Chapter 1941: The Wayward Course of Civil Governance

The light cast by the burning oil lamp still recklessly pressed toward Emperor Liu's face. In the shadows, Emperor Liu's breathing had grown noticeably heavier, causing Yan Tuo, standing nearby, to tremble with fear.

After observing for a good while, Yan Tuo finally ventured tentatively: "I beg Your Majesty to calm your anger and take care of your imperial health! For such ungrateful, law-defying scoundrels, a public execution as a warning to others will suffice—truly not worth troubling yourself over..."

Yan Tuo's words of consolation seemed to have some effect. Emperor Liu turned his head to glance at him, pondered for a moment, then said: "Tell me, in this world, how many more are there like Kang Baozhen?"

"This humble servant does not know." Yan Tuo had already been cowed into a shadow of himself by Emperor Liu's reprimands, so even when directly questioned, he did not speak more than necessary.

"Is it that you do not know, or that you will not say?"

"This humble servant would not dare!" Yan Tuo hesitated, and seeing the old emperor's expression grow even darker and heavier, he said with some inner struggle: "In this humble servant's view, one like Kang Baozhen may well be the only such case. After all, to be willing to squander a hundred thousand strings of cash, and for a family as enormously wealthy as the Kangs to directly influence a Vice Minister of Personnel to make arrangements on their behalf—those capable of such things, there are not many in all the realm..."

Yan Tuo knew well that if Emperor Liu took his words to heart, the fate of Kang and his son might become even more miserable—indeed, the entire Kang clan might not escape a bad end, especially since a Hechuan Earl had died just days before.

Sure enough, Emperor Liu said in a grim tone: "A mere merchant, relying on a bit of stinking money, dares to reach his hand into the inner workings of the court, interfering with the promotion and selection of officials. How can such a person be tolerated?"

Yan Tuo dared not respond to this. The imperial desk fell silent for a while, then Emperor Liu murmured softly: "Using money to seek private gain ultimately has its limits—but what of those who use power to seek private gain?"

Clearly, Emperor Liu's focus on this case went far beyond what appeared on the surface. He was very good at making associations. However, using power for private gain was a common thing, and Emperor Liu had long grown accustomed to it—he was simply using this as a pretext to launch another round of rectification, which was also his instinctive behavior.

Where Emperor Liu's thinking ran deeper was in the existing standards for official assessment and promotion pathways. Beyond the Kang Baozhen affair itself, Emperor Liu could not help but turn his thoughts toward the system itself.

All along, in terms of personnel standards, Emperor Liu had always advocated meritocracy—continuously patching, revising, and perfecting the court's system for selecting military and civil talent.

If in the early days he had pursued this path with a certain idealism and vision, then as he sat longer on the imperial throne, as his understanding of this world deepened, and as he became deeply involved in—even dominant over—the construction of the current society's operating rules, Emperor Liu's goals had been constantly changing. His original intentions had long been abandoned, and his bottom lines and limits had been continuously lowered.

As early as more than twenty years ago, Emperor Liu's actions were no longer about fairness. The fundamental purpose of all his measures was to consolidate imperial power and maintain rule. The perfection of systems for official selection, appointment, assessment, and promotion was merely a means; restricting an overly concentrated political force or a solidified class faction was the effect he wished to achieve.

However, things often go contrary to one's wishes—especially in governing a country. Either new contradictions replace old problems, or a good scripture is mischanted. This had been fully demonstrated in Emperor Liu's decades of governance. It could basically be said that none of his policies had developed and operated entirely according to his expectations, and no single decree had achieved a flawless result.

The Kang Baozhen case, at a deeper level, was another slap in the face to Emperor Liu's policies, and also a reminder—specifically reflected in the pathways of official selection and promotion.

In this regard, Emperor Liu had always practiced diversification of selection pathways and fairness in promotion and assessment. After decades of development, the Great Han had long formed a complete system for official selection and promotion. The original intention behind building this system was to avoid class solidification as much as possible—while satisfying the interests of the upper aristocratic class, it was also meant to give the lower ordinary scholars and commoners as much room and opportunity for upward mobility as possible.

In the early years, the results were quite good. Within the Great Han court, worthy men gathered in abundance, and the court was filled with upright officials, among them many capable talents of ordinary or even commoner origins. But as time passed, the situation gradually changed. The upper classes of the Great Han, including the bureaucratic class which had once shown considerable mobility, were inevitably heading toward solidification.

For ordinary people to become officials again, the difficulty had increased by an order of magnitude, and competitive pressure had risen to unprecedented levels. Looking back now, the earlier surge of talent—those many heartening examples of "carp leaping over the dragon gate"—was mainly due to the broader environment. In the early days, the court inside and out was generally starved for talent; anyone with even a single skill could find a position within the system and gain employment. But once the talent famine was resolved and the Great Han's bureaucratic class system was perfected, ordinary people trying to squeeze in would more often than not find themselves shut out at the door.

At present in the Great Han, the difficulty of becoming an official far exceeded the civil service examinations of his previous life. The civil service exam was fiercely competitive and hard to win, but at least there was still the possibility of effort, still basic fairness. In the Great Han, however, the more likely outcome was that one would struggle to the very end only to discover that the ladder for climbing had already vanished.

Not to mention anything else—just the single component of practical affairs, which occupied an ever-increasing proportion of the examination questions, was enough to block ninety percent of the realm's scholars. After all, ordinary scholars had no opportunity to gain practical experience at all. For most scholars, that knowledge of administrative skill was simply a blank slate.

In the early years, scholars could still gain experience and hone their administrative skills by serving as clerks in local government offices while continuing their studies. At that time, for some aloof and proud individuals, this was seen as stooping low and compromising their lofty ambitions.

But now, even becoming a clerk was not something one could simply choose to do. The realm was at peace, society was stable, education had recovered, and after decades of accumulation, the number of scholars had already erupted like a geyser. Under such circumstances, even local government offices had no shortage of clerical talent. In fact, one had to compete fiercely even for a clerk position—and this had gradually developed into the highest threshold for an ordinary person to enter officialdom.

In the past, because Emperor Liu advocated the emphasis on practical affairs, it had drawn much criticism. For many traditional scholars, such a reform was almost unacceptable. However, as time passed, more and more people began to support and defend this policy, using Emperor Liu's own practical-governance theories as their justification.

Beneath this surface, the main reason was that the vested interests had discovered that the practical affairs examination seemed tailor-made for people like them. For the powerful and noble, whether in learning or experience, their sons absolutely crushed ordinary students. Only by testing practical affairs could the sons of bureaucrats have a greater chance of continuing to become bureaucrats...

It was precisely because Emperor Liu had noticed this trend in his subsequent observations that he had, in later promotion regulations, given ordinary clerks the opportunity for direct promotion to commissioned official status. Every year, the Ministry of Personnel's promotion list included a quota for this.

However, this too had its prerequisites—you had to be a clerk, and you had to possess outstanding ability and excellent performance records; otherwise, everything was empty talk. And Kang Baozhen had precisely taken this path of clerk-to-official transition. If they had been more meticulous, more patient, and not so greedy in their conduct, even the imperial city and the Martial Virtue authorities would have found it difficult to detect.

Emperor Liu's "idealistic" consideration had given birth to a new type of "Nine-Rank System" in the Great Han—and this one was far more sophisticated than one based purely on birth. After all, wasn't "meritocracy" correct and fair? This reasoning could hold up anywhere and be argued with full confidence.

Emperor Liu was not unaware of all this. It was just that, on the one hand, he was unwilling to slap his own face, and on the other, he had no grounds for correction. Compared to the class solidification that had already emerged, he even more so did not wish to see a bunch of bookworms who treated the sages' words as absolute dogma. That would be of no benefit to the state. He did not care about their scholarship, but when it came to being officials, they had to do real work.

For the current scholarly community, their circumstances were, to a certain extent, even harder than during the three dynasties of chaos. Back then, they could still hope for a sage ruler to appear and restore order. Now, as Emperor Liu's reign grew longer and longer, their influence over the state continued to decline.

For propertied gentry, entering the court was not as difficult as it was for ordinary people, but first they had to straighten out their thinking and make compromises. This was also the final choice of many. After compromising and tasting the sweetness, they would defend the system to the death...

At the same time, Emperor Liu also had a "what's done is done" mentality about it. If things were to solidify, then let them solidify thoroughly—the best outcome being to ensure that the Liu clan's imperial throne could be passed down for a long, long time.

And on this point, Emperor Liu was sometimes quite confident. At least in his view, as long as the Great Han's current system could be maintained for a long time, the Great Han's rivers and mountains would gain more years of continuation.

After all, with the cognition of "practical work first" being continuously reinforced and promoted, the Great Han's bureaucrats—whether aristocratic or commoner—regardless of how many deep-rooted flaws they had, would at least become smarter, more resourceful, and more enduring in exploiting the common people...