Chapter 303: Establishing the System (II)

While certain people were drinking beer and brewing conspiracies, in a conference room within the Imperial City, a haggard-looking Xia was also gathering the party's core members to discuss countermeasures.

"How are things going with the Constitution Drafting Committee? Are they still refusing to budge?"

... In recent days, the power struggle among the Transmigrators over the various rules to be established before and after the founding of the nation had reached a fever pitch.

Politics, economics, military, foreign affairs, religion... In short, anything that could be talked about at length was fair game, all of it seized upon as ammunition for tearing at each other, with endless quarrels every day.

Under these circumstances, the Constitution Drafting Committee, responsible for designing the framework of the state, had completely turned into a marketplace. Although the "Dingge Party"—that is, the Conservative Party—held a numerical advantage in this crucial department, it seemed to be of no use whatsoever: this was constitution drafting, and a simple majority did not apply.

If all these clauses could not even pass within the committee, there was no point in thinking about taking them to a vote before the All-Transmigrator Assembly: to ultimately turn a clause into law required the consent of at least three-quarters of the people.

Furthermore, there was still the hidden BOSS to get past: the Cao Emperor.

And so the matter reached an impasse: if the vested interest bloc led by Xia Xianze did not leave sufficient benefits for the Imperial Han in the future political landscape, then the draft constitution could forget about passing...

Since the constitution could not pass, at the lower-level Rules Committee, where the Imperial Han held the majority, the arrogance of certain people grew even more rampant.

The Rules Committee was mainly in charge of practical matters: the revision of the calendar, the prohibition of various vulgar folk customs, the subordinate bodies of the future Government and Parliament, as well as the drafting of secondary legal frameworks, and so on...

With Double Eleven approaching, apart from those inconsequential matters, not a single major issue had been finalized—everyone knew the answers to these questions perfectly well, but the Imperial Han were simply blocking the final step and refusing to cast their votes in favor.

So the situation was gradually turning sour.

"Yes, neither side is giving ground." After Xia Xianze asked his question, a middle-aged man wearing gold-rimmed glasses and possessing a strong scholarly air replied.

This man was called Deng Xin. Before Crossing Over, he had been a library researcher. After Crossing Over, he had always served as the director of the Great Office, and now he concurrently held the position of Vice Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee. He was a capable party affairs officer for the Conservative Party and the negotiation lead.

"Still entangled over those issues?" Xia Xianze frowned upon hearing this.

"Mm. They are demanding three Cabinet seats, one of which must be among the Four Great Ministers of State."

The Four Great Ministers of State, traditionally speaking, were namely the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary, and the Home Secretary.

These four positions could also be called the Senior Grand Secretary, the Finance Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the Internal Minister. The names differed, but the substance was the same—these were the four most core positions of power within the government departments, the symbols of the state's public authority, not something a Minister of Sports and Culture could compare to.

What the Imperial Han were demanding now was one of these four positions.

However, of these four positions, only three remained originally... Xia Xianze's position as Senior Grand Secretary had been decided behind closed doors long ago. In other words, the Imperial Han wanted to pick one out of three, snatching chicken from the tiger's mouth.

This, of course, could not be tolerated.

Originally, according to the Conservative Party's plan, as a gesture of unity, the Imperial Han would eventually get one or two inconsequential positions in the Cabinet: a Junior Grand Secretary ranked near the bottom overseeing health and culture, and at most, perhaps transportation as well. That would be the limit.

Yet now it seemed that the original wish was unlikely to be fulfilled... The Imperial Han were too arrogant, their greed insatiable, their demands too numerous.

These demands were fundamentally impossible for Xia Xianze and his people to agree to. One had to understand, this was the 17th century. What the Transmigrators had currently established was only a tiny, pocket-sized regime, and there were very few positions to begin with.

Many official posts did not even exist yet—for instance, Digitalization, Employment and Pensions, positions already established in the constitutional monarchies of later generations, simply did not exist in this era.

So the Cabinet seats were never plentiful to begin with. The regime the Transmigrators had established, to put it nicely, was a fusion of East and West; to put it bluntly, it was a crude hybrid of native and foreign.

In Xia Xianze's plan, the first Cabinet he would form actually did not require many people; four or five Junior Grand Secretaries would suffice—each managing their own area, similar to the Vice Premier model of the Chinese Communist Party.

In this situation, the Imperial Han's demands seemed like a lion opening its mouth impossibly wide.

After listening to Deng Xin's report, Xia Xianze first rolled his eyes, then opened his mouth and asked: "We're out of time. Based on your judgment, can we make those bastards drop the idea and honestly reach an agreement within the next day or two?"

"Impossible!" Deng Xin shook his head decisively. "That bunch is just waiting to see us make fools of ourselves."

"Not us—waiting to see me make a fool of myself!" Xia Xianze let out a long sigh at this, tilted his head back, and silently began studying the ceiling.

With his movement, the conference room fell quiet.

The next moment, a fellow sitting in the back row blurted out a harsh remark: "Why not just kick all these troublemakers out of the committee?"

"Nonsense!" Old Xia, who had been staring at the ceiling, immediately snapped back to attention upon hearing this. He slammed his fist on the table and roared: "If you can't handle it, you just flip the table? When do we start slaughtering whole families? Once that door is opened, do you think it won't come for you?"

Xia Xianze's anger had a reason: in fact, within the Conservative faction, under immense pressure, there had always been people advocating for a shortcut that everyone was familiar with and that seemed very appealing: make the Imperial Han shut up.

In other words, strip the minority faction of their political participation rights.

The victor becomes king, the victor faces no punishment, slaughter the entire family of the opposition to reign supreme, then revise the history books... Every act of treachery could be praised as "wisdom." Every dynasty throughout history had operated this way, with Li Er being the classic example.

In short, cooperation was impossible, not in this lifetime. Only by silencing the opponents forever could life go on, it seemed.

... Even though they had fled to a parallel time-space, the millennia-old venomous insect culture of the East Asian peoples had ultimately left its mark on the Transmigrators.

Fortunately, this brainless suggestion was quickly shot down.

Cultivating left and right parties within the Noble Parliament, absorbing native elites in the future and expanding it into Upper and Lower Houses, and by the time the first-generation Transmigrators grew old, establishing a complete national political structure—all of this had long been the tacitly understood, established path among the elites, not to be altered.

As for the venomous insect model of not solving the problem but directly solving the opponent's physical body—to put it plainly, it was still the same old "winner takes all, loser is vilified" routine. Could this sort of thing be applied to a group of just over two hundred Transmigrators? One had to realize, this model inevitably required bloodshed... To make people with differing political views shut up forever, had there been any method other than bloodshed over thousands of years?

On this issue, neither Cao Chuan himself nor clear-headed people like Xia Xianze would choose the wrong path: back then, Cao Chuan could have easily "taken away" a certain Transmigrator who had designs on him, but in the end, it was nothing more than a tomato to the face.

In short, that kind of life-or-death, winner-takes-all struggle was not permitted here. Cao Huangshang would be the first to disagree: he had to be prepared for the day he flew off with his ring.

When that day truly came, if the people of the new time-space were still repeating the venomous insect mindset, then he or his descendants would surely be overthrown by rioters shouting, "Are kings and nobles born from special stock?"

This current stage was the best opportunity for everyone to adapt to cooperation and compromise. That set of rules from the Old Time-Space had absolutely no market under the unique model of over two hundred born nobles.

This was also the reason for Xia Xianze's anger: such tendencies had to be nipped in the bud at the very first moment. For the Emperor, and for himself.

By this point, the meeting had effectively become impossible to continue: if the decision-makers could not produce a solution, the matter would simply remain deadlocked. Xia Xianze naturally understood this, so after venting his anger, he waved his hand to signal the meeting's adjournment.

After the meeting, he went alone up the stairs from the second floor to the rooftop terrace, and began pacing around the Jianyuan Hall atop the building, hands clasped behind his back.

In truth, Xia Xianze's mood was far from as bad as it appeared: his poor complexion was the result of exhaustion from all these miscellaneous affairs, and had little to do with these worried-looking negotiation representatives.

He already had the answer to the problem in his heart; it was just that he was unwilling to take that step before the final deadline—always calling for the parent had lingering side effects and would lower his popularity among his comrades.

After a quiet chuckle, Xia Xianze shook his head: looking on the bright side, everyone had still gained something these past days. The losers who had never experienced real parliamentary struggle had, during this time, finally gotten a taste of primitive controversy and compromise.

One had to realize, this was deliberating a grand thousand-year plan, the great enterprise of nation-building, a matter concerning the blessings of future generations. This was not like holding a routine company meeting. All these days, everyone had been working under a state of immense pressure and profound sacredness.

Reaching the current situation was actually not bad at all. At least these bottom-tier failures of the Old World were now finally playing politics in a somewhat decent manner, without bullets and big knives flying everywhere. Xia Xianze was already very satisfied.

Thinking of this, he could not help but turn his head to glance at the utterly deserted "Imperial Palace" beside him. Then he sighed again and muttered to himself: "Ah, still have to call for the parent after all!"

With that, he turned and walked into the Jianyuan Hall.

Normally speaking, the Jianyuan Hall was open to all Transmigrators. After all, a glass curtain wall hall with excellent lighting was very useful, and besides, Cao Chuan had no use for it ordinarily.

Recently, however, due to the tense atmosphere, the Jianyuan Hall had been temporarily closed. The official explanation was that some decoration needed to be done and a bit of cleaning up.

After reaching the side door, Xia Xianze took out a key and gently unlocked this door.

Next, he would exercise his highest authority, one that set him apart from all other Transmigrators: to proactively request an audience with Cao Chuan.

In ancient times, this was called "severing the inside from the outside" — an essential skill for confining the Emperor, used by powerful ministers, powerful eunuchs, powerful empresses, and all such power-holders throughout the dynasties.

Yet here and now, Xia Xianze couldn't sever anyone from anything. He simply walked obediently to the hidden door behind the Dragon Throne, pressed the doorbell, stated his purpose, and then began praying that Boss Cao was home today... If he wasn't, that meant the Ming People had gone off gallivanting to later generations again, which would be a bit of a waste of time.

Fortunately, Boss Cao was obliging today and hadn't gone to later generations for unchecked debauchery. Not long after Xia Xianze pressed the doorbell, Cao Chuan walked out from the door wearing a hemp-gray tracksuit.