Chapter 1476: Knowing When to Advance and Retreat Is Supreme

"Marshal, you give us too much credit…" Zhao Song was moved, yet also somewhat overwhelmed by the unexpected favor. "We… we… how could we possibly deserve such generous regard from the Marshal!"

"What do you mean, deserve or don't deserve?" The Marshal glared at Zhao Song. "You are key generals personally appointed by His Majesty. If His Majesty deems you worthy, do you dare claim you are not? Besides… you are all trusted nobles within our Great Han army. If you aren't worthy of my protection and escort, then who is? We're all among our own here — spare me the humble talk!"

Zhao Song was left somewhat embarrassed by this fierce and stern rebuke, though he still felt deeply grateful for the other man's goodwill.

However, he had a faint, nagging sense that the Marshal's phrase "all among our own" carried some other, deeper meaning.

"But, I'll be frank with you here — the reason I've steeled myself to come shield and escort you is not, in truth, entirely for your sakes." Before Zhao Song could even ask, the Marshal shifted his tone directly. "It is also for everyone!"

"Marshal… what do you mean by that?" Zhao Song grew even more baffled and quickly pressed for an answer. The other two young men looked equally perplexed.

"This just shows you're still young, not yet at the age to bear the main burden…" Marshal Shi Manqiang shook his head slightly with a smile. "All of us here today are the same kind of people — we are the meritorious nobles of Great Han, and the top-tier meritorious nobles at that, am I right? I am a Duke; you, Zhao Song, are already a Count, and I reckon after this campaign against Japan you'll be enfeoffed as a Marquis. And you two… you two young men are both the eldest sons of your houses and will be enfeoffed as Marquises sooner or later, correct?"

"Yes…" Zhao Song replied hesitantly.

He very much wanted to offer a few modest words, but seeing the Marshal's expression, he decided against empty pleasantries.

"Indeed. We are all meritorious nobles. Though our ranks of nobility differ, and our origins and seniority vary, we are now all meritorious nobles of Great Han — men who followed His Majesty to conquer the realm, and men whose hearts are most united with His Majesty and with Great Han." Marshal Shi Manqiang's words still carried a pointed implication. "Great Han is a newly founded state; its foundation is not yet secure, and the realm is not fully pacified. His Majesty has no choice but to exhaust his mind and spirit, and we have no choice but to sleep with our spears as pillows…"

This brief lament only left the three men more baffled, unable to understand why the Marshal would voice such sentiments on a day like this.

"Marshal, your words seem to hint at something. May I ask… may I ask, Marshal… whether you have some important matter to entrust to us?" Among those present, Zhao Song had the highest seniority, so in the end he was the one who spoke up again.

"You could call it important, but you could also say it's not exactly trivial," the Marshal's words remained somewhat strange, as if concealing something. "I am merely saying that we old brothers who serve as marshals have truly reached our twilight years. From now on, the army of Great Han will have to rely on the younger brothers and the sons' generation to sustain it. You must clear your minds early and sharpen your eyes — do not disgrace the faces of us old brothers!"

"Marshal, what kind of talk is that?" Li Huanghe couldn't help but laugh aloud. "Though your achievements are illustrious and your seniority profound, you are not old in years — on the contrary, you are in the very prime of life. This is precisely the age to press forward ever more vigorously and lead us to seize still greater merits. Why speak such… such… dispirited words?"

Though sincere and heartfelt, these words carried the blunt directness characteristic of youth. This was, in truth, because he was the son of the great general Li Dajin, the Marquis of Yingchuan, and thus regarded these marshals as his own uncles, so he spoke with fewer inhibitions — it was not merely the confidence born of being the standout among the younger generation of officers in the army.

"Indeed, Marshal, you still have many years of merit ahead of you! We are still waiting for your guidance and command!" Zhao Song hastened to add his voice as well.

"Ah, you lot…" Marshal Shi Manqiang couldn't help but laugh. "Still going on about earning merit, earning merit — just when will it ever end? I am already a Marshal; what more could His Majesty possibly bestow upon me?"

Though he spoke with an air of breezy nonchalance, all three men could not help but feel their expressions shift.

Because these words were simply far too extraordinary in their implication.

Shi Manqiang was His Majesty's closest old brother, one of the founding fathers of the Great Han army from its inception. He had rendered service as arduous as sweating horses to the founding of Great Han and had become the pinnacle of the empire's system of meritorious nobility, enfeoffed as a Duke, his rank the highest a subject could attain.

For such a man to suddenly utter words betraying a fear that his achievements might overshadow his sovereign — no matter how one looked at it, it was startling.

And Zhao Song was the most shaken of them all.

"Marshal…" He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, yet the words would not come.

Since ancient times, to gird one's jade-inlaid sword and die for one's sovereign, to support a wise lord and win a marquisate over ten thousand households, to bring titles to one's wife and sons — this was the ambition of every hot-blooded man. Yet once the wise lord was successfully enthroned and the new dynasty established, those very same hot-blooded men would immediately face an awkward predicament — they were no longer relied upon by the wise lord; instead, because they held immense power and military strength, they became thorns in His Majesty's side.

Although Zhao Song was not well-read in history, he had heard the stories of how the Zhao Emperor of Song relieved his generals of military power over a cup of wine, and how Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang wantonly slaughtered his meritorious officials. The latter, in particular — because the era of the former Ming founder was not so very distant, and the sheer scale of the slaughter of meritorious officials made one's heart palpitate — shook Zhao Song especially deeply. After all, he knew that he himself had already become a member of Great Han's meritorious nobles. Faced with those predecessors of the former Ming, it was impossible not to feel a certain grief for one's own kind.

Of course, the current Emperor was still vigorous in his governance and showed no signs of being harsh and ungrateful; he remained deeply trusting and solicitous toward these old brothers and former subordinates. But who could truly say what the future held? To be honest, ever since the founding of Great Han and his own enfeoffment as a Count, deep within Zhao Song's heart, he had always harbored an ineradicable fear — a deep dread that he, too, might become a man His Majesty viewed with suspicion and distaste.

Yet he knew his fear was meaningless. Given His Majesty's prestige and renown within the army and the realm, if he truly wished to move against them, these meritorious nobles, there would be no difficulty whatsoever. They could only bow their heads and stretch out their necks, awaiting their fate — overthinking it was pointless. Therefore, he often seized every opportunity to express his loyalty to His Majesty, and to show that he harbored no great personal ambition, desiring only to shed blood for the realm of Great Han. If that day truly had to come, he could only hope that His Majesty would remember his loyalty and, like Song Taizu, merely strip him of military authority and send him home to be a wealthy man, rather than follow the example of Ming Taizu and truly exterminate them root and branch.

The Marshal's words today had precisely stirred that hidden fear in his heart. He dreaded that his suspicions were becoming reality — Marshal Shi held high rank and heavy authority, standing at the very apex of the military; had he truly caught wind of some ill tidings? Still… judging by His Majesty's attitude toward him recently, the most dreadful outcome should not yet be imminent… he thought to himself, somewhat steadying his nerves.

"Hey! I just made an offhand remark, and look how frightened you've become!" Marshal Shi couldn't help but burst out laughing again. "Rest easy, His Majesty harbors no other intentions toward us. Don't overthink it and scare yourselves. What I meant was simply this: His Majesty does indeed rely on us old brothers, but the merits I've already earned are more than enough — what more could I possibly add? We can't keep hogging all the merits forever, can we? If we old fellows keep monopolizing the front and blocking the path for you younger generation, I'm afraid you wouldn't be too happy about it in your hearts either… and that wouldn't be good."

"Marshal, you go too far with such words…" Zhao Song felt half relieved and half tense. "We are filled with reverence for you, Marshal — how could we harbor any resentment!"

"That you revere me is only natural, and I believe it. But others may not." Marshal Shi shook his head again. "I'll say it once more: we are meritorious nobles, we are in this together, and we ought to be of one heart. But others may not necessarily be so!"

Zhao Song and the others blinked, still looking very much in the dark.

"Although the system His Majesty has established separates the civil and military paths — civil officials do not command troops, and military men do not meddle in governance — since ancient times it has been said that one goes out as a general and comes in as a chancellor. Since we are meritorious nobles, such matters will likely be unavoidable in the future. We may stand independent of the civil officials and may never be able to transition into their ranks, but what of our sons and nephews? Beneath the meritorious nobility, the population will naturally flourish; we can't possibly stuff every single one of them into the army as soldiers, can we? So… in not so many years, the generation of our sons, nephews, and grandsons will naturally seep into political affairs." Marshal Shi raised his head and gazed at the ceiling of the tea room's private compartment, his thoughts seemingly elsewhere. "Besides, people like Chancellor Wang, Minister of Works Xu, and Minister of Finance Chen — aren't they meritorious nobles too? In truth, in our Great Han, the divide between civil and military is not so stark. The real divide is between meritorious nobles and non-meritorious nobles! All of you revere me, but there are those who are itching for me to step down quickly so that the men beneath me can climb up and take my place, and then they can replace the men beneath me — sharpening their heads to drill their way into the ranks of the meritorious nobility!"

These words left Zhao Song and the others with a dawning sense of comprehension. They exchanged glances, but none spoke, merely waiting for the Marshal to continue his reflections.

"So, it all comes back to what I said before. The meritorious nobles of the realm are one family. Together we surround and protect His Majesty, and we surround and protect the realm of Great Han. I lift you up both for your own sakes and so that, in the future, you can lift up my sons and grandsons. So you needn't be so grateful to me…" The Marshal's smile took on a somewhat ambiguous quality. "Do you understand now? Within the system of Great Han, His Majesty relies on the meritorious nobles, and the meritorious nobles form a body of their own. And you and I — we share the same breath and are branches of the same tree!"

Truly, just as Cai Duke Shi Manqiang had said, in the Great Han of today, the meritorious nobles had indeed begun to show faint signs of coalescing into a distinct body of their own. Not only were they united as one when forming armies and waging war, but even in ordinary times, intermarriage among them was frequent. Li Huanghe, for instance — his wife was the daughter of one of his father's old comrades-in-arms, an old officer now enfeoffed as a Count, and they already had a son. Ma Tongji had also married the daughter of a Viscount.