The imperial edicts to construct the Imperial Guard barracks and the Four Great Academies had been issued at the same time. In the blink of an eye, a month had passed; the foundations of all four academies were already leveled, yet not a single move had been made on the Imperial Guard camps.
The four Grand Secretaries were each originally supposed to oversee one academy. In the end, Wang He made the final call and assigned Donglin Academy to Li Weisheng.
There was ample justification for this decision. Li Weisheng had come from the west and entered the court, using thunderous momentum to suppress the Eastern Jin imperial kin and nobility, initiating reforms meant to place the clean-stream faction in power.
Behind such a figure stood a colossus—and even had he come all on his own, by what logic would he not take a large share of the spoils?
Once the civil officials had partitioned the positions among themselves, they threw themselves into the work with fiery zeal. They saw with absolute clarity that decades from now, each academy would become a faction to be reckoned with across the court and the realm.
Li Weisheng naturally accepted Wang He's goodwill without reservation. It was just that Donglin Academy lay in the eastern part of Jin, running entirely counter to Western Jin. The civil officials were evidently also afraid of Li Weisheng growing too powerful.
Naturally, Li Weisheng did not let such petty calculations trouble his mind. He spent half a month selecting the site for Donglin Academy, then returned to the capital to memorialize King Xuan of Jin.
The journey back and forth consumed no small amount of time. While the other three academies were already leveling ground, Li Weisheng had only just cordoned off the necessary land.
The royal capital of Eastern Jin was situated in the north, and though early spring had arrived, the weather remained frigid.
King Xuan of Jin received Li Weisheng in the warm alcove of his study.
Charcoal burned in the room, and flues ran beneath the floor; inside, it was warm as spring. Even so, King Xuan of Jin remained bundled in a thick fur robe, hands tucked into his sleeves as he stared at the map on the table.
Seeing Li Weisheng enter, King Xuan of Jin asked, "Did things go smoothly?"
"On minor matters, exceedingly smooth. For instance, apart from your subject's Donglin Academy, work has already begun on the other three academies, and they have already started recruiting students early in their respective territories.
"On major matters, things have gone exceedingly poorly. To this day, site selection has not been completed for any of the six Imperial Guard training camps. All manner of mishaps have occurred at the prospective locations. Some land actually belongs to a member of the imperial clan, while in other places, unruly mobs have suddenly sprung up to resist construction. In one place, bandits even appeared, slaughtering the court's envoy delegation to a man and releasing only the imperial commissioner."
King Xuan of Jin rubbed his somewhat clouded eyes and said slowly, "That is only natural. Though your strike was not fatal, it severed the hands and feet of our royal kin. They have troops in their grasp; that they haven't raised the banner of rebellion immediately is already out of deference to our face."
"Then does Your Majesty still intend to see this through?"
King Xuan of Jin said indifferently, "Your office has been granted, and your authority has been given. You hold seven personal decrees from our own hand alone! Essentially, every shred of power we could mobilize has been placed in your hands. Do you say we intend to see this through or not?"
Li Weisheng said, "If we are to succeed, I still need one more thing."
King Xuan of Jin frowned slightly. "We dislike hesitation and minced words. Speak plainly!"
Li Weisheng said, "In truth, your subject previously underestimated the difficulty of this undertaking, never expecting the other side to be so brazen as to intercept and slaughter a court envoy delegation."
King Xuan of Jin scoffed. "In time, you will find there are far more things they dare to do. This is nothing at all."
Li Weisheng smiled slightly. "Your Majesty need not worry; the things your humble subject dares to do are far greater in number! Now, I require Your Majesty to bestow upon me the title of General of Chariots and Cavalry, followed by two battalions of the Imperial Guard. Not many—a few thousand men will suffice."
"What do you want troops for?"
Li Weisheng said meaningfully, "Back when your subject governed the provinces, I was exceptionally skilled at suppressing bandits."
King Xuan of Jin was somewhat surprised and cast a profound look at Li Weisheng. Everything had two sides; one who was skilled at suppressing bandits was bound to be even more skilled at acting like one.
"Will that few men be enough?" King Xuan of Jin asked with great concern.
"Your subject will recruit troops on his own. Having the designations of those two battalions will be enough."
"Where will the silver come from?"
"Bandit suppression will yield the funds."
King Xuan of Jin did not ask further where the bandits would come from. Evidently, wherever Li Weisheng went, there would be bandits to suppress.
……
In Qingming Immortal City, Wei Yuan sat in his chamber, reading through dossiers on Eastern Jin.
Back when the Three Clans partitioned Jin, Eastern Jin had counted as the legitimate line. The founding Grand Ancestor had been suspicious by nature and trusted only those of his own blood.
Before his death, he had slaughtered the founding meritorious officials to the last man, then enfeoffed his sixteen sons in different regions. Furthermore, he established a rule that the sons of the royal main direct lineage must at minimum be enfeoffed as County Marquises, while all other branches were to be Pavilion Marquises.
Over thousands of years, the sheer number of Eastern Jin's royal clan and nobility had become a spectacle among the Nine Nations. Beyond their original fiefs, many imperial kin continually purchased land, gradually becoming the largest local landholders. Combined with Eastern Jin's unique system of raising troops based on land holdings, this meant that many members of the royal clan had assembled their own private battalions to varying degrees.
Of Eastern Jin's entire annual treasury revenue, forty percent was already spent simply supporting the royal clan, leaving the remainder woefully inadequate for anything else. Taking into account the taxes the royal clan levied within their own fiefs, actual consumption exceeded half. In other words, more than half of all Eastern Jin's revenue went toward supporting the teeming, multitudinous family of the King of Jin.
Therefore, Wei Yuan's arrangement for Li Weisheng to carry out reforms in Eastern Jin was primarily aimed at striking at the royal clan. Only secondarily did it aim to separate generals from troops, use the civil to restrain the martial, and ultimately achieve governance by the clean stream.
Wei Yuan had given comprehensive thought to the entire strategy, and the successive steps were distinctly laid out.
Separating generals from their troops, so soldiers knew no generals and generals knew no soldiers, would inevitably degrade the army's combat strength. In this era in particular, the core of an army's combat effectiveness lay in the several hundred or even several thousand personal guards surrounding the commander. This was the force willing to die for their general; overcoming stubborn foes and holding vital passes depended entirely upon them.
Under Eastern Jin's old system, although the grand army was a heap of loose sand, every battalion could be said to be the general's personal troops. Singled out, their combat power was by no means weak. It was only when battles grew large in scale that command became clumsy and disjointed.
Exalting the civil and suppressing the martial would strike a further blow against the entire military officer class, reducing Eastern Jin's army's combat effectiveness even more.
Striking at the royal clan, however, would replenish the state treasury and return regional authority to the court—measures that would genuinely enhance Eastern Jin's national strength. Before departing, Li Weisheng had specifically sought out Wei Yuan to consult on this matter, unable to fathom why it had to be done. Li Weisheng believed there was no need to touch the royal clan at all; instead, they should vigorously push for further enfeoffment, dividing Eastern Jin into hundreds or thousands of independent petty kingdoms.
Wei Yuan's reply was that while the overall goal was indeed to weaken Eastern Jin, the common people also had to live a bit better in the process. Civil officials were at least appointed; they still had to observe laws and maintain a shred of dignity. The royal clan, on the other hand, acted with utter lawlessness, and killing people in the streets was an everyday occurrence. Under whose rule the common folk would fare better was self-evident.
As for whether Eastern Jin was slightly stronger or weaker, it mattered not in the slightest before the present Qingming army.
Just as when Xiaoyu had rampaged across Eastern Jin's borders, storming cities and capturing people, he had clashed with dozens of Eastern Jin generals, great and small. Among them were the incompetent and benighted, as well as renowned generals of their day. Yet no matter the general, practically none ever returned.
Before undifferentiated blanket firepower, no stratagem held any sway. Hoping to flank or ambush? One had to bypass Xiaoyu and Star Lord Shaoyang first. If one wished to defeat Qingming, the only path left was a duel between commanders.
Yet Xiaoyu discovered that as long as he left Qingming, he could walk unchallenged among dharma idols. Facing one dharma idol or facing ten made no difference whatsoever; he could run roughshod all the same.
Thus, Wei Yuan's reluctance to move against Eastern Jin was not out of fear of its army; his only reservation was Xu Youyi.
In Wei Yuan's entire strategy, the academies were actually of paramount importance. They were the core of a court ultimately filled with upright men and the key to realizing governance by the clean stream.
With academies, scholars would naturally form factions. In the Confucian system, the bond between teacher and student was an even firmer tie than blood between father and son.
For an academy established by the court and presided over by a sitting Grand Secretary, gaining entry naturally made one a student of that Grand Secretary. Entering court service did not even require ingratiation or scheming; one naturally had a side to stand on. Thus, the scholars of the realm would inevitably flock to them like ducks to water.
With academies of grand scale, seven or eight out of ten slots in the imperial examinations would naturally fall under the academies' grip. On this point, literati had never possessed any bottom line.
With academies, factions could form. Suppressing the military nobility and clearing away the royal clan would in turn wipe away external enemies for the civil clean stream.
Once factions were successfully formed and external enemies cleared, only the final step remained in Wei Yuan's design: making the civil officials rich.
This step was rather simple. Wei Yuan had Li Weisheng parcel out the lucrative offices reclaimed from the royal kin and nobility; the civil officials would seek out wealth on their own, and within a few years, every one of them would naturally possess immense family fortunes.
Able to form factions, devoid of major enemies, and rich enough to rival a nation, the civil official class would spontaneously restrict royal power, finding ways to oppose King Xuan of Jin and hamstringing him at every turn without any need for Wei Yuan to direct them from afar.
Yet Li Weisheng still harbored concerns. He felt that if it truly came to that stage, the Eastern Jin court would become highly centralized, and when necessary, it would also become considerably efficient compared to the past. What if Qingming's grand army marched into Eastern Jin again and they resisted to the death?
Hearing this question, Wei Yuan had laughed heartily. He said that if a court official had only a hundred mu of land to his name, he might very well stand or fall with the city, fighting to the last soldier. But if his household owned thousands or tens of thousands of mu of land, would he still prefer death over surrender?
Li Weisheng had been left speechless on the spot. Only then did he understand the profound meaning behind Wei Yuan's desire to enrich Eastern Jin's civil officials.
When the blades and spears of foreign foes came crashing down, the necks of grand scholars might truly not be stiffer than those of peddlers and laborers. Particularly those with vast family estates were almost certain to act as wise men who recognized the times.
Implementing this entire grand strategy naturally required time. Wei Yuan had given Li Weisheng ten years to produce initial results. If Li Weisheng carried this out well, he alone would be worth an army of a million.
Before parting, Li Weisheng had asked the final question in his heart: "Realm Lord, why go to such great lengths? If you desire Eastern Jin, wouldn't it suffice to handle the immortal above, then march the grand army straight in and crush all disobedience?"
Upon hearing this, Wei Yuan laughed aloud and said that whatever effort could be saved ought to be saved. For every additional city that opened its gates in surrender, countless casualties could be averted, and the mortal folk would suffer a little less from the fires of war. These people, after all, were everyone's capital for attaining the Dao in the future.
At the very end, Wei Yuan patted Li Weisheng's shoulder and laughed. "When my grand army reaches the royal city walls, perhaps the one opening the gates for me will be Eastern Jin's Minister of War, haha!"
Li Weisheng followed with a few dry laughs, not finding the joke particularly funny.
Chapter 1176