Inside the room, Ning Yi made a “bang” gesture with his hand. Li Pin frowned. “How could that possibly be?”

Ning Yi fell silent for a moment. “Brother Li, have you ever considered why Confucian thought, across these thousands of years of development, has kept repeating this idea that merchants are driven by profit?”

“The sages championed virtue and opposed selfish profit-seeking — isn’t that simply natural enough?”

“That’s part of it, certainly.” Ning Yi nodded. “But another part of it comes down to this: commercial learning doesn’t lend itself well to governance — in three words, it’s hard to manage. A person can spend their whole life farming in some mountain village, nothing unusual about it, following the ways passed down through generations — marry, raise children, die, and get buried in the hills. But one day you go into the county town and see all that color and dazzle, and another day you go to the provincial capital and see even more things you can’t quite process — just like seeing that piece of clothing you want, and then going out to find a way to get it… greed, you see…”

Ning Yi smiled. “Of course, most of the time you’d honestly go work to earn the money for that clothing. But once desire takes hold in you, if there’s a loophole, you’ll always find your way to it eventually. Brother Li, which do you think is easier to govern — a farmer who tills the soil his whole life, honest and dutiful, or someone whose heart already harbors desire? Our dynasty has tens of millions of subjects, Brother Li — how many of them can our laws truly keep in check? How many of them simply live out quiet, dutiful lives as things stand? If commerce advances even one step further, how much more desire would that produce?”

“This is actually a rather fascinating system. Ever since the era of the Hundred Schools of Thought, there’s been this debate between rule by law and rule by virtue. In principle, rule by law ought to win out — and yet, going through the Qin, Han, Three Kingdoms, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties, Sui, Tang… and onward, slowly, you’ll notice something: how many people did the rule of law in those past ages actually manage to control? Ha… in truth, most of it relied on people’s own sense of self-discipline, on simple, unspoiled local customs — a small village could get by well enough with its own set of informal rules. If you dropped present-day Jiangning back into the Qin dynasty, Brother Li, do you think the laws and methods of that era could keep this place in order for long? The Qin may have been harsh, but Jiangning… has too many clever people, and far too many loopholes to exploit…”

“Confucianism is a truly great achievement, developed over thousands of years. Brother Li, the benefits of commerce weren’t discovered only in our own dynasty — if commerce had ever been fully opened up, the flood of profit that would follow surely wouldn’t be news to anyone today either. The example of Fan Li, Lord of Tao, has been sitting right there in plain sight all along. So why has commerce been suppressed across the entire realm for a thousand years? The deeper reason is this: they saw the consequences. The capacity of the rule of law simply couldn’t keep pace.”

“Our dynasty is no different — it’s a matter of ideology.” Ning Yi tapped his own forehead. “The more desire people harbor, the harder their behavior becomes to predict, the more susceptible they become to temptation, the more they chase after profit, exploiting any loophole they find. Our dynasty doesn’t suppress commerce, and that has its benefits — but civil officials growing greedy, military officers growing cowardly, the common people impoverished and weak, soldiers going through the motions without real commitment — who’s to say these aren’t, in some part, the fruits of that very same indulgence? At least… it probably accounts for some part of the cause.”

Li Pin’s eyes widened, and he sat there stunned, no longer even inclined to ask what a term like “ideology” meant — what he could understand was already enough to leave him shaken. After a good long while, he finally spoke. “Liheng’s words… are you suggesting that this doctrine of merchants chasing profit is itself the root cause of our dynasty’s weakness?”

“No.” Ning Yi took a sip of tea. “Not at all — this is simply a matter of development. Our dynasty has built up a certain foundation, and the rules of law have, in step with commerce’s growth, been developing as well — this is naturally a mutually reinforcing process. All I’m saying is that many things simply haven’t kept pace with each other, and that’s the real trouble — it’s far too complicated. To solve our dynasty’s current problems by fixating on merchants and currency alone, hoping the state can intervene in the economy and simply double or triple its revenue, enriching the nation and strengthening the people to solve everything at once — that’s simply not possible. You can’t just fixate on the one thing that’s tasted sweet and keep developing it further and further; the whole balance would only tip further out of alignment. That kind of distortion is far too dangerous for any nation, and sooner or later, something would go wrong…”

Ning Yi shook his head. Li Pin thought it over for a long while. “Then where does Liheng think the real key to this lies?”

“If we’re talking about genuinely putting this into practice, I honestly don’t know. But if we’re just having some idle, irresponsible chat, well, ha…” Ning Yi smiled. “Why not start with Confucianism itself?”

“Confucianism… does Liheng perhaps mean the current excess of officials and students?” Li Pin thought about it and laughed. “I’ve discussed this with others before too — the root of our dynasty’s troubles may well lie in the fact that we simply have far too many scholars and officials. It’s a serious problem, though… solving it would be even harder than the commercial issue…”

“What if I told you… it’s not too many, but too few?”

“Eh?”

Li Pin blinked, looking utterly confused. Ning Yi turned and gestured toward the classroom.

“Brother Li, what do you think those students, once they’ve finished their studies, will actually go on to do?”

“Given how you teach them — not just imparting knowledge, but also how to assess situations and make sound judgments — several of them should have no trouble becoming capable local officials one day.”

Li Pin said this quite earnestly. Ning Yi couldn’t help laughing where he sat, then took a sip of tea and clapped his hands.

Li Pin asked, puzzled, “I wonder what Liheng thinks they could actually do instead?”

“Among them, Su Wenyi could probably manage a minor official post — his grades aren’t good, but he’s the most quick-witted and sociable of the lot. As for the rest… honestly, I’ve been teaching them with an eye toward becoming shopkeepers or clerks. Of course, having studied, if the opportunity to become an official arises, there’s no harm in trying — the benefits of officialdom are quite good, after all…”

Ning Yi began counting off on his fingers. “Base salary, grain stipend, official allowance, seasonal clothing for spring and winter, provisions for attendants, tea and wine allowances, cooking supplies, firewood and charcoal, feed for livestock — in this day and age, once you become an official, the state covers everything: food, clothing, housing, transportation, expenses for family and attendants alike, and grants you several hundred acres of good farmland on top of it. Light work, scholar-officials exempt from corporal punishment, no prosecution for mere words, and promotion guaranteed every three years so long as there’s no serious fault — who wouldn’t want to become an official?”

Li Pin fell silent for a long moment. “Is Liheng really saying these students of yours are only fit to be shopkeepers?”

“Not only fit — suited to it. Most of them are rather plain-spoken and honest by temperament, ill-suited to officialdom. The art of governance depends above all on reading situations and navigating relationships with others; only with capability and ambition added on top of that can one become a truly effective official. Dexin, you know how to handle yourself in any situation, and you have both ability and ambition, along with sound judgment — you could become an excellent official. Most of them can’t manage that. These things aren’t simple.”

Ning Yi shook his head. “Enriching the people, strengthening the army, and then comes the selection of officials. The way to properly select officials could actually be solved by matching people to specialized roles — why not set up specialized schools instead? Whatever skill someone has, there’s no need to keep it hidden and guarded — arrange for some to learn carpentry, some to learn ironworking, some to learn cooking, some to learn management — that is, to become shopkeepers. Most importantly, arrange for some to study military strategy, some to study water conservancy, some to study mining…”

Li Pin looked visibly doubtful, clearly unconvinced. “If anyone with the means to study had the choice, who would willingly choose to learn such things?”

“That’s exactly the problem — becoming an official is so appealing that anyone with the opportunity to study aims straight for it. There’s an old saying that books hold both grain in abundance and houses of gold, but… why is it that we now have so many surplus students and surplus officials? In ancient times, only a small handful had the chance to study, few people could even read, and learning needed to be passed down, since the state required these people to govern. A single worthy scholar was harder to find than a fortune in gold, and so scholars remained a small, elite group at the very top — burdened with carrying on the teachings of the sages, establishing the people’s destiny, bringing peace to all future generations — far too much to manage…”

“But what about now? Thousands of years have passed, and the world keeps developing… There are countless tasks waiting to be done in this world, and if one is deemed most important, we naturally focus on that one first, and keep championing it. But now, Dexin, the number of people pursuing that one path has grown far too large. I’m not speaking of Confucian learning itself, but of pursuing officialdom specifically. Why not divert some of them toward other pursuits instead? Once people have studied, they naturally start thinking about things — with the flooding having reached such severity, if we had dedicated people studying water conservancy, building up a proper body of knowledge for later generations to study and refine further, and if these people focused solely on water conservancy while Confucian learning remained purely a matter of personal cultivation, would our floods still reach such extremes year after year?”

“Assigning specialists to specific tasks improves efficiency in anything, cutting out a great deal of wasted effort. Take weaving, for instance — in the old days, a mother taught her daughter, and farm wives worked their looms slowly at home, with varying speed and inconsistent quality. Nowadays, cloth merchants run proper workshops, hiring female workers to labor there, with people teaching them how to use the looms efficiently, tricks to work faster, and others besides working on how to improve the looms themselves. One person can now do the work several once did, with consistent quality and efficiency multiplied several times over. If the efficiency of everything could be multiplied several times over like this, what would our Wu dynasty look like then? Wouldn’t strengthening the military become almost effortless?”

“Of course, this is all just idle talk too. The difficulties involved are greater than you can imagine. You say there are too many Confucian scholars; I say there are too few people capable of study in the first place. If we truly matched people to specialized roles, there simply aren’t enough capable people to go around. As you said yourself, those with the means to study in their families wouldn’t choose to study commerce or craftsmanship instead, and Confucianism certainly wouldn’t willingly relinquish its own standing to make room for such things. But given how saturated things already are, with far too many scholars as it stands — if our Wu dynasty truly wanted to take a step forward, this might be the only direction left to consider. For instance, gradually shaping public opinion, first elevating urgent fields like military strategy and water conservancy, to withstand outside pressure and secure the people’s livelihood — and once things ease up somewhat, once more people have the chance to study, then consider matching specialists to roles more broadly. Unlike some rigid policy purely for military strengthening, once these fields gain real standing, capable people will naturally gravitate toward thinking about and working on them. As things stand now, with every other pursuit lacking standing, of course everyone can only turn to studying for officialdom…”

Inside and outside the room, everything fell quiet. Li Pin sat with his head bowed, deep in thought, while outside the window, the crouching brother and sister rested their chins in their hands, looking rather troubled.

Ning Yi picked up the teapot and poured himself another cup.

“Confucianism is a truly magnificent system. Beyond personal cultivation, it’s also a discipline for managing people, for balancing relationships between them. Hundreds of thousands of scholars, so vast a body of officials, and beneath the surface, tens of millions of subjects across the entire realm — all held within its balance and control. Especially in our own dynasty, where the surplus of scholars and officials has become quite pronounced, and various challenges from Buddhism, Daoism, and other schools of thought press in from every side — Confucianism, through its subtle adaptations, has crafted a set of rules for this whole game that not only keeps the interests of this vast body of officials in balance, but continues to grow stronger still, drawing wave after wave of scholars to throw themselves at it. Ten years of hard study by the cold window, and fame spreads across the realm in a single day — it’s a nearly perfect system of balance…”

He drew in a deep breath, savoring the scent of the tea. “I truly admire this body of learning — whatever its merits and faults, anything that can record, in some form, how people once lived and endured in a given place, deserves to be called an art. Confucianism is, without question, among the greatest and most exquisitely crafted of all such arts throughout history — taking so vast a land, so many people, and binding them together under one set of rules, in a manner both extreme and harmonious. The wisdom of thousands of years — one can only stand in awe before it…”

He raised his cup and touched it against Li Pin’s. “Since we find ourselves here together, let’s savor it while we can.”

The fragrance of the tea had already grown faint by now. Li Pin, still lost in thought, rose from his seat, stepped back two paces, and bowed deeply. Ning Yi had no choice but to stand up as well, somewhat helplessly.

“There’s much in what Liheng has said that I still haven’t fully worked through, but as far as what I have managed to grasp, Liheng, you’ve surpassed me by a wide margin. This bow is well deserved.”

“It was only idle talk.” Ning Yi returned the bow, then said with a smile, “If our dynasty didn’t spare people from prosecution over mere words, and if you and I weren’t both such inconsequential nobodies, I wouldn’t dare say any of this to you at all… Just idle chat, nothing more, just passing the time…”