Chapter 799: Jian Ba, the Cold Talent, Using Poison to Counter Poison and Subdue the Mighty

Chen Yan took a Blank Silk Book from the desk, dipped his brush in ink, and wrote two characters on the silk.

Jian Ba.

"Regardless of birth, regardless of household registration, regardless of whether you are a native of Xiazhou or a Liuren who fled from Qi State."

He set the brush down and looked at Zhang Wenqian.

"As long as you can read, do arithmetic, and know farming, you may come to take the exam."

Zhang Wenqian's lips moved as if to speak, then hesitated for a half breath.

"Pillar of the State, among the Liuren there are indeed many literate people. In Qi State the great clans dominate while the humble families are light; a large number of talented youths from humble families have been suppressed by the aristocracy all their lives and cannot rise. Even among the Liuren who fled to Xiazhou there are at least a thousand who can read and write."

He paused for a beat.

"But these people have no foundation, no backing. If we place them in grassroots positions, the remaining local strongmen will band together to devour them alive."

Chen Yan's mouth twitched upward slightly.

"They have no foundation; that is precisely what the Duke wants."

His finger tapped lightly on the desk.

"Only those without a foundation will stake all their lives and fortunes on the Duke. The Duke gives them official hats, and they sell their lives for the Duke; this deal is very profitable."

A flash of understanding passed through Zhang Wenqian's eyes.

"New System Old, press the outside against the inside."

Chen Yan did not respond, and pushed the silk bearing the two characters "Jian Ba" to the edge of the desk.

"Within three days, set up a pavilion outside the east gate of Tongwan City; any Liuren who considers themselves capable may register. The Duke will personally set the questions and personally grade the papers."

Zhang Wenqian clasped his fists, took the order, and left.

Three days later, the temporary examination pavilion outside the east gate of Tongwan City was packed with ragged‑clothed yet nervous and hopeful Liuren from Qi State.

There were white‑haired old scholars, youthful down‑and‑out students, and even a few farmers with calloused hands who entered with a try‑it‑out attitude.

The exam content was extremely practical; there were no archaic eight‑part essays, only three questions.

Question one, mathematics: given a county's total farmland area and population, calculate within fifteen minutes the per‑capita farmland and the tax conversion for each class of land.

Question two, practice: presented with a hypothetical dispute case where a local farmer and a Liuren from Qi State clashed over a boundary, write a concrete mediation plan and subsequent preventive measures.

Question three, essay: only one sentence.

If you were the magistrate of a county, how would you double the grain output of the populace within a year?

Grading took place that night.

Chen Yan sat in Shufang, with nearly two hundred answer sheets piled before him, while Hongye stood beside him grinding ink and adding light.

He reviewed them one by one; most were written in a standard manner, and a few even got the mathematics wrong, which he tossed straight into the wastepaper bin.

When he reached the one‑hundred‑thirty‑seven‑th sheet, his hand stopped.

That answer sheet was of terrible paper quality, its edges already frayed, yet the ink strokes were exceptionally neat, each stroke applied with perfect pressure.

The mathematics answer was precise to the unit place, the solution process stripped down to the extreme, with not even a single redundant calculation.

The mediation plan for the practice question did not muddy the waters like others; it directly proposed a land‑exchange procedure to resolve the dispute, its logic clear as if drafted by a veteran clerk with ten years of grassroots experience.

What truly caught Chen Yan's attention about this sheet was the essay for question three.

The essay's title consisted of six characters.

"Liuren and Local Integration Strategy."

Chen Yan read the essay from start to finish, then read it again from the beginning.

He set the sheet down, and his finger knocked three times on the desk.

"Hongye, what is the name on this answer sheet?"

Hongye leaned in and glanced at the signature in the lower left corner of the sheet.

"Chu Ci."

Chen Yan chewed the name over twice in his mouth, his eyes swirling with an inscrutable light.

"Tomorrow at dawn, bring this person to the Duke."

At the hour of Chen the next day, Chu Ci was escorted by two embroidered‑clad envoys into the Shufang of Zongguan Fu.

He was slender, wearing an old blue‑gray cotton robe washed almost translucent, a fresh patch sewn on his shoulder, his cloth shoes exposing half of a big toe, yet his back stood straight as a spear.

After stepping over the Shufang threshold, his gaze lingered on Chen Yan for less than a breath, then withdrew, standing neatly five steps from the desk.

Chen Yan sat on the Grand Master's Chair, his fingers pinching the essay's Bamboo Silk Scroll, turning it slowly in his hand.

"Chu Ci, a Qi State person."

Chu Ci's voice was clear and steady.

"Returning to the Pillar of the State, the commoner's ancestral home is Qinghe Prefecture, of humble origin; he took the imperial examinations in Qi State twice, both times dismissed by the chief examiner for insufficient family background."

Chen Yan tapped the essay with his fingertip.

"In your essay you mentioned a term called 'Qi controls Xia.'"

Chu Ci's back straightened slightly.

"Yes, the commoner means that the local strongmen of Xiazhou under the Pillar of the State have ruled for generations, their roots deep; killing alone cannot cleanse them. Killing the old brings up new ones; kill a father and there will still be a son."

Chen Yan placed the essay on the desk, crossing his fingers to support his chin.

"So your solution is..."

A hint of sharpness flashed in Chu Ci's eyes.

"Replace the cleansed local officials with humble Qi State folk. These Liuren of humble origin have been trampled by aristocratic families all their lives; their bottled resentment and ferocity exceed anyone's. The Pillar of the State need only give them a knife, and they will uproot the strongmen's roots one by one for the Pillar."

He paused, his voice dropping another half tone.

"Moreover, these people have no clan power in Xiazhou, no marital networks, no village alliances; everything they have comes from the Pillar's grace. They dare not rebel, nor can they, for rebellion would leave them with nothing."

Chen Yan stared at him for five breaths.

"Your whole scheme, when spoken nicely is called the art of checks and balances, but when spoken bluntly it's just raising a pack of hungry wolves to bite another pack."

Chu Ci's mouth twitched; that curve could not be called a smile, more like a calm that comes after someone sees through his cards.

"To a commoner, a wolf that can bite is far more useful than a sheep that cannot bite."

Chen Yan was silent for three breaths, then suddenly laughed.

The laugh was small, but the air in the Shufang seemed infused with a scorching current.

"What a wolf that can bite."

He drew a blank commission document from the An Tou, took up his brush and wrote a few lines, then stamped the Governor of Xia Zhou's Great Seal heavily at the end.

The vermilion seal burst upon the white silk like a blooming blood‑red peony.

He pushed the document in front of Chu Ci.

"From today onward, you are the County Magistrate of Qinggui."

Chu Ci's pupils contracted for an instant; he lowered his head to stare at the bright red seal on the document, his fingertips trembled slightly, then he clenched his fist hard and pressed it back down.

He did not kneel.

He bent over, cupped the document with both hands, and his voice was clear as the icy water flowing in a mountain stream.

"Commoner Chu Ci, accepting the Pillar of the State's command."

Chen Yan leaned against the chair back, his eyes scanning the young man before him, fresh from the grass but already showing his edge.

"Chu Ci, this Duke gives you a county, not to make you a peace officer."

His finger tapped once on the armrest.

"Qinggui County is the rotten mess Zhou Xingsi left behind; the maggots in the water haven't been cleared yet. Once you go there, the remaining powerful vassals will try every trick to pull you off that chair."

Chu Ci's mouth lifted a half‑smile, the curve carrying an unexpectedly fierce edge.

"Pillar of the State, rest assured; a commoner who was trampled by aristocratic families in Qi State for twenty years has long learned one thing."

Chen Yan's eyebrows lifted slightly.

"What is it?"

Chu Ci's voice was steady as a piece of steel repeatedly hammered.

"A person stepped on will, once turned over, strike harsher than anyone else."

Chen Yan's finger paused a beat on the armrest.

Those words reminded him of someone.

Himself.

The Jian Ba exam results were posted that afternoon; twenty‑seven candidates were admitted, all of them talented, impoverished youths among the Qi State refugees.

They were assigned to various vacant grassroots posts, from county magistrates to clerks, from grain supervisors to warehouse heads, like red‑hot iron nails wedged into every crack of the Xiazhou bureaucracy.

Their ferocity after taking office far exceeded Zhang Wenqian's expectations.

On the second day of his appointment to Qinggui County, Chu Ci brought two Hidden Agents from the Mingjing Office and six newly recruited Cha Yi from the county office, sealed and audited all the ledgers left by the former grain supervisor, uncovered five falsified records within three days, and on the spot dismissed the two implicated warehouse heads, escorting them to the Zongguan Fu.

The other twenty‑six new officials behaved similarly; one newly appointed clerk even lived in the county office's storehouse, his eyes never leaving the grain sacks for twenty‑four hours, and anyone who tried to ingratiate himself received a reply as cold as bone.

"My official hat was given by the Pillar of the State; what are you?"

But the transfer of power has never been a banquet.

On the seventh day of Chu Ci's tenure, an urgent dispatch from Qinggui County was placed on Chen Yan's An Tou.

Gao Jiong knelt in the Shufang, his voice pressed down tightly.

"Pillar of the State, the official granary seeds of Qinggui County have been tampered with."

Chen Yan opened the dispatch, his eyes lingering three breaths over the hastily scrawled lines.

"What does it mean?"

Gao Jiong clenched his jaw.

"When Chu Ci inspected the first batch of spring‑planting seeds, he found that thirty percent of the grain seeds sent to the villages had been swapped with moldy dead seeds; after sowing, the sprout rate was under twenty percent, and if planted on a large scale, the autumn harvest would be a total loss."

Chen Yan folded the dispatch and tapped his finger lightly on the desk.

"Who did it?"

Gao Jiong took from his chest a investigation document attached to the dispatch by Chu Ci.

"Following the seed allocation accounts, Chu Ci traced the trail to three major grain merchants in Cheng Dong of Qinggui County; behind those merchants stood the local old‑established powerful Xie Family. The Xie Family's patriarch died last year, and now his eldest son Xie Pingya is in charge."

His voice lowered another notch.

"While tampering with the seeds, Xie Pingya also secretly hired six jianghu assassins, already lying in ambush on the inevitable route of Chu Ci's countryside inspection."

Chen Yan's finger drew a long arc across the desk.

"They intend to kill Chu Ci."

Gao Jiong nodded.

"Eliminate Chu Ci and disguise it as banditry, then cause a massive spring‑planting failure; this will channel all the people's resentment onto the batch of new officials promoted by the Pillar of the State, forcing the Pillar to reactivate the local veterans."

Chen Yan leaned against the chair back, the turmoil in his eyes turning extremely dim in the lamplight.

"That's quite a far‑reaching thought."

He turned his head, looking at Hong Ye, who had been standing by the doorway.

Hong Ye's body leaned forward half an inch, and the short sword in the right sleeve was positioned ready to draw at any moment.

"Go to Qinggui County."

Chen Yan's voice was as level as a windless lake.

"Chu Ci's life cannot be discarded; he is the banner I set up for two hundred thousand Liuren. When the banner falls, the people's hearts scatter."

Hong Ye turned and vanished into the darkness beyond the door, moving so fast that the lamplight did not flicker.

Chen Yan tapped his finger on the desk again, withdrew his gaze from the direction where Hong Ye disappeared, and fixed it on Gao Jiong.

"You shouldn't be idle either."

Gao Jiong lowered his head even further.

"How long has the Mingjing Office been watching the Xie Family and those three grain merchants?"

Gao Jiong answered quickly.

"Since the first day Chu Ci took office they've been watching them—every flow of silver, every covertly linked list, all are in Shuyi's hands."

Chen Yan stood up, walked to the window, pushed open the carved rose‑wood window lattice; the cold spring‑night wind poured in, causing the edges of the quick report on the desk to flutter slightly.

"After Hong Ye secures Chu Ci, you take the list and cast the net through the night."

His voice floated back from the window, a calm that sent a chill down Gao Jiong's spine.

"This time there's no need to send them to the square for beheading; it's too much of a waste of time."

He turned, and his eyes, illuminated by the lamp light, burned with an intensely restrained ferocity.

"The confiscated estates, the silver goes to the Zongguan Fu war treasury, the lands are all forfeited and redistributed to the Liuren."

He stood by the window for a moment, and the corner of his mouth suddenly curved.

"The surplus mansions and shopfronts will be given to the twenty‑seven newly promoted low‑born officials, one set each, taken from the Xie Family's holdings."

Gao Jiong's mind raced around in an instant, instantly grasping the poisonous sharpness of Chen Yan's move.

Dividing the powerful families' estates directly to the new officials who replace them, these officials now bear a mortal grudge against those seized families; they have no retreat and must devote themselves wholeheartedly to serving Chen Yan to the end.

This is not a simple profit sharing; it's an iron chain that can only go forward, binding the twenty‑seven new officials and Chen Yan together like grasshoppers on the same rope.

Gao Jiong punched the chest armor.

"Shuyi understands."

He stood up, turned toward the doorway, and paused a step.

"Zhu Guo, there is one more matter."

Chen Yan leaned against the window frame, his fingers gently rubbing the hilt of the sword at his waist.

"Speak."

Gao Jiong turned his head back, and a rare hint of hesitation appeared on his Dark Hawk face.

"After these new officials take office, the enforcement of the New Law is indeed brutally severe, and administrative efficiency has increased severalfold."

He paused for a beat.

"But Shuyi also received some reports that a few of them, while suppressing the local powerful families, used methods too ruthless, inadvertently affecting some ordinary local farmers who were not involved in wrongdoing."

Chen Yan's finger lingered on the hilt.

"The Duke understands."

His voice was so flat that it sounded as if he were speaking about an inconsequential trivial matter.

"Using poison to counter poison, when the toxicity is too strong it inevitably harms the innocent, but this is currently the only way to clean up the grassroots administration of Xiazhou in the shortest time."

He released his hand from the hilt and turned back toward the desk behind him.

"After the spring plowing ends, the Duke will personally travel to each county; the branches that need pruning will naturally be pruned in due time."

He sat on the Grand Master's Chair and pulled out a new official document from the desk to unfold.

"First finish the battle before us, then we'll talk."

Gao Jiong clasped his fists and left the study.

The moment the door closed, the study fell silent, leaving only the faint crackle of the copper oil lamp's wick now and then.

Chen Yan grasped his brush and marked three characters on the document.

Execute as written.

When he set the brush down, his gaze passed over the mountain‑high stack of papers on the desk and landed on the massive Northern Border Military Sand Table on the wall.

Half of the small flags on the sand table, representing Xiazhou's counties, have already been changed to new colors by him.

A very slight curve lifted the corner of his mouth, a curve Hong Ye had seen many times; each appearance meant another crucial piece had been placed on the board.

The gears of Xiazhou's machine are turning at an unprecedented speed, from weapon forging to cavalry training, from administrative cleansing to talent selection; every link meshes tightly between his fingers.

And all this is only the beginning.