Chapter 344: Blood-Wash the Examination Hall?

"Strike! Strike! A scholar may be killed, but not humiliated! How can we, the juren of the southeast, be humiliated by eunuch-faction traitors!"

With that rallying cry from the Suzhou notable Su Jin, the entire Jiangnan Examination Hall instantly boiled over. Many juren who had been sitting dazed in their examination cells, or standing stupefied below the Mingyuan Tower, all snapped awake at once.

Today was not an examination — it was a showdown! The cunning and ruthless Governor-General Crown Prince had finally torn off every disguise and meant to extort heavy taxes from the wealthy southeast. These juren could not write a proper "tax-collection policy essay" anyway, so today's exam question was an insult to them — failing to become jinshi and still being humiliated, how could the spirited men of the southeast's scholarly class accept that?

And so the examination hall exploded at once.

"We won't take the exam! We won't! This kind of special examination insults the ancient sages! All juren of the southeast with any blood and ambition should strike!"

"Right! Strike! Strike!"

"No one is allowed to keep writing papers!"

"Everyone go below the Mingyuan Tower and drag out the chief examiner!"

"Right, the chief examiner must be a eunuch-faction man!"

"Go seize the eunuch-faction men!"

In the blink of an eye, the strike wave surged up, and the furious candidates poured like a tide from every direction toward the Mingyuan Tower, completely surrounding the place where Zhu Cilang, the great Crown Prince, was located.

Qian Qianyi, Gong Dingzi, and Wu Meicun all panicked at the sight. Zhu Cilang had of course not come alone — he had brought two or three hundred fully armed guards to the Jiangnan Examination Hall to supervise the exam. Those guards were now inside the Mingyuan Tower, and if they were sent out to fight, it would be a bloodbath!

But if no one was killed, how would this end? How could the strike wave be quelled? The Crown Prince was so unyielding — would he ever yield to the southeastern scholars? If he yielded, how could he govern in the future, how could he usurp the throne?

"Thousand Years, let this subject go out and try to persuade them." Qian Qianyi steeled himself and spoke.

He was a Grand Secretary, and the leader of the Donglin Faction — surely his words would carry weight?

Zhu Cilang smiled. "Master Qian, if you go out there you will get beaten. You are Our teacher; if you get beaten, where would Our face be?"

Qian Qianyi glanced at Gong Dingzi and Wu Meicun. Now was the time for them to step forward, take a beating, and appease the public anger!

"Master Gong and Master Wu need not go out either," Zhu Cilang said with a smile. "If you were beaten, We would lose face just the same!"

"Then — then who will go?" Qian Qianyi asked.

"Yin Yun!" Zhu Cilang shouted.

At once a brawny man in cloth-faced iron armor came thudding up from below. He dropped to one knee before Zhu Cilang: "Thousand Years, this lowly general is here!"

He was from the Tianjin Three Guards, originally the head of Cao Youyi's household retainers, holding the rank of Battalion Commander. In the battle for Tianjin Guard, Zhu Cilang had taken notice of him and repeatedly promoted and entrusted him, and now he had risen to captain of the personal guard.

"Thousand Years, you must not!"

"Your Highness, let this old subject go out instead. This old subject is not afraid of a beating."

"Your Highness—"

Seeing the murderous Yin Yun, the "Three of the Jiangzuo" up in the Mingyuan Tower all panicked. This meant blood-washing the examination hall! Not only had no such thing ever happened in the Great Ming, it had not happened in the preceding several hundred years either!

Zhu Cilang only sneered. "Yin Yun, have your men check their matchlocks, then cut the match cords to one foot five inches and light both ends!"

Hearing the order Zhu Cilang personally gave, the souls of Qian Qianyi, Gong Dingzi, and Wu Meicun were half frightened out of their bodies.

He really meant to unleash a massacre, to shoot the juren taking the examination!

Zhu Cilang then looked at Qian Qianyi with a faint, ambiguous smile. "Teacher, if We were to kill two or three thousand juren in the Jiangnan Examination Hall today, would anyone still dare obstruct the full land survey and the strict collection of commercial taxes in the southeast?"

"Th-Th-Thousand Years, you must not—" As Qian Qianyi spoke, his vision went black, his body went limp, and he collapsed in his chair, unconscious.

Zhu Cilang glanced at him, then looked at Wu Meicun and Gong Dingzi. "Grand Secretary Qian has fainted. Are the two of you going to faint as well?"

"We — we—"

"Thousand Years—"

The two Jiangnan talents no longer knew what to say. The Crown Prince had lost his temper and meant to blood-wash the Jiangnan Examination Hall! There were now more than ten thousand, nearly twenty thousand juren in the hall. If he killed two or three thousand of them, the rest would mostly be scared out of their wits and would surely pay their taxes obediently!

"Fellow recommended scholars, I am Su Jin of Wu County. Today I am honored to gather with you all in the Jiangnan Examination Hall to denounce the remnants of the eunuch faction, to plead for the people's livelihood, to bring glory to the scholarly world, and to rid the court of traitors. This will surely earn us a place in history—"

Below the Mingyuan Tower, the Suzhou talent Su Jin had by now climbed onto a table that had been moved from somewhere and was delivering a speech. Standing below the table were the juren who had come to sit the exam but could not write their papers — some two or three thousand in all, with more still arriving in a steady stream. The soldiers who were supposed to keep order in the examination hall had all vanished to who knew where, presumably scared off by the rebellious juren lords.

When scholars rioted, how would those stinking soldiers dare interfere?

Just as Su Jin thought he was about to make his name throughout the southeastern scholarly world and become the new leader of the Donglin Faction, someone in the crowd of onlookers suddenly challenged him!

"You're lying! You're a eunuch-faction traitor!"

"That Suzhou man standing on the table is a eunuch-faction man! Don't believe him!"

"Right! He's eunuch-faction! He didn't sign the 'Proclamation Against the Tartars and in Defense of the People'!"

"He's eunuch-faction, so he isn't afraid of the Tartars attacking!"

"Right, he's eunuch-faction!"

What? What? I'm eunuch-faction? Su Jin was suddenly confronted by several young juren with Hunan and Jiangxi accents who had appeared from nowhere, and for a moment he was left speechless.

He was only a juren who could write eight-legged essays, not an eloquent politician, so being suddenly accused of being eunuch-faction, he could not react for a moment.

How could he possibly be eunuch-faction? But it was true that he had not signed the "Proclamation Against the Tartars and in Defense of the People" — in fact, the southeastern scholars who had signed that proclamation were not all that many, not tens of thousands as was exaggerated, at most eight or nine thousand, and the rest were fabricated.

In this age, not even the telegraph had been invented, and communications were so backward — how could tens of thousands of scholars possibly have been mobilized to sign in a very short time?

Moreover, the Donglin Assembly had not yet been held, and the Donglin Faction was still an entity in name only, with no real capacity for political mobilization!

So the joint-signature campaign had only actually been carried out in the three prefectures of Huai'an, Yangzhou, and Yingtian. It was not at all strange that Su Jin, living in Suzhou, had not signed.

In Shandong, however, because of orders from the Duke of Yansheng's mansion and the Prince of Lu's mansion, and the frantic agitation of the two militia leaders Gao Hongtu and Zuo Maodi, many scholars had been drawn into signing. But their signature campaign had not ended before Sun Zhixie and Jin Zhijun fled north, so the names of Shandong scholars were actually not in those several boxes of "blacklists."

"I-I-I am not eunuch-faction! I didn't sign because no one came to ask me to sign!"

He actually began defending himself over the matter of not signing, but the moment he defended himself, his momentum weakened. And the juren who had accused him of being eunuch-faction pressed their advantage relentlessly.

"Nonsense! He's eunuch-faction!"

"Right! Only eunuch-faction men oppose strictly collecting commercial taxes!"

(End of Chapter)