Chapter 1461: Ambitious Young Men

He knew that to achieve His Majesty's goal of "forcing Japan into submission and compelling them to act on the court's terms," he would have to rely on the Foreign Affairs Department. Only the Foreign Affairs Department had the specialists who were thoroughly versed in Japanese affairs and capable of taking action as circumstances dictated. As long as the Foreign Affairs Department seized this chance to demonstrate its vital importance and secured what His Majesty and the court wanted, rewards would surely follow one after another. He might even use this opportunity to fulfill his long-cherished wish in one stroke—persuading His Majesty and the Grand Chancellor to elevate the Foreign Affairs Department into a full ministry of the cabinet, making himself a member of the Grand Cabinet and enjoying the treatment of a high minister.

The moment he imagined himself dressed in splendid robes, seated at the cabinet meeting table, deliberating state affairs alongside the other high ministers, Kong Zhang could not suppress the fire rising in his heart. That fierce flame even dispelled the chill around him, redoubling his vigor.

"Zhihe, this time the Grand Chancellor is seeing you in person. I fought hard to secure this opportunity—you must seize it well!" He turned around, slightly agitated, and looked at the young subordinate following behind him. "Go over all the relevant policy proposals in your mind. Think about how you'll respond to the Grand Chancellor's inquiries, so you won't be flustered and caught off guard when you meet him."

"Sir, this subordinate understands." The young man dressed in black bowed repeatedly. "This subordinate has been preparing the relevant matters for days now and already has a draft in mind. Though I dare not guarantee I will fully satisfy His Excellency the Grand Chancellor, I should have no problem handling the questioning."

"Good, good." Kong Zhang nodded repeatedly. "Zhihe, I've actually read all your proposals. Personally, I am very satisfied—you put real thought into them. But you surely understand how important this matter is for our Foreign Affairs Department. Let me be frank with you: this is a task personally designated by His Majesty. As long as you handle it well, the day our Foreign Affairs Department holds its head high will have arrived. And as for you—do you fear you'll lack a chance to rise meteorically through the ranks? Seize it well, Zhihe..."

"Thank you, sir, for your cultivation!" The young official thanked Kong Zhang with the utmost respect. "To carry out His Majesty's task well, for the honor of this department, and to repay your trust, sir, this subordinate will spare neither liver nor brains, and will not shrink from any sacrifice!"

"It's good that you understand." Kong Zhang nodded with a smile.

This young official was named Zhou Pu, courtesy name Zhihe, and he was precisely an officer in the Foreign Affairs Department. He hailed from Dengzhou Prefecture in Shandong. Both his grandfather and father had engaged in maritime trade and smuggling, accumulating some land and property, so his family had been fairly well-off since his childhood. By his generation, because his elders keenly felt that their family, lacking the protection of officials compared to those households with scholarly honors, had suffered many losses, they resolved firmly to send him to private school. Thus, from a young age he had studied a good deal of knowledge under a tutor—even the name Zhou Pu and the courtesy name Zhihe had been chosen for him by that tutor.

He had originally dreamed of passing the examinations, having his name inscribed on the golden roster, and bringing glory to his ancestors. Little did he know that by then the Great Ming had already plunged into an end-of-dynasty crisis—natural disasters and man-made calamities unceasing, bandits swarming everywhere, the Ming court visibly on the verge of collapse—and his own family had suffered considerable financial losses amid these upheavals. Pressed by such circumstances, he steeled his heart and abandoned all thoughts of examination glory, running off to sea to help his father with trade. Thanks to his quick mind, he soon learned Korean and Japanese, contributing greatly to the family's commercial ventures. In those years, he frequently traveled to Hanseong and Nagasaki and became thoroughly familiar with the conditions of both countries.

Not long after he took up trade, the rapidly rising Xuzhou power swiftly expanded outward, swallowing all of Shandong into its grasp, and then swept across the realm at a speed that left him dumbstruck. It soon established a new dynasty, and under the new dynasty's governance, the once-restless realm gradually settled into peace.

The realm might have gradually settled, but Zhou Pu's heart, on the contrary, grew ever more restless. Maritime trade was, after all, a life of licking blood from a blade, and the living was extremely harsh. He had grown up studying—how could he enjoy such a life? Moreover, at sea he now had to compete with the Cloud Mountain Firm. His was a small household with little real strength, so trading was becoming harder and harder to sustain. He was no bookworm, still less did he harbor any thought of dying loyal to the Great Ming. Under these circumstances, he soon began entertaining the idea of offering his services to the new court.

He had originally assumed the new dynasty would hold civil examinations, so he picked up the classics he had once abandoned and began studying them again. To his surprise, after consolidating power, the new dynasty did not, like previous dynasties, immediately open the examinations to settle the hearts of the realm's scholars. Instead, it kept the examinations suspended all along, continuing to favor those with meritorious service and the loyalist followers who had joined from the start.

Unlike some scholars who, feeling hopeless, grew disheartened or secretly—and not so secretly—cursed the new dynasty, he rushed to the capital to observe the situation and figure out a way to secure some official post for himself.

After much maneuvering, he used some fellow townsmen to get acquainted with Kong Zhang, who by then had already become Director of the Foreign Affairs Department. He volunteered his services to Kong Zhang. Unexpectedly, Kong Zhang had no interest in the subtle words and grand principles of the sages that he had memorized by rote, but did take a liking to his mastery of Korean and Japanese. After several rounds of assessment, Kong Zhang recruited him into the Foreign Affairs Department, making him formally a member of the Great Han court.

Although his rank was not high and it was an office handling foreign affairs, for the Zhou family, who for generations had scrabbled in the fields and on the sea, Zhou Pu could still be said to have brought glory to his ancestors. At the very least, when his father heard the news, he was so moved that tears streamed down his face.

Yet even as Zhou Pu secretly rejoiced at his good fortune, he could not help but feel a trace of doubt in his heart. He did not understand why the new dynasty kept refusing to hold examinations to select officials, to the point that it was recruiting officers by such means.

It was not until one occasion when he was drinking with his superior Kong Zhang that he heard the explanation.

It turned out that the new dynasty had risen from Xuzhou, then developed step by step into the Jianghuai region, next occupied Shandong, and finally swept across the entire north and seized Jiangnan. Therefore, the new dynasty had to look after the interests of the people from the land where the dragon arose.

Because of years of disasters and warfare, none of these places could currently be called culturally flourishing. If civil examinations were started now, they would never be able to outcompete Jiangnan no matter what. If examinations began now, the same situation as the late Ming would quickly emerge: the Jiangnan gentry clans, through far superior examination results, would pack the court and eventually squeeze out other factions. The Donglin faction, which rose in the late Wanli years and later dominated the court wielding power over three generations of the Ming court, had precisely these Jiangnan scholars and landowners as its foundation.

Since the present dynasty replaced the former Ming, it naturally summarized the lessons of the former Ming's downfall one by one. Something like the Donglin faction had to be guarded against from the very start. To prevent such a situation, it was simpler to suspend the civil examinations outright and appoint officials based on meritorious service—in other words, prioritizing the recruitment of people from Xuzhou, Jianghuai, and Shandong. That Zhou Pu was able to smoothly enter the Foreign Affairs Department was precisely because he, like Kong Zhang, hailed from Shandong.

Of course, this method of recruitment could not continue indefinitely. Thus, in recent years, the court had been increasing investment in education across the regions, especially in the land where the dragon arose. Once the educational level of these places had been raised, the civil examinations would gradually be reopened, allowing official recruitment to proceed in as fair a manner as possible—though, of course, the scope of the examinations would no longer be confined to the Four Books and Five Classics. As everyone knew, because of the lessons of the former Ming, His Majesty detested that whole Confucian scholar's routine and disliked even more those bookish men who could only spout empty talk. Perhaps in the future, the examinations would also include astronomy, geography, and even military strategy and policy essays, never again as narrowly confined as the old eight-legged essays.

But since he had already squeezed his way into the court, Zhou Pu no longer concerned himself with such matters. He devoted himself single-mindedly to doing his own tasks well, currying favor with his superiors, and incidentally advancing his own official rank by a few steps.

Thanks to the care of Director Kong Zhang, as soon as he entered the department he was assigned the authority and responsibility for handling matters related to Japan. Thus, for the past two or three years he had been dealing with Japanese affairs constantly. After several rounds of tempering, he could now be considered the department's greatest Japan expert. It was precisely for this reason that when Kong Zhang learned of His Majesty's intentions from the Grand Chancellor, the first person he thought of was this capable subordinate of his. The moment he returned to his office, he specially summoned him over, gave him careful instructions, and ordered him to quickly gather intelligence on Japanese matters and draft a plan of action to force Japan into submission as swiftly as possible.

After his superior assigned him this task, Zhou Pu, beyond the pressure, naturally sensed that this was a once-in-a-thousand-years opportunity. He therefore simply cast aside everything else around him and plunged headfirst into this assignment for days, racking his brains to devise how to meet the expectations from above. After several days of intense thought, he now had quite a few well-formed plans in his mind.

To think he would so soon get the chance to meet the Grand Chancellor in person... Though this young official still appeared outwardly calm, inside his heart had long been churning like overturned rivers and seas. With the chance for a meteoric rise right before his eyes, how many people could remain utterly unmoved?

Stay calm, stay calm! Zhou Pu reminded himself even as he followed Kong Zhang into the grand and towering Hall of Literary Splendor.

What they called the Hall of Literary Splendor was actually a collective name for a group of halls. The front hall was the Hall of Literary Splendor proper, facing south, five bays wide and three bays deep, with a yellow-glazed-tile hip-and-gable roof. The central bay had six-panel doors with interlaced lozenge latticework, while the side bays and end bays all had sill windows, each with four panels of interlaced lozenge latticework. The east and west gable walls each had a square window. In front of the hall was a moon terrace, with a paved path leading straight to the Gate of Literary Splendor. The rear hall was called the Hall of Sovereign Reverence, similar in layout to the Hall of Literary Splendor but slightly shallower in depth. The front and rear halls were connected by a covered corridor. The eastern and western side halls were respectively the Hall of Fundamental Benevolence and the Hall of Assembled Righteousness.

And the Grand Chancellor's summons for them was precisely in the eastern side hall, the Hall of Fundamental Benevolence.

This side hall was very spacious. It had originally contained many imperial objects used by the previous dynasty's royal household, but the Grand Chancellor, fearing impeachment for presumption, had ordered them all removed and the hall rearranged, using it solely for summons. The furnishings were extremely austere.

Zhou Pu was first left outside by Kong Zhang, who walked in alone.

"This subordinate pays his respects to the Grand Chancellor." The moment he saw the Grand Chancellor, he bowed in salute.

Thanks to old friends "Zhu Wenjie, Duan Yichen, Lan Luhu 2015, jijiliu, Great Han Commoner, Dragon King in the Wind" for their tips, and thanks to everyone for your subscriptions and monthly tickets—thank you all.