Chapter 1614: Celestial Alliance, Celestial Soldiers, Celestial Punishment

"Lords and ministers of the vassal states who have come from afar, you have gathered at Yingtian to send off our Great Ming's departed Retired Emperor. But We wish to take this rare opportunity, with all of you assembled together, to work out with you a plan that bears upon the everlasting peace of the Great Ming and of your vassal states and city-states for ten thousand generations..."

On the plaza outside the Gate of Imperial Supremacy, Zhu Cilang had already finished his conversation with Zhu Qirui and had begun, word by word, to lay out his plan for establishing the Celestial Alliance.

This Celestial Alliance was very nearly the last great undertaking of Zhu Cilang's life!

In his view, over the fifty-six or fifty-seven years since he had been swindled over here by the Great Ancestor, the Exalted Emperor, he had in fact accomplished only two great things. The first was the restoration of the Great Ming — rescuing a dynasty that the Chongzhen Emperor had tormented to its last breath. The second was the establishment of a Celestial civilization sphere.

Of these, the first great undertaking was done for the ancestor who had swindled him — Zhu Cilang was the foremost filial son under heaven, after all, so of course he had to restore the Great Ming for his ancestor!

And the second great undertaking was for the country and for the people! Filial piety is foremost among all virtues! Zhu Cilang was the twenty-fifth filial paragon destined to be remembered through the ages, and naturally possessed a noble soul. Therefore he could not merely conquer and govern the realm for one family and one surname; he also had to leave behind a legacy that would benefit ten thousand generations for the countless descendants of the Yan and Huang Emperors and for the nation of Huaxia standing in the east of the Divine Continent.

That legacy was a civilization sphere belonging to the Huaxia people!

In Zhu Cilang's view, even if the Ming dynasty could not have its life extended, even if the people of Huaxia had to endure the sufferings of the Manchu Qing and the Republic, there would still come a day of revival... But what could be revived in the future was only China — there would be no Celestial civilization anymore.

In Zhu Cilang's memory, although the China of later ages was able to revive, it no longer possessed its own civilization sphere... A fallen nation can rise again, but a vanished civilization sphere may very well have been forever submerged in the long river of history.

And when Zhu Cilang had taken over from Chongzhen as the receiver of a broken realm, although the Ming's territory was shattered and ruined, this nation still stood at the center of a civilization sphere.

Although this civilization sphere had been shrinking continuously for various reasons, compared with the situation in later ages, it was still immeasurably better. Because no matter how hard Huaxia tried, it could not possibly do everything by itself...

Perhaps it is only after losing something that one learns to treasure it, and so this man standing at the center of the Celestial civilization sphere had begun working to revive his civilization sphere even before the war for the Ming restoration had been won — this time, Huaxia must not be allowed to lose its civilization sphere again!

And the first step in Zhu Cilang's revival of the Huaxia civilization sphere was, of course, to solemnly bring forth the lost writings of Confucius — the "Zilun Gewu Pian" — under the name of the "tomb-raiding Imperial Ama" Dorgon, thereby opening the great gate of Huaxia natural philosophy!

It was not that Huaxia civilization truly lacked the desire to explore natural philosophy; in fact, Huaxia civilization's inquiries in this area were by no means few. But because it had never found the proper gate, it could not grasp the essentials, and thus found it difficult to produce inspiring results.

Scholarship, too, must reckon with input and output. If a certain direction of research never yields results, the number of people willing to pursue it naturally dwindles... Just as in later ages no one studied the way of immortality — cultivate as one might, no one was ever seen to become an immortal!

Thus Huaxia's "investigation of things and extension of knowledge" always ran into the predicament of investigating and investigating, yet unable to investigate out a single hair — there was the desire to study nature, but without methods and tools, the difficulty of research was too great! Over time, of course, people retreated in the face of difficulty, and retreating and retreating, natural philosophy became a neglected field.

In fact, before the Ming's decline, when Western natural philosophy first began to be introduced, a great number of Ming scholar-officials with full bellies and nothing to do were quickly drawn to it and began to study and research it.

But because there was no way to drape Western natural philosophy in the skin of the Confucian and Mencian Way, there was naturally no way to make it into a prominent school of learning.

And the appearance of the "Zilun Gewu Pian" draped natural philosophy of Western origin in the outer garment of the Confucian and Mencian Way, making it possible to turn natural philosophy into a prominent field that everyone was willing to pursue — compared with moral essays, natural philosophy equipped with the "Zilun Gewu Pian" was far more likely to produce results. For the foundation of moral essays was nothing but the great principles of Confucius and Mencius, which predecessors had studied for so many years that they had long been chewed to pulp — what flowers could still be researched out of them? But Huaxia's natural philosophy had boundless prospects. Study the "Zilun Gewu Pian" diligently, and if that was not enough, consult some Western books on natural philosophy — and before one knew it, one might become a great Confucian scholar!

Do not assume that because Huaxia had an official-rank-centered mentality, all clever people would necessarily go into officialdom. In fact, throughout Huaxia's history there were no few people wholly devoted to scholarship. Moreover, holding office, making a fortune, and pursuing scholarship were not incompatible. Was not Newton, so great a scholar, also the Warden of the Royal Mint?

And the path of first becoming a great Confucian scholar and then seeking office was not bad either! One could harvest fame, profit, and office all at once!

And to become a great Confucian scholar, one naturally had to produce respectable scholarly achievements. But in the field of moral essays there was no longer any room for breakthrough, and so the many great Confucian scholars who emerged during the Hongxing years all took the path of natural philosophy.

By the fiftieth year of Hongxing, the Huaxia civilization sphere had essentially caught up with the West in natural philosophy!

Of course, a civilization sphere cannot survive on scholarship alone. Otherwise, the present Western civilization ought to be centered on Greece.

Therefore the second step in reviving Huaxia civilization was, of course, to strengthen the trunk and spread the branches... The Great Ming was the trunk, and it had to be made strong! But there could not be only the Great Ming, because the Ming court's capacity for governance was limited, and so the territory it ruled could not be too large. Yet if, because the court's governing capacity was insufficient, one simply gave up striving and muddled along, allowing one's own civilization sphere to gradually disintegrate and shrink until it was finally lost altogether, that would leave calamity to one's descendants.

Therefore, as soon as the war situation in the Ming homeland had somewhat stabilized, Zhu Cilang began to consolidate and expand the civilization sphere... And so for these forty or fifty years, Zhu Cilang had persisted in carrying out a colonial line aimed at expanding the civilization sphere and the living space of the East Asian race.

Because the homeland was not greatly expanded, the Ming court could shift the costs of colonial expansion and the pressure of administration outward at the same time. At the same time, it could maximize the mobilization of domestic enthusiasm for expansion and colonization... It even allowed many Japanese, Annamese, Joseon people, and Mongols to ride along on the expansion of the Celestial civilization sphere — this is what happens when a civilization sphere expands! Just as in Europe, where it was Portugal, Spain, Holland, and England that took turns dominating the seas, with France added at most. Yet many Germans, Italians, Slavs, and Northern Europeans also drifted along with them to the New World, Oceania, and Africa.

In the original history, Belgium — which did not even exist during the Age of Discovery — even managed to obtain a large chunk of colonies in Africa...

No matter how many people hitched a ride, the main body of this Huaxia civilization sphere that Zhu Cilang built was certainly the Han people of the Celestial Dynasty, and the overwhelming majority of the vassal states also had the Han people and Han culture as their mainstream. In fact, under the empowerment of the "Zilun Gewu Pian," Confucianism's combat strength had greatly increased, and it had already overwhelmed Buddhism and Daoism to become the dominant school of the Celestial civilization sphere!

But forty or fifty years of rough-and-ready expansion had also caused the interior of the Celestial civilization sphere to become increasingly chaotic.

Of course, the interior of a civilization sphere cannot possibly be as orderly as the interior of a single nation. Chaos is unavoidable, and struggles between states are even more inevitable.

But amid the chaos and struggle, a certain order must also be established!

With order, it will not slide toward disintegration.

With struggle, it can maintain its vitality.

Zhu Cilang, his gaze burning, looked upon the assembled princes and dukes of the various Huaxia states, and after a long silence, spoke again: "Today We wish to conclude with you lords the Grand Charter of the Celestial Alliance, to bind the member states, to protect the Huaxia orthodoxy, and to ensure that our descendants shall not be made to wear their hair loose and fasten their garments to the left, nor be trapped by barbarians!

Therefore, for the first article of the Grand Charter, We propose that it be set down thus: All states of the Huaxia realm must uphold the Huaxia orthodoxy, study the Way of Confucius and Mencius, and observe the rites of the Celestial Dynasty..."