Chapter 842: The Eastern Capital After Years Apart

Leaving the Han palace, he once again stood before the city gates and looked back. The Han imperial city remained as majestic and magnificent as ever—aside from the vast plaza that had been cleared and leveled before the gates, there was almost no other change. Yet the aura of suppressing the realm seemed even more formidable than before.

Zhong Mo could not help but recall six years ago, when his down-and-out circumstances had flashed through his memory. At that time, too, he had received an audience with the Emperor, and upon leaving the palace, he had also paused to look back—only then he had worn an old hemp robe, with a heavy pouch of reward money tucked in his bosom.

Recalling the past, boundless emotions welled up in his heart, all written plainly on his face.

On the southeastern side of the imperial city, there was a "parking area," arranged according to official rank. After all, only a handful of people were permitted to ride carriages into the imperial city, and most of them had already passed away. Beside it stood a stable—not everyone preferred riding in carriages, for the Great Han had a strong martial ethos, and many civil and military officials liked to ride horses to "work." Although the Great Han did not have an abundance of warhorses, it already had no small number of draft horses and pack horses, and the Khitan to the north did not enforce strict controls on the trade of miscellaneous horses other than military mounts.

Finding his carriage among the forest of vehicles, he saw the driver dozing, yet the man's senses seemed quite sharp—the moment Zhong Mo approached, before he even spoke, the driver woke at once and nimbly produced a low stool for Zhong Mo to board the carriage.

Afterward, he busied himself with tidying up, especially cleaning away the traces of horse dung on the ground, before driving off. The Great Han's management of urban livestock was extremely strict, sanitation being one of the key points. According to regulations, the dung and urine produced by horses, camels, and other livestock within the city were to be cleaned up by their owners; violators among the common folk were fined, while officials additionally had a demerit recorded against them.

It was said that once, when the Emperor was on an inspection tour of Kaifeng, he saw livestock dung scattered across the streets, filth everywhere, and a stench that assailed the nostrils. He immediately pointed out the problem, and later a set of Eastern Capital sanitation management regulations was promulgated, from which the city's livestock hygiene management was derived.

Additionally, if livestock ran out of control and charged through the streets, the animals were to be captured and killed, and the owners fined. If official or private property was damaged, the owners were to compensate; if someone was injured or even killed, the owners were likewise subject to criminal punishment.

"Where is Minister Zhong headed?" The carriage curtain was lowered, and the driver's inquiring voice came from outside.

Hearing the question, Zhong Mo considered for a moment, then said, "First return to the guesthouse. Once I change my attire, I'll take a stroll through the markets!"

"Yes!"

This driver was not one of Zhong Mo's attendants, but a local hired through the Protocol Office after arriving in the Eastern Capital—skilled at driving, knowledgeable of the Eastern Capital's rules, and familiar with the roads. The Eastern Capital was changing with each passing day, but it also had many rules and stricter governance; it was not a place any random out-of-towner could navigate with ease.

Nowadays, when outsiders came to the capital, anyone with a modicum of wealth would hire a guide. As for common folk who could not read a single character and knew no roads, being swindled was a minor matter—but inadvertently violating a prohibition would be a disaster.

The Eastern Capital, though not lacking in humble commoners, was truly not a place where ordinary folk could thrive—especially outsiders.

Inside the carriage, Zhong Mo closed his eyes slightly, and a hint of somber gravity surfaced on his refined countenance—an expression he only revealed when alone. What echoed ceaselessly in his mind were the Son of Heaven of Han's words about the Chuanshu rebellion before he had taken his leave; he had been pondering them ever since leaving Chongzheng Hall.

Since the word "warning" had been spoken outright, Zhong Mo had no choice but to take it seriously. Settling his mind, he turned the matter over and over in his thoughts. Zhong Mo was a very clever man, and having experienced great rises and falls, his temperament had grown all the more composed.

The Han Emperor's words and the rumors and information he knew about the Chuanshu rebellion kept intertwining and tangling in his mind. The specific circumstances behind it all would never be known to outsiders, but setting aside the surface-level reports and looking at the results, one would find that regardless of who had instigated the Chuanshu rebellion, those who suffered heavy losses and received severe blows were precisely the nobles, officials, and powerful magnates of the Meng Shu.

At this thought, Zhong Mo's expression grew even more solemn, and he could not help but feel a sense of apprehension, having roughly guessed the Han Emperor's intent. He, Zhong Mo, belonged to the same class in the Southern Tang—though his family could not be called enormously wealthy, fine clothes and sumptuous food were the baseline, and the family owned no small amount of land and property, with relatives and friends likewise holding considerable assets.

If it were only his own family, that would be one thing. Even a great purge like that of Chuanshu had mainly targeted the upper-middle echelons of meritorious nobles, officials, and the rebellious clerks and magnates. Though some of the old Chuanshu officials from over two hundred prefectures and counties had also been purged, those who obediently submitted to the court and accepted the Great Han's rule were all still living well today. Though the atmosphere for holding office was not as lax as under the Meng Shu, their families and property had been preserved. Compared to those old-regime powerholders whose estates were confiscated, whose fields were distributed, and whose entire clans were relocated out of Shu, they were far more fortunate.

Zhong Mo felt that, given his connection with the Emperor and his contributions to the court, the outcome would certainly not be like that. What the Emperor was targeting should be those nobles and officials he had been cultivating in Jinling.

At this realization, Zhong Mo suddenly shuddered with alarm—if his guess was correct, the affairs of Chuanshu would one day be reenacted in Jiangnan. Moreover, judging by the Han Emperor's attitude, the group of "pro-Han faction" members he had united might become a hidden danger in the future, and could even implicate him personally.

Thinking further, would his own actions make the Han Emperor believe he was forming a faction for private gain? After all, the Southern Tang's factional strife was notorious, running through its history as a constant theme in its court...

By the time Zhong Mo returned to the Protocol Guesthouse, he had already come to terms with it all. He decided that after returning to Jinling, he would never make contact again. Given the current situation of the realm and the Great Han's strength, if it marched south, it truly would not need much effort from him—he only needed to make appropriate coordinating decisions at the right moments.

Moreover, he was still, after all, a minister of Tang, so he had to mind his appearance. And if he overstepped, before the Han army even arrived, he might have already invited disaster upon himself. When it was time to keep a low profile, one kept a low profile.

The Protocol Guesthouse was not far from the imperial city, surrounded by rows of official residences, with grand and imposing decor—it had been rebuilt during the great renovation of Kaifeng, embodying the intent of receiving envoys from all directions with courtesy.

The envoys of the various powers who had come to Kaifeng this time had not yet departed—a motley assortment of people in all manner of dress and appearance, all lingering here, wishing to savor a bit more of the Eastern Capital's splendor.

Walking through the clean and elegant guesthouse, hearing the rising and falling of barbarian tongues and regional dialects, Zhong Mo could not help but feel a surge of emotion—the Great Han of today, though far from having all the myriad peoples of the four directions come to court, was nonetheless seeing its imperial rise exert a markedly growing influence over the surrounding regions.

A burst of cheerful conversation came from down the corridor. Following the sound, he saw a young man in silk robes speaking with a Min-dialect accent—Liu Shaoji, the adopted son of Liu Congxiao of the Qingyuan Army, who had come north in secret on his father's orders to present tribute and express his vassal loyalty.

Clearly, even the Qingyuan Army, isolated in Quan and Zhang, could sense the changes in the realm's situation. Speaking of which, although Liu Congxiao had been holding Quan and Zhang in separatist rule for over a decade, he was nominally still a vassal of the Southern Tang.

Yet this vassal of the Southern Tang was now, without the slightest hesitation, directly pledging allegiance to the Central Plains court. At this, Zhong Mo, as a Tang minister, pretended not to see it and did not go up to greet him, to avoid awkwardness.

Returning to the room where the Tang envoy was lodged, Zhong Mo changed into casual clothes, rested briefly, and then, with two attendants and the driver as guide, set out to tour the Eastern Capital's markets. He had already been in the Eastern Capital for quite some time, but most of it had been spent in the guesthouse, with his energy devoted to exchanges with the Han court's officials. As for Kaifeng, which he had not seen for many years, he had never had the chance to tour it.

"The Kaifeng of today grows more prosperous by the day—its grandeur far surpasses that of years past!" Walking along the streets of the Southern Market, Zhong Mo could not help but exclaim.

The breaking of the old ward-and-market layout did not mean the original markets had declined; on the contrary, they had become even more prosperous, with no small volume of foot traffic every day. Building on the foundations of the original Northern, Eastern, and Southern Markets, Murong Yanchao had carried out large-scale reorganization and expansion back then, with over 1,500 shops and establishments newly built by the government. Apart from those kept for official use, those given to "righteous merchants" in return for their donations, and those compensating residents whose land had been taken, the rest were sold, generating revenue for the Kaifeng prefecture as well.

The market's planning and layout had also grown increasingly rational—meat stalls, fish stalls, rice stalls, and noodle stalls were each zoned into their own areas under centralized management, completely reforming the chaos of earlier years. All manner of shops were neatly organized, and everything one saw was in perfect order.

Strolling along the main thoroughfare running through the Southern Market, his eyes beheld surging crowds and clamorous noise like tides. The broad street was wide enough for six carriages to travel abreast. Having experienced the narrow, congested roads of Kaifeng in those days, the contrast was especially stark when seeing the scene before him now.

It was like the shock Zhong Mo had felt upon first arriving in the Eastern Capital and stepping onto the Heavenly Street that led straight to the imperial city. That Heavenly Street, thirty zhang (roughly a hundred meters) wide, stretched beyond the reach of one's gaze—such splendor and imposing grandeur, in Zhong Mo's estimation, could only be matched by Chang'an and Luoyang at the height of the great Tang.

Though Jinling was also a city that could hold a million residents, compared to Kaifeng it was clearly lacking—lacking in the spiritual dimension.