Chapter 332: The Wheel of History Rolls Forward

"Why have you come again?"

In the stone chamber of the Censorate, Zhang Cang's plump face lifted from the pile of books, looking somewhat impatiently at the uninvited guest, Heifu.

Heifu gave a wry smile. "Is Zihu disgusted with me, then?"

"I wouldn't dare."

Zhang Cang propped himself up on the desk and rose, muttering, "It's just that when Heifu was a Court Consultant, that was fine—it was an idle post. Now, as Prefect of the Palace Gentlemen, you are to guard the forbidden precincts. Apart from rest days, you should not stray a step from the King's presence, yet you still have time to come to the archive. That is why I find it strange."

Heifu said helplessly, "Today I came by His Majesty's order, to find a book."

"His Majesty sent you to fetch a book?"

Zhang Cang was somewhat surprised. "Is that not a matter for the Receptionists?"

"It is not to be fetched and delivered to the inner court, but for me to read myself." This was precisely what made Heifu uneasy.

He said, "How would I know where the book is? I could only come and ask Zihu for help."

Zhang Cang grew interested. "What book has His Majesty ordered you to read?"

"The Marquis of Shu scroll in the *Annals of Qin*."

The *Annals of Qin* was the name of Qin's historical records. This book was stored in the adjacent "Hall of Brightness." With Zhang Cang's help, Heifu quickly found that roll of aged bamboo slips.

He sat down at a well-lit desk, unrolled the scroll, skipped past the records of Cancong, Yufu, and the Duyu and Kaiming clans of Shu, and jumped straight to Qin's war of conquest against Shu.

"In the ninth year of King Huiwen, Zhang Yi, Sima Cuo, and Commandant Mo led troops via the Stone Cattle Road to attack Shu. The King of Shu himself opposed them at Jiameng, was defeated, and Ba and Shu thereupon submitted to Qin…"

"In the tenth year, King Huiwen enfeoffed Tongguo, son of the King of Shu, as Marquis of Shu, and made Chen Zhuang the Chancellor of Shu. Six years later, Marquis Tongguo of Shu and Chen Zhuang revolted. King Huiwen ordered the Commoner-Head Gan Mao, Zhang Yi, and Sima Cuo to attack Shu again. Chen Zhuang, in fear, killed the Marquis of Shu and came to surrender. Chen Zhuang was then executed, and the Kaiming clan was exterminated…"

Heifu had only heard a rough outline of this history and did not know the details, but the Emperor had specially ordered him to read it; there must be a deeper meaning.

"In the seventeenth year, King Huiwen enfeoffed Prince Yun of Qin as Marquis of Shu. Because the Rong chieftains in Shu were still strong, ten thousand Qin households were moved to populate it. In the twenty-seventh year, Zhang Ruo walled the city of Chengdu."

"So that is how Chengdu came to be…" Although Heifu liked sweets, he also had a taste for spicy food and was very fond of Chengdu and Chongqing.

He continued reading: "In the fourteenth year of King Zhaoxiang, Marquis Yun of Shu made sacrifices to the mountains and rivers and sent offerings to the King. The King shared them with a close minister, and the close minister immediately died. The King suspected Marquis Yun of Shu intended to rebel, flew into a great rage, forced Yun to commit suicide, and executed twenty-seven of his ministers…"

Reading this, Heifu was startled and understood why Qin Shihuang had made him read this history.

Sure enough, reading further, there was yet another rebellion.

"In the fifteenth year of King Zhaoxiang, the King again enfeoffed Prince Wan as Marquis of Shu. By the thirtieth year, word again came that Marquis Wan of Shu intended to rebel, and the King again executed him. The Marquisate of Shu was then abolished, Shu Commandery was established, and Zhang Ruo was made Commandery Governor… Later, King Xiaowen appointed Li Bing as Governor of Shu Commandery…"

After reading, he was silent for a long time, merely letting out a long sigh and covering his face.

Good heavens, the Emperor had slapped him in the face with hard facts!

Zhang Cang, of course, knew the contents of the bamboo slips. Seeing Heifu's strange behavior, he lowered his voice and asked, "What exactly did you say to His Majesty?"

"Nothing."

Heifu smiled again. This matter was a small lesson the Emperor had given him, and he must keep his mouth tightly shut about it. But thinking it over carefully, to receive instruction from Qin Shihuang was still quite an honor.

The meaning Qin Shihuang wished to convey was clear. The "one country, two systems" policy Heifu had proposed was nothing new. And the counsel to "use border marquises to pacify the lands of the Rong chieftains and barbarians" had already been practiced in Shu by King Huiwen and King Zhaoxiang, with rather poor results.

Whether it was the Marquis of Shu from the Kaiming clan or the two princes of Qin, none met a good end. In contrast, the neighboring Ba Commandery, where no prince was enfeoffed to guard it and a commandery was directly established, never had any major disturbances because the ethnic policies implemented for the Ba people were reasonable.

"There are rebellious marquises, but no rebellious commanderies…"

Heifu's smile was somewhat bitter. He understood the Emperor's meaning: Young man, if you want to offer counsel on the grand strategy of the state, you had better study more!

He also finally understood why the Emperor and the Legalists insisted on comprehensive commanderies and counties and absolutely refused to tolerate any fiefdom creation…

This matter was already settled; it could not be changed by a few words from him.

…

Sure enough, the next day, when it was again Heifu's shift on duty at the Hall of All Under Heaven United, the Emperor summoned the assembled ministers and announced the decision on fiefdoms versus commanderies at the court assembly.

"In the time of the Three Dynasties, the Son of Heaven established states, the feudal lords established houses, ministers set up collateral branches, and grandees had secondary lineages. Kinship was cherished and the honored were honored. Though praised by ten thousand men, this was, however, the privatizing of all under heaven!"

"Qin is different. It takes law as its teaching and officials as its teachers. Rewards do not favor one's own kin; members of the royal house without merit and service may not be entered in the clan registers. Princes and royal grandsons are reduced to commoners in two generations. Commoners and rank-and-file soldiers may, through the merit of farming and battle, be arrayed in the court hall. This is the making public of all under heaven!"

Standing within the hall, Heifu's throat moved. He felt these words were not quite right, but thinking of his own experience, there was nothing wrong with them either.

Although he had risen by clinging to Li You's coattails, in the final analysis, what had allowed him to advance was Qin's relatively fair system of military merit ranks.

After these two resounding declarations, the Emperor ordered the Receptionist to read out the final verdict:

"Now all under heaven has suffered together from unceasing warfare, because of the existence of marquises and kings. Relying on the ancestral temples, all under heaven has just been settled. To re-establish states now is to plant the seeds of war, and to then seek peace and rest—how difficult would that be! In the debate between fiefdoms and commanderies, the Commandant of Justice's opinion is correct!"

"Therefore, I shall not enfeoff my sons and brothers. I divide all under heaven into thirty-six commanderies, and for each commandery, appoint a Governor, a Commandant, and an Overseer!"

Victory and defeat were decided. The Erudites at the tail end of the hall fell into complete silence; they were utterly disappointed with the new dynasty.

Left Chancellor Wang Wan, after a soft sigh, was the first to bow in praise, expressing his submission to the Emperor's decision!

Li Si also bowed together with the assembled ministers, but as he lowered his head, a smile no one noticed appeared at the corner of his mouth.

This was not merely his and Wang Wan's struggle for the future position of Right Chancellor, nor was it simply a debate over fiefdoms versus commanderies; it was also a struggle between Legalism and Confucianism.

The frantic maneuvering of the Confucian Erudites over these past months had finally been dealt a sobering blow. What the Emperor trusted most was still the governance of Legalism.

And he, Li Si, would forever hold a place in the Emperor's heart!

…

Within the Hall of All Under Heaven United, the various court gentlemen and assembled ministers kowtowed, praising the Emperor's decision. Yet in Qin Shihuang's ears, the words that had lingered for the past twenty years seemed to resound again.

"King Zheng of Qin, do you still remember… the ambition of the successive former lords to unify all under heaven?"

"I remember. I have already fulfilled this ambition."

He lifted the jade imperial seal carved from the Heshi Bi with both hands and pressed it heavily onto the edict!

"A grander ambition, an unprecedented and unparalleled great enterprise, shall be realized in my hands!"

If all under heaven is a horse-drawn carriage, then the Emperor is the charioteer, brandishing the long whip to drive the realm!

He cracked the whip, wanting to lead all under heaven away from this thousand-year-old path of "enfeoffment and fragmentation," and bring the living souls of the Nine Provinces onto a completely new thoroughfare!

The poem says: "The Zhou road was like a whetstone, straight as an arrow. The nobleman trod it; the common man looked upon it."

The Confucian scholars praise the governance of Zhou, but in Qin Shihuang's eyes, that was nothing more than a stale, old, and conservative way.

The Qin way, however, is the way of modeling after the Later Kings, the way of pushing out the old to bring forth the new, the way where regardless of nobleman or common man, all can fully exercise their talents!

It is also the Way of an eternal, unbroken lineage!

Though Heifu's counsel that day had planted a tiny seed of hesitation, the Qin Emperor's heart was hard as iron — he would permit no second-guessing, and absolutely no turning back!

His gaze was fixed forever forward, passing over the rows of heads crowned with tall caps and martial crests, looking beyond the palace gates, toward the distant horizon.

Qin Shi Huang seemed to see the shackled captives of the Six Kingdoms, wading through the muddy waves of the Wei River, laboring on the yellow earth of Xianyang's northern slope to build a new, towering palace.

He saw Hangu Pass swing open to the east, as one hundred twenty thousand households of Six Kingdoms nobles and commoners, dragging their families along, streamed westward in a chaotic tide.

He saw the weapons of the realm being confiscated one by one, the selfish border barriers and river fortifications being toppled one after another, the great rivers ceasing to be a scourge, the once-formidable obstacles turning into smooth, open roads.

He also saw, under his rule, this vast and boundless land.

Its territory stretched east to the sea and Joseon, west to Lintao and the Qiang lands, south to the Five Ranges, and north, taking the river as its rampart, along the Yin Mountains to Liaodong. And south of Limen and Jiuyi, there was still an unknown expanse of dense forests and coastal shores awaiting Qin exploration.

He also saw, on either side of Zhangtai Street, the petty officials of every bureau sealing the copies of his edicts, handing them into the hands of the postal couriers, to be carried by boat and cart, dispatched to every region, delivered into the hands of the thirty-six commandery governors, the thousand county magistrates and their deputies, and then passed further down, to be proclaimed aloud by the village bailiffs and hamlet chiefs to the illiterate common folk.

And what would follow would be the united, thunderous shout of thirty million black-headed people.

"Long live Your Majesty!"

"Long live Qin!"

Long after Qin Shi Huang's chariot had departed the hall, Heifu, who was not on duty tonight, still stood rooted to the spot for a long time.

"The Emperor believes he can sever the Gordian knot of feudalism and division, and lead the realm down a new path. Little does he know, the two-thousand-year cycle of order and chaos in China has only just begun!"

Can one blame him? Probably not.

Heifu sank into deep thought: "Every one of us, whether ancient or a transmigrator, can only search for answers within the history we already know."

"Later generations, seeing Qin's swift collapse and the benefits of Han's parallel system of commanderies and kingdoms, will wonder whether Qin, had it adopted enfeoffment, might have walked a different path. But what Qin Shi Huang and Li Si saw was the great chaos brought about by Zhou's enfeoffment, and the three rebellions in Shu sparked by Qin's own enfeoffment of the Marquis of Shu!"

That said, the decision the Emperor made today was, in its broad direction, not wrong.

Though it is easy to break one's back by driving the cart too fast, and though his stubbornness will sharpen the contradictions. Yet the wheel of history rolls ever forward, the tide of the era surges mightily — this man of resolve, of drive, of struggle, the choice he makes at this moment, even if not perfect in every detail, does it not still deserve respect?

Heifu found that, involuntarily, he had begun to worry about the empire's future...

Though personal survival and honor matter most, being inside the system, one cannot remain utterly indifferent, letting things run their course.

By this time, he too had descended the steps, following the palace's central axis road to the gates of Zhangtai Palace. The Gentlemen of the Guard also had leave; Heifu had been on palace guard duty for ten days and had finally earned a rare day of rest.

Unexpectedly, just outside the palace gates, someone stopped him, cupping his hands in salute and saying:

"Chief of the Palace Gentlemen Household! Three years without seeing you — did you not recognize me in the hall just now?"

Looking at the young man before him, dressed in the garb of a Gongcheng rank and about his own age, Heifu was startled, then overjoyed.

"So it's Brother Ba!"

It was none other than Ba Zhong, the son of the Widow Qing of Ba, who had joined hands with him to quell the rebellion back during the Ba uprising in the Yi Circuit of Nan Commandery!

But what was this mine boss's son doing in Xianyang?

(End of chapter)