Chapter 431: Do Not Die as Peaceful, Starving Wraiths

PS: The previous chapter has been slightly revised. The Inspector of Ji Province is now Huang Chang, and Pi Tong has been made Governor of Weicheng.

……

During the Spring and Autumn period of the Zhou dynasty, not only were noble titles passed down through generations, but official posts within the states were also hereditary. The most typical example was the state of Jin: the Zhao clan held the rank of minister, and for several generations, the clan heads all served as ministers. The six ministerial clans divided up the six general and lieutenant-general posts of the three armies, ranking them by seniority and seniority alone — only when the person ahead died or retired from old age could the next in line move up.

These were rules the ministerial clans set for themselves. If the Marquis of Jin, as the ruler, had tried to insert his own trusted men to dilute their power? Had he actually done so, he would likely have faced a joint attack from the six ministers and been deposed in favor of another ruler. This was called hereditary offices for hereditary ministers.

It was not until the Warring States period that a new system of appointing officials "according to merit and in proper order" emerged. Though the degree of reform varied from state to state, all basically followed the principle of "granting rank upon seeing merit, bestowing office according to ability."

In the Qin dynasty, which enforced this most strictly, noble rank advanced one tier per one deed of merit — rigid and inflexible. Even the veteran general Wang Jian, who had conquered several states, complained that the title of full marquis under the First Emperor of Qin was terribly hard to attain.

Official posts, however, were different. As long as the ruler deemed you capable, leaping several ranks and overtaking your seniors was commonplace. There were many cases of foreign guest ministers and commoner scholars rising in a single bound to wear the seal of the Chancellor. And when the ruler no longer needed you, no matter how great your past contributions, you were dismissed at a word, without a single murmur of complaint.

After centuries of centralization, if Diwu Lun, at this stage, could not even reassign his ministers, then what was the point of contending for the realm? He might as well hang himself at once.

That was precisely why Jing Dan was relieved of his post as Imperial Counselor and dispatched to You Province as Inspector.

"It looks like a demotion, but Sun Qing also retains his status as General of the Front, giving him unified military and civil authority over the ten commanderies of You Province. After all, most of those commanderies are only nominally subordinate, still effectively controlled by semi-independent Governors. With the Xiongnu, Wuhuan, and Goguryeo causing trouble on the borders as well, power in You Province needs to be concentrated."

This was an enormous mark of trust in Jing Dan. In Ji Province, however, the situation was somewhat different — Diwu Lun intended to divide power slightly.

Pi Tong was transferred to the northern capital, Yecheng, to serve as Governor of Weicheng. It was a half-step promotion that allowed him to exercise his talent for governing a commandery, while preventing him, as a member of a great Xindu clan, from excessively favoring the powerful families and local factions of Hebei.

The Left Chancellor and General of the Rear, Geng Chun, also held both military and civil duties to speed the recovery of this scarred and ravaged province, but the power of oversight fell to the Inspector of Ji Province.

Huang Chang, of humble origin, was promoted — a move perfectly justifiable by procedure. If one insisted on ranking by seniority, Huang Chang was the very first Wei scholar to pledge allegiance to the King of Wei. He had assisted Ma Yuan in taking Henei and earned minor merit, and had now also attained the rank of count. Since becoming Director of the Chancellor's Rectifiers, he had handled intelligence and oversight work impeccably, closely aligned with the Inspector's core duties. His only shortcoming was…

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"He's short!"

In the Han dynasty, holding court office depended not only on ability and background but also on appearance. The disabled and deformed could not serve. Huang Chang stood barely over six chi tall, which counted as a third-degree physical defect.

Yet Diwu Lun made this appointment precisely because he needed Huang Chang to carry out a major task for him!

Upon returning to Yecheng, Diwu Lun summoned Huang Chang for a consultation.

"In former times, Emperor Wu of Han established the Inspectors — low in rank and salary but great in authority, a balance of small and large. But the present dynasty is different. The realm is in turmoil, especially in Bing, You, and Ji provinces. The commandery and kingdom officials at the two-thousand-dan rank are mostly rebels or recent defectors who have not been subordinate for long. Unless the Inspector holds high rank and heavy authority, he cannot keep them in check."

Diwu Lun said: "You should know, as Inspector, what matters you must oversee?"

Huang Chang, profoundly grateful for the King of Wei's promotion — all those years of toil had not been in vain after all — replied: "The Inspector has six articles of inquiry!"

"First: officials of the two-thousand-dan rank and below who disobey imperial edicts, forsake the public good for private ends, prey upon the common people, and amass wealth through corruption — investigate and interrogate them!"

This article targeted those who directly used their power to seize the people's wealth and squeeze their blood and fat. In a newly subjugated place like Ji Province, where laws were lacking, such evils were often committed openly — they had to be crushed.

"Second: those who show no care for doubtful cases, who kill with fierce severity, who impose punishments in anger and bestow rewards in wanton pleasure, who harass, oppress, cruelly exploit, and slaughter the common people, becoming a scourge to them — investigate and interrogate them!"

Ji Province had only just been pacified; popular uprisings could easily erupt. The cruel officials needed to be reined in a little.

"Third: those who make unfair selections and appointments, favoring and clinging to those they like, slighting the worthy and doting on favorites. Fourth: their sons and younger brothers who rely on their influence and power to seek appointments in the territories under oversight — investigate and interrogate them!"

These two articles targeted cronyism. But in Ji Province, where officials loyal to the King of Wei were insufficient, such fine distinctions could not be enforced at all. At most, when sons and brothers bullied others by abusing their power and went too far in harming the local community, they would be curbed.

"Fifth: those who betray the public trust by colluding with the powerful families below, passing bribes, and undermining government decrees — investigate and interrogate them!"

When the authorities collude with powerful families, a situation often arises where "one would rather betray a two-thousand-dan official than offend a great clan." Although the great clans of Ji Province had suffered considerable damage during the war, they remained deeply entrenched. Diwu Lun did not believe that Geng Chun and Pi Tong, both born of great clans themselves, could bring down the ruthless hand required. That was why he needed Huang Chang to share his sovereign's burden.

"Beyond the five articles for overseeing officials, there is one more: guarding against powerful clans and local magnates."

At this, Diwu Lun asked in return: "Over the past two hundred years, who has been the greatest local magnate in Ji Province? Who has exceeded the regulations in land and dwellings, used strength to bully the weak, and used numbers to oppress the few?"

A jolt ran through Huang Chang; he understood the King of Wei's meaning.

He raised his head, his words charged with excitement and murderous intent: "The various Liu clans!"

……

A few days later, the first decree of the Inspector of Ji Province was issued from Yecheng to every commandery, ordering the garrisons and two-thousand-dan officials to carry it out at once!

"The Book of Documents, 'Charge to the Duke of Bi,' states: 'Guard against the stubborn people of Yin; move them to the city of Luo, that they may be near the royal house and be transformed by its teachings.'"

"When the Duke of Zhou made his eastern expedition, only the stubborn people of Yin refused to submit. Fearing they would rebel, he relocated them to the eastern capital, close to the royal house, so as to use its teachings to transform them."

"Last year, the Bronze Horse bandits ravaged the lands of Ji, causing the common people to suffer grievously, their brains smeared on the ground, the dead beyond counting. Fortunately, the King of Wei, with his sagely virtue and divine might, drove out calamity and chaos, executed the unprincipled, and brought great peace to Hebei."

"Wang Lang, Liu Yang, and Liu Lin were akin to the chaos of the Three Overseers. The various Liu clans of Hebei are like the stubborn people of Yin. Thus, having reflected on past pain, I intend to have the eight Liu clans relocated to Bing Province and placed under the jurisdiction of its counties."

The so-called eight clans were the eight kingdoms once established in Ji Province: Zhao, Zhongshan, Changshan, Zhending, Hejian, Guangchuan, Pinggan, and Guangping. Beneath them were numerous branches of descendants, who had been enfeoffed with no fewer than thirty-five marquisates for royal sons, now branching into over fifty families involving tens of thousands of people. It seemed the King of Wei intended to finish what even Wang Mang had not done — to tear them out by the roots!

On the surface, the wording followed the Zhou dynasty's relocation of the stubborn people of Yin — well-founded and reasonable.

But that was only the first layer. Those "clever people" who saw the second layer began to murmur: "The King of Wei is probably avenging the old grudge from when Liu Bang relocated the descendants of the Tian clan!"

Two hundred years ago, to guard against the various Tian clans of Qi, Liu Bang relocated the entire clan of Tian Heng's family, thus giving rise to the Diyi through Diba clans of Changling.

Now Diwu Lun was likewise dividing the various Liu clans of Hebei into eight families for relocation — no matter how you looked at it, this was wanton retaliation!

A Confucian scholar who had studied the Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals excitedly did the math: "From Han Gaozu to Liu Ziyu, that is exactly the ninth generation. Does this not fulfill the words of Confucius?"

"Can a blood feud of nine generations still be avenged? Confucius said: 'The kingly way restores the ancient; honor the king and repel the barbarians.' A blood feud even of ten generations may still be avenged!"

The kingly way, repelling barbarians, avenging blood feuds — every phrase matched the King of Wei's style. This interpretation thus spread widely. Though some considered the King of Wei petty, the common people mostly approved.

When Diwu Lun learned of this in Yecheng, he was not angered but pleased.

"Just as I expected. The point is to make people think I am carrying out clan vengeance!"

In this move, Diwu Lun was on the fifth layer: using the narrow appearance of clan revenge to mask the substance of striking at the landed magnates.

He could not let everyone understand that his reason for targeting the various Liu clans of Hebei was purely because he had his eye on their land!

During the Bronze Horse rebellion, because of Liu Ziyu, who turned his elbow outward, many of the Liu clans had been ruined. But the bulk of their wealth and land remained concentrated in their hands.

Diwu Lun had pondered the problem of roving bandits in Hebei. Ji Province was densely populated with limited land, numerous great clans, and a sharp problem of land annexation. Aside from the original Bronze Horse core, who mostly fled from the Yellow River flood zones around Bohai, the rest were largely landless poor peasants and tenant farmers swept up and pressed into service in various commanderies.

The Bronze Horse were said to number a million — it sounded inconceivable, but if you added the two hundred thousand fighting men in mobile warfare to the families behind them, the number might actually be real.

Over these months in Ji Province, Diwu Lun had traveled through many places, crossing countryside that was once fertile but had now turned barren and desolate. Everywhere he went, the sight was shocking.

While the King of Wei fought against Liu Ziyu, in many commanderies and counties where order had collapsed, the grain harvest had nearly failed for a full year. Through the bitter winter, countless people starved to death every day.

Diwu Lun often saw people fleeing west toward the Julu area. The flesh hanging on their bodies hung in folds, every bone clearly visible. Their eyes were blank and lifeless. Even a twenty-year-old youth moved like a withered old man, step by halting step, unable to walk steadily, tottering under the harsh sun, stretching out a bent hand to beg a mouthful of food from passersby.

And according to Ma Yuan and Zhang Yu, the refugees who never made it west were even more numerous. Scenes like this had been going on for years.

Driven to such a state, must one still ask, "Why don't they eat minced meat?" or "Why not be peaceful, starving wraiths, rather than imitate the mantis that fiercely waves its arms?"

The refugees banded together into roving bands of brigands, attacking the feudal lords and powerful magnates who levied crushing taxes and duties on them yet could not fill their bellies, who seized their land yet could not repair the irrigation canals. They stormed the cities and looted the rich and extravagant, the ones who bought up their wives and daughters, who went on laying out thirty-six-course banquets while honest men starved.

Until they were used by Liu Ziyu and reduced to cannon fodder in the struggle for supremacy.

Two or three out of every ten people vanished in three years of upheaval, yet the chaos did not end with Liu Ziyu's death.

So long as the common folk keep fleeing into exile, the Tongma will spring up in an endless stream. Exterminate the Tongma, and there will still be the Tiema and the Xima; in the end, a patch of ringworm will swell once more into a mortal affliction.

When you get to the root of it, it all comes back to land and grain.

Diwu Lun only said to himself: "What the mantis that waves its arms, for all its fury, cannot accomplish because of its own limits — that I shall do."

The defeat of Liu Ziyu this time was achieved mainly with troops from Henei and Wei Commandery, seventy to eighty thousand men in all. Diwu Lun had to settle the matter of land and homesteads for these men. The family properties, estates, and fields of the King of Zhending and the King of Zhao across the various commanderies were confiscated in their entirety, yielding several hundred thousand qing — enough to distribute land to the soldiers.

But that was still not enough. Sorting out the abandoned land in each commandery one by one and returning the refugees to the fields was an extraordinarily difficult task. There simply were not enough officials to carry it out, and to finish it all, the whole year would have passed. Moreover, the grain supplies in Henei and Wei were stretched to the breaking point and could not meet the relief needs of Hebei.

Yet the refugee problem brooked no delay. Diwu Lun therefore tore down the east wall to patch the west wall: he struck down all the Liu princes of Hebei and confiscated the grain they had hoarded. Only then would the Jizhou authorities have enough rice in hand to provide relief. And the more than one hundred thousand qing of ready land reclaimed as public fields could be used to settle over a hundred thousand Tongma army captives and several hundred thousand refugees in military-agricultural colonies nearby in the spring, giving them hope of survival, binding them to the land, and turning them back into registered, taxpaying commoners.

This decision did not even rise to the level of a trolley problem: let a few tens of thousands of people who had already enjoyed wealth and privilege for over two hundred years leave this land. The sacrificial victims of the Liu ancestral temples would become toilers in the furrows.

Yet the famished, who outnumbered them several dozen times over, could thereby survive. They would not, in their desperation, have to pin their hopes on a fake Wang Lang risen from the dead.

And so long as any Tongma chieftain or common soldier was willing to go straight and become a tenant farmer to earn a mouthful of food, the court would welcome them at any time.

In this way, the various Lius would fall, and Diwu would eat his fill — enough to let Hebei slowly settle down, restore production, and contribute its strength to the King of Wei in the war of unification. As for the rest of the local strongmen, they could be dealt with slowly later on.

Having arranged all these matters, Diwu Lun was about to leave Yecheng. Looking back at the land of Jizhou, so heavy with suffering, he gave these parting instructions to Geng Chun, Huang Chang, and Pi Tong:

"Remember this."

"If the meat-eaters were truly brilliant and godlike in their rule, bringing peace to the realm and prosperity to the people, who would willingly become a refugee?"

"The numbers of the roving bandits are not decided by the fake Wang Lang, or Shanghuaikuang, or Chengtou Zilu."

"They are decided by me — and by all of you!"

There were still garrison troops in the various commanderies of Jizhou. Riding the prestige of a great victory, at a moment when the various Lius had been weakened, and with the Hebei magnates who had once bound themselves to the Lius by marriage unwilling to shield them, the edicts were carried out with extraordinary smoothness.

The overwhelming majority, just like the various Tian clans two hundred years before, hung their heads and resigned themselves to misfortune. They obediently handed over their granaries, fields, and homes, and with their weeping, wailing families in tow, left the fiefs where their ancestors had lived for generations. They departed with the army returning to Taiyuan, not knowing where they would be resettled.

There were also some clansmen of the Liu imperial house who still had fire in their blood. They rose in arms to resist, and after being suppressed, fled to the eastern part of Jizhou, gathering in the reed marshes by the Yellow River.

These sons of the Liu clan gathered together, each pouring out his grief over the destruction of his family and the scattering of his wife and children. They were filled with righteous fury, convinced they had done nothing wrong, yet their wealth had been stripped from them. This was open plunder by Diwu Lun!

"Had we known it would come to this, we should have fought to the death alongside the Sixing Emperor back then!" They were all consumed by regret. A month ago, they should never have heeded Diwu Lun's call to surrender and laid down their arms. Now it was too late to take up blades again.

They were somewhat at a loss, and could only turn their eyes to their leader — Liu Zhi, who had lost an eye at the Battle of Xiaquyang but had narrowly escaped with his life — and put their questions to him.

"King of Xindu, they all say the Sixing Emperor still lives. Shanghuaikuang in the west says the Emperor is with him, and so does Chengtou Zilu in the east. Where is he, exactly? So that we may go and rally to him."

But Liu Zhi could not deceive himself, nor deceive the others. Heavily, he told them the truth: "The Sixing Emperor met his end at Xiaquyang."

Liu Zhi had no trust in the roving bandits. Shanghuaikuang and Chengtou Zilu were merely exploiting the Sixing Emperor's name — a crime of deceiving the sovereign. These two men were Han ministers in name, but Han traitors in truth! They were utterly unworthy of service.

As he watched the various Lius sink once more into despair, Liu Zhi suddenly spoke with ringing authority: "My lords, though the Sixing Emperor has passed, the Great Han has not perished!"

He looked down on Lu Fang; the Western Han and the Green Han were dead in all but name, not worth mentioning. But east of the passes, there were still two outstanding men of the Liu clan. If they could join hands, why worry that the house of Han would not be restored?

"In Liang, in Yanzhou, there is the Jianshi Emperor."

"In Huainan, in Jiangdong, there is also the King of Wu, Liu Xiu!"

Liu Zhi rose to his feet: "I shall go south, to Suiyang, to pay my respects to the Jianshi Emperor and petition him to join forces with the King of Wu. Together we shall strike down the realm's enemy, Diwu Lun, and fight our way back to Hebei!"

Liu Zhi was firmly convinced that the Great Han had not perished.

Wherever the Han banner flew, a raging inferno still blazed!

What Liu Zhi did not know, however, was that at this very moment, the two outstanding Lius he was counting on to "join hands" — Liu Yong and Liu Xiu —

had already met beside the Huai River, blades drawn against each other!

PS: Chapter 2 at 23:00.