Chapter 466: A Stable Triangle

The two bundles wrapped in gray cloth were different shapes — one round, one rectangular.

Inside the round bundle was a human head — the head of the Yellow-Belted Shuotuo.

Many Han people had fled back to Beijing from Liaodong, and naturally quite a few among them had seen Shuotuo; with Wen Tiren's influence, finding someone to identify the head would be effortless.

By this point, however, Minister Wen already believed it ninety-nine percent in his heart — having someone identify the head was just a minor detail.

Inside the other bundle was an assault rifle.

Wen Mansion was an old residence allocated by the court, belonging to official property. The defining feature of such official property was a large footprint, but the decoration was dilapidated and repairs were never timely.

So when the bullets passed through the second gate, then through the moon gate of the rear garden, they hit nothing of value — just some flowers and plants, plus a few iron pots and porcelain pieces deliberately placed on a long table.

The shooting distance of over three hundred meters, along with those household items shattered to pieces, vividly demonstrated to Minister Wen exactly how the Tartars had been taken out.

Although Wen Tiren was a pure-stream Scholar-Official who had risen all the way through the Hanlin Academy system, as a high-ranking official aspiring to enter the Cabinet and control the overall situation, he was well-versed in the basic common sense of warfare in this era.

So upon seeing this lightning-fast repeating Fire Lance, Old Wen's mind instantly conjured a scene of a thousand Repeating Crossbows firing in unison.

"With such a superb weapon, no wonder you could send the Tartar Captives fleeing in defeat!"

Wen Tiren was now not only shocked, but also developed a strong investigative interest in a certain Cao: "Does this mean your general is now invincible under heaven?"

"Hardly." Xue Haiyuan's reply swiftly shattered Old Wen's fantasy. "This type of copper-cased bullet is purchased from overseas Sea Merchants — ten taels of silver per shot. That little demonstration just now turned four hundred taels of silver to ash."

Old Wen: "..."

After this string of events, Wen Tiren, his doubts completely dispelled, said nothing further and began hurriedly writing his memorial.

On his side, Xue Haiyuan recounted the recent series of battle details to Old Wen as thoroughly as possible, and also produced a draft of Regional Commander Cao's memorial — actually a formal dispatch outline transmitted by telegraph — for Wen Tiren to cross-check, lest any slip-ups occur in his wording or in the subsequent court audience.

In short, the content of this memorial must not have any major discrepancies with Sun Chengzong's memorial; on other aspects, he could elaborate freely.

Because of this tremendous merit he was about to claim, Wen Tiren's path to the Cabinet had visibly transformed from a thorny trail into a broad thoroughfare. After all, military merit was the hardest form of achievement — those farcical internal feuds and slanders in the court were all like drifting clouds before those Tartar heads.

This way, once Old Wen formally entered the Cabinet, he would become a strategic-level ally, able to cooperate tacitly with Regional Commander Cao in many areas, watching each other's backs and aiding one another. Since ancient times, so-called powerful chief ministers all had to ally with strong frontier generals externally and connect with Chief Eunuchs internally to meet the standard — in this timeline, Wen Tiren might just get to walk the path of a powerful chief minister himself.

So at this moment, both sides tacitly refrained from mentioning any specific reward, because Old Wen's return on investment after entering the Cabinet would be long-term in nature. This was a Grand Secretary with Drafting Rescript Power, handling all administrative affairs of the Ming Empire — his authority already rivaled that of high officials in later generations.

Near noon, while Wen Mansion was busily preparing, the pathfinder and advance scout, Ministry of Works Vice Director Comrade Luo Lishi, was once again sitting in a certain residence waiting to be received by its owner.

This residence was not large in area and situated in a secluded spot, but its interior decoration was exquisite and magnificent, complete with household servants, the lady of the house, and all such personnel.

As for the owner of the residence? The owner was still on his way home from work.

So who was the owner? Eunuch Fang Zhenghua.

The eunuchs of the Chongzhen reign, compared to those other famously notorious Chief Eunuchs like Liu Jin and Wei Zhongxian, truly did not amount to much.

The only most famous ones were probably Wang Cheng'en, who hanged himself alongside Chongzhen, plus Cao Huachun, who opened a city gate.

However, at that time Cao Huachun had already returned to his old home in the Tianjin countryside for four years — this accusation was clearly another black pot dumped by the civil officials who controlled the power to "manufacture" public opinion.

In fact, several eunuchs opened gates at that time: Wang Dehua opened Desheng Gate, Wang Xiangyao opened Fucheng Gate, and additionally Minister of War Zhang Jinyan opened Zhengyang Gate, Duke Cheng Zhu Chunchen opened Chaoyang Gate... In the end, no one criticized the civil officials who opened gates, and the blame was entirely shouldered by Cao Huachun, who was far from Beijing.

The above is idle chatter. In short, during the Chongzhen reign, because the Emperor was diligent and personally reviewed memorials, the eunuch faction did not easily usurp great power the way they had under previous dynasties with emperors who could not even finish reviewing memorials.

In fact, when Chongzhen first ascended the throne, he was practically duped into limping by the civil officials.

A youth barely of high school age, suddenly shouldering an aging Empire, understanding nothing of the wider world, yet eager to forge ahead with reforms and eliminate abuses — naturally, he was seen through at a glance. So Chongzhen heeded the civil officials' words: he downsized the Eastern Depot and Brocade Guard system, rooted out the eunuchs entirely, and recalled the garrison eunuchs stationed across the realm. The beneficiary of all these actions was, without a doubt, the Civil Official Bloc.

And what was the result?

Freed from external constraints, the civil officials vied to establish their own private factions and began wantonly attacking each other within the court — while proper affairs went unattended.

During this Later Jin incursion, with successive military setbacks and critical shortages of both provisions and pay, the civil official system merely continued bickering in court, unable to offer a single viable strategy.

A certain young man who had been brutally schooled by society finally had a sudden epiphany at this moment, and thus he reactivated the eunuch system.

In less than a year after this Jisi Incident, from Shanhai Pass to Xuanfu, from Datong to Shanxi, Regional Military Inspector Eunuchs were dispatched by Chongzhen to every route of the Nine Border Garrisons.

The moment these people took office, they began submitting memorials impeaching civil officials in every border garrison, and succeeded time and again, bringing down quite a few civil officials.

After this, Chongzhen took even more drastic retaliatory actions: Wen Tiren's future ally, Eunuch Zhang Yixian, was dispatched to audit the civil officials of the Ministry of Revenue and Ministry of Works. Chongzhen established an office for him, naming it the Household and Works Superintendent, with authority equal to the military inspectors outside.

The civil official system, now having its purse strings pinched by a eunuch, naturally would not take this lying down. Yet when a large group of court officials, including the Minister of Personnel, jointly submitted arguments of protest, the Emperor replied with a single sentence: "If all ministers served the nation wholeheartedly, why would We need to employ inner servants?"

At that, everyone was left speechless.

In short, after paying an enormous price, the young Chongzhen finally came to gradually grasp the core imperial philosophy he had previously had no opportunity to learn: the balance of power.

The Transmigrators' decision to contact the eunuchs this time also carried this meaning. The reasoning was simple: a triangle is the most stable structure.

Central Grand Secretary + Inner Court Official + Outer Frontier General — this triangle was the optimal closed-loop system, capable of achieving political resource complementarity and pressure relief.

In fact, no powerful chief minister in any dynasty had ever succeeded without the cooperation of inner court officials. Even someone as formidable as Zhang Juzheng still had to collude with the Grand Eunuch Feng Bao to smoothly implement his major policies. Later generations all talk about Zhang Juzheng and the Single Whip Reform, but Feng Bao's role in it was equally immense.

The owner of the residence where Luo Lishi now waited was a key figure in Chongzhen's Inner Court during this period: Director of the Directorate of Ceremonial Fang Zhenghua.

In the mid-to-late Ming dynasty, because multiple emperors neglected governance, the Directorate of Ceremonial, which handled Red Inking on the Emperor's behalf, gradually amassed tremendous power.

The procedure was as follows: memorials from across the realm were first preliminarily annotated with resolution suggestions — Drafting Rescript — by the Outer Court's Cabinet Grand Secretaries, then sent into the palace. Often, they only needed to pass the step of approval — Red Inking — by the Directorate of Ceremonial to become legally binding formal administrative orders of the Ming Empire.

For most of this process, the Emperor was effectively sidelined, because the Emperor simply did not have the energy to handle that many memorials.

The Transmigrators' decision to send someone to contact the Grand Eunuch Fang Zhenghua now had multiple reasons. The primary one was that Fang Zhenghua was one of the current Directors of the Directorate of Ceremonial, and his Red Inking power could perfectly interface with Wen Tiren's Drafting Rescript power — this was what the Transmigrators valued most.

Additionally, it was now 1630; many of the more famous grand eunuch chiefs of the palace from a dozen or so years later had yet to rise through the ranks.

Someone like Wang Cheng'en was merely a junior nobody who had just scraped his way to Eunuch Attendant; Du Xun was still learning to cook in the Imperial Kitchen.

Cao Huachun, on the other hand, was in the limelight, currently presiding over the rehabilitation of Wei Zhongxian's unjust cases.

However, this task clearly required close dealings with the Donglin Party members, so the Transmigrators, having already chosen Wen Tiren, naturally could not approach him — Wen Tiren and the Donglin Party were sworn irreconcilable enemies. Besides, although Cao Huachun was favored by the Emperor, he was still far from entering the Directorate of Ceremonial.

As for the others like Gao Qiqian and Zhang Yixian, the same reason applied: these people had not yet made it into the Directorate of Ceremonial.

At this time point, the Director of Palace Eunuchs of the Directorate of Ceremonial was Gao Shiming, and the Directors were Li Fengxiang and Fang Zhenghua. The Transmigrators' current objective was very clear: they only needed to establish a connection with one of them.

This was the reason Luo Lishi came looking for Fang Zhenghua today: the first two had absolutely no ties whatsoever to the Transmigrators, including the Transmigrators' connections in Beijing — emergency communication would be extremely troublesome.

Only Fang Zhenghua's side could be reached. Because this gentleman had previously served as Director of the Palace Maintenance Directorate, and Luo Lishi was responsible for palace repairs, the two already had a decent relationship.

In the past two years, Fang Zhenghua had moved to the Directorate of Ceremonial, while Luo Lishi, having become a distributor for the Transmigrators, had been pulling strings everywhere to expand the construction materials market, so their relationship had actually grown even better. Fang Zhenghua's private residence, for instance, had been renovated by the construction crew under Luo Lishi; at the time, because Eunuch Fang had been promoted, the glass windows and cement flooring had even been discounted by forty percent, a personal favor owed.

So today, sitting in Fang Zhenghua's private residence outside the Imperial City, Luo Lishi was still confident about the mission, because he understood the man's character fairly well.

At noon, the owner who had received the message indeed emerged from the Imperial City — Luo Lishi had already made a trip to the Imperial City earlier, entrusting a eunuch to deliver a verbal message to Fang Zhenghua.

Fang Zhenghua was a Shandong man, and had also climbed up step by step from the lowest ranks of eunuchs. He was just past forty, in the prime of life, full of vigor and energy.

After meeting his master, Luo Lishi did not delay and quickly laid out the whole story from beginning to end.

Unexpectedly, after hearing him out, Fang Zhenghua made a prompt decision and expressed his willingness to help: he was a eunuch, and his role in this matter was merely to report to the Emperor. Though the credit would be small, he would bear no responsibility either — it was basically picking up a wallet for free.

"I must thank Brother Luo. If this succeeds, there will certainly be repayment later!"

"As for Minister Zongbo and Cao Jiangjun, I must trouble Brother Luo to pass on a word — we should all keep in closer touch going forward."

Fang Zhenghua had come out of the Nei Shufang, so his bearing and manner were close to those of a proper scholar — courteous, modest, and polite.