Chapter 2132: End of the Kangzong Chronicle: Eight Years on the Throne, Indolent and Without Achievement

Coming by the northern route and leaving by the western route, it was naturally difficult to make Emperor Liu Wenpeng retrace his steps on this rare imperial tour. Therefore, after entering the Yangtze from the north, he chose to continue upstream by boat.

The Jiangnan naval forces dispatched nearly half of their ships and sailors to escort the imperial progress, and Liu Wenpeng's two thousand silver-armored guards became "cavalry on the water."

It is worth mentioning that when Shizu made his southern tour twenty years ago, he had carried out a thorough rectification of the entire southern navy due to its abuses (nurturing bandits to justify their own importance, setting up checkpoints to collect tolls, extortion and plunder). During the Taizong era, the Great Han's inland river navy, under the authority of a powerful sovereign and the gravity of national law, had maintained good conduct and respectable combat effectiveness.

However, by the seventh year of Pingkang, one could only describe it as "old habits resurfacing." Of course, what Liu Wenpeng could see and hear was still a scene of calm seas and blessings descending upon all directions.

Passing Wuchang and entering Jiangling, the prosperity of the middle Yangtze presented itself to Liu Wenpeng in a different image and temperament. Riding the dragon boat, commanding a thousand troops, making a grand show as he passed through, Liu Wenpeng squandered his time freely, "chanting" the glories of a golden age, while further eroding the local officials' and commoners' nearly instinctive awe and reverence for the empire's supreme ruler.

As for the ordinary common folk, let us set them aside—they were the most simple-minded of the ruled, and being exploited was their fate. An emperor passing through merely temporarily intensified and aggravated matters. Moreover, there was a subconscious, domesticated reverence for authority; most people merely hoped that the days after the imperial carriage departed would be easier, returning to how things were before. Whether such a modest wish could be fulfilled was clearly doubtful.

In contrast, those powerful figures who held local authority—as they set aside their reverence, summoned their courage, raised their heads, opened their eyes wide, and used this rare close-up opportunity to observe the emperor above them—found that the originally mysterious, lofty image, if not collapsing outright, was at least shaken.

Once the radiance of the imperial title faded, what remained was merely a willful, pleasure-loving youth. And the reason this youth could stand above everyone, squandering and amusing himself at will, was simply that he had a good father.

Of course, this reversal of impression did not cause local magnates to lose their reverence entirely. In the current Great Han, no matter what the emperor was like, imperial authority was not so easily shaken.

Only, if the emperor behaved thus, one could hardly blame his subjects for following his example—especially those magnates whose moral integrity and bottom lines were quite limited.

And this was far more serious than the expenditure of Liu Wenpeng's tour itself; this was a fundamental, far-reaching influence.

Of course, Liu Wenpeng would not understand these things, nor was he particularly concerned about them. What he could see was still the scene of "the imperial carriage arrives, officials and commoners submit." At least for now, the sanctity of imperial power and the emperor's authority meant he need not worry about the emotions, thoughts, psychology, and other such inexplicable things of his subjects.

Regardless, as long as the empire's foundations remained strong and firm, he was the empire's most legitimate emperor. Whether willingly or not, the magnates of the realm had no choice but to support him. Liu Wenpeng himself might not be so worthy of enthronement, but the system of primogeniture was a system that the empire's nobles, bureaucrats, and even ordinary scholar-official families believed in and revered—it had become a social consensus.

In Jiangling, Liu Wenpeng accepted the "wholehearted" contributions of the Jinghu Northern Circuit and Jiangling Prefecture. Here, mention must be made of Feng Duan, the Prefect of Jiangling—the great-grandson of Chancellor Feng Dao of the Qianyou era, and of the main lineage of the Feng clan.

In the first year of Kaibao, when Shizu enfeoffed his meritorious ministers, Feng Dao, for being "perceptive and adaptable," and for having rendered no small merit in consolidating and maintaining state governance during the founding years, was granted the title of Duke of Ying, ranked among the Twenty-Four Meritorious Ministers of Qianyou.

The title of Duke of Ying had now been passed down for four generations, and the grace of "hereditary for three generations without reduction" granted by Shizu had expired according to regulation.

As the legitimate heir of the Feng clan, after the former Duke of Ying, Feng Jie (grandson of Feng Dao, son of Feng Ji), died of illness, Emperor Taizong re-enfeoffed his eldest legitimate son, Feng Jing, as Commandery Duke of Hejian. The empire's nobility system truly matured and became complete during the Taizong era, because Taizong was a man who acted entirely by the rules, unlike Shizu, who in deciding certain matters could not help but mix in personal preferences and enjoyed playing tricks of turning one's hand to make clouds and another to make rain.

And the "Twenty-Four Ministers of Qianyou," once the focus of universal attention, presented an entirely new picture in the Pingkang era half a century later.

Simply put, even among the Twenty-Four Ministers of Qianyou, there were disparities. Some had long since lost their heirs, their names in life and death recorded only in the history books—for example, the two Wangs (Wang Zhang, Duke of Yu, and Wang Jun, Duke of Shang);

Some retained their power and prestige, still rooted in the empire's center of power, and despite rises and falls, continued to exert important influence on the empire from all aspects—for example, the Lis (Li Shaoyou, Duke of Shou), the Murongs, the Guos, the Gaos, the Zhes, the Xiangs, and the Zhaos (Zhao Kuangyin);

Of course, there were also those who developed normally and passed down according to regulation, such as the Fengs. But compared to those military merit aristocrats, and even compared to the several civilian minister families like Wei, Wang (Wang Pu), and Fan, they were more than a notch weaker.

Among the still-continuing families of the Twenty-Four Meritorious Ministers, the Fengs were now roughly on par only with the family of Wu Xingde, Duke of Geng—and the enfeoffment of Wu Xingde back then could be called Shizu's most casual stroke.

The Fengs' development over these years was the most direct challenge to this lack of confidence. The Fengs' influence in the central government had become negligible. In the eyes of ordinary people, they still appeared prominent, but in the view of those who truly held power, they were hardly worth mentioning. Apart from Feng Jing, the Commandery Duke of Hejian, Feng Duan, the Prefect of Jiangling, was actually the highest-ranking Feng family member currently in office.

The various welcomes and receptions meticulously prepared by Feng Duan and his associates did not win Liu Wenpeng much favor, unlike that group of Chen Yaozuo in Hangzhou. Wine, women, romance, and scenery—Liu Wenpeng had already grown tired of such things in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

Therefore, Liu Wenpeng was more interested in his imperial elder brother Liu Wenji. Beyond visiting him, he specifically sent people to investigate and inquire about the Jing Prince's performance in his post in Huguang.

The results made Liu Wenpeng quite satisfied, because after Liu Wenji arrived in Jiangling, he had stayed at home nursing his illness the whole time—inspecting no territory, governing no affairs, managing no business, presenting an entirely helpless appearance.

Liu Wenji even specifically begged Liu Wenpeng for punishment, hoping that his negligence and slackness could be disciplined, lest his conscience be uneasy. To this, Liu Wenpeng naturally pardoned him with great magnanimity.

After meeting Liu Wenji, Liu Wenpeng set off northward with a good mood, taking a roundabout route eastward to the Taikang Traveling Palace, for summer was approaching and it would be a fine place to escape the heat.

It was truly a waste of heaven's gifts—the Taikang Palace, situated on Mount Jigong, had consumed enormous amounts of manpower, wealth, and resources back then, nearly draining the blood and sweat of not only the Court of the Imperial Treasury, the Ministry of Works, and the Palace Construction Directorate, but also the people of several surrounding prefectures.

And since the Taikang Palace was completed, it had only been used during Shizu's final southern tour. For the past twenty-odd years, it had lain abandoned. Of course, it was not completely abandoned—every year, the Court of the Imperial Treasury and local governments still invested certain resources in maintenance and repair, after all, it was the Son of Heaven's largest summer retreat. At the same time, those years of "abandonment" had also given the surrounding commoners a relatively long period of peace and quiet.

Emperor Taizong, who practiced frugality throughout the entire Yongxi era, resolutely refused to enjoy himself at Taikang Palace. This was Liu Wenpeng's first time. And with the arrival of the imperial carriage, a great commotion and frantic bustle were inevitable.

At the same time, after more than twenty years, a "re-inauguration" ceremony was held once again. Before that, an edict had already been sent to the capital, transferring two thousand palace attendants and court officials from both the inner and outer courts to take up residence in the Taikang Palace in advance, preparing to serve the emperor.

Although comparing Liu Wenpeng with Emperor Shizu was truly disrespectful to Emperor Shizu, to be fair, even if Liu Wenpeng racked his brains to play at luxury, devise novelties, and hunt for the exotic, he still could not match a single grand move by Emperor Shizu.

At the same time, the gap in managing one's reputation was even more vast. In his later years, Shizu could not help but be extravagant, yet in both official and popular circles, few dared to criticize or condemn him—indeed, many even whitewashed and beautified his image.

At the Taikang Palace, Liu Wenpeng spent an entire summer. It was not until autumn arrived, in mid-July of the seventh year of Pingkang, that he set out on the return journey to the capital—he still had to get back to Luoyang in time for the Mid-Autumn grand celebration.

During the months of summer retreat at Taikang Palace, Liu Wenpeng had not been entirely comfortable. In the fifth month of summer, because he was playing too wildly, a great fire broke out and burned down the Yankang Hall within the palace grounds. Had firefighting measures not been taken promptly, the losses would have been even greater.

At the end of the sixth month, Liu Wenpeng's beloved Pure Consort Chen passed away (she came from an ordinary background, with outstanding looks and figure—Liu Wenpeng had snatched her from among the common folk into the palace).

However, the death of a favored consort did have an effect on Liu Wenpeng, but not a very great one. What truly connected to the empire's fate and the course of history was that Liu Wenpeng had picked up an extremely bad habit: taking drugs.

Because after more than a year of effort, he still had no offspring, Liu Wenpeng was anxious about it himself. To this end, he specifically sought out physicians and medicines, but all the imperial physicians and national masters could provide were some nourishing and health-preserving prescriptions.

So Liu Wenpeng ordered people to find the famous Daoist Master Ziyang. As the legendary true disciple of Patriarch Chen Tuan, he ought to have some real skill—Liu Wenpeng had him refine elixirs.

And the Perfected Person Ziyang did not disappoint. The result was that before any imperial prince or princess appeared, Liu Wenpeng had opened the door to another world.

After a year-long imperial tour, Liu Wenpeng had played to his heart's content and traveled until he was weary. After returning to Luoyang, he naturally needed to rest and recuperate, enjoying a rare period of quiet. He even began to inquire into state affairs—having been away so long, he was actually not too confident in his heart, fearing that those powerful figures at the center might overstep their authority.

During the year-plus of Liu Wenpeng's tour, the overall situation at court had remained relatively stable, but the underlying struggles and tugs-of-war had grown ever more complex and intense.

Wang Dan, the Director of State Affairs whom Liu Wenpeng had forcibly elevated to the position, clearly could not command universal respect. In terms of control, he was far inferior to Zhang Qixian. This was only natural—after all, Zhang Qixian had come all the way through the Kaibao era, waded through water, charged through fire, and served as chancellor for many years; he possessed a certain degree of leadership.

Of course, Wang Dan neither compared himself with Zhang Qixian nor thought of controlling the overall situation—the second point was simply impossible. Compared with those nobles of impeccable pedigree, Wang Dan, a second-generation aristocrat, was more than a notch weaker in both seniority and merit. Small matters he could cover up, medium fires he could stabilize, but a great conflagration he simply could not suppress.

The reason the court situation could be maintained at a basic level of stability was more due to the mutual checks and balances among the various forces. At the same time, Wang Dan had self-awareness—he merely positioned himself in the middle, coordinating as best he could, striving to ensure the normal functioning of governance.

But clearly, such a situation, stumbling along as it was, could hardly be said to be sustainable for long—it conflicted with the empire's consistent tradition of "strongman politics." The "era of co-governance" that appeared in the fifth and sixth years of Pingkang was more like an experiment in a political model. If given enough time to test it, perhaps genuinely new things could have been explored.

But this was clearly unrealistic. First, Emperor Liu Wenpeng would not remain so "well-behaved" forever. And the conflicts and contradictions among the powerful figures at the center, accumulating with the passage of time, would always reach a point of eruption.

Indeed, one had already erupted in the spring of the seventh year of Pingkang—the conflict between Finance Commissioner Li Hang and Deputy Commissioner of Military Affairs Guo Liangping, which was also a contest between commoner bureaucrats and military merit aristocrats.

The course of events was very simple. Li Hang resolutely opposed the navy's enormous shipbuilding demands and frequent training plans. Guo Liangping intended to replace all of the Great Han's main naval warships within the next ten years, upgrading them entirely to gunboats.

Such a vast plan involved a sum that was simply astronomical. As the chief financial minister of the Great Han Empire, Li Hang firmly refused and strongly opposed it.

For Guo Liangping, this plan concerned the century-long strategy of the Great Han navy—it was the means to continue elevating the navy's status. How could he allow a pedantic scholar like Li Hang to sabotage it?

What happened was that the two powerful figures at the center ignited the most intense civil-military conflict in decades. Two old men nearing seventy with full heads of white hair argued until their faces were red and their noses were flaring. In his excitement, Guo Liangping nearly resorted to violence. Though he was restrained, he subjected Li Hang to much verbal abuse, severely humiliating him.

But the result was that Li Hang lost face but won the substance. Guo Liangping had outstanding military talent and a tough style, but when it came to political struggle, he was far inferior to Li Hang. Combined with the disparity in their official powers, he quickly fell into a disadvantageous position.

Behind this, of course, there was also obstruction from a group of army magnates. To be honest, they were the most sensitive to Guo Liangping's "Twenty-Year Navy Plan." If Guo Liangping really pulled it off, wouldn't the navy turn the world upside down?

With another group of meritorious nobles exerting their influence, Li Hang naturally became the victor of this political struggle. However, had Guo Liangping truly lost? His plan for naval modernization was still carried out and achieved actual progress—only on a smaller scale, with the timeline doubled. It was hard to say whether this was Guo Liangping's true goal all along.

After learning some of the little-known details of the "Li-Guo Dispute," Liu Wenpeng was overjoyed, his mood considerably lightened. If the ministers did not fight among themselves, how could he, the emperor, find peace?

Emperor Liu Wenpeng's quiet period did not last very long. In the late autumn of the seventh year of Pingkang, another conflict erupted at court, this time with a different protagonist—between Emperor Liu Wenpeng and Finance Commissioner Li Hang.

The reason was that Liu Wenpeng wanted to build a summer retreat in the Western Garden of Luoyang, finding the Taikang Palace too far away and the back-and-forth travel too tiring. He had even drawn up construction plans, intending to conscript labor to manually dig out a lake, and at the same time, following the example of Meng Chang of the Later Shu, who had built a "Crystal Palace" in Chengdu, to construct a waterborne palace on the newly excavated artificial lake.

Setting aside other matters, the very fact that he was learning from Meng Chang showed the nature of this undertaking. (Of course, the words of Meng Chang's "Admonition to Officials"—"Your salaries and emoluments are the people's flesh and blood; the common folk are easy to oppress, but Heaven above is not easily deceived"—were still carved on the walls and plaques of government offices throughout the Great Han's circuits, prefectures, and counties to this day.)

And unlike before, this time when building the detached palace, Liu Wenpeng intended to draw on the state's finances—to put it simply, he was prepared to exhaust the people and drain the treasury. He had completely stopped pretending. The truth was that the Superintendent of the Imperial Household, Liu Gui, had been complaining to him about having to keep spending his own "private money"—after so much of it over so long, it truly pained him.

In response, Li Hang naturally offered forthright remonstrance and resolutely opposed it. The court was thrown into an uproar, and no small number of upright and honest ministers stood on Li Hang's side.

Including Chancellor Kou Zhun and Xiang Minzhong, a great many people submitted memorials one after another urging Liu Wenpeng to reconsider, hoping he would abandon the idea.

And under such circumstances, matters tend to develop in the opposite direction. As it turned out, when Liu Wenpeng saw that Li Hang had stirred up such a great wave of opposition against him, he was both shocked and enraged. Old grievances and new resentments surged up together, and with a word of command, the imperial partisans fell upon Li Hang one after another. And so Li Hang—minister of three reigns, Yongxi-era chancellor—was dismissed from his post.

Li Hang's dismissal had a tremendous impact on the Great Han Empire. From this point onward, it could be said to be even more serious than Liu Ai and Zhang Qixian being driven out of the court.

Because this affair signaled that the balance between the commoner-official faction and the aristocratic-official bloc in the empire's central court had been thoroughly shattered—at least within the Hall of State Affairs, power had become unbalanced.

The successor to the Finance Commission post was Minister of War Xiang Deming. On this matter, Liu Wenpeng, who had just brought Li Hang down, did not dare defy the will of the assembled ministers. And the remaining leaders of the commoner-official faction in the Hall of State Affairs turned out to be just four men: Xiang Minzhong, Kou Zhun, Xu Shilian, and Wang Qinruo. To be fair, even if these four were bound together, they could not match the prestige and influence Li Hang had held among the commoner officials in the seventh year of Pingkang.

But for Emperor Liu Wenpeng, he simply could not afford to care about all that. At least he had won his struggle against Li Hang—yet this victory was not worth rejoicing over in the slightest. From the empire's perspective, there was even a hint of sorrow in it.

At the same time, Liu Wenpeng's "floating palace project" proceeded smoothly. In the winter of the seventh year of Pingkang, tens of thousands of laborers had already entered the Western Park and, under strict management, begun excavation work.

In the summer of the eighth year of Pingkang (1014), Emperor Liu Wenpeng, restless from inactivity, stirred up trouble again. This time he chose to make a northern tour—he wanted to go hunting on the grasslands of Monan. Of course, the stated purpose could not be so blunt. The public announcement was that he was making a northern inspection tour of Hedong, offering sacrifices to Heaven at Taiyuan, the land where the dynasty had risen, and taking the opportunity to visit the grasslands to mediate the conflict between the Khitan of Mobei and the Naiman regime, bringing peace back to the lands beyond the northern frontier.

Over the past years, the situation in Mobei had never been entirely calm. The Naiman tribe, under the rule of Sun Khan Liu Jin (said to be the illegitimate son of Prince Wei Liu Min), had grown ever stronger, and after absorbing Han and Khitan culture, had formed a basic political structure.

In the fourth year of Pingkang, Liu Jin formally proclaimed himself king, with the state name "Jin." After assuming the kingship, the Naiman began dealing with the Great Han as a vassal state, and immediately sent envoys southward to submit to the court, hoping to receive imperial recognition and rewards. Liu Wenpeng, who had only recently taken personal rule, was delighted by this submission and readily agreed, bestowing a golden charter and enfeoffing Liu Jin as King of Jin.

There were some in the court who opposed it at the time, but not many people took this miscellaneous barbarian regime—whose population did not exceed five hundred thousand—seriously.

After assuming the kingship, Liu Jin began leading his "Jin state" in continued eastward expansion, attacking Khitan settlements, seizing pasture and water, and plundering tribal peoples.

With the rise of the "Jin state," the Khitan's reputation as the overlord of Mobei began to waver. In the face of such provocations, they naturally mustered troops to resist. The Jin state's strength lay in the savage vigor of a new power, while the Khitan's lay in the advanced nature of their civilization. On paper, the Khitan still held an absolute advantage.

Yet even in the era of Yelu Xian, the Khitan had been unable to completely eradicate the Naiman threat (of course, the Great Han had been playing the role of troublemaker behind the scenes back then)—let alone now.

The two sides fought and stopped, fought and stopped, with scarcely a year passing without war. The turmoil in Mobei had already begun to affect the peace of the Great Han's Shanyang region.

And the former chancellor Wang Xuanzhen had been pushed out to serve as Pacification Commissioner of Monan, ostensibly to pacify the northern frontier. Looking at how things developed afterward, it was hard to say whether this was foresight or pure coincidence.

In recent years, Mobei had been like a great poison cauldron, with two poison insects named "Jin" and "Khitan" within it—and perhaps also the Mengwu Shiwei people constantly pressing southward.

They fought, they evolved, they were eliminated—just like the story that had repeated itself on the grasslands for the past thousand years.

By the seventh year of Pingkang, the Khitan and the Jin state had fought another great battle, with combined forces exceeding one hundred thousand bow-drawing warriors. Such a great war was enough to draw the Great Han's attention, and the empire was indeed shaken.

The Great Han Empire had enjoyed decades of peace, yet in the bitter cold beyond the northern frontier, the barbarian tribes were once again gathering strength, developing, and growing.

Emperor Liu Wenpeng's journey north was a grand spectacle. The imperial army, along with the northern border garrisons and militia, assembled one hundred thousand men as escort. There was no choice—they dared not be careless. The Bureau of Military Affairs had to hold its nose and deploy troops to guarantee the emperor's safety, with Guo Yi serving as Commander-in-Chief of the field headquarters, commanding the entire force.

Suffice it to say, Liu Wenpeng truly was just going hunting. Had he harbored even the slightest thought of a northern campaign, no one could say what might have happened—the history of the Great Han Empire might have turned a completely new page. Throughout the task of escorting Liu Wenpeng, Guo Yi, this battle-hardened old general, kept his heart suspended in anxiety, and several strands of white hair had appeared on his head.

Judging from the results, Liu Wenpeng's northern tour did achieve some effect—at least it served to halt the fighting.

Liu Wenpeng established his field headquarters at Baishui Lake in Monan and sent envoys inviting the two kings to come pay homage. With one hundred thousand Han army troops marching north, and perhaps even more behind them, both the Khitan and the Jin state could hardly avoid being "startled." As nominal vassals, the two kings, after much deliberation, both came south one after another and sat down at the negotiating table set by the Great Han emperor.

Under Liu Wenpeng's supervision, the two sides ultimately reached a reconciliation, agreeing to cease hostilities, stop the conflict, and no longer attack each other. At the same time, both cited their heavy war losses and requested aid from the court. Liu Wenpeng generously bestowed money, silk, grain, salt, and tea, and also approved the two states' request to expand border trade.

Liu Wenpeng believed the two states had been forced to lay down arms and reconcile by the awe of his heavenly majesty. In reality, however, both states had suffered grievous losses in their years of conflict and, following the natural pattern, were about to enter a period of dormancy and recovery.

After completing this "Baishui Conference," Liu Wenpeng triumphantly "returned in victory." And after coming into close contact with Liu Wenpeng, emperor of the Great Han, King of Jin Liu Jin, on his journey back north, uttered this lament: "I once personally paid homage to Emperor Taizong. His majesty was like a heavenly being, inspiring awe and submission—no one dared harbor disloyal thoughts. Yet even an emperor as wise as Taizong entrusted his affairs to the wrong people. If the Great Han emperor is like this, then I could be emperor too."

Unaware that he was being looked down upon—frankly speaking, Liu Wenpeng had thrown his face away in the barbarian lands beyond the northern frontier this time.

And the northern tour of the eighth year of Pingkang was also Liu Wenpeng's last bout of troublemaking, because he could no longer stir up trouble. On the journey back south, weak and short of breath, he caught a chill.

After a long and arduous trek, he finally returned to Luoyang in early winter of that year, managing to make it back to the palace—he did not die in a foreign land.

However, the reason accidents are called accidents is that they always come suddenly. On the nineteenth day of the eleventh month of winter in the eighth year of Pingkang, Liu Wenpeng, whose health had shown some improvement, inspected the construction site of the "Western Park Crystal Palace Project," and that very night, at the Guansheng Hall of the Shangyang Palace, he died without warning, bringing his imperial career to an abrupt end. He had reigned for eight years, at the age of twenty-eight.