Chapter 326: An Open Scheme

After Zhang Yixian finished his display of false modesty, he summoned a young eunuch and gave a few instructions. The young eunuch, bearing the name cards of Zhang Yixian and Zhao Zhilong, hurried straight to Dongli Pavilion, while the assembled men in the hall rose from their seats and gathered in small groups to murmur among themselves.

Zhang Yixian, for his part, chatted casually with Zhao Zhilong about old court anecdotes with an air of complete ease.

A little over half an hour later, the messenger eunuch returned and reported to Zhang Yixian that the Imperial Commissioner was feeling unwell and not fit to receive outside guests; once he had recovered, he would naturally invite Eunuch Zhang and the Earl of Xincheng to discuss matters.

Everyone in the hall knew this was Li Banghua's excuse, but they were utterly helpless against it. Seeing that it was already noon, Zhang Yixian had no intention of keeping them for a meal—he merely remarked that they should not delay their official duties and should return to await word, then rose and left with Zhao Zhilong, going around the screen to drink in the rear courtyard. Lü Weiqi and Yu Youwei, left with no choice, also rose and departed one after another.

That very afternoon, bad news arrived one after another. Several mid- and low-ranking officials from the Ministry of Works, the Ministry of Rites, and the Ministry of Revenue were taken away by the Embroidered Uniform Guard from their offices and homes. And when the afternoon shift ended, Lü Weiqi and a host of other senior officials discovered that Embroidered Uniform Guard officers were brazenly following behind them. When they made their way home in trepidation, they saw figures of Guard officers at both the main gates and side doors of their residences—these signs made it abundantly clear that they were all under surveillance. For a time, every official of any rank in the Nanjing officialdom was gripped by panic, each fearing that the Guard outside their gates would suddenly burst in on orders and take them away.

The cause of this atmosphere of universal dread was those two terrifying words: guilt by association.

The crime of implication that the Founding Emperor had inaugurated in the great cases of the early dynasty was too dreadful. In the Hu Weiyong Case, the Empty Seal Case, and the Guo Huan Case, tens of thousands of people in each had been implicated and executed, their families wiped out. Though two hundred years had passed since those cases, their immense deterrent power over civil officials persisted to this day, and the main force that had carried out those cases was the Imperial Guard, which had awed the Great Ming ever since.

Although no emperor after the Founding Emperor had again unleashed the practice of exterminating nine familial branches on a grand scale, many cases investigated by the Depots and Guard still dragged countless innocents into their nets. When the current Emperor ascended the throne, he had purged the eunuch faction, then restricted the power of the Depots and Guard to the greatest extent possible, and through these two measures won unanimous praise from the Donglin faction. But judging from various signs in recent years, the Depots and Guard, long thought to have vanished, had been reborn, and their rise was now unstoppable.

What the Depots and Guard, currently on an upward trajectory, needed most was to render meritorious service, because in doing so they could bring enormous wealth into the palace, which would surely win the Emperor's vigorous support. And these fat sheep who had long dwelt in places of luxury were precisely the targets of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, that ravenous wolf.

The officials, whose fears multiplied the more they imagined, stared wide-eyed through a bitter sleepless night. When they reported for duty the next day, every yamen had several men with dark circles under their eyes and sallow, pallid complexions.

Because the residences of important figures were all under Guard surveillance, Lü Weiqi and the others could not even gather to discuss countermeasures. Whether by day or night, all officials in the city with major interests in the Southern Metropolitan Region had invisibly lost their freedom—behind each of them, openly or covertly, trailed Guard officers. This feeling of having a thorn in one's back was both terrifying and nerve-wracking.

Meanwhile, the Guard's arrests showed no sign of stopping. Every day, officials and clerks were taken from several important ministries and departments. Although those arrested were not of high rank, what was frightening was that everyone worried whether the next to be seized might be themselves.

After several days spent in fear and anxiety, Zhang Yixian and Zhao Zhilong once again convened the senior officials who had attended the previous meeting at the yamen. Once all were seated, Zhang Yixian waved a hand, and a young eunuch carrying several routine memorials distributed them to Lü Weiqi, Yu Youwei, and the others in the seats of honor before withdrawing.

These memorials had been sent by Li Banghua's men to the Residence of the Garrison Eunuch. They had been written by several investigating censors touring Shandong who intended to present them to the Emperor, but since the head of the Censorate was nearby in Nanjing, they had first been forwarded for Li Banghua's review.

The contents of these memorials differed, but their ultimate thrust was unanimous. After enumerating the various malpractices of the ministries and courts in Nanjing, these censors all concluded by requesting that the Emperor abolish the rump court in Nanjing, establish new provinces in the Southern Metropolitan Region according to locality, and have the court select officials to fill the posts—thereby thoroughly solving, at the level of official structure, the problem of the court's edicts not running smoothly in the Southern Metropolitan Region for two hundred years.

The censors unanimously hinted in their memorials: since Emperor Chengzu moved the capital north, over two hundred years the rump court remaining in Nanjing had gradually slipped beyond the control of the Emperor and the central court. Possessing money, grain, and troops, it had in effect become independent of the entire Great Ming, showing the early signs of the separatist military governors of the former Tang dynasty. If the court did not take timely measures to respond, perhaps unspeakable calamity would arise in the future. For the sake of the imperial Ming dynasty's altars of state enduring for ten thousand generations, abolishing the Nanjing rump court was an imperative move.

Of course, these memorials had been written at Zhu Youjian's direction, with Li Banghua instructing several censors close to him to compose them.

The memorials were quickly passed around and read by all the Nanjing men present, after which the young eunuch stepped forward, collected them, and withdrew from the hall.

"What a venomous scheme! Heh! Destroy the man, destroy his heart—well said, 'perhaps unspeakable calamity'! In two hundred years, this is the first time anyone has put forward such an absurd argument! So all that came before was merely laying the groundwork—the drunkard's heart is not in the cup! Heh heh heh heh! Fine! Very fine indeed!"

Lü Weiqi sneered coldly.

Now the truth was fully revealed.

From the Jiangnan market-closure case, to Li Banghua and Li Ruolian arriving one after another in Nanjing, to the Guard's so-called talk of mass implication, to the arrests and property seizures of these past days that kept pressure on the Nanjing men—the Emperor's ultimate purpose had finally been revealed in today's memorials.

"Perhaps unspeakable calamity"—these words directly cut off any thought of non-cooperation among the Nanjing men.

For the Emperor, the moment he detected any sign of a threat to the altars of state, he would surely immediately adopt the most extreme methods to destroy it utterly. The Nanjing men could well imagine that once these memorials reached the palace, what would follow the imperial edict south would certainly be countless elite troops with gleaming weapons. When that time truly came, it would no longer be a matter of the Guard selectively seizing people and confiscating property; under the ravages of iron and blood, many official-gentry magnate families that had existed for two hundred years would be uprooted and utterly annihilated.

If the Embroidered Uniform Guard was a wolf, then those armies that razed cities and forts and treated human life as mere grass were simple killing machines. The Guard used ropes to take people; the armies spoke with blades.

Yet even understanding the truth of the matter, the Nanjing men were utterly helpless. This was an open, aboveboard scheme, and those words about unspeakable calamity had given it the most fitting justification.

Though Lü Weiqi's words struck a chord with everyone present, no one voiced agreement aloud. Nearly all were contemplating what this affair meant for themselves and their families—including Zhang Yixian and Zhao Zhilong.

If the Nanjing rump court were abolished and new provinces established, the post of Garrison Eunuch could no longer exist, and the meritorious Garrison Marquis would disappear along with it. Zhang Yixian would certainly be recalled to the palace, while whether the Earl of Xincheng's household would remain in Nanjing was still unknown.

Zhang Yixian and Zhao Zhilong, who had thought themselves above the fray and able to profit from the situation, were deeply disheartened—they had not expected the Emperor's measures to be so decisive that virtually no one in Nanjing would be spared.

While worrying whether the Guard would continue making arrests and confiscating property, the Nanjing men also fretted over their own futures. As things stood now, abolition seemed all but certain. If the Emperor, to reassure the people, ordered the Guard to cease its arrests, how would their group be resettled? And once they went north to the capital, how would the family businesses that depended on them develop and survive?

Each lost in his own thoughts, no one spoke a word. The atmosphere in the hall was both strange and calm. Only one path lay before the Nanjing men: submission. Otherwise, they would either be immediately seized by the Guard into the Imperial Prison, or await the army's arrival from the south and stretch out their necks for the blade.