“…Then you’ll be able to draw the common people to your side and push back against the gentry-scholar class. At that point, something like ‘governing the realm together,’ which seems to have accumulated two hundred years of vested interest, will become a lesser, secondary problem by comparison… This is the only real chance you have of winning, today…”
At Jiangemen Pass in late fifth month, Ning Yi’s voice rang out on the sunlit hillside. Beside him, Zuo Xiuquan’s expression had turned grave, a mixture of complicated feelings churning within him.
Within the Huaxia Army’s sphere of influence at this time, the Zuo family held a special status, and it was precisely for this reason that Zuo Xiuquan was able to raise somewhat unconventional questions here. Of course, at their level, as long as one’s position was made clear and no substantive lines were crossed in private, such discussions could all be considered a debate between gentlemen. In his earlier remarks, he had, in truth, employed a bit of provocation and pushed his luck somewhat — but what he had not anticipated was that this discussion would progress to the point it now had, leaving him, for a moment, filled with something close to regret.
Here before him, Ning Yi had genuinely laid out a path forward, thrown out an entire framework — leaving him unable either to accept it or to reject it. Wise as he was, he could already vaguely perceive some of what might extend from this framework. Considering the crisis currently facing the Fuzhou court, this direction did indeed offer a genuine possibility of breaking the deadlock — but beyond that lay another problem: once the deadlock was broken, what they might then face could turn out to be something even more terrifying and dangerous.
The people’s livelihood, the people’s rights, the people’s wisdom… this was merely a small part of what was being done in the southwest…
He truly shouldn’t have tried to be clever… shouldn’t have asked… and shouldn’t have listened, either…
He sighed inwardly, fell silent for a moment, then finally spoke with a smile. “Mr. Ning calculates well. If Fuzhou truly promotes all of this and later fails, it will simply have made a dowry gift for you, Mr. Ning.”
“If it fails, that’s exactly what will happen,” Ning Yi said, his smile open and unconcealed. “But if it succeeds, perhaps a path forward really will emerge.”
Zuo Xiuquan thought for a moment. “…As for ‘handling the Emperor’s identity and framing accordingly’ — what exactly does that mean?”
“The greatest obstacle to promoting human rights and equality is that the gap in status between the Emperor and ordinary people will always be enormous. The only way to possibly circumvent this is to accomplish two things well. First, for a certain period, the Emperor’s interests must be highly aligned with those of the common people — just as today, when Jun Wu tells everyone, lend me your strength, and we’ll strike down those great clans who fragment the nation’s power. Once power is consolidated, we’ll then strike down the Jurchen invaders. In this way, within a given period, imperial authority will win the greatest possible goodwill, and can gain its legitimacy and sanctity from this…”
As he spoke, the two continued walking slowly along the mountain path. “But this legitimacy and sanctity won’t last, because once external pressure eases, the Emperor and the imperial clan will inevitably become the largest interest class, and people will gradually come to realize the unfairness inherent in this. At that point, the second step can be attempted — allow imperial authority to withdraw, while still preserving its sanctity, letting the bureaucratic apparatus become a firewall standing between the throne and the common people, with the Emperor no longer directly involved in the struggle over interests…”
“How hard could it be to deal with the common people?” Ning Yi tilted his head with a smile. “For the foreseeable next several hundred years, even if human rights awaken, the people will never obtain a hundred percent fairness — not unless the whole world truly achieves the Great Unity, with everyone becoming sages, everyone bearing exactly the same responsibilities, so that everyone’s share of benefit could truly be equal. But that’s simply impossible. As long as differences in intelligence and ability exist, the privileged class will always take the larger share, and the common people, taking the smaller share, won’t mind so long as they have food and drink — they won’t object to their nation having a sanctified imperial symbol.”
Having said this, he paused with a smile. “—Of course, unless there were a decades- or even century-long intellectual liberation movement that firmly established the ugliness of the imperial institution, only then could a different kind of consensus be reached. But that won’t happen now — the existence of an emperor has been an inevitability for a thousand years. If today’s emperor can hand power over to a relatively reliable bureaucratic system, and no longer arbitrarily wield power himself, he will earn everyone’s respect. People won’t mind supporting and honoring such an imperial house, and in this way, the process of sanctifying imperial authority can be completed — this way of playing the game, we can call constitutional monarchy.”
Zuo Xiuquan tilted his head. “In other words — centralize power first today, and once the Jurchens are defeated, then move to a system of a figurehead monarch governing through others.”
“Or, alternatively, don’t use my idea at all — if the young emperor can carve out a path forward on his own, then just forget I ever said anything,” Ning Yi stated calmly, his gaze steady. “If this approach is used, defeating the power-diffusing scholar-officials and the invading foreign enemy should both be achievable. But if, after completing the initial stage of enlightening the common people, the Emperor still insists on remaining at the very pinnacle of power, flaunting his difference from everyone else, sooner or later someone will drag him out and cut off his head. Becoming a figurehead monarch will, by then, be the only way left for him to protect himself.”
Having said this, he smiled again. “Establish a bureaucratic layer, watch the fire burn from across the river — if something goes wrong in the future, it won’t be the Emperor’s fault. How wronged the poor Emperor will be — he is, after all, the Son of Heaven, the entire nation technically belongs to his family, and yet, for the sake of the people, he voluntarily steps back, refrains from governing directly, enduring humiliation and bearing the heavy burden, generation after generation. Tell me, who would blame him for that?”
“And who would hold power at that point, then?”
“A chancellor, a chief minister… anything works. Swap them out every few years — he’s not the Emperor, he doesn’t have to hold the position for life. Establish the rules first, and when the time comes, he steps down.”
“And if a power-hungry chancellor were to plot treachery?”
“By then, basic enlightenment of the common people will already be widespread, meaning education will have become systematized. Write the hardship and greatness of the Emperor’s voluntary self-restraint, along with the necessity of this entire system, into the textbooks every child reads. As long as nothing extremely extreme occurs, this system can sustain itself over the long term…”
The two continued walking slowly forward, with Zuo Xiuquan asking questions from time to time, and Ning Yi answering each in turn. After a while, the expression on Zuo Xiuquan’s face grew increasingly strange.
If his initial questions could perhaps be attributed merely to a bit of scheming, an attempt to fish some scattered opinions out of Ning Yi, then Ning Yi’s response had left him with complicated feelings he could hardly put into words. At first, he had still thought this speech was merely this inner demon’s offhand counterattack — but who could have known that, by this point, Ning Yi would go on to lay out and deduce the entire framework in complete, methodical detail. If what had first been thrown out seemed like the bewitching words of a demon meant to confuse, by now it felt, oddly, almost like earnest, heartfelt counsel.
Especially when, later on, he heard Ning Yi say: “…As for some of the ideas and difficulties surrounding constitutional monarchy, we’ve done quite a bit of theoretical work on this within the Huaxia Army over the years. The materials are still stored at Heo Deung. If you’re interested, Master Zuo, I’ll have someone bring them to Chengdu for you this time.”
Zuo Xiuquan hesitated for a long moment, and finally said, “Mr. Ning, this… could it be that you genuinely wish to see the Martial Dynasty find its own way forward?”
“It’s easy to say, hard to do. Do you really think a mere few years of theoretical deduction by me and a handful of young people could actually make something like this happen?”
“But… if Mr. Ning is truly speaking to me in earnest, then at the very least… the possibility exists.”
Zuo Xiuquan frowned and clasped his hands. What he ultimately could not bring himself to voice was the question of “does Mr. Ning truly hold such broad-minded views?” — but in the end, he did not ask it aloud. Ning Yi looked at him and smiled.
“Many people in the world today know that the purpose of our Huaxia Army is to abolish Confucianism, to open the people’s minds, to pursue equality and awakening… At its core, the young emperor in Fuzhou is now trying to use ‘honoring the sovereign, expelling the barbarians’ to counter ‘governing the realm together’ — this is a fundamental change at the level of foundational thinking.” Ning Yi gestured toward the side of his head. “How difficult would that be — Master Zuo, you can imagine. But within the Huaxia Army, we’re attempting to use the thinking of natural science to counter the old mystical modes of thought, to use a mode of reasoning that puts logic first to counter a way of thinking governed by emotion, propriety, and law, to use human rights and equality to counter the Confucian hierarchical view of ruler and subject, father and son. How difficult is that, do you think, Master Zuo?”
Ning Yi smiled, his gaze calm, carrying within it the vastness and coldness of snow-capped mountains and open seas.
“Regarding the opening of the people’s wisdom, the enlightenment of the people’s rights, we’ve considered many different scenarios and approaches in our deliberations — enlightenment without an emperor, enlightenment with an emperor, enlightenment in times of peace, enlightenment in times of war. These deliberations and ideas may not necessarily prove useful, but Master Zuo, as long as you’re interested, I won’t hold anything back, because theoretical deduction alone is just idle speculation. If Fuzhou can, to the greatest extent possible, become an experiment in opening the minds of the people — even one conducted under a monarchical model — we too stand to gain the most valuable kind of experience from it.”
“The foundational mode of thought in our land, in our society, is mystical in nature. The characteristic of mysticism is moving from the whole to the parts, with emotion placed above reason — like the idea that heaven and earth were once a primordial chaos, that the Formless gave birth to the Two Principles, and the Two Principles gave birth to the Four Symbols. It sounds quite reasonable, so people pass it down generation after generation, believing it to be truth. But where does it actually originate? Who observed it? Who can rigorously prove it? People are accustomed to accepting principles that simply sound right, without questioning why they’re right — in the past, our way of thinking simply didn’t involve that kind of interrogation… The thinking of natural science must work in reverse — completely in reverse.”
“The thinking of natural science moves from the parts to the whole. We first clearly establish whatever small, verifiable fact is at hand, then hypothesize what pattern or principle governs it, and rigorously work out the deduction from there. Natural science doesn’t speak of heaven and earth in chaos, of the cosmos in its primordial vastness. At Heo Deung, when we make iron plates and want to achieve a flat surface — what is a flat surface? To an ordinary person, it just means the tabletop looks flat, that’s enough. We use a water-powered mill to press two iron plates together, grinding them against each other continuously, and as the two plates keep rubbing against one another, they become smoother and smoother, until eventually every point on their surfaces approaches the most precise possible flatness — this can be proven through mathematics and geometry. This is the most primitive, and yet the most precise, kind of flat surface…”
“To move from mysticism toward natural science, what needs to change is the most fundamental mode of thinking itself — it’s not even about any single specific idea, not a matter of casually deciding, ‘oh, this principle sounds right, this saying sounds profound, so it must be true.’ Master Zuo, this is what the Huaxia Army is fighting against. Today, the Jin state’s Great Construction Institute is studying natural science, Fuzhou is studying natural science, and across every faction in this realm, I encourage all of them to study natural science — if they don’t, I’ll simply blast their heads off with cannon fire. Perhaps over the course of several decades or even a century, we’ll truly come to understand the mode of thinking that is natural science and materialism.”
Having said this, Ning Yi paused, and Zuo Xiuquan frowned and spoke up. “But why… is the thinking of natural science superior to mysticism?”
Ning Yi shook his head. “It’s not that it’s superior to mysticism. In some books that came from the far west, I discovered that their mode of thinking moves from the parts toward the whole — that’s a place far to the west, perhaps thousands of li away, the endpoint of what was once called the Silk Road. Using this mode of thinking, I devised various concepts, which resulted in the hot air balloons, telescopes, cannons, and rockets you’ve seen today. Mystical thinking, having developed to this point, can now only serve as a basis for grand but ultimately hollow philosophical musings. Confucianism, which began with the aspiration to civilize and enlighten the realm, has, by this point, chosen instead to castrate human nature. Confucius spoke of repaying grievance with directness — yet by now, everyone only knows the phrase ‘repay grievance with virtue.’ Why is that? This entire approach to governing people, even if carried forward another thousand years, will never produce any true change.”
“Within the mode of thinking that moves from the parts toward the whole, countless possibilities exist. What you’ve seen today is only the very beginning. Our reforms in papermaking alone have already given the enlightenment of the entire populace real hope — going forward, this mode of thinking needs to be thoroughly digested, and once it’s been substantially absorbed, it can then be combined with the philosophy and humanities of the mystical tradition. Perhaps then, we might one day truly see a world of great unity.”
He waved his hand.
“It’s difficult for me to fully explain its necessity and urgency, but I’ve already seen it, and so I intend to push it forward. I can scatter the ideas of natural science across the whole realm — within the Huaxia Army, the concept of equality gave rise to Old Bull Head; in Jiangnan, a man named He Wen learned to overthrow landlords and redistribute their land, and has now founded something called the Fairness Party. Going forward, whether it’s Lin’an, or the likes of Liu Guangshi and Dai Mengwei, or the bandits in Shanxi, all of them will, to varying degrees, choose to undertake some form of reform. These attempted reforms will become nourishment for the entire realm.”
“What ultimately succeeds may not be us, the Huaxia Army. Old Bull Head might go bankrupt. The Fairness Party might burn itself out in some great fire. The Huaxia Army itself might prove too rigid and break too easily — someday I might die, and all these various ideas might flicker out like extinguished lamps. But I believe the seeds will already have been sown. If my own ideals cannot ultimately prevail, I would be glad to see Jun Wu in Fuzhou find his way successfully down the path of constitutional monarchy, because that too would, to some degree, open the minds of the people. I wish him success. I truly hope he succeeds.”
Having said this much, Ning Yi’s words came to an end. Zuo Xiuquan’s expression finally lost its complicated cast; his face grew solemn, and he bowed deeply toward Ning Yi with clasped hands. Ning Yi caught his hands and patted the back of them.
“Of course, there are still many details to discuss going forward. First and foremost — Jun Wu needs to stop this little trick of spreading word about our former teacher-student relationship. Letting it circulate among the common people certainly does some good, but among the middle and upper classes, there are important figures loyal to the Martial Dynasty, willing to make a desperate last stand alongside the young emperor — some of them might, because of this rumor and his tacit tolerance of it, withdraw their support from him. So, openly, he must take a clear stance — he absolutely must present himself as the legitimate heir of the Martial Dynasty.”
“…On another note, I’m willing to open up the ideas and texts of natural science to him, but not the finished results — he must cultivate his own craftsmen, and train a proper materialist mode of thinking among them. I’ll be frank about it too — if he fails, this whole enterprise falls to me. My intentions here are not entirely benevolent.”
“…Of course, when it comes to training craftsmen, establishing factories, running schools, enlightening education, and organizing the lower levels of society, I can offer some conveniences to give them something to reference. For example, those young people you left here — Wen Huai recently achieved great merit in Tanzhou. If you wish, you could lend them to Fuzhou, to help assist in building up grassroots organizational structures there. Of course, whether to trust them, and to what degree, is up to you.”
“There’s still a great deal more we can discuss in detail going forward. The years ahead will be turbulent and stormy — best prepare to greet a truly momentous transformation.”
Ning Yi smiled. “Chengdu welcomes you.”
…
Sunlight poured down from the sky. Zuo Xiuquan stood atop the tower at Jiangemen Pass, watching the clouds drifting across the sky. It was a clear sky beneath the summer heat, the air not stifling, with no sign of rain to come — yet in his ears, it seemed as though peals of thunder were rolling past.
The years ahead will be turbulent and stormy…
Ning Yi’s words still echoed in his mind.
…
Several days before this, on the southern bank of the Yellow River, the delegation of envoys sent from Lin’an to lobby Zongfu and Zongbi at the Jurchen eastern route army’s camp had been thrown out of the camp.
Afterward, a portly man with a kindly yet dignified bearing had crossed the Yellow River in a small boat, entered the military camp, and met with the two Jurchen princes.
The two sides exchanged threats and insults, sharp words meeting sharp words, but in the end, a preliminary understanding was reached: once both sides had completed their period of rest and reorganization, they would meet in a proper, head-on decisive battle, and take the loser’s head as the prize.
The armies on both banks of the Yellow River then began operating according to the agreed-upon steps. The vast Jurchen eastern route army began crossing the river and marching north, while Wanyan Chang and Shulisu’s forces, stationed on the northern bank, bypassed certain fixed positions near Liangshan and ceased their burning, killing, and plundering of nearby towns and villages.
…
In Fuzhou, Jun Wu, Zhou Pei, and the others received, day after day, one great Confucian scholar or eminent figure after another, sometimes even whole delegations of them — both sides probing each other, sometimes evasive, sometimes speaking plainly. Some departed; naturally, others chose to stay.
Compared to Jun Wu’s resolute determination, Zhou Pei’s manner was somewhat gentler. Since Zhao Ding’s granddaughter, Zhao Xiaosong, had once saved her life years ago, quite a few great Confucian scholars leveraged this connection, coming to the Grand Princess’s residence to ask whether the situation might still be turned around.
In the old days at Lin’an, she had played a more conservative role, often urging Jun Wu, then still Crown Prince, not to act too radically, lest he damage relations with everyone. But by this point, she too had come to accept the policy of no longer patching up this broken ship.
“There’s no path leading back now.”
At the end of these conversations, she would always sigh in this way. She was, after all, still young, and though she had lived through countless trials, she had finally come to accept this path of a desperate, all-or-nothing gamble. In the end, some of the elder statesmen were willing to entrust their lives and fortunes to this cause as well.
The reforms had already begun moving forward. Ominous portents and predictions reached her ears every single day, with people prophesying their eventual self-destruction. Sometimes she would wake with a start from her dreams, and beneath the starlight, she would gaze eastward, toward the sea.
“…You must assist Jun Wu, little Pei… You must assist Jun Wu, and pass down the Zhou family’s realm, pass it down, pass it down… won’t you?”
She recalled Zhou Yong’s dying instructions.
Father, Your Majesty…
Will we still be able… to reach that place?
Not long after, crate after crate of goods would be transported from thousands of li away in the southwest.
…
Few could have anticipated that, across this vast realm, a fire more intense and more complicated than the war against the Jurchens itself would only begin to emerge after the Jurchens’ fourth invasion of the south.
…
Yunzhong.
The cause and consequence of what was to come traced back to something very small.
That was over a decade ago, during the Jurchens’ second invasion south, when they had breached the Martial Dynasty’s capital, Bianliang, and abducted several hundred thousand Han people, taking them north to serve as slaves.
Life as a Han slave was extraordinarily harsh, and especially among the first batch of Han slaves captured during the Humiliation of Jingping, nine out of ten had already died from inhuman torment over a decade earlier.
Among them had once been an official’s household from Bianliang, taken north in its entirety — the men of the family reduced to slaves, the women to prostitutes. Over the years following their capture, several family members had died one after another. By the tenth year of Tianhui, the head of this household — who had once served as an official in the Martial Dynasty’s Ministry of Rites — reported a piece of news to his superiors, in a bid to survive.
The news was this: his son had once abandoned scholarship for a military career, serving as an officer in the Martial Dynasty’s Wurui Battalion, and had later followed the Black Banner’s Ning Yi in killing the emperor and rebelling, becoming one of the Black Banner’s most core members. This son, named Luo Ye, would, in the future, inevitably send men to the Jin state to rescue his family.
At the time, this coincided with the period of the Battle of Xiaocang River, when the War God Loushi had already fallen in the northwest. This official surnamed Luo hoped the Jurchens would spare his family’s lives, so they could later be used to persuade defection in the northwest, or perhaps serve as bait to entrap Black Banner spies.
A Jurchen official recorded this matter, but no special care was extended to the family as a result.
It was not until after the Battle of Xiaocang River had concluded, when the Jurchens, having paid a heavy price in the northwest, began placing greater emphasis on intelligence warfare, and Xiyin ordered Wanyan Qingjue and others to organize efforts focused on the southwest, that this record was dug up once more. But by that time, many members of the Luo family, including the official himself, had already died, and given the poor flow of information across such vast distances, the people in Yunzhong had no way of judging the authenticity of this intelligence. The record was once again shelved.
Before long, a chief constable named Mandu Dalu took notice of this record. By that time, of the original Luo family, only one half-mad young daughter remained, barely clinging to life.
This was the fifteenth year of Tianhui. Just past mid-fifth month, someone came to report that, during a recent inspection sweep, that madwoman had disappeared. By this point, news of Nianhan’s crushing defeat in the Martial Dynasty’s southwest had already spread, and every day, no small number of Han slaves in Jurchen territory were dying unjustly. The decree originally issued by Wuqimai, requiring a fine for anyone who killed a Han slave, had temporarily become impossible to enforce. A mad woman dying silently, without a trace, was hardly out of the ordinary.
Public order had already fallen into chaos, and resistance and flight among Han slaves were bound to intensify at any moment. Mandu Dalu had many other matters demanding his attention at this time, but the instincts honed over years as an old chief constable prompted him to pay this matter some attention nonetheless.
On the twenty-third of the fifth month, a merchant caravan set out toward Yanmen Pass.
Lu Mingfang was among the caravan, looking back at the desolate scenery of the Youyan region receding behind him.
In truth, he had grown up in Bianliang, not yet fully an adult when the Jurchens came invading. He had lived through the chaos of war, and not long after, had followed his father to Yunzhong to establish a foothold there; before long, his father had died. He had spent nearly half his life now in the company of the Youyan region.
Over the past decade or so, he had gone south only three times — twice to Xiaocang River, once to the southwest — and each time, what he saw was likewise desolate scenery. Now that the Huaxia Army had achieved a great victory and occupied the Chengdu Plain, once he reached Chengdu, he would finally see a prosperous, flourishing southern city.
Thinking about it, his past memories had grown almost distant to him now — what, exactly, did the prosperity of the Han people look like? He tried to recall, but found that the only clear images in his mind were of the northern landscape.
Lu Mingfang died on the evening of the twenty-fourth of the fifth month.
Not long after, his mutilated body was transported back to Yunzhong, and the Jurchens began publicly proclaiming that they had killed the chief of the Black Banner’s spy network in the north.
Tang Minjie saw that nearly unrecognizable corpse among the crowd. He studied it for a long while, his cheeks twitching repeatedly.
It seemed to be dusk, in the last days of the fifth month. He walked into some unnamed dark alley and vomited once. Throughout Yunzhong Prefecture, the killing of Han slaves was growing ever more rampant. At this moment, he had become the true head of the Black Banner’s operations in the north.
“Old Lu… how did you manage to keep your sense of proportion?” He sat in the alley, a voice from not long ago echoing in his mind. “What I mean is, you have far more restraint than I do…”
Lu Mingfang had sat there and given an answer. What had he said? Though Tang Minjie could no longer recall the words, perhaps because he was thinking of his fallen comrade, the corner of his mouth still curled, ever so slightly, into a smile…
…
As An Xifu led his delegation across Jiangemen Pass, following the crowds toward Chengdu, the atmosphere in Shanxi was growing tense and severe.
Zonghan and Xiyin, leading what remained of their now much-diminished western route army, continued planning their future course as they retreated north. Their letters had already been sent back to the Jin state one after another, on one hand making their position clear, on the other laying out the facts plainly, hoping to complete the coming transfer of power in the most appropriate manner possible, and hoping too that the senior elders within the Jin state might come to recognize the threat posed by the Black Banner, and reach some form of consensus on the matter.
This was a defeat without precedent. But at the same time, the long string of victories Zonghan and Xiyin had accumulated in the past still carried some weight. In the fifth month, within the imperial palace at Shangjing, someone read aloud, several times over, the letters sent by Zonghan and Xiyin to the gravely weakened Emperor Wuqimai. This Jin emperor’s will was extraordinarily resilient — having endured two years since suffering a stroke and partial paralysis, gritting his teeth through it all, waiting for the conclusion of the southern campaign. On the twenty-fifth of the fifth month, his consciousness, in a rare moment, became clear, and regarding the outcome of this southern campaign, he left behind a final decree.
He had risen alongside Aguda, fighting alongside Zonghan and Xiyin for half a lifetime. At this moment, this emperor, now nearly at the point of death, still summoned his last strength to answer the plea of his comrades-in-arms, thousands of li away.
…
The sunlight was setting.
Before long, it would sink beneath the earth, only to stir up the fiercest of waves—