Chapter 596: Change the Reign Title, Take a Small Wife

Taking a wife and taking a concubine are two entirely different experiences, and for Zhang Zhao, who was now taking consorts, it was the same.

Back when he had his grand wedding, all the elaborate rites and formalities had made his head spin, but now, taking Lady Fu and Gao E'nang, he was far more at ease — he did not even have to go receive the brides, and only needed to wait inside the palace.

First, the Gao and Fu families prepared their daughters and their dowries, and at the auspicious hour they arrived precisely outside the Vermilion Bird Gate of the Qianyuan Palace.

Then, escorted by Gao E'nang's elder brother Gao Xingzhou and Lady Fu's eldest younger brother Fu Zhaoxin, they were delivered to the inner palace.

After that, Gao Xingzhou sent word to the inner palace attendants, and only then did Empress Cao Yanxi, who had long been prepared, lead the palace attendants, maids, and guards to the Xuanwu Gate, one of the main gates of the inner palace.

The groomsman invited for the bridal escort was He Fujin, one of the Thirteen Loyalists of the Xingjiao Gate as certified by Zhang Zhao, a sworn friend unto death of Lady Fu's father, a man of high virtue and great prestige.

More crucially, after Zhang Zhao entered Kaifeng Prefecture in the Eastern Capital, in order to change the prevailing atmosphere, he had gone to great lengths to exalt loyalty and righteousness.

The thirteen men who had last defended Emperor Zhuangzong Li Cunxu at the Xingjiao Gate, and their descendants, had all been given important posts.

And the painting "Thirteen Loyal Ministers Defending Their Lord," based on the defense of the lord at the Xingjiao Gate, was already half finished.

When Zhang Zhao was returning from Yangzhou to the Central Plains, he had specially issued an edict ordering the ruler of the Southern Tang, Li Jing, to have the Southern Tang's famous painter Gu Hongzhong accompany the imperial procession to Kaifeng Prefecture in the Eastern Capital, first to paint portraits of the thirteen men, and then to complete this "Thirteen Loyal Ministers Defending Their Lord."

Gu Hongzhong was the famous painter who, in history, painted "The Night Revels of Han Xizai," and he was especially skilled at figure painting.

And among the thirteen, those still alive — Fu Yanqing, He Fujin, Wang Quanbin, and others — were all among those being given important posts.

For men like Hou Yi, who already had moral blemishes, his son Hou Renbao was given an important post instead.

For those already deceased, such as the eldest son of Xia Luqi, their descendants were richly rewarded with wealth and rank.

Although He Fujin had not yet been sent out to a provincial post, Zhang Zhao had already raised his offices to Acting Grand Marshal and Grand General of the Left Dragon-Soaring Guard — both were honorary titles, clearly meant to build up his credentials before sending him out.

At the same time, He Fujin's son He Jiyun was also transferred back from Chenzhou to the Eastern Capital, to serve his rotation of palace guard duty in the Hanshan Division.

It was also obvious that, like Gao Xingzhou's son Gao Huaide, he would be gilded with experience and then sent out as a great general.

With the halo of the Thirteen Loyalists added on, the Fu and Gao families had carefully selected He Fujin to serve as groomsman.

Even Empress Cao Yanxi, who had originally intended to wait inside the palace for the two daughters of the Fu and Gao families to come pay their respects, upon seeing He Fujin outside the palace gate, personally rose and went out to the palace gate to receive them.

One must not underestimate what Zhang Zhao was doing — under his vigorous promotion, He Fujin and the other thirteen men shone like dazzling pearls, glittering above the heads of all the military men.

On the surface no one said anything, but An Shuqian, An Shenyue, and others had long been inwardly eaten up with envy, wishing they could go back to the Xingjiao Gate and play the loyal minister themselves.

And the younger generation, seeing how the thirteen families of the Xingjiao Gate had prospered, suddenly understood in their hearts.

So if one's father had little power, but had simply been a loyal minister, he could still leave blessings to his descendants!

One could say that through Zhang Zhao's deliberate exaltation, the matter of being a loyal minister — something that had scarcely been spoken of for nearly one or two hundred years — had recently and suddenly become something people often kept on their lips.

Outside the Xuanwu Gate, after a set of elaborate ceremonies, the bridal escort turned back, while the two women followed Cao Yanxi to go pay their respects to Zhang Zhao.

Zhang Zhao, once again a bridegroom, sat upright in the inner palace, waiting for two delicate young ladies to bow to him.

But Zhang Zhao, who had originally been prepared to properly appreciate the two women's lovely figures, was immediately disappointed.

Because the two young ladies were simply swallowed up by their magnificent ceremonial robes, and on their heads were nine-tiered dragon-and-phoenix flower hairpin crowns that almost completely covered even their faces.

Still, Zhang Zhao observed them with interest for a while, until the palace attendants reminded him that the time for the grand court assembly had arrived, and only then did Zhang Zhao nod and leave.

Empress Cao Yanxi, feeling a little sour at heart, escorted the two women to the rear palace.

But she was only a little sour, because she knew the importance of the Emperor taking these two consorts.

This could be seen from the ceremony itself — this time they used the pattern of a common folk marriage, rather than the original custom of simply having them sent to the palace, where the Emperor would "sample" them and, only if satisfied, nod and accept them, starting from the lowest ranks of Beauty and Talented Lady — instead, they were directly made consorts.

Zhang Zhao chose to hold the grand court assembly on the very day he took his consorts precisely because he was about to make a major move.

The crowd of Hebei local magnates, who had just been enjoying themselves immensely in the Eastern Capital, were brought directly to the grand court assembly.

These men, though in their own prefectures, counties, and villages they were top figures whose word was law and who held the power of life and death, were still sufficiently awed by a state-level formal event like the grand court assembly.

It is like that swaggering Boss Dong of Tazhai — if you hauled him into Zhongnanhai and gave him a scare, he would still behave like a cowed grandson.

And this was exactly the effect Zhang Zhao wanted.

In such a solemn and awe-inspiring setting, and under the immense pressure of Zhang Zhao himself and tens of thousands of imperial guards,

what was said to be the Hebei magnates coming to the Eastern Capital to negotiate terms with the Emperor was in reality nothing more than the magnates kneeling on the ground, listening to the Emperor's instructions.

Of course, if Zhang Zhao went too far, once these men returned home and recovered their nerve, they would certainly refuse to cooperate, so Zhang Zhao still had to give them some sweeteners to taste.

The concrete solution was this: Zhang Zhao would not demolish their fortified manors at all, but the population of the manors had to accept the court's census and registration.

The taxes that ought to be paid could not be short by a single cent, and at the same time, people the manors could not feed had to be released.

Do not assume that once inside a fortified manor everyone could eat their fill — in times of chaos, such a paradise did not exist.

In fact, the hierarchy inside the fortified manors was even more brutal, and it was entirely normal for the farmers at the very bottom to starve to death.

However, compared to those scattered in the wilds, who had the freedom to starve to death, inside the fortified manors, as long as those above did not permit you to starve to death, you did not have that freedom.

This is also the reason every dynasty hoped to eradicate the fortified manors — not because their fighting strength had grown so great that the state apparatus could not destroy them, but because this closed social structure was perfectly suited to raising sworn assassins.

They could not defeat you on the battlefield, but they could raise sworn assassins, and then use those assassins to kill high court officials and even imperial relatives, and could also use them to disrupt local order and even collude with foreign enemies.

At the slightest stirring in the countryside, with these people fanning the flames, things could very easily blow up into something huge.

Zhang Zhao had them open up their fortified manors for court inspection precisely to break the pattern of each manor being a world unto itself.

If the population of the manors decreased, and the hierarchy and oppression were not so deep, their independence would also quickly vanish.

At the same time, the magnates of each fortified manor also had to agree to sell half of their cultivated fields to the court, and the court would use these fields to distribute equally to the common people who did not belong to the manors.

Zhang Zhao's method of payment was this: if you sold one mu of cultivated land to the court, the court would give you ownership of five mu of abandoned wasteland, and would also pay you the land price from peacetime as the purchase price.

Of course, most importantly, the magnates of each fortified manor had to quickly organize their able-bodied men so as to respond to the court's great army marching north, and their stockpiled grain and fodder also had to be contributed, with the court purchasing it at market price.

And apart from these demands, the rest were benefits: Zhang Zhao gave the land of Hebei a total of fifty passing quotas in the Classics, Mathematics, and other examination subjects.

This was to let them distribute official hats among themselves — those who passed would be appointed as officials in the other prefectures and in the central government.

At the same time, Zhang Zhao also decided to draw brave and valiant young men from among the people of Hebei to organize the Left Qianniu Guard and the Changshan Garrison; the Left Qianniu Guard was set at three thousand men and would serve as a personal army accompanying the Emperor's left and right, while the Changshan Garrison was designated as an imperial guard unit.

From now on there would be seven personal armies and eight imperial guard garrisons — this was giving the brave young men of Hebei a chance to rise.

However, the selection for the Left Qianniu Guard and the Changshan Garrison would not be decided by the magnates themselves.

It had to go through the court's selection and assessment, strictly following the regulations of the personal armies and imperial guards.

All of this, in reality, was nothing more than a redistribution of interests.

Zhang Zhao would take out a small portion of shares in the Great Zhou state and let the Hebei local magnates offer up real gold and silver to buy them.

After this, the Hebei magnates would also be members of the court.

Guo Tiance explained the plan point by point to the assembled Hebei magnates, and the magnates kneeling on the ground glanced at one another, all showing satisfied expressions.

They quite approved of Sage Zhang's plan, and they could also sense that the Son of Heaven was indeed extending goodwill toward them.

Very often, the moment people hear the combination of fortified manors and powerful local families, the word "separatist" immediately springs to mind.

But in reality, apart from the Eastern Han, the fortified-manor magnates were generally not very large.

The Eastern Han had no choice in the matter — Emperor Guangwu's foundation was too thin, and he was in fact pushed onto the imperial throne by the Hebei magnates.

The Hebei magnates of this time were no more than a single family and surname controlling a few hundred people, and then several families banding together to form one fortified manor. They could not withstand the Khitan host sweeping south, and even less could they withstand the court's iron cavalry.

Nor was anyone foolish enough to actually believe that by relying on a fortified manor they could stand independent of the court.

What they sought was nothing more than the power to hold on to as much of the population as possible; rebelling against the court was absolutely something no one contemplated.

Originally, they did in fact have another path to take, and that was to support Liu Zhiyuan.

Liu Zhiyuan's little Hedong court was far smaller in scope than Zhang Zhao's Great Zhou, and its strength was considerably weaker as well.

Moreover, without a great base like Hexi, Longyou, and Guanzhong, whose combined population reached six or seven million, Liu Zhiyuan's bargaining power in the face of the Hebei magnates was much lower, and the magnates could more easily extract greater benefits from Liu Zhiyuan.

It was only a pity that they were not Henan magnates or Huainan magnates — they were Hebei magnates.

Ever since the land of Yan-Yun was seized by the Khitan, the Hebei magnates' number one mortal enemy had been the Khitan, without exception.

Given the way Liu Zhiyuan was cozying up to the Khitan, the Hebei magnates, who had just endured the Khitan host sweeping through like locusts, could not accept it emotionally, could not ignore it in reality, and still less could they take the long view.

Who knew whether Liu Zhiyuan might, like Shi Jingtang, sell them out in order to enter the Central Plains?

And so, after a brief silence, the magnates once more pressed their heads to the ground.

One of them, an old man over seventy from Dingzhou, raised his head slightly and called out loudly to Zhang Zhao.

"This commoner kowtows in thanks for the Sage's heavenly grace. The land of Hebei has suffered calamity after calamity; today at last a sage sovereign has appeared, willing to take pity on us, the people who struggle to survive beneath the Khitan iron hooves."

At this, Zhang Zhao finally no longer sat high upon the imperial throne, but strode swiftly down and helped the old man to his feet.

"The Khitan have seized our rivers and mountains, and sooner or later they will pay the price. We are willing, together with you elders, to restore and revive the nation!"

Hearing Zhang Zhao speak thus, the Hebei magnates all rose to their feet, and the Great Tang's traditional spectacle of mountain-chanting and dancing immediately descended.

The Hebei magnates arranged themselves with Gao Xingzhou in the center, An Shenqi and Fu Yanqing to the left and right, and Huangfu Chong and the old man following close behind.

Over a hundred people first chanted "Long live the Emperor" in unison with rhythm and cadence, then broke into small, quick-stepping dance movements.

Zhang Zhao could tell that the dance movements were not strictly prescribed, but could be freely improvised.

Gao Xingzhou, for example, was imitating the movements of a valiant warrior on the battlefield — his left hand held an empty blade, his right hand seemed to grip a great shield; he advanced two steps and thrust, then retreated one step as if faintly defending.

An Shenqi was rather more freewheeling, his dancing actually resembling the fellows who flail about wildly in the bars of later ages.

Fu Yanqing was far more proper, dancing to the rhythm of the "Prince of Qin Breaks the Battle Formation" dance.

The old man was old in years but not in body; his dancing looked something like sumo wrestling, and the others' postures were each of every shape and form.

Yet although the dance styles differed, there were no fools among them, because no one at this moment chose to dance the most popular dance of the time, the Sogdian Whirl.

Hmm... Hebei magnates whirling away at top speed in the palace, before the Emperor — that really would have been a touch of black humor.

Having accepted the Hebei magnates' mountain-chanting and dancing, Zhang Zhao formally became their emperor, and the Hebei problem was, on the surface, resolved.

This coalition, composed of the yabing guards of the various garrisons plus the local magnates, would soon provide the court with guides, provisions, and other assistance in Zhang Zhao's campaign against Liu Zhiyuan.

Of course, not everyone in the land of Hebei would submit to Zhang Zhao; Liu Zhiyuan would still win over a portion of them.

The current arrangement had also been reached under conditions of compromise by Zhang Zhao; once the Khitan threat was gone in the future, it would certainly need to be revised.

After the magnates finished their homage dance, they withdrew one after another, because the next item on the agenda had nothing to do with them — and the biggest item of all was that Zhang Zhao was going to change his name.

He had no choice but to change it! The character Zhao was simply too common.

When people of this time chose names, they mostly liked to use Yan, Cun, and Zhao as the middle character — for example Zhao Yanjin, Zhao Yanshou, and so on, who sounded like brothers but in fact had no relation at all.

And as for the character Zhao, it was used in names a great deal as well; Fu Yanqing's sons were all named Fu Zhao-something.

Zhang Zhao's own Vice Minister of Rites of the Left was named Zhang Zhaoyuan, who in history had changed his name to Zhang Zhao in order to avoid Liu Zhiyuan's taboo name.

Even more exaggeratedly, the Zhang Zhaos in history were beyond counting; the most famous was of course the elder statesman of the Sun Wu regional faction, Zhang Zibu.

There was also, in the Northern Wei, the son of Zhang Pu, Duke of Guangping, who was also called Zhang Zhao and served as Prefect of Youzhou and General Who Pacifies the East — a minor celebrity, more or less.

In the same period, the Southern Dynasties also had a famous Zhang Zhao — that great filial son who wept and vomited blood when his father died, and who shut his door for over a decade after both parents passed. As for other unknown Zhang Zhaos, there were even more.

Even in the present dynasty, people called Zhang Zhao, or Zhang Zhao-something, or Zhang Something-Zhao, were beyond counting in every region.

Zhang Zhao now somewhat understood the plight of Emperor Xuan of Han, Liu Bingyi.

The two characters "Bingyi" were also very common; if he did not change his name, the common people would not even dare to mention the word "illness," and the prisons were even filled with commoners who had violated the emperor's taboo name.

So Liu Bingyi could only choose to change his name to Liu Xun, and then release from prison all the commoners who had been jailed for violating the taboo.

However, it was not as if there were no emperors who chose to tough it out — our Taizong the Civil Emperor, Li Erlang, was the classic example of toughing it out.

The two characters "Shimin" were even more universal than "Bingyi" and "Zhao," but Li Erfeng could still bear to make the whole realm avoid his taboo.

It was just that Zhang Zhao did not have such strong psychological fortitude, and moreover, coming from a later age, that character trait of not wanting to bring too much trouble to others was still imprinted on his heart, so Zhang Zhao prepared to change his name.

And so, after the Hebei magnates withdrew, the Hanlin Academician and Drafter of Edicts Li Fang at the Emperor's side announced on the Emperor's behalf that henceforth the Emperor's taboo name would avoid the character but not the sound, and that the Emperor's taboo name would change from Zhao to Zhao with the metal radical.

The new character was homophonous with Zhao, and moreover this character had already fallen out of common use in daily life; its original meaning was to cut something with a metal implement (usually a sickle).

Zhang Zhao chose this character first because the pronunciation did not need to change, and second because the Great Zhou, inheriting the Great Tang's virtue of Earth, took Metal as its virtue, so using a character with the metal radical was exactly in keeping with the times.

The final layer of meaning was the surface meaning: it signified that Sage Zhang would raise his weapons and reap the rulers of states that refused to submit, or other separatist powers, as well as the Khitan northern barbarians.

And after Zhang Zhao changed his name to Zhang Zhao, he still had another great matter to attend to, and that was the bestowal of surnames.

Among my Sage Zhang's Four Great Guardian Kings, apart from Wang Tongxin, none of them yet had complete formal names.

Man Xiong was of Guiyi Army origin, but both his parents had died in the Bianqiao battle when the Ganzhou Uyghurs attacked Dunhuang, and he had grown up eating the food of a hundred households.

He was called Man Xiong because he was as brawny as a bear and somewhat brutish in temperament, hence the name "Man Xiong." As for his father's surname — he himself no longer remembered it, and others could not say clearly either.

Qiong Reduojin, by contrast, knew exactly who he was: he was a Tibetan herding slave from the Qingtang Plateau.

But after Zhang Zhao occupied Liangzhou, Qiong Reduojin's small tribe began claiming that their ancestors were Hexi sons of Tang who had been captured and taken up onto the plateau, and they became very sensitive about anyone saying he was of Tibetan herding-slave origin.

Dhondup's background was even more of a muddled account — his mother did not even know where she herself had come from, nor who Dhondup's father was.

The name Dhondup was an extremely common name for both men and women on the Qingtang Plateau; the two characters "Dhondup" were a Chinese transliteration of the Tibetan pronunciation.

"Dhon" means a matter, and "dup" means to complete; together they mean to complete a matter. In Tibetan the combined meaning is a person who can get things done, and rendered into Chinese it carries the implication of achieving merit and fame.

But as a founding meritorious minister of the Zhang Zhou dynasty, going about forever bearing a Tibetan name like Dhondup was rather unseemly.

Besides the three of them, Ma Shacai and Ma Yaozi also needed to change their names.

Ma Shacai came from the Geduo horse-bandit gang. He was not surnamed Ma at all, but was of horse-slave origin, and "Shacai" was plainly an insult. Taken together, the meaning was something like "horse-raising wretch," and it clearly could no longer serve as a name.

Ma Yaozi, for his part, did know that his surname was Ma, because back when Luo Xianda bought him to be trained as a death-sworn agent, he had been placed in the care of an old woman. The old woman's surname was Ma, and so Ma Yaozi took the surname Ma after her.

However, although old Mother Ma gave Ma Yaozi the warmth of a family, she had little learning, and simply called him Yaozi after the common nickname used among the Han folk of Shazhou, and gradually Ma Yaozi became his actual name.

Now Ma Yaozi had achieved merit and fame, and he had kept his word by marrying Yu Niang, who was much older than him and had waited bitterly for him for five or six years.

But his foster mother had died early, and he did not want to be called Ma Yaozi for his whole life, so he asked Zhang Zhao to bestow a courtesy name upon him.

Come to think of it, this court of our Sage Zhang really was one of hard origins! Half of the great generals, never mind their ancestors, many could not even sort out who their own parents were.

So after Zhang Zhao changed his own name, he bestowed the character "Zhao" from his own name upon them. Moreover, this "Zhao" was originally the generational character for Zhang Zhao's own generation among the Dragon-Tongue Zhang clan.

Because of the implication of achieving merit and fame in his name, Dhondup was granted by Zhang Zhao the surname and given name Zhang Zhaojiu.

Qiong Reduojin was granted the name Zhang Zhaojie, and Ma Shacai was granted the name Zhang Zhaojun.

To commemorate his foster mother, Ma Yaozi was specially allowed by Zhang Zhao to keep his surname and receive only a given name, and was called Ma Zhaoyuan.

As for Man Xiong, Zhang Zhao had originally wanted to grant him the name Zhang Zhaoxiong, but Man Xiong was unwilling to take the character "xiong." He felt that he was utterly loyal, and wanted the character "zhong" — loyal.

So in the end, with a strange expression on his face, Zhang Zhao granted Man Xiong the surname and given name Zhang Zhaozhong.

Uh! One wonders what the Bureau Chief twelve hundred years later would make of this, and whether he would unleash the weapon of causality and deliver a great critique.

And this was not merely a matter of granting surnames and names. Zhang Zhao had Zhang Lieming enter the palace to serve as the recording clerk for this name-granting. At present, the clan chief of the Dragon-Tongue Zhang clan was Zhang Huaiqing, still in Liangzhou, the Western Capital's Cheng tian Prefecture.

So Zhang Zhao had Zhang Lieming make a proper record, then send it to Liangzhou for Zhang Huaiqing to place in the archives.

Once this procedure was completed, it signified that Man Xiong Zhang Zhaozhong, Ma Shacai Zhang Zhaojun, Dhondup Zhang Zhaojiu, and Qiong Reduojin Zhang Zhaojie had formally entered the family register of the Dragon-Tongue Zhang clan.

And since Ma Yaozi, now Ma Zhaoyuan, had not changed his surname, Zhang Zhao extended hereditary privilege to his eldest son, making him a Chiliarch of the Brocade-Clad Imperial Guard, and transferred him into the Left Yulin Guard for service.

Ma Yaozi's eldest son was not his biological son, but the child Yu Niang had brought with her, and he was already fifteen this year.

Out of an experience similar to Zhang Zhao's own, Ma Zhaoyuan was extremely strict with this son, and gave him the name Ma Xiongxin.

In part it borrowed the name of Shan Xiongxin from the Complete Heroes of the Great Tang, and the final character "xin" also carried the hope that this stepson of his could take on something of the character of Murong Xinzhang, the Sage Zhang's foremost good son.

Therefore, although he had not entered the Dragon-Tongue Zhang family register, Ma Zhaoyuan was not particularly regretful. To be able to give his son Ma Xiongxin, whom he had painstakingly trained for ten years, the best possible start was not in vain for all his effort.

And the matter did not end there. After court was dismissed, Zhang Zhao took Zhang Zhaozhong, Zhang Zhaojun, Zhang Zhaojiu, Zhang Zhaojie, and Ma Zhaoyuan directly to the rear palace.

The Compassionate Empress Dowager Lady Li and the Benevolent Sage Empress Dowager Lady Song, as well as Empress Cao Yanxi, the two Imperial Consorts Cao Yannai and Li Ruoliu, and Zhang Zhao's eight children aged three and above were all present.

A ceremony was still to be held here: the two empress dowagers, acting on behalf of Zhang Zhao's father Zhang Chengfeng, who had passed away more than thirty years earlier, would accept Zhang Zhaozhong (Man Xiong), Zhang Zhaojun (Ma Shacai), Zhang Zhaojiu (Dhondup), Zhang Zhaojie (Qiong Reduojin), and Ma Zhaoyuan (Ma Yaozi) as adopted sons.

Among them, Man Xiong was two years older than Zhang Zhao. Dhondup, Ma Shacai, and Ma Yaozi had no idea how old they themselves were, and Qiong Reduojin was three months younger than Zhang Zhao, but Zhang Zhao uniformly reordered their seniority for them.

Zhang Zhao's elder brother Zhang Geng, who had died young, was the eldest brother; Zhang Zhao himself was the second brother; Man Xiong was the third; Qiong Reduojin the fourth; Ma Yaozi the fifth; Ma Shacai the sixth; and Dhondup the seventh.

Uh... Ma Shacai was actually not the least bit "sixth" — he was thoroughly loyal.

With the ranking settled, the five men kowtowed to Zhang Zhao, addressing him as Second Brother. Zhang Zhao then had his third son Zhang Xianjing take the lead, followed by his two elder brothers Zhang Xiancun and Zhang Xianzhao and his younger brother Zhang Xianzhi, as they cupped their hands in salute and paid respects to their five uncles one by one.

The other five men also bowed deeply and received the princes' salutations.

And the moment these four brothers appeared, Li Ruoliu's advantage was immediately evident.

For apart from the third prince Zhang Xianjing, the eldest son Zhang Xiancun, the second son Zhang Xianzhao, and the fourth son Zhang Xianzhi — these three brothers were all born of Li Ruoliu.

This was Li Ruoliu's greatest reliance, and also the matter that most worried the sisters Cao Yanxi and Cao Yannai.

The little aunt had carved out a broad path in the rear palace purely by virtue of her productive belly.

And seeing Zhang Zhao place Zhang Xianjing at the head, the two sisters finally let out a long breath of relief.

What they had yielded — the near-monopoly of the rear palace by the Cao family — had been exchanged for Zhang Zhao's basic confirmation of Zhang Xianjing's status.

Zhang Zhao, meanwhile, stole a glance at Zhang Xiancun. Seeing that the boy showed not the slightest resentment, only a little dejection, he sighed inwardly.

My son! Your old man is doing this for your own good. Your father here is in robust health and can hold power for at least another forty years.

If I made you crown prince, then by the time you ascended the throne, wouldn't you be nearly sixty?

Since ancient times, has there ever been a crown prince of forty years under heaven? That resentful remark of Brother Ma's second son had been echoing in Zhang Zhao's ears all along.

Zhang Xianjing was not yet four years old, so even after forty years as crown prince he would only be forty-four — which did not seem too miserable.

And Zhang Zhao's recognition of Man Xiong and the other four as brothers in fact also answered an urgent political need.

The foundation of Zhang Zhou was still too thin. As for the kinsmen of the Dragon-Tongue Zhang clan, Zhang Zhao in truth did not trust them — not because they had the ability to overthrow Zhang Zhao, but because they could very easily create separatist regimes.

Using Man Xiong and the other four was, in effect, taking out an insurance policy for the two empress dowagers, the empress, the imperial consorts, and his sons.

If by any chance something happened to Zhang Zhao, then within the court there would be the utterly loyal uncles such as Man Xiong holding the fort, and outside there would be Ma Shacai, Ma Yaozi, and the rest, plus Murong Xinzhang, Li Cunhui, and Zhang Liecheng — overall security could still be guaranteed.

Even if they reached some tacit understanding among themselves and the realm ultimately fell into Murong Xinzhang's hands, with these five men plus Li Cunhui and Zhang Liecheng present, the lives of Zhang Zhao's two mothers, his wife, and his children should still be without great danger.

And if nothing went wrong with Zhang Zhao, then he would also have five trusted candidates to whom he could grant discretionary authority and send out to suppress the four quarters.

For example, in the days to come, when Later Shu, Southern Tang, Southern Han, and the like had just been pacified.

Thus at this point, the final flawed link in the politics of Zhang Zhou was at last mended.