Chapter 767: The Year of Pure and Bright

The Forbidden City, the Palace of Heavenly Purity.

Upon the imperial desk lay a stone-inscribed proclamation of Liu Chengzong's victory beyond the frontier.

When the Chongzhen Emperor first saw this stone inscription, he was especially delighted — or at least, he acted especially delighted.

He put on the air of a man who shared in the glory of Liu Chengzong's triumph beyond the border.

Though inwardly he was seething with jealousy, he forcibly suppressed his displeasure and kept telling himself: so many eyes are watching; he must not appear petty.

Besides, amid a pile of memorials reporting attacks on the capital region, having this piece of intelligence — that the Daicing army had been pinned down and hammered hard — did bring a certain thrill of vengeance gratified.

That was, until he asked where this proclamation had come from.

The thing had been presented by his father-in-law, Tian Hongyu, through Cao Huachun — it had not come through the proper channels of the court.

Cao Huachun said that the servants of the Tian household had been passing it among themselves; he saw it and thought it might cheer the Emperor, so he took it and presented it.

And the servants of Tian Hongyu's household had bought it off the street.

Only then did Chongzhen learn that before Qian Shisheng had even re-entered the border wall, this proclamation had already been sent via the frontier army's courier system and had spread like wildfire through the capital. Every bookshop was setting movable type and carving woodblocks, printing it madly.

How far it had spread in just a few days — even Tian Hongyu, the Brocade Guard Commander, did not know.

Chongzhen exploded with sudden fury, nearly overturning the imperial desk. Memorials were flung across the floor, and even the hanging plaque inscribed with "Nine Reflections" was splattered with cinnabar ink.

If this proclamation had merely been carved in stone in the Xing'an Mountains and a single copy sent back by Qian Shisheng to inform him of the Lingdong campaign's course, it would have meant little to him — his happiness for Liu Chengzong might even have far outweighed his jealousy.

But if this proclamation had already spread throughout the capital, then to Chongzhen, that was no different from it having spread across the entire realm.

In ordinary times, Chongzhen would not have been so enraged.

But what kind of time was this?

Ajige's twenty-thousand-strong army was still rampaging through his capital region, inflicting enormous losses.

They had used surrendered soldiers as inside agents to capture Changping, killing the Patrol Pass Censor Wang Zhaokun, as well as the Ministry of Revenue secretaries Wang Gui and Zhao Yue, and the Garrison Eunuch Wang Xizhong — all dead.

The tomb of the Tianqi Emperor at Heavenly Longevity Mountain had been burned; the Chief Regional Commander Chao Pichang had vanished without a trace, and there were even rumors that he had surrendered to the Eastern Slaves.

Baodi County had been breached, and its magistrate, Zhao Guoding, had died for the nation; Shunyi had been breached, and its magistrate, Shangguan Jin, had taken his own life.

Rebel soldiers from the Changping garrison had even pressed as far as the Xizhi Gate outside the capital itself.

The impact was utterly disastrous.

Being raided by invaders is always like this: the army is scattered to defend various points — if you don't defend, you'll be plundered one by one; but the enemy's border incursions are always led by elite cavalry. If they win, they breach cities, burn, and loot; if they lose, they wheel and vanish like the wind. Advance or retreat, it all means losses for the defender.

Yet in truth, the Ming army's performance this time had been very good.

From the Emperor and the Ministry of War at the central court down to the relief armies and garrison commanders in the field, everyone now had experience dealing with sudden raids, and the level of coordination far exceeded that during the Jisi Incident.

Although Changping city had fallen, the small fortress of Gonghua outside the city — used for imperial sojourns during tomb visits — had been held by its commander, Jiang Xuan.

The Eastern Slaves tried to use a double-agent ploy against the Divine Pivot Battalion's Vice Commander, Hei Yunlong, who had once been captured and escaped back, but Chongzhen issued an edict to turn their own trick against them, laying an ambush in the Western Hills and winning a battle there.

Wang Pu of Datong won a victory at Zhuozhou; border troops fought a small-scale skirmish at Marco Polo Bridge; the Lengkou garrison commander Cui Bingde and the Yongping army supervisor Liu Jinghui also killed over a hundred men at Qian'an.

And counties like Gu'an and Wuqing, though they lacked the strength to annihilate the enemy when the great army struck, took in the populace and held their walls fast — they too managed to protect their territory and keep the people safe.

The officials were obedient, the troops fought to the death, the ministry officials cooperated, and the Emperor himself could turn the enemy's stratagems against them.

Chongzhen could truly see that his empire was gradually, step by step, moving in a better direction.

But the one thing people cannot bear is comparison.

One look at Liu Chengzong's proclamation — the man had led an army to chastise Liaodong, burned its capital, and won the greatest victory since the Wanli era — and Chongzhen instantly felt that his own military achievements had lost all their luster.

To be perfectly honest, watching Liu Chengzong win battles beyond the frontier felt worse to Chongzhen than losing battles inside the frontier himself!

The crux of it was that this news, carried by the printed proclamations, was spreading everywhere.

Are you not setting the hierarchy of the realm for me?

Liu Chengzong is stronger than Hong Taiji, Hong Taiji is stronger than Zhang Zhi, and Zhang Zhi is stronger than me.

You, Liu Chengzong, can burn Hong Taiji's ancestral tombs; Hong Taiji can burn my late elder brother's tomb; Zhang Zhi can burn my ancestral tombs; and I cannot even find where Zhang Zhi's ancestral tombs are.

This ninth year of Chongzhen is simply absurd — is this the Year of Pure and Bright? Why is everyone setting fire to tombs!

Chongzhen could not understand it.

He even briefly considered a tit-for-tat retaliation: issuing an edict to Liu Chengzong, ordering him to find the ancestral tombs of the roving bandit Zhang Zhi in Yan'an Prefecture and set them ablaze as well.

But he felt that doing so would be treating Zhang Zhi as far too important a figure.

When the violent rage subsided, Chongzhen felt increasingly desolate.

He felt as though he had been cursed by Heaven; each day since becoming Emperor was worse than the last. Every time he thought things were finally about to improve, the heavens would slap him flat on the ground.

A man like a string puppet — happiness is hard to find.

The Emperor did not wallow in self-pity for long; he had grown accustomed to these violent swings, these blows that always pushed him to the brink of collapse.

After some thought, he decided he must still minimize the proclamation's impact. But he could not say this himself — that would make his jealousy too obvious — so he summoned the Senior Grand Secretary, Wen Tiren.

When Wen Tiren arrived, he took the proclamation and looked it over. His eyes lit up, and he raised his head with great excitement — only to meet a face as cold as frost.

The Senior Grand Secretary instantly read the expression and weighed the words, then declared decisively: "Your Majesty, for this traitor to act thus reveals a treacherous heart. He is using a single battle beyond the frontier to flaunt his prestige and win over the people. Your Majesty must not, under any circumstances, allow this!"

Chongzhen frowned and said, "But this does greatly display the nation's might…"

Wen Tiren saw the Emperor's hesitation, laced with words that did not match his true feelings, and understood his attitude perfectly.

He put on an expression of bitter disappointment, as if lamenting that iron had failed to become steel, and declared with finality: "This old minister believes that if Liu Chengzong had dispatched a man specifically to deliver this document to the palace, it would be commendable loyalty and courage. But now that it is being spread everywhere in the capital, it is no longer that — I fear it will only damage Your Majesty's prestige."

"The urgent task at hand is to first dispatch the Brocade Guard to ban its printing, set up checkpoints at the nine gates of the capital to prevent the proclamation from flowing outward. As for the talk in the capital, we can simply bestow hereditary honors and reward with colored silks, and wait until Minister Qian returns to the capital to discuss further."

In his heart, Chongzhen gave a thumbs-up.

This court — it really does need people who can speak like a human being.

"The Grand Secretary speaks true doctrine!"

Chongzhen slowly shook his head, his face showing a trace of regret: "Then we shall do as the Grand Secretary says. This was originally a good thing, but Liu Chengzong handled it poorly."

What he meant was that Liu Chengzong had allowed this proclamation to enter the interior through civilian channels — clearly harboring ill intentions.

The Brocade Guard Commander, Tian Hongyu, received the order and departed. Within a single day, the Brocade Guard fanned out across the capital, confiscating every bookshop's carved printing blocks for the proclamation and every freshly printed copy of the stele text.

By the next day, in the entire capital, only the bookshop under Tian Hongyu's name was still printing the inscription. A single copy became nearly impossible to obtain, and the price multiplied tenfold.

The Chongzhen Emperor had many imperial in-laws. Tian Hongyu was the father of the consort Tian Xiuying.

People all said that the Chongzhen Emperor's father-in-law Zhou Kui was greedy, but Zhou Kui was actually an honest man.

His life experience resembled that of a wandering swindler. He was terribly poor as a child, studied medicine and fortune-telling, but mastered neither skill. After rising to power, he became stingy and miserly. His sons were all coarse and vulgar, with no proper means of making money, so they had to resort to moneylending for interest — it just made them easy targets for scolding.

The Great Ming Code never prohibited moneylending; it only set a maximum interest rate.

Zhou Kui received an annual stipend of a thousand dan of grain. The Chongzhen Emperor also granted him seventy thousand mu of support farmland, taxed at three fen of silver per mu, totaling two thousand one hundred taels per year, disbursed by the Ministry of Revenue. That money was just sitting there — if he didn't lend it out, what else was he supposed to do?

On the contrary, Tian Hongyu, father of the Chongzhen Emperor's most beloved Consort Tian, was the one truly fond of currying favor and insatiably greedy.

Tian Hongyu was a Shaanxi native who in his early years registered his household in Yangzhou and started his career as a low-ranking military officer, a Bazong.

He was exceedingly adept at currying favor. He had his daughter trained to perfection in zither, Go, calligraphy, painting, needlework, cuju, archery, and horsemanship. Selected to enter Prince Xin's estate, she quickly became the Chongzhen Emperor's most beloved consort and was just granted the title of Noble Consort last year.

His daughter's struggle for favor within the palace desperately needed his help as her father.

Since the Chongzhen Emperor ascended the throne, he had essentially sought donations from meritorious nobles and the imperial clan every year, like a beggar asking for alms.

Tian Hongyu never missed a single occasion. Whenever the emperor had a need, he provided money if money was needed, and men if men were needed.

In the first year of the Chongzhen reign alone, when grain shipments to the Nine Border Garrisons could not get through, Tian Hongyu organized his own men and helped the court transport one thousand three hundred dan of grain to the border garrisons — topping the list of meritorious nobles.

Beyond that, to help his daughter compete for favor, Tian Hongyu also spent lavishly on silver.

Consort Tian built a Moon-Gazing Terrace on the west side of the imperial palace just to take the Chongzhen Emperor moon-viewing, and she paid for it with her own money. The perfume she used and the pearls on her jeweled crown were all rare treasures hard to find outside the palace.

Even the uniform hairpin style worn by the palace maids in Consort Tian's residence could prompt the palace maids of the Central Palace to kneel together before the Chongzhen Emperor, kowtowing and begging for the same reward. The Chongzhen Emperor sent eunuchs out of the palace to buy identical ones, but they traveled several hundred li in every direction and all returned empty-handed.

Because those were imitation flowers, artificial fake flowers, that Tian Hongyu had specially sent men to buy from Jiaxing.

The main reason Tian Hongyu started printing the inscription himself was that after he sent the Embroidered Uniform Guard to seal the bookshops, he discovered that someone had already taken the inscription to Tongzhou, and it was even possible that someone had already tucked it into their robes and was carrying it by boat to Jiangnan.

This was a great affair that showcased national prestige.

Especially since Liu Chengzong, contrary to his usual behavior, had left no treasonous words on the stele inscription. In the eyes of onlookers, it seemed as if a Ming imperial army had won a victory beyond the frontier.

Who wouldn't enjoy reading that?

This thing simply could not be suppressed.

Since it couldn't be suppressed, what harm was there in making a little money along the way?

Besides… the ones who fought this battle were all our own countrymen!

While suppressing the inscription printing blocks, Tian Hongyu could not help but study the inscription repeatedly.

He was passionate about currying favor. This inscription had brought Qian Shisheng great renown, and for Tian Hongyu, this was also an opportunity to ingratiate himself with Qian Shisheng.

However, what Tian Hongyu focused on was not only the battle process, swift as wind sweeping away clouds, but even more so the lengthy casualty roster that followed, over three thousand names, each with their own origin.

More than half were Khalkha Mongol nobles and herding soldiers. Those names Tian Hongyu could skip over without reading, because he could not understand them.

Although Tian Hongyu was also a military officer, he was not a border general. He had served as an officer in Yangzhou. If you asked him about the beauties on the Qinhuai River, he could rattle them off like counting family treasures, but if you asked about the deserts north and south of the Gobi, he understood none of it.

But aside from the Mongol soldiers, Tian Hongyu could roughly understand the origins and names of the remaining thousand-plus men. After all, he had lived in Shaanxi in his youth. From that roster, he could almost discern the composition of Liu Chengzong's army, like a blind man feeling an elephant.

After a bout of research, Tian Hongyu discovered that Liu Chengzong was simply the foremost loyal subject of the Great Ming. Just look at this casualty roster — discounting the Mongols, a full third of those who died fighting in formation were Great Ming imperial clansmen!

Among the other battalions that died in formation, soldiers from the border armies, militia from Shaanxi, Gansu, and Ningxia, and those of student background who died in battle — their cause of death was almost always multiple arrow wounds. Only the Great Ming imperial clansmen and a small number of soldiers from Liaoyang either fought to the death without retreating or were wounded in hand-to-hand combat.

Clearly, the Great Ming imperial clansmen under Liu Chengzong were engaging the enemy in genuine blade-to-blade combat on the front line.

If these weren't the main force, what was?

Before this, Tian Hongyu had never imagined that Great Ming imperial clansmen could be so fierce.

He felt that Cao Huachun, who supervised the Capital Training Divisions, had taken a completely wrong approach — transferring Zhou Yuji, Huang Degong, and others to drill the troops, drawing men from the Four Tengxiang Guards to snatch personnel from the Imperial Horse Directorate, with power struggles raging beyond control.

Had he known the imperial clansmen were so capable in battle, he might as well have conscripted impoverished clansmen from various regions to drill the Brave Guard Battalion!

In fact, Tian Hongyu was not the only one to notice the imperial clansmen's outstanding performance under Liu Chengzong. As the inscription spread through the capital, the very next day officials submitted memorials suggesting that imperial clansmen be conscripted to form a battalion in the capital to defend against the eastern caitiffs.

The Chongzhen Emperor had originally been undecided, still thinking of waiting for Qian Shisheng to enter the capital so he could carefully inquire about the situation of Liu Chengzong's imperial clan battalion.

He could understand Liu Chengzong making imperial clansmen serve as soldiers. Serving as soldiers was always better than being killed with a single blade, like what the local bandit Zhang Zhi had done.

At least under Liu Chengzong, no princes or commandery princes had died… Of course, this was also why the Chongzhen Emperor detested Liu Chengzong. Rather than having the Prince of Han and the Prince of Su constantly submit utterly absurd memorials to the court, it would be better to just kill them outright.

The emperor now even doubted himself: Are the men of our Zhu family all suited to be soldiers? How is it that under you, they are so formidable, able to fight the Eight Banners of the eastern caitiffs to a standstill?

He was just pondering whether he should also try forming an imperial clan battalion when, at this critical juncture, the Prince of Tang raised an army.

He raised the army first, then submitted a memorial requesting to come to the emperor's aid.

By the time the Chongzhen Emperor received word that the Prince of Tang, Zhu Yujian, was coming to his aid, Zhu Yujian had already led over a thousand men out of his fief. Zhou Yidian, the circuit intendant of Runan, could not dissuade him.

For a moment, the entire realm was shaken.

In the Great Ming, only a vassal prince plotting rebellion would lead troops out of his fief.

In fact, the Chongzhen Emperor had received more precise intelligence: Zhu Yujian was not simply coming to the emperor's aid.

Because just half a month before he left his fief of Nanyang, Zhu Yujian had first seized two of his royal uncles, beating the Prince of Fushan, Zhu Qishuang, to death on the spot, and leaving the Prince of Anyang, Zhu Qijun, barely clinging to life.

This made him the second commandery prince to be killed during the Chongzhen reign, after Zhang Zhi killed the Prince of Wan'an.

In the Chongzhen Emperor's eyes, the Prince of Tang had never been a virtuous prince to begin with. And after he killed his royal uncle and raised troops to come to the emperor's aid, a series of his actions since taking up his fief were now connected.

Since taking up his fief, he had built the Gaoming Tower, invited renowned scholars from all quarters, and used the matter of imperial clan appointment exchanges to repeatedly submit memorials interfering in court politics to gain fame. He emphasized the dignity of vassal princes, successively imprisoned the magistrate of Neixiang, Ai Yuchu, and the prefect of Nanyang, Chen Zhenhao, and seized full control of Nanyang.

Taking advantage of the eastern caitiffs' invasion of the capital region, when the court could not attend to Nanyang, he beat a royal uncle to death with staves, and now, using the pretext of coming to the emperor's aid, he was leading troops north.

What exactly was he trying to do?

The Chongzhen Emperor was practically exploding with rage, but at this moment he truly could not spare attention for the Prince of Tang. He had no choice but to order him to turn his army around and return to Nanyang, thinking that once he returned to Nanyang and the invading eastern caitiffs were exterminated, he would deal with him then.

Just at this moment, Qian Shisheng, Gao Qiqian, and their party, escorting the severed heads of the eastern caitiffs, entered the capital.

Good afternoon!

(End of chapter)