"Lord Li Weisheng and Lord Sun Chao'en have arrived."
One of Wei Yuan's avatars slowly opened his eyes, rose, and stepped into the guest hall. The moment he walked through the door, Sun Chao'en and Li Weisheng dropped to their knees, prostrating themselves. "Greetings, Realm Lord!"
"What are you doing? Get up, both of you!" Wei Yuan swept out a wave of Dao power, gently lifting them to their feet.
Once they were reseated, Li Weisheng said solemnly, "Lord Wei, you are the Realm Lord, Great Tang's Military Commissioner of Qingyang and Military Commissioner of Yizhou, and Prince Wei of Western Jin. In light of any of these titles, it is only proper that your humble subordinate kowtow to you."
Sun Chao'en, sharing a closer relationship with Wei Yuan, chimed in, "The Realm Lord showed me great favor by recognizing my modest talents. It is only right that I prostrate myself."
"There is no need for such formalities in the future," Wei Yuan said, waving his hand.
Li Weisheng's expression grew stern. "That will not do at all! If the name is not correct, the words will not ring true; if the words do not ring true, affairs cannot succeed. To rectify names, one must first rectify propriety. Ritual decorum must neither be abandoned nor compromised. The Realm Lord now governs hundreds of millions of subjects; every gesture and breath you take carries monumental weight. If you set aside decorum today out of warmth toward us, and others see and copy it tomorrow, would that not throw the world into turmoil?"
"Well..."
Sun Chao'en added, "Has any king of the nine states or master of Great Tang ever addressed others as brothers? Even when subordinates are permitted to sit, they are granted seats. And what does being granted a seat entail? One must first kowtow before daring to sit. This sequence of precedence must never be upended."
Neither of the two held back, their mouths filled with overstepping, grand assertions of imperial etiquette.
Helpless, Wei Yuan could only yield for the moment before steering them back to business. "I invited the two of you here to serve as masters for the first cohort of the Qingming Lecture Hall of Notables, lecturing the scholars and notables we have selected. Once they graduate from the hall, they will set out to serve as officials across the various states. I sent the curriculum materials to you both in advance. Have you looked them over?"
Li Weisheng said, "Your vision is breathtakingly profound, my Lord. Your humble servant is filled with utmost admiration!"
Sun Chao'en, however, remarked, "Such teachings are entirely unheard of. To call them the art of slaying dragons would hardly be an exaggeration. Can these things truly be taught to outsiders?"
Wei Yuan offered a faint smile. "They are merely principles of statecraft and governance. Discerning minds in this world are as numerous as carp crossing a river; sooner or later, someone would uncover them. Yet while perceptive minds abound, few ever get the opportunity to bring their talents to bear. Furthermore, every person admitted to the Lecture Hall of Notables has undergone layers of vetting and signed a blood covenant pledging allegiance to Qingming."
Li Weisheng frowned. "There will always be those who try to find loopholes in an oath."
Wei Yuan remained as calm as a drifting cloud. "A petty scoundrel or two is of no concern; we need only do our own work well. So long as the scholars of the world continue to see Qingming as their beacon, we will naturally stand on ground where defeat is impossible."
Li Weisheng and Sun Chao'en bowed together. "The Realm Lord is truly wise!"
The next day, the Qingming Lecture Hall of Notables commenced its classes. More than fifty scholars, carefully selected from various regions through rigorous screening, sat inside the hall. A reverent silence filled the chamber. Before the assembled notables hung a map of Great Tang's territories, manifested through Dao arts. It displayed not only administrative boundaries, but also variations in elevation, local weather, and present climate conditions. The map showed a colossal storm cutting across Northern Qi, heading toward Eastern Jin.
Sun Chao'en walked onto the rostrum and cleared his throat. Just as he prepared to speak, several scholars cried out in astonishment, "Could that be Chancellor Sun Chao'en of the State of Ji?!"
Sun Chao'en smiled faintly. "Official titles are of no consequence at present. When the day comes that we serve in the same court, it will not be too late to discuss rank." A quiet thrill ran through the eyes of the gathered notables. After all, had they lacked ambitions for an official career, they would never have hacked through the brambles and overcome numerous trials to sit here.
Clearing his throat once more, Sun Chao'en turned to the core topic. "Each of you has long enjoyed fame, with the classics, histories, masters, and anthologies memorized forward and backward. But why have you been gathered here? The sages spoke of benevolence and righteousness, yet never of profit. For these three months, profit is the sole subject we shall examine.
"The word 'profit' encompasses everything. Setting aside trivial side branches, our first task is to understand where the silver in every state's treasury truly comes from. In truth, from ancient times to this day, tax revenues boil down to only a few kinds: agriculture, poll, artisan, commerce, and trade."
Sun Chao'en proceeded to detail the origins and revenue bases of each tax. The agricultural tax had been the primary tax since antiquity and remained the foremost source of income for every dynasty's treasury. Next came the poll tax, levied per person.
Commercial taxes also had a long history, but their share had always been meager. Dynasties had never paid much attention to them, and merchants consistently occupied the bottom of the social hierarchy. As for artisan taxes, states directed them at workshop proprietors, and they were virtually negligible. Such levies were mostly extracted in the form of corvée labor—rounding up craftsmen and working them without pay for a period. Lastly came trade taxes, the tariffs collected at border checkpoints between states; they were intermittent, and even when collected, they almost never reached the national treasury.
Since antiquity, taxes on agriculture and persons had made up the overwhelming majority, while the other three amounted to loose change. What Sun Chao'en had explained so far was common knowledge, familiar to virtually every scholar present. Assuming this would merely be a rehash of old platitudes, faint disappointment surfaced among the crowd.
At that moment, Sun Chao'en changed the direction of his argument. "As the old saying goes, a man travels thousands of li to serve as an official solely for wealth. A gentleman loves wealth and acquires it through proper means. Reaching for the agricultural or poll taxes is the folly of fools. Those two levies have always been the paramount concerns of every state, watched by ten thousand eyes. Striking at them carries immense risk, and the slightest meddling is detected at once. Wise men do not touch them.
"Our true targets are artisan, commerce, and trade. Look at Qingming, and you should understand that these three will become the mainstream of the future. Yet what we must do is not embezzle; it is to seize and to conceal. What does it mean to seize? It means investing in advance to occupy key positions. How do we seize them? Just as high ministers and noble clans in every court annex land, we will annex workshops, raw materials, merchant caravans, trade routes, and even border passes."
These words were completely unheard of to the scholars, plunging them into deep contemplation. In truth, comparing the current conditions of various states with those of Qingming made it easy to arrive at this conclusion. The men seated here were exceptionally sharp, and one by one, sudden realizations dawned upon them.
One person spoke up to ask, "Seizing workshops and commerce is easy enough to comprehend, but how does one seize trade?"
Sun Chao'en guided him patiently. "The tax revenues collected at the border passes of the various states are negligible. Moreover, those who smuggle goods across borders are vicious, desperate cutthroats, making these posts hot coals that no one wants to touch. When you enter officialdom in the future, you might as well shoulder your monarch's burdens and volunteer to take up these positions. Of course, if any among you end up serving in the State of Ji, I will personally assign you there. Once in place, men of your great talents will naturally know how to make your fortunes."
Sun Chao'en made no mention of safety, nor was there any need to. Behind these scholars stood Qingming. No matter how vicious those smugglers were, could they ever be more fearsome than Qingming?
Another person asked, "Then how should we understand this word, 'conceal'?"
Sun Chao'en smiled faintly. "Do these categories have any silver in them? There is none now, and there will be none in the future."
Someone slapped his forehead in sudden realization and shouted, "I see! Several centuries ago, the population of Song surged, with its true count multiplying several times over, yet its poll tax revenue fell to less than a third of what it had been. Those people had all been 'concealed' by the great noble clans! So that is what 'conceal' means!"
Sun Chao'en nodded, feeling that this man had truly drawn connections across ideas and proved worthy of instruction.
Over the course of three months, Sun Chao'en and Li Weisheng took turns teaching, interspersed with occasional lectures from cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning and Qingming. The cultivators from the Palace of Grand Beginning primarily taught matters concerning cultivation resources, while the Qingming cultivators shared contemporary industrial knowledge, teaching the scholars precisely which links in the chain to stake claims on beforehand, and which resources—unwanted today but destined to explode in value tomorrow—they ought to annex.
As the three months went by, the notables were entirely remade. Having already mastered vast seas of classics, they absorbed these practical matters far faster than ordinary men; photographic memory was a basic trait shared by them all.
By the time their studies ended, they possessed an intimate understanding of where wealth arose and where it settled. Throughout those three months, neither Sun Chao'en nor Li Weisheng had uttered the word 'greed' or 'embezzle' even once. Yet in time, the scholars understood: serving as officials in this manner, why would one ever need to embezzle? If they earned anything less than a fortune, they would be unworthy of Qingming's painstaking cultivation.
Nevertheless, Sun and Li repeatedly stressed one principle: they must keep the rulers of every state fixated squarely on the agricultural and poll taxes. The most effective rationale was always, 'The ancestral laws must not be altered.' Quick-witted to a fault, the scholars grasped that this was their cohort's sacred mission.
With this term of the lecture hall drawing to a close, the scholars were soon to scatter in different directions. One group was bound for Northern Qi, another was off to take up official posts in Song, after which they would slowly climb their respective ladders. These notables were all shrewd individuals; within days of the lectures beginning, they had already embraced one another as classmates of the same cohort. Moreover, the lecture hall would continue to host term after term, making anyone who walked out of its doors natural comrades of the same school.
What each notable saw was merely his own small sphere, but what Wei Yuan gazed upon was the world under heaven. So long as these men entered officialdom smoothly and managed to 'conceal' the artisan, commercial, and trade taxes, those three great revenue streams would vanish right from under the monarchs' noses.
Perhaps many years later, someone would realize what had happened. But by then, the chance to enrich the state and strengthen its armies would have long slipped away.
This was Wei Yuan's strategy: concealing wealth within the bureaucracy.
Chapter 1309