Chapter 301: Painting

Liu Chengzong was at Dajianlu, thousands of li away, so naturally he could not hear Ren Quan'er's prayers.

But Muya was also talking with him about matters of prayer.

Lucheng had an Erlang Temple, which had always been a place of worship for the people of Sichuan. However, because of the struggle over the market on both banks of the Dadu River, for several years very few Han people had reached Dajianlu. The incense offerings were scarce, so much so that the temple gate was broken and the main hall had collapsed.

Liu Chengzong told Muya to repair Erlang Temple. Muya was obedient enough, gathering the old scholar Yang Wanchun and the thirteen Ajia families to donate over a thousand taels of silver, allocating three main halls, three dormitory halls, and eighteen group worship halls, planning to establish Lucheng's largest Han-style Three Teachings Convent here.

However, that fellow Muya actually intended to move Li Bing and Erlang Shen to the group worship hall, leaving the main hall for Liu Chengzong as a living shrine. This was extremely inappropriate.

Just after the New Year, Liu Chengzong returned to a state of being so busy his feet barely touched the ground.

On one hand, the cultivated land rented from Muya needed to be organized with manpower for planting. On the other hand, a supply station needed to be set up on the western side of the Great Grasslands to support the Songpan Garrison banner troops.

One of these matters concerned immigration, the other concerned rations. Both were extremely important, so much so that Liu Chengzong had little time to pay attention to Muya.

He never expected that Muya would seek him out on his own, wanting to talk with him about the matter of everlasting stability.

Liu Chengzong had never believed there was anything in this world that remained unchanged for ten thousand generations. Times change, situations shift; even the same system might have been good policy a hundred years ago and become bad policy a hundred years later.

Dynasties change — which dynasty has ever been able to last forever?

But Muya said he had a way to make Liu Chengzong's rule over Kangning Prefecture last forever.

To be honest, even though Liu Chengzong felt he had restrained himself, the look he gave Muya still very much resembled one directed at a great fool.

Liu Chengzong said bluntly, "Muya, there is nothing in this world that lasts forever. And whether my rule over Kangning Prefecture is stable or not has nothing to do with Kangning Prefecture... it has to do with us ourselves!"

He pointed his thumb at his own chest and said, "If we do well, it will be stable. If we act perversely like the nobility, then a single gust of wind will topple it."

Muya was stunned for a moment before reacting, nodding, "The Grand Marshal is right. However, civilizing the common people can make the Grand Marshal's rule more stable."

Liu Chengzong thought this was nonsense and said, "There aren't even three thousand people in Kangning Prefecture who can regularly speak in long sentences. What do you think I brought those government students here for? I need them to train a batch of people proficient in Han and Tibetan languages, to give the common people knowledge, so that when the time comes, we can hold local imperial examinations."

As the saying goes, a skilled warrior makes use of the situation to his advantage. For Liu Chengzong, the matter of civilizing was the same.

Once there was a first batch of students and the first imperial examination was held, when Tibetan scholars became officials, civilizing would naturally spread on its own.

The Great Ming's civilizing efforts in the Hehuang Valley were just like this. Western Tibetan scholars could go as far as Guangdong to serve as officials, and the common people would naturally follow the imperial court.

But what Liu Chengzong did not expect was that Muya paused for a long time before saying with an embarrassed look, "Uh... the Grand Marshal misunderstood. The civilizing I spoke of is not about increasing people's knowledge or teaching languages. It's about building a living shrine for you."

Liu Chengzong was dumbfounded. "You call this civilizing?"

What kind of civilizing was building a living shrine? In Liu Chengzong's consciousness, this thing was called sycophantic flattery. The last person who liked this sort of thing was Wei Zhongxian, and it was hard to associate it with anything good.

But Muya very seriously asked a question that seemed completely unrelated on the surface: "Has the Grand Marshal never entered a temple in Kangning Prefecture?"

"No." Liu Chengzong shook his head as a matter of course. "Temples waste wealth and the people's strength. I wish I could tear them down wherever I go. What would I go to a place like that for?"

Hearing this, Muya shook his head helplessly and, in a rough voice, hummed a line from a play: "How arrogant is this master! Seeing my elder brother standing respectfully below the steps, he lies high, feigning sleep and refusing to rise!"

Liu Chengzong recognized this as a line from Romance of the Three Kingdoms. He laughed and said, "Don't play Zhang Fei here. You just want to say I'm arrogant, right? Fine, I am."

Seeing that he was not angry but simply accepted it lightly, Muya felt a surge of joy in his heart and breathed a sigh of relief.

The relief was naturally because Liu Chengzong was not angry. Over these days, Muya had become familiar with him and knew he was not the hot-tempered sort, but rather fairly approachable.

And the joy was because Liu Chengzong had never been to a temple — this was his strong suit.

He clapped his hands in front of him and said, "The Grand Marshal knows that I, Muya, though a native chieftain and tribal leader, have studied the Four Books and Five Classics since childhood. I have worshipped Buddha and also worshipped Erlang Shen. When I say the Grand Marshal is arrogant, I am absolutely not taking the side of the monks."

"But under the Grand Marshal's rule, there are hundreds of thousands of Tibetan people. At least twenty thousand of them have been to a temple, and they go often. The Grand Marshal has never once been to a temple. It is as if one had entered the Central Plains to rule, yet had never known what the Four Books and Five Classics were."

Liu Chengzong waved his hand. "But the rest of the people have never entered a temple in their entire lives."

Muya took a deep breath. "Grand Marshal, the experiences they lack are not limited to entering a temple. Writing, using weapons, arithmetic... there are many things they have no experience with."

Liu Chengzong nodded slowly and said to Muya, "Are you trying to ask me why I don't employ the old nobility?"

"No." Muya shook his head, raised his thumb between the two of them, and looked at Liu Chengzong very seriously. "I want to ask the Grand Marshal, does Kangning Prefecture lack an official who is familiar with the customs of the Tibetan people, proficient in the Western Tibetan dialects of Shaanxi and Sichuan, and dedicated to civilizing the common people?"

"You know someone like that?"

Muya cupped his fists. "It is I."

Oh-ho, so he's come asking me for an official post.

Liu the Lion laughed heartily. "You don't want Changhexi anymore?"

"I do want it, so I'm asking the Grand Marshal if perhaps I could go be an official in Nangqian, and still keep Changhexi for me." Muya said it very casually, but his expression was pitiful. "I can really help the Grand Marshal greatly in Kangning. Truly, lasting peace and stability depends on me."

Muya was not speaking offhandedly. He truly wanted to be an official in the Qinghai Marshal's Office.

Because he had discovered that Liu Chengzong was very strange.

How to describe it?

One could say that so far, everything the Qinghai Marshal's Office had done, Muya could understand just by using his brain a little.

In his eyes, attacking and destroying the Bili King, attacking the Lincong King, expelling the nobles of Bili and Lincong, and even expelling a batch of nobles from Nangqian — Muya could understand this. It was just like the imperial court attacking and destroying Yang Yinglong of Bozhou, dismantling Bozhou into Zunyi Prefecture in Sichuan and Pingyue Prefecture in Guizhou, replacing native chieftains with appointed officials to centralize power.

Restoring freedom to slaves and abolishing corporal punishment was also very normal. The Qinghai Marshal's Office was mostly Han people, so following Han laws was very normal.

As for reclaiming farmland and such, none of it was particularly surprising.

But what made him want to serve as an official in the Marshal's Office was not these things. It was that during their conversations, he discovered that Liu Chengzong's starting point for doing things was different from what he had imagined.

This fellow had not imposed heavy taxes and levies in Kangning Prefecture, nor built a slave army to conquer east and west. He actually genuinely wanted to teach the slaves, step by step, how to be ordinary people who worked hard but could eat their fill.

It was very strange, so strange that Muya had recently been unconsciously anxious in his heart: With such arrogance, you cannot accomplish what you want to do!

Liu Chengzong, for his part, was very cautious about this proposal of serving as an official. He asked, "If there were a vacancy for a prefectural clerk in Kangning Prefecture, what would you plan to do?"

"Actually, it doesn't necessarily have to be me. When I have time, I'll take the Grand Marshal to a temple, and the Grand Marshal will understand."

Muya smiled, tapped his own temple with a finger, and explained to Liu Chengzong, "The Grand Marshal is a scholar from northern Shaanxi. I will name a few things, and the Grand Marshal will certainly know them: the Four Books and Five Classics, novels, opera troupes, storytellers, serial picture books."

Serial picture books was a general term. Those with many words and few pictures, only drawing characters within the novel, were called portrait illustrations; those with one picture per chapter were called full illustrations; and those with multiple scene illustrations per chapter were called chapter-by-chapter illustrations. All were entertainment advances brought about after the popularization of printing in the Song Dynasty.

Liu Chengzong asked, "What about these things?"

"What I say may not be right, so the Grand Marshal can just listen for now. I believe that the morality of the common people does not originate from the law. Before I even knew of the Great Ming Code, I already knew that Guan Yunchang rode alone for a thousand li, that the treacherous minister was called Qin Hui, and the villain was called Dong Zhuo."

As Muya spoke, he suddenly laughed to himself, adding in his heart: The day before yesterday, I looked at the Records of the Three Kingdoms again. Dong Zhuo, like you, had a father who was a minor official, and in his youth, he could also shoot a bow with either hand and was fierce. You'd better be careful to keep your figure.

"Besides these, there are also memorial archways, the local gentry, folk tales. The Han lands have so many ways to teach morality to the common people."

Muya spread both hands. "And what about us barbarians? The land is vast and the people sparse, with high mountains and deep valleys. To visit a relative, you have to ride a horse for five days. As soon as it's time to harvest grain, the barbarian leaders start fighting. Life is hard. If the common people have no restraints, then all that's left is murder and robbery."

"Why do I say the Grand Marshal not visiting the temples is arrogance? Many things you only understand when you go there yourself. Inside, it's all paintings — like a riddle. A Han person sees Guan Yu and knows loyalty and righteousness. How would the tribal folk living in the mountains know that? In a place like ours, how do you broadly plant roots of virtue?"

Muya waved a hand and said, "We have our own riddles. See a snake, a dove, and a pig painted on a wall, and you know greed, anger, and ignorance. See a trident, and you know the three wisdoms."

Liu Chengzong neither agreed nor disagreed, slowly shaking his head. "They speak of compassion as the core, but what I've seen is not that at all."

"Grand Marshal, Confucius also extolled incorruptibility and devotion to public duty — yet some Han officials still embezzle and twist the law without batting an eye."

Muya said with utter seriousness, "Extolling is one thing. But those who hold the power of life and death also need greater restraint. Without restraint, chaos naturally follows. The Man tribes have gone many years without a king who can restrain the headmen and the monastic communities everywhere."

"The Grand Marshal is a man of strength and power — you have the talent to win men's allegiance, and the heart to achieve boundless merit. I wish to lend the Grand Marshal a hand."

Liu Chengzong was already growing impatient. Muya had said a great deal, but he still had no idea how Muya intended to help him, or how to achieve his wish for lasting peace and order in Kangning Prefecture.

He asked, "So what exactly do you plan to do?"

"Paint."

Muya's face remained utterly earnest. "The Grand Marshal wants to establish community schools, county academies, and district schools everywhere — to give people learning, let them become officials, give them a future. I believe this method addresses the root, but the results are too slow. It's a matter for the next generation at least. Without five or six years, you'll see no fruit. So what do we do in those five or six years? Fight wars?"

"I don't think the Grand Marshal intends to spend his whole life stuck in the tribal lands. My method is fast, and it won't delay the Grand Marshal's transmission of learning."

Muya rubbed his hands together, his eyes blazing with fervor. "Eight hundred years ago, Guru Rinpoche entered Tubo, subduing ghosts and gods of false views and deviant knowledge all along the way, transmitting the Buddha-dharma... Now the Grand Marshal dispatches troops to sweep away false views and deviant knowledge, driving out those who perpetrate every kind of evil — is that not also subduing demons and vanquishing monsters?"

Liu Chengzong's eyes lit up. He truly had not seriously studied the thinking of the common people on this land — though this was not entirely out of arrogance.

Because the vast majority of his knowledge about the tribal lands came from Master Chen, and Master Chen was a monk from Xining. Everything he saw and heard was never disconnected from Han territory.

Not until they penetrated deep into Nangqian — even Master Chen had never ventured that far into the tribal lands. Everything, for everyone, was an unprecedented experience.

Based on this understanding, Liu Chengzong had formed his ideas about regulating the temples and codifying the scriptures by law.

And Muya's proposal basically aligned with his own ideas — yet was more grounded in local reality. Painting.

Liu Chengzong followed Muya's line of thought. "Not just painting them — we also need people to compose them into stories and travel everywhere in ascetic practice, proclaiming the Marshal's Office's merit in subduing demons and vanquishing evil."

"Exactly right!"

Muya clapped his hands. "Have those nobles do it together. It can also serve as a touchstone — who is of one heart with us, who is not, clear at a glance. Those not of one heart, we find ways to deal with them. No need to start a war."

"As for those who are of one heart, Grand Marshal — I am a tribal man too. People are both good and bad. Don't exterminate them all. The Marshal's Office also needs the resources and talents of the nobility."

Muya urged, "The Marshal's Office wants to let the slaves turn their lives around — that is great merit. But in the short term, the common people's learning and ability cannot keep up. Relying on just a few dozen Han scholars — their strength will fall short too."

Liu Chengzong, seeing his worried expression, burst out laughing. "Since when did I ever say I would exterminate the nobility? Right now, Kangning Prefecture has seven counties. The magistrate of Makang is the monk Gama from Nangqian. The magistrate of Lincong is the former headman of the Baizha Salt Flats."

"And for the other five county magistrates, I also intend to appoint old nobles — provided, of course, that they are obedient."

The problem Muya raised — Liu Chengzong had long been aware of it. This was not something he needed others to remind him of.

It was just that on this matter, his considerations differed somewhat from Muya's. He leaned more toward Cao Yao's thinking: at the very start, when the common people's rebellious mentality was strongest, appoint locals as the chief officials of each county.

As for the future, Liu Chengzong still intended to appoint tribal people as chief officials — but by then, they would mostly be of slave origin.

It was true that many slaves lacked sufficient talent and ability — but lacking talent and ability was not their crime.

It was also true that many nobles possessed genuine learning and skill — but on this land, every last drop of that genuine learning and skill was blood and tears.

If people like Basang managed to learn something in the coming years, he would far rather appoint such people as his grassroots officials.

Hearing Liu Chengzong say this, Muya let out a deep breath of relief, clasped his fist in salute, and smiled. "Then the Grand Marshal can await my good news. Before the fourth month, I will find the right candidates and produce a set of pictures — the Great Marshal Subduing Demons and Vanquishing Evil, the People Dwelling in Peace. By next year, every soul in Kangning Prefecture will know the Great Marshal's achievements!"