Chapter 1515: The Young Attendants

Governing a nation requires weighing trade-offs, and sometimes even making decisions that go against one's own conscience, decisions that may even harm some people. As his uncle, he wanted to explain this principle to his nephew; he believed that with the Crown Prince's intelligence, he would be able to understand it.

"Then... will it just go on like this forever? Workers never allowed to return home?" After a long while, the Crown Prince raised his head and asked.

"It won't come to that. Even I couldn't do such a thing." The Minister of Works shook his head. "This matter must be resolved through two approaches. The first is to continuously improve machinery and craftsmanship, steadily reducing workplace injuries so that workers shed their fear, and to raise their wages step by step so they become reluctant to leave. As for the other... after a few years, most of the land under heaven will have owners again. Even if one wanted to buy land, it wouldn't be so easy. Lifting the ban then would cause no harm to the dynasty. So... for now, we'll use the ban for as many years as we can drag out."

"I see..." The Crown Prince let out a long breath, finally somewhat relieved.

These two solutions were probably the result of deliberations among the senior ministers, and his Imperial Father must have already approved them. The new dynasty did not suppress land annexation; it turned out that aside from fostering a force to counterbalance the nobility of merit, there was also this consideration at play.

There was still so much he needed to learn; he wondered when he would ever finish learning it all.

"If the Crown Prince still feels troubled at heart... then your servant can make a slight accommodation here." Seeing the Crown Prince still hesitating, the Minister of Works made a concession. "The ban cannot be breached outright; he and his son cannot be allowed to return directly to their hometown to farm. However, they can be transferred to work within Hejian Prefecture. That would be justifiable..."

"No, there's no need. Thank you, Uncle!" After a long silence, the Crown Prince suddenly sighed himself. "State affairs are numerous and complex; I can't always let my nephew play the good man."

"It is best that the Crown Prince thinks so." The Minister of Works also seemed greatly relieved.

The clear winter sky illuminated the vast earth with brilliant light yet brought little warmth. Across the boundless plains, withered yellow grass lay spread like a carpet, stretching all the way to the distant mountain peaks.

In the still-chilly breeze, a gray musk deer threaded its way freely through the grassland, searching for enough food to fill its belly.

Winter had not yet passed; it had to minimize activity and seize every moment.

Just then, it sensed something amiss and raised its head, spotting a strange-looking group of creatures in the distance—some on two legs, some on four—quietly observing it. And those two-legged creatures were aiming a bizarrely shaped iron tube straight at it.

It did not know what this thing was, but instinct made it feel danger, and it immediately decided to flee.

Yet, in that very instant, white smoke suddenly burst from those bizarrely shaped iron tubes.

"Bang!" "Bang!" Accompanied by the nearly simultaneous roar of gunfire, a tremendous impact force sent the entire musk deer flying, and it finally fell wretchedly to the ground. After twitching a few times, its breathing slowly ceased.

Its suffering drew no one's concern; its death, on the other hand, brought these young hunters an indescribable thrill.

Several youths dressed in fur garments spurred their horses simultaneously, charging toward the spot where the musk deer had fallen dead.

In ancient times, people hunted with bows and arrows, but after the founding of the new dynasty, firearms flooded into civilian hands, and so hunters gradually all switched to using firearms for hunting. However, this group of youths were not true professional hunters; they had merely seized the chance to go out and amuse themselves with hunting—and precisely because of this, their excitement was far greater than that of professional hunters.

Several horses charged up beside the dead musk deer's corpse, and the riders dismounted.

The tallest youth among them was extremely agile; he was the first to snatch up the musk deer's carcass and then lifted it high with excitement. "I shot it, I shot it!"

The other youths had also run over by now and likewise scrambled to examine the deer; some also claimed they had shot it.

Arguing all the while, they took the deer, remounted their horses, and charged back toward where they had been before. These youths were normally confined to their family residences, so they treated this as a kind of game and never tired of it.

Watching his group of attendants from afar, the Crown Prince felt both amused and exasperated. What was the point of a whole group of people ganging up on a single deer with guns and getting so wildly ecstatic about it?

To prevent the imperial princes from merely studying and becoming physically frail, the Emperor had always encouraged them to strengthen their bodies through various means. Thus, not only Prince Qi, Zhao Hu, but even the Crown Prince himself had trained a skilled hand with the gun. And because the Great Han had risen to power through military might, the young attendants who followed at his side had all been familiar with marksmanship since childhood.

This time, his inspection tour was partly intended as a holiday to relax, so the attendants around him had all been brought along as well.

These attendants were all selected from noble families of merit to serve at the Crown Prince's side. This served both to familiarize the Crown Prince with his future subjects and to strengthen the bonds between the next generation of the imperial family and the merit nobility.

After multiple expansions, a large group of sons from both old and new merit noble families had gathered around the Crown Prince as attendants. They studied and learned alongside the Crown Prince, to the point that the place where the Crown Prince studied had already taken on the appearance of an academy.

Moreover, according to his Imperial Father's plan, that place would indeed eventually become a true school, where future generations of the Great Han imperial family and merit nobility would study together, learn cultural knowledge, and simultaneously absorb the Great Han's new political and institutional ideals, instilling the concept of national prosperity through industry and commerce into the mind of every member of the elite, so that the Great Han would naturally set itself upon the path of modernization and industrialization.

After inspecting the construction site of the bastion fort, since there was still some time left in the holiday, the Crown Prince, as his father had instructed, led his attendants out to hunt. The Minister of Works, needing to survey various locations for suitable sites to build a detached palace, was no longer accompanying him.

However, as the Crown Prince, even with no one watching, he could not shout and whoop like the others. So he merely fired a few shots and then let those young attendants go collect the trophies and boast about their marksmanship.

At this thought, his gaze could not help but drift slightly to the side.

This young attendant beside him was named Zheng Sen. He was only ten years old by nominal age, yet his height was already considerable, nearly reaching the Crown Prince's chin. Because he usually trained his body well, even though he held a gun almost as long as he was tall, his hands did not tremble, and when he fired, the muzzle was kept very steady.

This young attendant, like him, had fired his gun with indifference, yet never went to collect the prey, nor joined in the attendants' frolicking, as if he had already been left to his own devices—and had accepted this arrangement himself.

The reason he was ignored by the others was not only because of his proud and aloof personality, but also because of his identity.

Although they were all sons of merit nobles, the noble youths around the Crown Prince were vaguely divided into three major factions. The first faction consisted of the sons of those merit nobles from Xu-Huai who had been the earliest to follow the Zhao family in their rise. These youths considered their own families closest to the imperial house and having rendered the greatest service to the state, making them true sons of meritorious officials. This group was the smallest in number but more self-regarding than the others, more arrogant in attitude, and their circle was the most closed off.

The second faction was made up of the children of Xu-Huai merit nobles who had joined the Zhao family faction later, as well as those from Shandong, Northern Zhili, Southern Zhili, and other regions who had followed the Zhao family after their rise. They were numerous and got along well among themselves, and they vaguely harbored some envy and jealousy toward the first faction. The two factions had little interaction, but conflicts were also minor.

The third faction consisted of the sons of merit nobles who had only pledged allegiance to the court around the time of the new dynasty's founding and had subsequently been granted titles. Their fathers had surrendered the latest; in the eyes of the others, they had rendered no great service to the new dynasty. Moreover, because of their shallow seniority, their actual standing at court was relatively low, and there was even a faint additional implication of being "hostages." Thus, they were unwelcome among the attendant group, and one could even say they suffered collective ostracism from the other two factions. This faction was not very large either; having endured repeated cold treatment, they normally only socialized within their own circle.

Zheng Sen was a person of the third faction. He was the son of Kuaiji Marquis Zheng Zhilong. Zheng Zhilong was a maritime tycoon and a great pirate of southern Fujian, who had once commanded a vast following and roamed the seas unchecked for many years. When the new dynasty was established, he assessed the situation, saw that the dynasty's military might was irresistible, and, weary of a life adrift at sea, chose to surrender to the new dynasty after the Great Han court began its southern campaign against Jiangnan. He also offered up a huge portion of his family fortune and was thus enfeoffed as Kuaiji Marquis. Zheng Sen, as his eldest son, was also summoned to the capital.

After arriving in the capital, he quickly understood his position among the Crown Prince's attendants and encountered the same cold treatment as other children of similar backgrounds. However, although he was very young, he was physically robust and had a fierce, unyielding temperament. So after getting into a few fights, no one openly bullied him anymore.

Children who should have been innocent and carefree, once gathered together, had already become tainted with a certain worldliness, and even their social circles had each been delineated in advance, often ignoring one another entirely. The Crown Prince had noticed this situation in normal times. He had the intention to change it, but had never been able to, and could only wait for time to slowly allow the various factions of merit nobles to grow harmonious.

On his recent inspection tour outside the capital, he could not possibly bring all his attendants, so he had brought the sons of his uncles—that is, people from the first faction of merit nobles. Apart from them, he had only brought along Zheng Sen. Thus, it was perfectly normal that Zheng Sen had been given the cold shoulder the entire journey and had hardly anyone to talk to. It was truly remarkable that he could endure it.

This child was really quite pitiable. At just a few years of age, he had been sent a thousand miles to the capital by his father, and had suffered nothing but bullying. It was only thanks to his unyielding nature that he could bear it as if nothing were wrong.

The Crown Prince had specifically called this Zheng Sen out for a reason, of course.