Chapter 52: To Kill a Man, Kill His Heart

Although Zhu Youxiao said it that way, the meaning was obvious — that is, His Majesty still didn't know what the people of the realm thought.

There was no way to say it directly. So as a subject, what should you do?

The answer was simple: let His Majesty know what the people of the realm thought.

As for who these "people of the realm" were, naturally they wouldn't be those of the Donglin Faction, but rather the people Wei Zhongxian summoned. As for what Wei Zhongxian's people would say, there was no suspense there — basically, whatever they were told to say, that's what they said.

Watching Wei Zhongxian's departing back, Zhu Youxiao sat back down in the wheelchair, reached out a hand to gently tap the armrest, his expression very calm.

In fact, Zhu Youxiao had already made up his mind — he was going to move against the Donglin Faction. He was going to start cleaning house.

Originally Zhu Youxiao had wanted to see whether the Donglin Faction had anyone worth using, such as Yang Lian, who was after all one of the Six Gentlemen of Donglin in history. But he'd discovered that Yang Lian was completely useless.

This Yang Lian, when facing Wei Zhongxian, naturally shouted for blood — he could sacrifice his life to defend his own Dao.

But in other respects, he was woefully lacking, with no solutions at all. The case framing Xiong Tingbi — it had been so long, and still it hadn't been fully investigated. Just a single recantation and he was at his wit's end.

Cherishing his reputation, refusing to use torture, with no other means to get at the truth, while habitually compromising with his own people and holding strong factional biases — such a Yang Lian naturally couldn't be used.

Within the Donglin Faction, if Yang Lian couldn't be used, then who could? Zhu Youxiao had neither the patience nor the inclination to screen them one by one.

That being the case, he might as well just strike them all down.

Of course, this striking down wasn't just physical annihilation — it was also ideological annihilation. The Great Ming needed new thought.

"It seems I can only go further and further down the road of the fatuous ruler!" Zhu Youxiao sighed helplessly, leaning his body back.

The intellectual debates of the late Ming were actually a very important matter, known as the late Ming new intellectual tide.

This new tide was closely connected to the political and economic situation of the mid-to-late Ming and the changes in cultural thought.

Starting from the School of Mind breaking through the ideological shackles of the School of Principle, the economic foundation of Ming dynasty scholar-officials — especially those in the Jiangnan region — was no longer purely agrarian. It had become an umbrella collective of great landlords, slave-masters of bankrupt peasants, handicraft workers, and merchants.

Their political demands inevitably carried characteristics of opposing regulation and weakening administration. But because the Ming system itself determined that the commodity economy of the medieval period was limited, all the wealth of these scholar-officials was confined to land. The larger the state fiscal deficit, the more taxes were levied, and all the taxes were shifted onto ordinary peasants. The more thoroughly the Single Whip law was implemented, the more it could accelerate peasant bankruptcy.

At such an urgent time, new thought was bound to emerge. The fashion of lecturing flourished, and the Donglin Faction came into being in response.

Politically they advocated clean officialdom and merit-based appointment, promoting talent outside the normal rules. As for who counted as talent? Naturally, their own people.

On taxation, they advocated not competing with the people for profit, collecting fewer taxes, and if taxes had to be collected, only from self-cultivating peasants. The heavier the taxes on self-cultivating peasants, the faster they went bankrupt; the faster they went bankrupt, the stronger the landlord-officials of these Donglin people became.

Then it would be beacons of war blazing on all sides, the realm in turmoil, and everyone would go down together.

But even knowing this, these partisans couldn't restrain their own hands. Money right in front of you — would you not take it? Tax money you could save — would you not save it?

Never mind this era — people of later generations didn't have that awareness either.

To clean up these landlord-gentry, the only recourse was harsh and severe law, was raw power. If you don't pay, then I confiscate.

This was exactly what these people feared, so they seized state power, placed the military under their own supervision, put a cage on imperial authority, denounced the eunuch faction as heretics, and beat down the nobility as useless!

When all of that was accomplished, it seemed the time had come to enjoy the fruits of victory.

The realm in turmoil, the rivers and mountains toppled — replaced by a high-pressure rule of a foreign race. Everyone obediently learning to kowtow was the true way.

Thinking of all this in his mind, Zhu Youxiao suddenly laughed — and laughed loudly, laughing until he coughed.

In that laughter was both mockery and desolation.

After a long while, Zhu Youxiao stood up, walked to the doorway, gazed at the distant sky, and sighed softly.

As the saying goes, to kill a man, kill his heart. To destroy the Donglin Faction, killing people alone wouldn't do — unless one did like the Manchu Qing and staged a "Three Days of Yangzhou," thoroughly cleansing the realm and slaughtering all opponents.

But Zhu Youxiao wouldn't do that, because it didn't fit his thinking.

The Great Ming faced a colonial-era world; he couldn't afford to gut his own strength like that.

Another key point: Zhu Youxiao was incapable of doing something like the Three Days of Yangzhou.

The Manchu Qing could do it, but he could not. Because one was an invader and the other a ruler — the same deed, done by different people, becomes something different.

But Zhu Youxiao had his own methods. As the saying goes, to kill a man, kill his heart — to destroy the Donglin Faction, he had to dig up their roots, start from their ideology, and directly overturn their ancestral graves.

Zhu Youxiao was hardly a stranger to ideological warfare and contests over orthodox lineage.

Whether it was Emperor Wu of Han's domestic "abolish the hundred schools, revere only Confucianism," or the foreign Renaissance — people of later generations had all read about these.

"Abolish the hundred schools, revere only Confucianism" — although it had an element of Confucians gilding their own image, he could do the same thing.

Which one to choose?

That was simple: the Taizhou School of the School of Mind — specifically, the thought of Li Zhi.

Li Zhi himself was already dead — hounded to death by the School of Principle.

Now it was Zhu Youxiao's turn to use Li Zhi's thought in reverse to hound the School of Principle to death, to hound the Donglin Faction to death.

Li Zhi's thought conformed to the tide of history and the great trend. Once it received the push of the imperial house, the School of Principle and the Donglin Faction absolutely could not stop it.

As for why Zhu Youxiao chose Li Zhi's thought, the answer was simple: because Li Zhi had people who adored him.

Even though he was dead, he still had disciples and diehard fans — people defending his Dao. Even into the final years of Chongzhen, he still had his devoted followers.

These people would become Zhu Youxiao's people. They would tear into the Donglin Faction without mercy.

The Qi, Zhe, and Chu cliques were the same as the Donglin Faction, but the Taizhou School disciples of the School of Mind differed from both the Donglin Faction and the Qi, Zhe, and Chu cliques — they were very powerful. The only thing emperors could not accept was their discourse on the emperor.

For example, Li Zhi believed that according to the principle of the unity of all things, there was fundamentally no distinction of high and low, noble and base in society. Commoners were not base — they had qualities worthy of honor; princes and nobles were not noble — they too had their base aspects.

He also said, "Heaven establishes the sovereign for the people's sake," meaning that the reason Heaven set up a monarch was for the myriad people — not some mandate of Heaven.

Such thought was displeasing to emperors, and even less could it ever be accepted by them.