On the day I issued the decree, Lady Wang, dressed in her official robes, knelt before the palace gate and wept, her voice shrill: "Your Majesty has forgotten that my son died for the country!"
I listened through the vermilion gate, and only had a eunuch relay a message: "The Regent said that fertile land should nourish the people, not fertile fields. If the General were here, he would not tolerate such atrocities."
That same year, Zhou Shu, a county magistrate from a humble background who had spent three years managing the Huai River and saving the banks from floods, was directly promoted from a seventh-rank official to the position of Vice Minister of Works.
When Zhou Shu came to express his gratitude, he was wearing a faded blue cloth robe with frayed cuffs. He was clutching a drawing he had made during the river management project, the pages of which were curled at the edges, and river mud was still stuck between his fingers.
He spent three months squatting by the river, personally measuring the water level and drawing the canal lines.
He kowtowed and said, "Your humble servant will certainly not fail Your Majesty, nor the method used by the Regent to build the canal."
The hydraulic engineers sent by the Regent taught us to 'constrain the water to attack the sand,' and I have followed their instructions exactly for the past three years, which is why the Huai River has not flooded the fields again.
When I helped him up, I touched the calluses on his hands, which were even thicker than mine, and my heart suddenly ached—this was the "loyal and virtuous bone" that the Regent wanted.
In the fifth year, he used the Jiangnan salt tax case to purge the protégés that Lü had placed in the local areas.
The Lü family exploited the salt fields of Lianghuai for ten years, causing the price of salt to rise from one guan per jin to five guan. Ordinary people could not afford salt and could only cook vegetables with fresh water. Even pickling vegetables became the privilege of the rich.
Imperial Censor Zhang Yan—who is now the Left Censor-in-Chief—was then a Salt Inspector. He and two attendants disguised themselves as salt merchants and conducted a three-month undercover investigation of the salt fields.
He piled up a whole desk full of evidence of the Lü family's unauthorized salt collection and forced salt tax collection, and even made rubbings of the private seals on each salt certificate.
When I asked him to sit in the seat of the Left Censor-in-Chief, he kowtowed and said, "I fear retaliation from powerful families. My wife and children are still in Jiangnan."
I pointed towards the academy outside the hall, where the sound of students from Chongwen Academy reading aloud could be heard.
“Look at those students, which one of them didn’t get in under pressure from powerful families? If you can uphold justice at the saltworks, I can protect your wife and children.”
Later, after the Lü family fell from power, the price of salt in Jiangnan returned to normal. People carried bags of salt and cried in the streets, saying, "Finally, we can eat salty rice again."
Now, when I look in the bronze mirror in the morning, I see that the childishness on my eyebrows has completely faded, and the corners of my eyes have gained a touch of dignity. There are even two silver strands at my temples, like cotton threads that have been burned by candlelight.
As my fingertips traced the cool, bronze texture of the mirror's edge, I suddenly realized that perhaps I had truly become the person she wanted me to be.
It wasn't that little princess who always hid behind her and would clutch her clothes whenever she heard thunder; it was the monarch who could steadily uphold the Zhaoning Kingdom.
He is a monarch who can make the people point to the palace and say, "This emperor is reliable," and a monarch who can confidently say, "I have not let you down."
I once heard her tell the story of the greatest emperor of all time in the warm pavilion of the Imperial Study.
The charcoal brazier was warm then, and the glow of the silvery charcoal made her features appear softer, even the fine lines at the corners of her eyes seemed warm.
Holding the plate of candied fruit, I ate some candied kumquats and asked with a laugh, "Is being an emperor really this tiring?"
Qin Shi Huang unified China, but he only lived to be fifty. He might as well have been a peaceful emperor, eating sweets every day.
She pinched my cheek, her fingertips carrying the scent of ink from books, but her eyes were as deep as a still pond: "You should be tired."
Your Highness will hold in your hands the lives of all people, the rice on farmers' stoves, and the clothes on children's bodies.
Only when Your Highness stands firm can the people sleep peacefully and hear the laughter of their own children at night, instead of the sounds of war.
Only then could they harvest the grain in the autumn and dare to keep half of it instead of having it all taken by the landlord.
Now, when the night is quiet, I always compare the memorials to my own records.
When the powerful families knelt down, they bowed even more respectfully, and no one dared to interfere in the affairs of the court under the guise of "assisting in government" as before.
The key officials in the Grand Council are all capable people whom I personally promoted. When Minister of Revenue Wang submitted his memorial last month, he couldn't suppress the smirk on his face.
Even his white beard trembled: "Your Majesty, the national treasury has enough silver and grain to support the military for ten years. The granaries in various prefectures are piled high, enough to fill even a mouse."
"I have examined the accounts of the previous dynasty, and from the founding of the dynasty to the present, such abundance has never been seen in a hundred years!"
He also presented a map of the granaries in each prefecture, which was densely covered with maps, even marking the remote Yunzhou with the words "full of grain".
Last month, during my southern tour, I walked incognito through the streets of Suzhou. It was early summer, the loquats were ripe, and the air was filled with their sweet fragrance.
The vendors carrying loads on their shoulders called out "Loquat, sweet loquat" in their clear, crisp voices.
I saw an old farmer in the field carrying heavy ears of wheat, the awns brushing against his face. His sun-darkened face was etched with smile lines that made his eyes squint.
He touched the wheat ears and said to his son beside him, "This year's wheat ears are heavier than last year's!"
The Emperor's southern tour must have brought good fortune; we'll be able to save two more bushels of grain this year, enough for you to get married!
In the market, children run around clutching sugar figurines, not caring that sugar strands stick to their lips, chasing after the vendors selling candied hawthorns and shouting, "Grandpa, I want a skewer!"
Steam rose from the wonton stall. The owner scooped up a spoonful of soup and said to the customer with a smile, "This soup has been simmered with bones for three hours. It's incredibly delicious!"
The woman, carrying a vegetable basket, bargained with the stall owner: "If you lower the price by one coin, I'll come back to buy more next time and bring you a few more customers!"
The stall owner smiled and replied, "Since you're a regular customer, I'll give you a discount of one coin!"
Even the arguments had a lively, everyday feel to them—smoke danced on the stoves of every household, and the smoke billowing from the chimneys was warm.
Laughter filled the air under the eaves as an old man sat at the doorway, fanning himself with a palm-leaf fan and telling his grandson the story of "The Emperor's River Management".
Even the wind carries a reassuring sweetness, the kind of sweetness that makes you feel "not afraid of not having food to eat tomorrow, not afraid of not having clothes to wear in winter".
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