Chapter 225: Five

"Wang Lun?"

Wang Mang had just put forward this proposal when someone nearby urged against it: "Your Majesty, this absolutely must not be done!"

It was Chen Chong, the Master of Fates of the Five Majesties. Although Wang Mang knew that the grudge between him and Diwu Lun had never been resolved, today Chen Chong had considerable reason on his side.

"In the beginning, Your Majesty, in order to bring harmony to the nine branches of the clan, made the descendants of the Yellow Emperor and Shun into the imperial house, and all the descendants of the Tian clan into royal kin — even Tian Kuang, the Grand Governor of the Master of Troops Commandant, was no exception. And I, your servant, was also enfeoffed as Marquis of Tongmu, to carry on the blood sacrifices of King Chen Hu."

"Among all the Tian lineages under Heaven, only the Di clans of Linqu Township were not granted the name of the imperial house. This was no oversight — the Minister of the Imperial Clan did it deliberately!"

Chen Chong brought up this old history: "Diwu Lun's ancestors were none other than Tian Rong and Tian Heng from the time of Chu and Han! Those Tian brothers were the very murderers who killed Your Majesty's ancestor, Prince Min of Jibei! How can the descendants of an enemy be allowed to share the same surname as the imperial clan?"

This matter of Diwu Lun and Wang Mang having a "feud of nine generations" was something Chen Chong had kept hidden, waiting only for this day's opportunity. Wang Mang had always been superstitious about clans generating and overcoming one another — for instance, Yao abdicated to Shun, so Yao's descendants, the Liu clan, should likewise abdicate to the Wang clan, descendants of Yu Shun. That was the logic.

He had assumed that once Wang Mang learned of this, he would be displeased, perhaps even reverse his decision to employ Diwu Lun and instead promote Tian Kuang, the ally Chen Chong had secretly been cultivating. But Wang Mang did not follow the expected script. He shook his head. "This matter? I have long known of it."

"The Zhou killed Feilian and Elai, ancestors of the Qin, yet their descendants Zhao Fu and Qin Zhong both served the Zhou loyally."

"Two hundred years have passed. How can the cruelty of his distant ancestors be used to chill the heart of a loyal minister? The very reason I wish to bestow the Wang surname upon Diwu Lun is to let this grievance dissolve and vanish."

Chen Chong was instantly struck dumb. Fortunately, the Grand Prolonger of Autumn, Zhang Han, who was in attendance, stepped forward. After State General Ai Zhang had gone east to Luoyang and State Preceptor Liu Xin had fallen from favor and been long ill, Zhang Han was the only old minister left at court who provided Wang Mang with information on yin-yang and mandate omens. He was deeply versed in the Book of Changes and had been the implementer of the Xin Dynasty's well-field system.

Zhang Han urged Wang Mang from another angle: "Your Majesty, from the perspective of yin-yang suppression, it is still inadvisable to change Diwu Lun's name. For the 'Wu' in his surname happens to match our dynasty's auspicious number."

Different dynasties not only had different Five Virtues, but also used different numbers. The Qin dynasty, for instance, honored the color black, and the number the First Emperor of Qin favored was six. Tally cords and official caps were all six inches; carriage width was six chi; six chi made one pace; six horses were driven; the realm was divided into thirty-six commanderies; the width of the straight roads, the number of palaces and observatories, the character counts on stone inscriptions, tiger tallies, and the Feng and Shan sacrifices — all secretly aligned with the number six.

Though Wang Mang utterly despised the Qin, on this point he was rather similar to the First Emperor of Qin. The Xin Dynasty held the virtue of Earth, honored the color yellow, and its number was precisely five!

Thus tally cords, caps, and carriages all became five chi and five inches. Reign titles changed every five years. Across the whole realm, they forcibly contrived to have two thousand two hundred and five counties, one hundred and twenty-five commanderies, and appointed twenty-five commandery inspectors.

And the number of commanderies guaranteed by the central court officials was as follows: the Grand Preceptor and the General Who Establishes the State guaranteed three provinces, one division, and twenty-five commanderies in the east; the Grand Mentor and the General of the Front guaranteed two provinces, one division, and twenty-five commanderies in the south; the State Preceptor and the General Who Brings Peace to the Beginning guaranteed one province, two divisions, and twenty-five commanderies in the west; the State General and the General of the Guard guaranteed two provinces, one division, and twenty-five commanderies in the north; the Three Dukes — the Grand Marshal, the Grand Chancellor, and the Grand Minister of Works — guaranteed twenty-five commanderies in the central region.

In official titles, Wang Mang was likewise partial to names like Master of Fates of the Five Majesties and General of the Five Majesties. Even Wang Yi's great army was bestowed the name "Tiger Tooth Five Majesties Army" — all to match the numerological usage and secure good fortune in yin-yang terms.

Once one understands this, it is no wonder that Wang Mang was rather partial to Diwu Lun and repeatedly entrusted him with important tasks: the man was simply born with a good surname! In this world, those surnamed Chen, Tian, or Wang are beyond counting, but one called Diwu — there is only this one house.

Sometimes Chen Chong could only lament: if this man had been named Di'er Lun or Disan Lun, he would have been toppled by him long ago!

Now, reminded by Zhang Han, Wang Mang recalled that one of the reasons he had employed Diwu Lun was precisely because he valued this number.

With these two arguments working in tandem, Wang Mang thus abandoned the plan to rename Diwu Lun as "Wang Lun."

"In that case, I shall simply wait until Lord Diwu has swept away those who falsely assume titles for me, and then bestow the surname — it will not be too late!"

Having said this, he asked those beside him: "Where has the Duke of Weixin reached?"

"Your Majesty, he has already passed the Black Dragon Gate and reached the Four Gates of the Royal Road!"

…

Diwu Lun had no idea he had nearly become Wang Lun. After receiving the edict the day before, he had stationed his troops at Hongmen and entered the palace himself, accompanied by the Palace Attendant of the Yellow Gate, Wang Ye.

He vaguely recalled that the last time he entered the palace was before setting out for Wei. Compared to two years ago, the Hall of Longevity had become even more austere: the palace women were older and plainer, and the fabric of their lower skirts had moved from below the knee to above it — supposedly because the Emperor, to save a bit of cloth for the frontline soldiers, had ordered the palace weaving chamber to cut an extra slice.

But that one slice, compared to the "Nine Temples" the court had built at great expense and with countless laborers — tearing down the palaces of the Former Han and using their beams and pillars to construct them in the southern suburbs of Chang'an — was merely a drop in the ocean.

This audience was arranged in the Greenhouse Hall, where the Emperor rested. The place was warm in winter, but in summer it felt somewhat hot.

He remembered especially that on his last visit, the walls here had been plastered with pepper, embroidered silks hung upon them, fragrant cassia made the pillars, fire-bead screens and swan-feather curtains were set up, and the floor was spread with soft woolen carpets from the kingdom of Jibin. Rich fragrance sprayed from beast-shaped censers, permeating the entire hall — likely some spice from the Western Regions or Lingnan.

But now, entering again, he found that all the luxurious decorations inherited from the Former Han had vanished without a trace. The screens were removed, the feather curtains put away, the soft woolen carpets replaced with ordinary rush mats, and even the incense was no longer lit.

"Many refugees have flooded in from east of the passes. In order to scrape together food and clothing to feed the people, His Majesty ordered that all superfluous and extravagant items in the palace be stripped away. As long as they did not violate sumptuary laws, they were sent to the East and West Markets, exchanged for money and grain, and let the powerful families compete for them."

They're even running auctions now? But Diwu Lun very much doubted that, given the current level of corruption in the Xin Dynasty, if the Emperor sent down ten thousand bolts of cloth, would even a hundred remain by the time it reached the bottom?

"Your servant Diwu Lun, pays respects to Your Majesty!"

"Duke of Weixin, dispense with the formalities."

But when Diwu Lun raised his head, he discovered that the last time they met, Wang Mang's hair had been almost entirely white, yet this time…

How had it turned black again! Jet black, as if dyed — one wondered if parting it would reveal silver roots.

Diwu Lun dared not look too long. Wang Mang had a square jaw, a large mouth, and eyes that gleamed with sharp light. Because he toiled at state affairs day and night without rest, the bags under his eyes were also very large, making his appearance somewhat unsightly. When not meeting trusted confidants, he often shielded himself with a mica screen and disliked people staring at his face for long.

But Wang Mang gazed intently at Diwu Lun's features, marveling at his youth and capability, and asked about conditions along the journey. Diwu Lun naturally had to make it seem as though, having received permission, he had traveled day and night — see, the first day of the fifth month was still a few days away.

Diwu Lun had assumed Wang Mang would press him on his strategy for defeating the rebels. He had already concocted a fair amount, which should have sufficed to fob him off.

But what he had not expected was that today Wang Mang was exceedingly patient, not mentioning the southern war at all, and instead showing great interest in Diwu Lun's governance in Wei.

"All that you, my lord, have done in Wei — I am fully aware of it."

These words were rather frightening. Had Wang Mang not been smiling when he said them, Diwu Lun would have thought that the moment the Emperor set down his brush with a clatter, a group of men would rush out from behind the curtains and seize him!

But on careful thought, all the information channels between Wei and the court — from the Marquis of Yangping, Wang Mo, to the Ximen clan — had been cut off by him. Even that Director of Standards, Shi Xiong, had been given great credit by Diwu Lun after the great defeat of the Red Eyebrows, allowing Shi Xiong to be smoothly promoted and transferred elsewhere as a Grand Governor.

Sure enough, Wang Mang knew little of Diwu Lun's rebellious acts. What he focused on was mainly Diwu Lun's pacification of the Li clan of Wu'an the previous year, and the land distribution measures he had carried out after securing Shouliang.

Wang Mang did not know the details well, only that Diwu Lun had crushed the powerful families and evenly distributed their land to the recruited soldiers. Now he asked Diwu Lun to recount the process in detail.

"The soldiers I recruited were mostly refugees, without even a sliver of land to their name. Yet the Li clan and other conspirators sat upon vast wealth of crisscrossing fields. Since they had been expelled, and mindful that Your Majesty had once issued the decree on royal fields and the well-field system, I therefore divided the Li clan's land. Every hundred mu was split into nine shares. Eight shares were evenly distributed among the soldiers, each man receiving thirty or forty mu. The remaining share became public military farmland, to be tilled by the soldiers when garrisoned."

Diwu Lun could only strain to tie his measures to the Xin Dynasty's royal field system, which now existed in name only.

Unexpectedly, these words hit Wang Mang right where it itched, and he launched into a lengthy, rambling discourse.

"Land is the great treasure of the state. It is not only bound to the farmer's flesh and blood, his life and death, his poverty and wealth, but is also tied to the safety of the realm, the order or chaos of the nation, and the rise and fall of every dynasty."

"In ancient times, for every eight households, one well-field was established. One husband and one wife tilled one hundred mu of land, taxed at one-tenth. In this way, the state was well-supplied and the people prosperous, and songs of praise arose together. This was the Way of Tang and Yu, the governance of the Three Dynasties."

"However, the tyrannical Qin was without the Way, destroying the sage institutions and abolishing the well-fields, leading to the annexation of land. The greedy and base arose; powerful and great households possessed a thousand qing of fine land, while the poor and weak commoners had no ground to stand an awl. The Han inherited these ills: powerful people encroached and bullied, dividing up fields and seizing tenancies. Fathers, sons, husbands, and wives among the common people toiled at the plow year-round, yet what they gained was not enough to sustain themselves. The rich, meanwhile, fed human food to their dogs and horses, and grew arrogant and wicked."

"In the time of Han Wudi, Dong Zhongshu proposed limiting private landholdings to ease scarcity and block the path of annexation. In the time of Han Aidi, the Three Dukes, men like Shi Dan, also pushed for land limitation decrees, but in the end, they came to nothing."

"Until I promulgated the Royal Field Decree, taking all land under Heaven back into state ownership and cutting off the path of buying, selling, and annexation. I also hoped that the powerful families of the realm would emulate my act of returning land: any household with fewer than eight adult males but land exceeding one well-unit was to distribute the excess land to the nine branches of kin, neighbors, and village communities. Where there was wasteland, it was to be given first to tenant farmers who previously had no land, ensuring that every tiller had his own field!"

A fine phrase indeed — every tiller has his own field!

Although Diwu Lun no longer, as he had when he first arrived in this era, suspected Wang Mang of being a transmigrator predecessor every time the man did something startling,

this Emperor's way of thinking and style were indeed quite different. His words and deeds always managed to give you a great shock, and could never be fully explained by the simple phrase "reviving antiquity."

China's greatest problem is the peasant problem, and the peasant's greatest problem is the land problem. This has remained unchanged for two thousand years.

It was just that Wang Mang analyzed the contradiction thoroughly, yet truly solving a problem required designing an effective system — it could not be done by words alone. But in this Xin Dynasty, from the Emperor down to the ministers, all were divorced from reality. They spoke only of eating the finest grains without ever discussing the stench of the latrine. With a few words, they decided: the legendary well-field system — that's the one!

An idealistic Emperor, leading a pack of ministers full of private greed, managing this extraordinarily complex realm, expecting every man to be a sage and voluntarily hand over his land — it was sheer folly.

If you ignore human nature, an overly idealistic system is doomed to fail! Though Wang Mang was no transmigrator, his failure taught Diwu Lun — a true transmigrator — a profound lesson.

Yet Wang Mang did not believe he had already lost. He was lost in nostalgia, full of regret. As for Diwu Lun, these words stuck in his throat. He desperately wanted to speak openly and honestly with Wang Mang, but he simply could not get them out, and could only mumble in agreement.

"Your Majesty speaks the truth!"

In the end, this decree had been in force for only three years before it ended in utter disgrace. Even someone as stubborn as Wang Mang had to back down. He no longer forced powerful families to surrender land to restore the well-field system, only clinging stubbornly to the land ban that forbade buying and selling, which at least somewhat curbed the trend of annexation — in the Guanzhong region, at any rate.

And now, with the realm in turmoil, even those like Zhang Han, the Grand Proctor of the Empress's Palace, who had once supported Wang Mang's well-field push, were advising him to abolish the royal land system along with it.

It was not merely to win the support of powerful families everywhere to help suppress the rebels; the court officials felt it could also eliminate the root cause driving desperate commoners to banditry…

After all, a yeoman farmer with a small plot of land was extremely vulnerable. In a year of good harvest, they could scrape by, but if a disaster year slashed their yield, to survive they might sell their land, their children, their wives, even themselves into slavery, just to get through the crisis and find a way to live.

Yet the royal land and private slave decree had blocked that path. When people found that even becoming a slave was impossible, they looked around and saw no way out but exile or rebellion!

But Diwu Lun felt this was a desperate, ill-considered remedy. A few years earlier, it might have worked, at least to curry favor with the great clans. But now, none of Wang Mang's decrees were followed anymore east of the passes. Annexation, the slave trade — everything went on exactly as before. Even in Diwu Lun's own Wei territory, it could no longer be contained, let alone elsewhere.

The common people were fleeing not because they could not sell land or children, but because of the rampaging imperial armies and frequent natural disasters. Once the collapse began, it could not be stopped.

When the disease has reached the vital organs and death is near, only then hastily applying needles, stones, decoctions, and pills… no, rather, stopping the harsh medicine Wang Mang prescribed for the realm — it is probably too late.

Yet Wang Mang felt it was not too late.

"I will not yield. The royal land decree will absolutely not be abolished."

Even now, Wang Mang was quite resolute. He did not believe his hope to "equalize landholdings and curb annexation" was wrong, and remained rather optimistic. What Diwu Lun had accomplished in Wei territory, in particular, seemed to have given the Emperor a powerful shot in the arm.

So it was not my idea that was flawed, but the method of implementation!

Pacing within the Greenhouse Hall, Wang Mang seemed to glimpse another path to realizing the golden age of the Three Dynasties: "I understand now. Men are not sages; one cannot expect the remnants of the former dynasty and the black-hearted powerful families to voluntarily surrender their land."

He suddenly turned and pointed at Diwu Lun: "It must be done as you did in Wei and Shouliang."

Diwu Lun looked utterly bewildered. Wait, Brother Mang, are you going to…

Wang Mang, who would never halt his steps, had another grand plan, and he now shared it with Diwu Lun, who so perfectly matched his thinking and still wholeheartedly yearned to put the royal land and well-field systems into practice.

"The Li clan of Wancheng, the Liu clan of Chongling, the Yin and Deng clans of Xinye, who have attached themselves to those who falsely claim titles — they are all great clans and powerful houses of the Front Division, with hundreds or even a thousand qing of land, their wealth rivaling princes. Once you and the Grand Minister of Works have pacified the south, I shall have every single rebel and collaborator, every last family, utterly exterminated!"

"And their vast lands shall become well-fields, distributed to meritorious soldiers to cultivate, with the surplus used to resettle refugees."

Though the battle had not yet been fought, Wang Mang seemed to already see the dawn of victory and the transformed realm that would follow. He smiled: "I have figured it out. Since the kingly way will not work, then we take the way of arms!"

What Wang Mang had resolved to do was now abundantly clear:

Overthrow the local tyrants, redistribute the land!

…

PS: Tomorrow's update at 13:00.