Chapter 23 023 "Summon Xiao Yu, I want to see him."...
In just seven days, both Luo Fu and Deng Shi lost weight. Xiao Rong, after kneeling outside the imperial city all night, was also sent back by Emperor Yongcheng and has been punishing himself by staying at home to reflect on his mistakes.
Even her father-in-law, a marquis, couldn't figure out a way to get Xiao Yu out of trouble, so Luo Fu had even less of a connection to do so. When her sister-in-law brought back news from the Prime Minister's residence confirming that Xiao Yu had been punished for directly satirizing the Emperor in his examination paper, Luo Fu immediately stopped worrying about Xiao Yu. He brought it on himself; he wasn't even afraid of death, so why should anyone else pity him? With that energy, Luo Fu would rather worry about herself and her innocent parents in Yangzhou who might be implicated by her foolish son-in-law!
She couldn't bear to think about it; the thought made Luo Fu burst into tears. If she had known Xiao Yu was such a fearless person, she would have preferred to marry a less attractive, shorter, poorer, and less talented scholar from Yangzhou rather than marry into a noble family in the capital.
Yang Yanzhen and Li Huaiyun first visited and comforted their mother-in-law, who had lost her appetite, before heading to Shensi Hall, a place they knew well.
Ping An, who had also lost weight, led the two ladies into the inner room with light steps.
Luo Fu lay listlessly on the bed. When she saw her two sisters-in-law, she forced a bitter smile, mustered her strength, and sat up, leaning against the headboard.
Ping An moved two embroidered stools to the bedside. After asking the ladies if they needed tea, she glanced at her mistress with concern, then bowed and withdrew.
Yang Yanzhen looked at his third sister-in-law, whose long hair was slightly disheveled and whose plain face made her even more pitiful, and said in a low voice, "The reading of the palace examination papers will end this afternoon. At that time, Lord Xia and the three deputy chief examiners will present the drafted lists of the second and third class, as well as the answer sheets of the top ten candidates, to the Emperor. The Emperor will then select the top three scholars from the top ten. In other words, the results of the palace examination will be announced no later than tomorrow morning. The Emperor will also make a decision on whether my third brother is guilty or innocent, so as to give an answer to all the candidates who watched my third brother being taken away."
Luo Fu gripped the brocade quilt beneath her slightly.
Yang Yanzhen noticed this and continued, "I know my sister-in-law is extremely worried, and I cannot comfort her with just a few words. However, I still want to tell her that the current emperor is a wise ruler. In the past, some upright officials were indeed punished for their remonstrances, but none of their families were implicated. Moreover, the longer this matter drags on, the more time the emperor will have to think it over. With the emperor's wisdom, it is very likely that my brother will only fail the exam and be exempted from other punishments."
In any dynasty, ministers always had to take risks when advising the emperor. Emperor Yongcheng, with his literary and military prowess, established the Great Zhou Dynasty, ending more than two hundred years of division and chaos. Only the remnant Yin occupied a state in the north, which had long been an obstacle to Emperor Yongcheng's ambition of unifying the Central Plains. Therefore, it was understandable that Emperor Yongcheng regarded the remnant Yin as a thorn in his side that had to be eliminated.
When Emperor Yongcheng launched his first northern expedition, all his ministers supported him. He led an army of 300,000 to attack the Yin Kingdom, which had fewer than 100,000 soldiers. Everyone believed that the Great Zhou would surely win this battle. Unexpectedly, the new emperor of Yin was also a wise ruler skilled in military strategy. He also allied with the Hu people and borrowed 100,000 iron cavalry to jointly resist the Great Zhou, resulting in Emperor Yongcheng's crushing defeat. This led to the opposition from many ministers when Emperor Yongcheng decided to launch a second northern expedition. However, after Emperor Yongcheng demoted two founding heroes and executed three upright ministers who had successively offered advice, the remaining ministers ultimately chose to remain silent.
Before the Lunar New Year, Emperor Yongcheng had already decided to launch his third northern expedition against the Yin Kingdom in July of this year. Given the precedent of the execution of three upright officials last time, all the civil and military officials in the court echoed his sentiments. However, at this very moment, Xiao Yu, a candidate who had not yet officially entered officialdom, actually treated his palace examination paper as a memorial to the emperor and handed it to him without needing anyone to help him.
High-ranking officials in the capital all knew that Emperor Yongcheng could not tolerate his ministers opposing his northern expedition. The more they opposed it, the greater the chance that Xiao Yu, who had escaped death at the time, would be given a light punishment or even be pardoned.
These were the court officials and ministers that Luo Fu, who had only been in the capital for half a year and was born in Yangzhou, had little contact with. After listening to Yang Yanzhen's reasoned analysis, Luo Fu seemed to see the several swords hanging over her and her family finally being moved further away. These swords would only truly disappear after Xiao Yu was exonerated.
"Thank you so much, sister-in-law. You and my second sister-in-law have had to go through so much trouble because of us."
Luo Fu expressed her sincere gratitude, saying that both of her sisters-in-law were good people. Even if the Xiao family fell, they could have been rescued by their respective maternal families, yet they were still willing to care about her, their third sister-in-law, whom they had not known for long.
Not long after her two sisters-in-law left, Luo Lan came to visit her sister again. In the past, she was afraid that the Marquis's family would look down on her because she was a poor relative, so she did not visit them frequently. Now that the Marquis's family had become a clay idol that could not even protect itself, Luo Lan and Pei Xingshu had become the only relatives who dared to visit.
Luo Fu relayed her sister-in-law's words to her older sister.
Roland's eyes reddened as he listened, and he held his sister's hand, saying, "The First Madam is more knowledgeable than us, so what she says must be accurate. Sister, just wait patiently for your brother-in-law to return."
Luo Fu gave a cold laugh: "I'm looking forward to his return. Once he's back and the trouble he caused has passed, I'll divorce him."
She was afraid of death, afraid of being implicated by Xiao Yu, and even more afraid that her promising older sister and brother-in-law, and her contented parents, would be dragged down by him. After the divorce, she no longer cared about being an official's wife and returned to Yangzhou to find an ordinary husband and live a peaceful life.
Roland wanted to advise her sister not to rush into a decision, but Xiao Yu had already ridiculed the emperor so much. How broad-minded must the emperor be to allow Xiao Yu to enter the court as an official? If Xiao Yu couldn't become an official, he would only be supported by his family for the rest of his life. He himself couldn't even hold his head up in the Marquis's mansion. What good days could her sister have if she continued to follow him?
The two sisters hugged each other, only sobbing and sighing.
.
In the Imperial Study, the afternoon sunlight shone through the stained glass windows, illuminating the long couch placed by the window. Emperor Yongcheng lay on the couch, with some memorials and a palace examination answer sheet placed on a low rosewood table to one side.
Eunuch Ma entered with a bowed posture. His gaze lingered on the increasing number of silver strands in the Emperor's hair and the wrinkles around his eyes that were no longer smooth. After waiting a while, seeing that the Emperor had opened his eyes, Eunuch Ma reported, "Your Majesty, Minister Xia and the three deputy examiners request an audience."
Emperor Yongcheng gave a lazy "hmm" and raised one hand. Eunuch Ma immediately stepped forward, helped the emperor sit up straight, and then tidied the emperor's slightly disheveled hair crown.
"Bring it in."
"yes."
A moment later, Xia Qiyuan and three other officials entered, some carrying exam papers and others carrying red envelopes.
This was a procedure that had to be followed for every palace examination. Emperor Yongcheng first looked at the list of the second-class and third-class candidates who had already been prepared. There were no problems. Then he picked up the answer sheets of the top ten candidates in this palace examination from the tray and read them carefully.
History has long provided numerous precedents for ways to revitalize a nation. What Emperor Yongcheng wanted was not empty talk, but a practical way to revitalize the nation that could be applied to his own dynasty.
Among these ten responses, some excelled in their eloquent writing, some in their insightful observations and references, and some proposed detailed and comprehensive reform measures in one or more aspects of governance.
The ten exam papers had been unsealed, and Emperor Yongcheng could see the name of each candidate. However, he would look at the content first and only recognize the candidates if he found one that suited his taste.
Looking from right to left, the answers got better and better. When Emperor Yongcheng picked up the first one, a clear smile finally appeared on his face, because the candidate had listed ten measures to revitalize the country, each one addressing the urgent problems that the Great Zhou Dynasty needed to solve, covering issues such as governance, people's livelihood, education, and military training. Emperor Yongcheng glanced at the name "Pei Xingshu" at the beginning of the paper and continued reading it a second time.
This time, Emperor Yongcheng frowned more and more as he read on. Halfway through, he couldn't help but slam down Xiao Yu's answer sheet on the low table, which he had previously closed and reviewed dozens of times over the past seven days.
Previously, every time he read it, he would jump to the ten examples of incompetent rulers that Xiao Yu listed to satirize him, especially the last part that directly satirized him. However, after reading Pei Xingshu's ten measures to revitalize the country, Emperor Yongcheng suddenly realized that these ten measures actually matched the examples of revitalizing the country listed by Xiao Yu for the ten wise rulers. However, Xiao Yu did not list only one example for each wise ruler. The one that was obviously different from Pei Xingshu's was "stopping war and allowing the people to recuperate."
To be more precise, if Emperor Yongcheng was angered after reading Xiao Yu's last paragraph and wanted to ask Xiao Yu what real skills he had to solve the current predicament of the Great Zhou Dynasty besides his sarcastic insults, then if Emperor Yongcheng read it from the beginning, the actions of those ten wise rulers were precisely the strategies for national prosperity that Xiao Yu had given him.
To prosper a nation, it must first survive.
Has the country really come to this?
Emperor Yongcheng got off the bed wearing only socks, ignoring Xia Qiyuan and the others as if they were nothing, and walked alone to the map of the Great Zhou.
This map was redrawn after he incorporated the southern regions into the Great Zhou. From the north and south of the Yangtze River, from the East China Sea to the Shu region in the west, all belonged to Zhou. Only Liaozhou in the northeast corner was circled with a thick red line, reminding him every day that only by destroying the remnants of Yin that occupied Liaozhou could he truly unify the Central Plains and his great cause be truly without any regrets.
Emperor Yongcheng stared intently at the red circle. He was already sixty-six years old, and riding a horse on a long expedition was becoming increasingly strenuous. The longer the time for the fall of Yin was delayed, the lower the chance of unifying the Central Plains under his rule would be.
Emperor Yongcheng reluctantly lowered his gaze only after his eyes had become sore from staring at the screen.
Jizhou, Jinzhou, Liangzhou, Yuzhou, Qingzhou, Yangzhou, Jingzhou, Jiaozhou, Yizhou, plus Liaozhou—these ten provinces in the Central Plains were once all the land of the Yin Kingdom. The founding emperor of the Yin Kingdom was incredibly wise and powerful, but his descendants were less capable than the previous generation. After a brief period of revival, the Yin Kingdom eventually lost control of the ten provinces, and its territory shrank more and more until, more than two hundred years later, only Liaozhou remained, and it almost perished because of him.
More than forty years ago, Emperor Yongcheng went from being a general to a king who ruled a state, and then from a king to the founding emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. He once spared the people who had submitted to him from the continuous war, but now, because of his two northern expeditions, the people have begun to suffer the pain of war again, and eight of the nine states have experienced civil unrest.
No one understood better than Emperor Yongcheng that the people suffered in the chaos of the times, but a wise ruler could rise in the chaos. As the old dynasty was about to collapse, the new dynasty was secretly gathering strength to break through the ground!
Emperor Yongcheng's clenched fists gradually showed prominent veins.
How many years does he have left to live? When he dies as a tyrant amidst the curses of the people, can a crown prince with an empty treasury suppress the rising warlords among the people, and can he withstand the return of the new Yin king who is filled with hatred?
So, is it more important to exhaust the nation's resources to achieve his own lasting legacy, or to win back the hearts of the people and leave the crown prince with a stable Zhou dynasty?
After a long silence, Emperor Yongcheng loosened his fists and said in a deep voice, "Summon Xiao Yu, I want to see him."
After Eunuch Ma went out to deliver the message, Emperor Yongcheng said to Xia Qiyuan and the others, "You may all leave now. I will think about it and give you an answer before I leave my post."
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Author's Note: Everyone who watches TV dramas must have seen the story of the upright official who was demoted and his wife, who, without much drama or complaint, simply accompanied her husband as he packed his bags to endure hardship. I wanted to write about a similar upright official, but a different kind of wife. [doge emoji]
100 little red envelopes, see you tonight~
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