Chapter 801: The Great Ming Has Learned to Be Bad!

The Great Ming has learned to be bad!

The Great Ming of the past, upright and honorable, a model for all nations, has now learned to be bad!

Truly, the rites have crumbled and the music is ruined!

They have all learned to counterfeit — and not just any counterfeiting, but the disclosure of false information with an extremely vile impact, and major academic fraud.

Song Siyeol walked out of Laoshan Confucian Temple in a state of shock, anger, dread, and despair.

Laoshan Confucian Temple was only a common name; its formal name was the Palace of the Great Achievement and Utmost Sage — the two characters "Great Achievement" were added by Zhu Cilang to Confucius's titles after the excavation of the Zilun Gewu Pian. And the Palace of the Great Achievement and Utmost Sage was a holy site of Confucianism, housing the original copy of the Zilun Gewu Pian unearthed from the Confucius Grove, and personally presided over by Kong Yinzheng, the Duke for Perpetuating the Sage. Thus this Palace of the Great Achievement and Utmost Sage was also called the head temple of all Confucian temples under heaven!

But after Song Siyeol entered the Palace of the Great Achievement and Utmost Sage accompanied by Luo Dagong, he thought he had come to the wrong place!

This was no Confucian temple at all, but a temple to Sun Wu, the Sage of War!

A "Confucius Martial Arts Platform" here, a "Three Thousand Disciples Troop-Mustering Ground" there, a "Fierce-Eyed Spear-Wielding Confucius Statue," a "Confucius Holding a City Gate Model" statue, a "Confucius Expounding the Dao Through the Sword" statue, a "Confucius Shooting a Willow Leaf at a Hundred Paces" statue — in short, what was enshrined in the Palace of the Great Achievement and Utmost Sage was a Confucius who specialized in cutting people down, a figure even more Sunzi than Sunzi himself!

But such distortions of Confucius's image counted for little in the Palace of the Great Achievement and Utmost Sage, because the Ming Confucian scholars, led by Kong Yinzheng, were also distorting Confucius's teachings.

They spouted nonsense like "the brave who have love are humane" — so Confucius's "humaneness" now meant first learning to cut people down, then daring to cut people down and not fearing being cut down, and finally showing mercy under the blade and not cutting people down recklessly. So this great sage Confucius was actually teaching the principles of cutting people down?

Well, not cutting people down recklessly is also a principle — at least it is more principled than cutting people down recklessly, right?

What Song Siyeol found hardest to accept was the academic fraud committed by the Ming sovereign and his ministers regarding the Zilun Gewu Pian!

He had already seen the original copy of the Zilun Gewu Pian, protected under a glass cover imported from Venice — this was a treasure not everyone was qualified to see. Only with Zhu Cilang's personal approval would Kong Yinzheng, the Duke for Perpetuating the Sage, and a senior eunuch (a grand eunuch) responsible for guarding the Palace of the Great Achievement and Utmost Sage together use their keys to open the iron door of the treasury.

Although the entire process was full of ritual and mystery, Song Siyeol, who was deeply learned in antiquities, was certain that the original copy of the Zilun Gewu Pian he saw was fake. Because this great work, buried underground for over two thousand years, with a total length of tens of thousands of characters — a monumental work by the standards of the Spring and Autumn era — contained not a single character that Song Siyeol could not recognize, and not a single sentence that Song Siyeol found utterly incomprehensible.

Moreover, throughout the entire text there was not one wrong character, not one missing character, not one character so blurred by age as to be illegible!

A thing from two thousand years ago! How could that be possible?

How many coincidences would have to come together? How could it be possible? Since it was impossible, that meant this Zilun Gewu Pian was fundamentally a hoax — a fraud!

And the fact that no one in the Great Ming dared to publicly expose this forged remnant of the Utmost Sage and First Teacher showed that the hidden hand behind the fraud could blot out the sky.

In the Great Ming of today, there was only one such person! It was the Son of Heaven in the Laoshan Palace.

And this Son of Heaven was unlike all previous emperors of the Ming — cunning and sinister, daring even to fabricate something like a Japanese pirate invasion. Forging a Zilun Gewu Pian was nothing remarkable by comparison.

It seemed that Ming Confucianism was going to be destroyed by this forged Zilun Gewu Pian!

Henceforth, the orthodox line of Confucianism would be in Joseon.

"Master Song, Master Song, what are you thinking about?"

Luo Dagong's voice sounded beside Song Siyeol's ear, and only then did he realize he had made a fool of himself — he was standing outside the gate of the Palace of the Great Achievement and Utmost Sage in a daze!

That Duke for Perpetuating the Sage, who looked like a "Zhang Fei reincarnate," and that Ming zhuangyuan of empty reputation, Luo Dagong, were grinning as they looked at him!

"Well?" Luo Dagong asked with a smile. "You have seen the original of the Sage's surviving work?"

"I have seen it!" Song Siyeol was no fool; he did not dare say it was fake.

"Good, good." Luo Dagong nodded, his face full of envy. "What great fortune! Even I, a Ming court official and a zhuangyuan, have never had the chance to see it with my own eyes!"

"That is because the Son of Heaven treats those from afar with generosity," said Kong Yinzheng, the Duke for Perpetuating the Sage, with a smile. "But only Master Song has been permitted to see it. Last time an envoy from Annam came to request a viewing, he was not granted one."

That is because you were afraid of being exposed! Song Siyeol thought to himself. Now that the fake has become real, and many Confucian scholars who study the Zilun Gewu Pian will consciously defend it, there is no need to keep it so tightly sealed. But Joseon must never fall for this! We must firmly uphold the correct line of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy!

The principles in the Zilun Gewu Pian are greatly detrimental to the stability of the Joseon state!

The moment he thought of Joseon's tranquility, Song Siyeol remembered the "fake Japanese pirate navy." To counterfeit to such a degree was simply madness and depravity!

Such conduct was not what a great and superior state should do!

The "counterfeiting emperor" of the great and superior state, Zhu Cilang, did not feel there was anything wrong with counterfeiting at the moment — all is fair in war, after all!

As for academic fraud — the learning itself was all genuine! It was merely promoted under Confucius's name; otherwise it would not have been so easy to open the "Gewu Imperial Academy"!

Four hundred "Gewu jinshi"!

After two or three more years of self-study, a new-style education system that did not need to rely on foreign teachers would take shape!

So Emperor Zhu did not know he was in the wrong at all, and was still leading the Great Ming down the path of learning to be bad.

"All using soft-sail ships? Can you manage it?" Zhu Cilang held a table of organization for the "United Fleet of Japan" in his hand, reading it as he asked.

"We can! No problem!" Zheng Jiangong thumped his chest. "Before the Feixiang returned, our men really weren't up to it, but now they are. And the students of the Naval Academy have studied soft sails — if we actually used hard sails, they wouldn't be as good."

It turned out Emperor Zhu was preparing to send his "own line of the navy" out into the world!

A navy also needs tempering in real combat. Keeping it always in port would not do! It had to be sent out to test itself against the navies of strong powers.

Of course, Zhu Cilang could not fly the flag of the Great Ming — that would be a declaration of war against the Spanish Empire!

That could not be done; room had to be left for maneuver. Not because he feared Spain, but because there truly was no need. Even if you did not strike at it, it did not have many years left to strut.

But fighting without a declaration of war, flying the Japanese flag to test themselves against the Spanish, was not something to fear.

"Should we get a few atakebune?" Zhu Cilang asked. "Since it is supposed to be a Japanese navy, it ought to at least look the part, right?"

"No need," Zheng Jiangong shook his head. "Atakebune are junk. Terrible seaworthiness, prone to capsizing, and insufficient firepower. Sending them out to meet Spanish galleons would be suicide. They are not as useful as our big bird ships."

As merchant ships, the big bird ships were quite good — strong seaworthiness, few sailors required, especially suited to the variable winds of China's coastal waters.

But as warships, they were somewhat slow, which was disadvantageous for seizing favorable battle positions. Therefore the navy of the Great Ming Empire now uniformly equipped itself with soft-sail ships.

The number already in service was not large either — including the Feixiang, there were only seven soft-sail ships of over 600 tons in total, of which three were warships and the rest armed merchantmen.

But the strength of seven soft-sail warships of over 600 tons (including the 800-ton Feixiang), placed east of Malacca, absolutely made it the third navy!

The first navy was of course the East India Company's navy — no comparison there. The gap in navigational and naval combat experience was too great, and they also controlled the Strait of Malacca, able to summon fleets from the Indian Ocean at any time, and in numbers that could crush the Ming navy.

The second navy in the East was the Dongning Fleet! That was Zheng Sen's fleet. Zheng Sen possessed ten Western-style soft-sail warships. Although he had no large ship like the Feixiang, he also owned the Anping Shipyard, whose technical standards were first-rate, capable of continuously producing soft-sail warships.

The third navy was the navy directly under the Great Ming Empire — seven medium soft-sail warships, with a total displacement exceeding 4,500 tons, already quite formidable.

And the fourth navy was the Spanish fleet stationed in the Philippines colony. It did not include the galleons of the Viceroyalty of New Spain that paid regular visits, nor the armed merchantmen belonging to the Spanish Pacific Trading Company.

The galleons of the Viceroyalty of New Spain could not be touched, but the armed merchantmen of the Pacific Trading Company were excellent prey!

(End of Chapter)