Chapter 580: Sovereign and Subject

At the end of the sixth month, the First Emperor of Qin's rewards were delivered to Linzi by the Remonstrant Yang Jiu…

Heifu thanked him for the sovereign's grace, then with the utmost reverence accepted a jet-black jade tablet carved with the characters "Grand Chief of the Masses."

Grand Chief of the Masses was the eighteenth rank of Qin's nobility. Before Shang Yang's reforms, the Grand Chief of the Masses assisted the ruler and was roughly equivalent to the early office of Chancellor; afterward its status declined somewhat, but it remained second only to Marquis…

The Grand Master of Remonstrants, Yang Jiu, also clasped his hands toward Heifu and said:

"Commandant, you must have swapped out jade tablets like this a dozen times by now — from rough stone jade to white jade, then to rare jet jade and purple jade, from three inches to half a foot, and now to a full foot. You are only two inches away from the one-foot-two-inch purple jade tablet."

Yang Jiu could not help but sigh with emotion. Seven years ago, he had been ordered to deliver the "Left Chief of the Masses" jade tablet to Heifu. Although he had concluded that this young army officer would one day achieve great things, he had never expected him to climb so fast and so high. In a mere seven years, he had completed the entire journey through the "Minister" tier from lowest to highest. One more step, and he would reach the pinnacle of a subject's glory: enfeoffment as Marquis!

The most outrageous part was not even seven years and eight ranks, but that he often jumped two ranks at a time. Right now, Heifu's noble rank was already equal to that of his father-in-law, the Commandant of Justice Ye Teng. Were it not for his extreme youth, he could be recalled directly to Xianyang to serve as one of the Nine Ministers or their deputy, which would be entirely sufficient…

Looking back at himself, after all these years, his beard had certainly grown very long, but his rank had only risen two levels. Truly, comparisons between men are infuriating.

"It is all thanks to Grand Master Yang's good fortune. Every time Heifu has been promoted in rank, it has been the Grand Master who came to inform me. You are truly Heifu's star of blessing!"

Heifu remained full of humility, which Yang Jiu found very gratifying, but he dared not have too much interaction. The First Emperor detested close officials fraternizing too intimately with frontier commanders; public business had to be handled publicly…

Fortunately, Heifu understood this as well. No sooner had he received the Grand Chief of the Masses jade tablet than he immediately had someone bring forward a lacquer box. Inside lay a gilded tiger tally, both its left and right halves present…

Qin dynasty regulations were strict. To prevent generals from growing too powerful, except for great commanders permanently stationed on the frontiers, tiger tallies were only issued to the commander-in-chief and deputy commanders before each campaign. If the tallies did not match, the troops would not be dispatched. Once the war ended, they had to be returned immediately. In this way, military power remained forever in the sovereign's hands.

Thus, even someone like Lord Wu'an, Bai Qi — when the sovereign wanted you dead, you had no choice but to die, without any room for resistance.

The laws and ordinances of Qin were not only the Qin officials' weapons, but also the ropes that bound them. And the person holding the other end of the rope was the sovereign.

Holding one end, he could loosen it if he wished, or tighten it if he wished.

That was why Shang Yang could make the laws flourish, yet also fall victim to his own laws. Fan Ju could evade blame once under King Zhaoxiang of Qin's protection, but when King Zhaoxiang no longer needed him, he too had to face punishment and execution. Han Fei laid everything bare in his writings, considering everywhere how to strengthen the emperor's power, yet he forgot that when the "perfect sovereign" he had hoped for finally emerged in response to the times, he — the "confidant" who had thoroughly dissected the sovereign's mind and power — had also reached the end of his road.

"Everything you say is correct, but since you are so clever and still yearn for Han, I'm sorry, but I have no choice but to send you to your death!"

Sovereigns all profess love for dragons but are terrified of the real thing. When no one understands them, they lament being solitary men. When someone does understand them, they fear their true heart being fathomed. Moreover, a confidant can be a friend, but cannot be a subject — and an emperor standing above ten thousand upon ten thousand has no friends.

"Only a crafty spirit like Zhang Yi, after achieving fame and success, slipped away fast enough to meet a good end, I suppose…" Heifu thought to himself.

Unlike the simple joy he had felt when he first received a jade tablet, at this moment, as he held this pale purple emblem of Grand Chief of the Masses in his hand, he felt none of the "warm jade's" warmth — only a chill that seeped thread by thread into his heart.

His heart had long since been sullied.

To be honest, the emperor's rewards were still quite fair. Apart from deliberately elevating Heifu one extra rank, everything was carried out strictly according to the laws and ordinances. Cao Can, Gong Ao, and the others under Heifu all received rank promotions. Gong Ao, for slaying Tian Du at the Battle of Pingyuan Ford, leaped to become "Five Grand Masters." Cao Can, because his unit had been the first to scale the walls when Gaotang was breached and had also slain Tian Heng, was promoted two ranks in succession to become "Officer Grand Master."

All officers and soldiers of the army who had rendered meritorious service were also granted noble ranks according to the military rank statutes. The newly acquired farmland was mostly inserted right into Qi territory itself, on the former lands of the rebellious Tian clans…

This was something that rarely happened. Previously, when the First Emperor destroyed the six kingdoms, he toppled their state altars but did not touch the grassroots level. He even issued the decree to "let the black-headed people register their own fields," recognizing the original land ownership and not touching that particular pie.

And the rewards for Qin army soldiers were mostly sent back to their native places. After the Chu conquest campaign, a full six hundred thousand men were promoted in rank, and the land suddenly became insufficient to distribute. They were assigned to open up wasteland on the frontiers like Yuzhang and Beidi, which at the time stirred up considerable resentment. Gong Ao, who served under Heifu, was so furious he nearly mutinied…

But this time, the emperor had reversed his usual practice and begun inserting Qin soldiers' farmland into the densely populated Qi region. This sent an unusual signal:

If the Mount Tai Feng and Shan sacrifices represented the First Emperor's break with the six kingdoms, especially the intellectuals of Qi and Lu,

then this Tian clan rebellion in Qi had made the emperor completely abandon his earlier notion of "taking it slowly." He was no longer content to maintain the past status quo, and the court's policies were suddenly tightening!

The Tian clans were to be exterminated or relocated, and soldiers and military-merit landlords would be inserted to dilute the local powers.

On the other hand, the number of executions, which the First Emperor had increased from two thousand to ten thousand, would be taken to various places and nailed to death across Qi, Chu, Yan, Han, Zhao, and Wei — at every ward post. This also meant that the emperor had thoroughly abandoned any possibility of kingly governance and intended to use the way of force and the way of hegemony, using violence and terror to suppress all under Heaven…

This kind of harsh rectification might well become adding fuel to the fire.

But among the civil and military officials filling the court at Pengcheng, no one dared to remonstrate. The First Emperor was a man of deep vindictiveness. Assassination plus rebellion — these eight thousand extra executions represented the emperor's rage.

"When the Son of Heaven is wrathful, a million corpses lie prostrate, and blood flows for a thousand li!"

Anyone who spoke of conciliation to the emperor at a time like this would probably be regarded as one of those "Five Sorts of Vermin" who "strive to absolve, pardon, and release criminals in order to overawe the mighty."

Well, except for the iron-headed and naive Fusu. A pity he was in Xianyang, too far away to help.

So Heifu's "self-defilement" — staining his own hands with blood — was also a matter of having no choice.

That scene of a perfect meeting of sovereign and subject is merely the imagination of literati and poets. Or perhaps, in the Spring and Autumn period, lords and their household retainers, bound by clan law, feudalism, and ties of blood, might still have had utterly loyal hearts.

But in the Warring States, in Qin, in the court halls at the pinnacle of power, the true relationship between sovereign and subject was in fact a contradiction. They were simultaneously opposed and unified. What maintained the two was more interest than so-called "loyalty and righteousness."

The First Emperor enjoyed reading Han Feizi, and Heifu's father-in-law Ye Teng was also a Han Fei enthusiast, so Heifu had the good fortune to have read a few chapters.

Han Fei told a story: "When a master hires a hired hand to sow and plow, and the master spends his family's wealth on fine food and exchanges fine cloth for money, it is not because he loves the hired worker. He says: by doing this, the plower will plow deeper and the weeder will weed more thoroughly. The hired worker exerts himself and weeds and plows swiftly, exhausting his skill to straighten the field ridges and furrows, not because he loves the master. He says: by doing this, the broth will be tasty and the money and cloth will be easy to exchange."

This means that the hired farmer plows with effort not because he bears any affection for the master, but because he can get more reward; the master treats the hired farmer better not because he cherishes the hired farmer, but because he hopes the hired farmer will till the fields better.

The master is like the emperor, the hired farmer like the assembled ministers. The master sells official posts and titles, the ministers sell their intellect and strength — this is a portrait of the sovereign-subject relationship in a bureaucratic empire.

True. Far too true.

The two sides become sovereign and subject based on the relative height of their power positions. What maintains the relationship, in the final analysis, is still interest. But the interests of sovereign and subject are often different: the sovereign hopes the ministers can be single-mindedly devoted to the public good, but the ministers often harbor private motives — they want to seek profit for themselves, they want to leave a retreat for themselves and their families, and even out of considerations of safety, they want to loosen the ropes tied around them a little, or even reverse the blade of power so that the sword's tip points at the sovereign.

Those who played it well became the Tian clan, became Zhao, Wei, and Han. Those who played it poorly became Lü Buwei.

This contradiction determines that no matter the circumstances, the game between subject and sovereign will never stop for a single moment!

Therefore, for Heifu, facing the First Emperor — the most domineering great boss in history — and still wanting to remain clean, to emerge from the mud untainted, was hardly possible… He had to tread on thin ice with fear and trembling, as if standing on the brink of an abyss!

Inside the system, the emperor's trust was the wellspring that allowed Heifu to keep doing things. If he lost the imperial favor, death was unlikely, but a single written order would send him rolling back to Xianyang to live as a retired noble.

Only by constantly doing things could he find ways and means to swim to the upstream of "power" and exploit the momentum for his convenience.

Heifu had bet correctly. He had made the emperor's dragon countenance beam with delight, and not only was he promoted two ranks, but the emperor also let him off the hook — he no longer had to continue soiling his hands and was released to return to Jiaodong.

The Battle of Gaotang had been over for more than half a month. The "Tian rebels" had almost all been annihilated or captured. Men like Lu Goujian of Julu Commandery had also fled into the old forests of Hejian. Beyond that, because the rebellion had been suppressed so swiftly, the gallant swordsmen of Chu, Wei, Yan, Han, and other places had not yet had time to react and could only continue to lie dormant.

The sky east of the Pass, which earlier had been dense with dark clouds, now — after a black wind blew through — saw the clouds part and the mist scatter.

But the main reason was that people discovered that the sun — that blazing, scorching sun — had not set. It still hung high above, bringing light to those inside the system and bringing cruel, harsh exposure to those outside it!

The sky was still light; the night was yet early.

Protected by soldiers, the Qin officials returned to the rebellious counties to hunt down fugitives, bind them, and send them off to the Great Wall, Hexi, and Mount Li. The commandery offices of Jibei and Linzi replenished their commandery troops and urgently set about purging the remnants of the Tian clans. After this rebellion, the emperor had decided that the "Tian clans" in the four commanderies of Qi absolutely could not be left in place any longer! All were to follow the Jiaodong model: those who had rebelled were to be exterminated, and those who had not yet rebelled were to be forcibly relocated.

One could well imagine that the enforcement process would inevitably be brutal, and sporadic resistance would still appear. This would be another wave of sanguinary wind and bloody rain…

Fortunately, while the surrounding commanderies and counties were in chaos, Jiaodong was at peace.

…

In the early seventh month of the thirty-second year of the First Emperor, Heifu led several thousand Jiaodong soldiers back to Chunyu County.

Unlike a year and a half ago, when Heifu had first arrived and faced a treacherous assassination attempt on the frozen river, this time, as soon as he crossed the Wei River and set foot on Jiaodong soil, he saw beside the ward post, led by the commandery officials and county magistrate, a large group of scholars, separated by vigilant soldiers and personal guards, bowing with clasped hands toward Heifu.

They were the clan heads of the old Jiang-Qi aristocratic families in the commandery — the Yan, Guo, Gao, and Lü clans — along with scholars from each county and disciples of the public academies. Behind them were the "common folk" bearing provisions of food and drink, though in truth they were still those left-lane dwellers and hired laborers who had previously reaped the benefits. But all together, they numbered over a thousand people.

Catching sight of Heifu's banner, the crowd actually knelt and bowed their heads to him one after another:

"We, the gentry, commoners, and elders of Jiaodong, respectfully welcome the Commandery Lord's return. We also thank the Commandery Governor for his foresight in relocating the various Tian clans to the frontier, sparing Jiaodong the calamity of war!"

PS: The second chapter will be in the evening, a bit late.

(End of chapter)