DLWAV CH150

My name is Yao Wenju.

The year I was born, the Great Yang had just brought an end to the thirty years of chaotic warfare that had persisted since the reign of Emperor Zhao the Last.

My father thus named me Wenju.

Because in times of chaos one employs martial generals, while in times of prosperity one relies on civil ministers.

Thus, he hoped that in the future, I could become a figure of both exceptional virtue and talent, like Duke Kou of Lai (Kou Zhun) or Duke Fan Wenzheng (Fan Zhongyan), bringing glory to our ancestors and leaving a lasting name for generations.

And I did not fail his expectations.

At two, I could recognize characters; at three, I could read; at six, I could compose poetry; and at twelve, I passed the metropolitan examination to become a tribute scholar, my fame reverberating throughout the southern lands.

I originally believed that my life would be smooth sailing, just as my relatives and friends said when congratulating me.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that just as I was preparing to take the palace examination, one of the examiners presiding over my provincial exam was caught illicitly selling examination questions, and I was subsequently dragged away from the examination grounds by officers from the Ministry of Justice.

Because my senior martial brother had reported me to the authorities, claiming that I too had purchased the examination questions. My teacher subsequently stepped forward as well, testifying that what my senior martial brother said was true; then came my neighbors, my clansmen… and even my fiancée.

My senior martial brother reported me out of jealousy that I was on the verge of passing the imperial examination as a Jinshi at such a tender age, whereas he had studied for over twenty years and had failed to pass even the provincial exam.

So during a drunken bout, malicious intent arose, and he fabricated the rumor that I had bought the exam questions as well. His friends and relatives sharing the table immediately spread the rumor far and wide. Once he sobered up, fearing that a reputation for rampant jealousy would spread and harm his future official career, he decided in for a penny, in for a pound, and went straight to the authorities to report me.

My teacher stepped forward to testify for my senior martial brother because that senior martial brother was his own biological son; in his eyes, my life naturally could not compare to the career prospects of his flesh and blood.

My neighbors and clansmen stepped forward to implicate me partly out of jealousy, and partly simply because they had accepted bribes from my teacher.

My fiancée stepped forward to implicate me because during the imperial examinations that year, the candidate most widely favored to win first place was the son of the Minister of Works. He had already achieved first place in four sequential examinations; if he could also take first place in both the metropolitan and palace examinations, he would accomplish the legendary glory of “Six-Time First-Place Laureate,” etching his name in history.

Unexpectedly, due to my sudden rise, he only placed second in the metropolitan examination.

He held a deep grudge against me, so his father, the Minister of Works, stepped in to bribe my prospective father-in-law. He likely promised to grant him a promotion, and my prospective father-in-law readily agreed, having my fiancée come forward to testify that I had indeed purchased the exam questions.

Just like that, the charge of purchasing exam questions was pinned firmly on me, and along with those who had truly bought the questions, I was sentenced to execution after autumn.

Fortunately, Lord Yan Fengmao, who was serving as the Minister of Justice at the time, was relatively upright. Just before the autumn executions, he barely managed to crack the case and cleared my name.

The reason I say he “barely managed to crack the case” was that the Minister of Works was not only an important court official, but also Emperor Taizu’s first maternal cousin; how could Emperor Taizu tolerate such a royal scandal coming to light?

Thus, in the end, the only ones convicted were my senior martial brother’s household, the neighbor’s household, and those clansmen of mine.

Yet in the end, they were merely flogged with a few dozen planks and left off the hook.

Because far too many people were implicated, all of whom were formerly my relatives and friends, to avoid gaining a reputation for being ruthless and vindictive, I was forced to submit a petition on my own initiative, begging the court to pardon them.

As for that Minister of Works, absolutely nothing happened to him.

More ironically, he actually proved to be a man of his word, promoting my prospective father-in-law as promised.

Enraged by this injustice, my father passed away.

This was the first time I recognized the sinister cruelty of this world.

I swore it would be the last.

I resolved to seek revenge.

Yet I knew that as a mere commoner, how could I possibly be a match for those high-ranking dignitaries?

Besides, anyone could see that having caused those dignitaries to lose so much face, they would never let me off lightly.

So I chose to conceal my talents, pretending that I had been shattered by the incident and had lost my scholarly gift.

In this manner, I struggled to survive.

It wasn’t until fourteen years later, when Emperor Taizu passed away and the former Minister of War was schemed out by Emperor Jianzhao and sent back to his hometown for colluding with the Prince of Qinghe, that I knew my chance had finally arrived.

What I didn’t anticipate was that right as I took my first step onto the path of vengeance, I crossed paths with the son of the deposed Prince Wu, Wu Ruize.

Upon learning that he snatched my sword and ran off to the Fu residence to kill Fu Deben, my very first thought was that he was going to get me killed.

Because one only needed to think for a moment to know that the royal family would not spare Wu Ruize, nor would they spare anyone associated with him.

So at the first opportunity, I kicked every single one of my fellow scholars down the stairs and slandered them as lapdogs of Fu Deben and Prince Rui.

Because only then would they have a chance to sever their ties with Wu Ruize, and only then would they have a chance to save their lives.

Yet who could have thought that in barely half a year, Wu Ruize… no, I should call him His Majesty now, wiped out the Great Yang and became the Emperor.

And I transformed into the new dynasty’s Count of Huai’an, Left Vice Minister of Personnel concurrent with Left Vice Censor-in-Chief of the Censorate, and Grand Secretary of the Hall of Jianji—holding no formal title of prime minister, yet wielding all the authority of one.

Furthermore, anyone who had ever followed him, regardless of the size of their contributions, was smoothly promoted and ennobled.

Meanwhile, among the scholars I kicked down the stairs back then, the best off had merely managed to pass as an associate Jinshi, pulling strings everywhere just to be sent away as a proper seventh-rank county magistrate in an impoverished county.

—In a sense, my good intentions back then ended up doing them a disservice.

After all, if they had followed His Majesty back then, they would be at least a proper sixth-rank secretary in the Six Ministries by now.

So moving forward, I will inevitably have to give them a few more opportunities.

Yet all of that was no longer important to me back then.

What mattered was that after becoming a Grand Secretary of the Cabinet, without me even needing to mention it, people took the initiative to deal with my former teacher, former father-in-law, former fiancée, and former neighbors for me.

Among them, the most miserable were likely those fine former neighbors of mine. The moment they heard I had become the prime minister of the new dynasty, overcome with terror, the two elderly ones directly frightened themselves to death. Of the three younger ones, one got up in the morning to peddle goods, accidentally tumbled into the river, and by the time people pulled him out, his body was already bloated; the other two, while carrying out the funeral procession, slipped off a field ridge—one broke his leg, and the other blinded an eye, likely beyond cure.

As for that Minister of Works, he required my intervention even less—back then, because he was a maternal relative of the Yangji imperial clan, he managed to remain unpunished; but now, Great Yang had fallen, and as an imperial relative of the Ji family, he naturally could not escape his doom.

And most crucially, after wiping out Great Yang, His Majesty instated Mr. Jiang as Imperial Consort and named the Eldest Princess as Imperial Crown Sister.

I strongly disapproved of this.

Sharing the peach and cutting the sleeve were the behaviors of a benighted ruler to begin with.

Establishing a woman as heir to the throne was an even greater offense against the entire world.

After all, who wouldn’t hope that under their guidance, their sovereign would become an illustrious ruler for the ages?

Yet His Majesty was thoroughly resolved.

I began to feel that my dream of becoming an illustrious minister and leaving a lasting name was doomed never to be realized.

Yet since His Majesty had already made up his mind, as a subject, I could only make the best of a bad situation.

Just like that, I transitioned from Grand Secretary of the Hall of Jianji to Grand Secretary of the Hall of Wenhua, because the Grand Secretary of Wenhua also bore the responsibility of tutoring the crown heir.

In the third year of Jianxing, the Imperial Crown Sister formally entered the court to observe and participate in governance.

The first department she entered alongside her Supervisor of the Household, Meng Jiao, was the Ministry of Revenue. In less than half a year, they utilized a new method of bookkeeping to thoroughly clear away the bad debts and dead accounts left behind by the former dynasty.

Then came the Ministry of War: they proposed replacing the garrison system with a recruitment system, substantially raising soldiers’ remuneration, writing into the penal code that insulting soldiers was a criminal offense, and even establishing official academies throughout military camps…

Next was the Ministry of Works: they vigorously promoted maritime trade and used the revenues earned to heavily construct infrastructure across the country…

Furthermore, the reasoning they provided was always so irrefutable that the court ministers couldn’t find any ground for rebuttal. They could only be run ragged at their command, having no time left to object to them usurping high office as women.

After that, they overhauled the legal code. Relying on accessible transportation networks, they completely dismantled the entrenched power of clans and patriarchal lineages, consolidating all legislative and judicial authority into the hands of the imperial court.

They also abolished brothels, founded institutes of technology, vigorously popularized advanced agricultural tools, established the Ministry of Commerce…

Later, under the pretext that the Imperial Crown Sister needed to form her own advisory staff, they convened an examination nominally called a “Talent Selection Exam,” which was in truth an imperial examination for women…

And I, yielding step after step in this manner, ultimately still became an illustrious minister who left a legacy for the ages—

Because in the tenth year of Jianxing, His Majesty, who had been acting as a hands-off boss since the second year of Jianxing, formally abdicated the throne to the Imperial Crown Sister.

Thus, the Imperial Crown Sister became the freshly minted Emperor Chengde.

By this point, having substantially improved military compensation, she held military authority firmly in her grasp.

From then on, she ceased suppressing her true nature.

In the third year of Chengde, overriding all objections, she officially integrated the female imperial examinations into the triennial civil examination system.

In the fifth year of Chengde, when those puritanical Confucian scholars once again made severe criticisms of her private life over baseless rumors between her and the newly crowned Zhuangyuan, she simply held an imperial selection, taking over a dozen chosen men into her harem all at once… including that very Zhuangyuan.

Precisely because of this, more than five hundred civil officials resigned from the court that year.

The operation of the court briefly ground to a halt.

Yet no one anticipated that she and her female officials would actually weather this storm.

In the tenth year of Chengde, after the proportion of successful female candidates in that session’s examinations reached thirty percent, having remained calm for four years, she suddenly raised the executioner’s blade against those reactionary Confucian scholars.

That month, as many as eight thousand people were executed at Caishikou.

At almost the exact same time, the frontier armies launched sudden offensives against the Southern Rong and Wa, successfully breaching the royal capitals of both the Southern Rong and Wa a month later.

Overnight, the dynasty expanded its territory by eighty million hectares.

The entire realm was plunged into celebration; who still remembered those mere eight thousand severed heads at Caishikou?

And this was merely the beginning.

In the twelfth year of Chengde, the Great Qian Militia Battalions, newly rechristened the Royal Army, dispatched troops to the thirteen major vassal states under the pretext of helping them quell domestic rebellions, seizing control of their national armies and establishing permanent garrisons across all thirteen vassal states.

In the nineteenth year of Chengde, the newly formed Royal Navy established thirteen overseas bases in one breath, claiming two hundred billion hectares of land.

Then came the twenty-fifth year of Chengde… the thirtieth year of Chengde…

In the thirty-first year of Chengde, ten thousand nations came to pay court.

Lord Meng Jiao, who had already become the Senior Vice Grand Secretary of the Cabinet, said that they were only able to achieve what they did today by standing on the shoulders of history and giants.

Yet there are many who stand on the shoulders of history and giants; for instance, Emperor Taizong of Tang was so wise that he even compiled all his governing insights into books for posterity, so why didn’t Emperor Taizu of Yang or Emperor Jianzhao learn even a fraction of it?

Take another example: Lord Meng’s fellow townsman named Guan Zhen. It was said that she too had studied these subjects, yet she couldn’t even pass the preliminary student examination, and was frightened into an illness merely by glimpsing a corpse on the road.

Therefore, I frankly admit that I underestimated them; I underestimated women.