasty and to the orthodox tradition. His arrangements for the Zuo family before his death likely leaned, if anything, toward the Martial Dynasty. But Ning Yi held no grudge over this.
He also knew that what he said here would very likely, before long, reach the ears of that young emperor thousands of li away, through Zuo Xiuquan’s mouth — and for this reason, he did not begrudge offering a few more words of encouragement here regarding that child from years past.
— To have come this far truly hasn’t been easy.
Zuo Xiuquan nodded.
“So, Mr. Ning, what do you make of the new sovereign’s decision?”