To become an official: kill and burn, then accept amnesty!
Most people, under the influence of Water Margin, have an iron stamp pressed into their minds—rebel, surrender, and you come to a terrible end. But in reality, Wang Chong, who had read a little of the historical records, of course knew that a fair number of those who accepted amnesty had come to good ends. In the Tang and Song dynasties alone, those who entered the history books—who received amnesty, were granted official rank, and yet ended well—numbered at least several dozen, and as for the other dynasties, there were even more, beyond counting.
Moreover, Wen Zhengchun, the Prince of Yan, was the Heavenly Empress's own son. He had been wronged, was about to be killed by people colluding with the eighteen grassland tribes—so what if he staged a little rebellion? It was no more than a child throwing a tantrum to his mother.
The more Wang Chong pondered, the more he felt this Tongzhou Prefect's suggestion was sound. Though the man had his own ulterior motives, as long as a thing benefited himself, Wang Chong didn't care in the least about anyone else's motives. He calculated for a while, then gave a soft laugh and said, "It's only that this matter still has a few difficulties. I hope the Prefect can advise me on them all as well."
Though he was fairly confident he could coax his men into rebelling with him—by, say, coming to the throne's aid on the Heavenly Empress's orders—he still wanted to make full use of the man, so he asked, "But what if I rebel and no one is willing to follow me? What then?"
The Tongzhou Prefect had gradually come to see that this Prince of Yan was no unreasonable brute, that he understood the prince wanted to extricate himself and was willing to cooperate, and that what Wang Chong had done before was truly brilliant. So he too brought out a measure of his own skill and said with a smile, "Your Highness the Prince of Yan, your fief is in Yanzhou."
Reminded by him, Wang Chong suddenly saw it. He let out an "Oh" and laughed. "Why didn't I think of that!"
Back when Wang Chong was with the Chrysanthemum-Killing Alliance, chatting with his brothers there, he had also picked up a rough sense of the state of the realm.
The Central Plains at this time were not in their heyday. Apart from the capital, Chang'an, the Shangdu Luoyang, the Zhongdu Haojing, and the Tiandu Chaoge had all at one time been captured by the grassland coalition forces. Of the thirty-seven provinces of the realm, at least half were already out of control—held either by the eighteen grassland tribes or grasped by the various regional military commanders. Though the Heavenly Empress struggled on bitterly, it was barely holding.
To give an example: his title was Prince of Yan and his fief was in Yanzhou, yet Yanzhou was now under the control of the Shangtuo tribe of the eighteen grassland tribes. This Prince of Yan, Wen Zhengchun, would most likely never see his fief in all his life.
It was only a rebellion, but it didn't necessarily have to fly the banner of rebellion. He could take this affair and spin it entirely: say that in Chang'an he was overcome with dread, uneasy by day and uneasy by night, that there were always scheming lowlifes plotting to harm this prince, and insist that he return to the Yan lands to take up his fief.
Wang Chong asked again, "But what if the rebellion actually succeeds?"
"These days the troops my mother controls directly number at most seventy or eighty thousand, and even guarding the various military prefectures is already hard enough. If I really did rebel in Tongzhou and my mother simply ignored it—if the court sent no troops to attack me at all and merely issued an edict of reprimand—that would be awkward."
The Tongzhou Prefect laughed heartily. "Would that not be exactly what Your Highness wishes!"
Wang Chong thought for a moment, then laughed out loud and said, "When you leave, you'd best bring the prefectural governors and county magistrates of each place along with you as well."
The Tongzhou Prefect understood at once and answered, "I'll write letters this very moment and have them all come to Tongzhou Prefecture."
Wang Chong then asked a few more questions about the various affairs of Tongzhou. The Prefect was quite a capable official, and in his answers he showed a thorough grasp of Tongzhou's sixteen prefectures—whether the mountains and rivers and terrain, or the notable figures of each prefecture, he brought them all out effortlessly, recounting them like treasured possessions.
Wang Chong couldn't help saying, "Were I not merely pretending to rebel, I would truly hate to part with a great talent like you, sir."
The Tongzhou Prefect smiled awkwardly and quickly said, "My going to Chang'an is also to work on Your Highness's behalf."
Wang Chong had no real intention of keeping this Prefect. He couldn't yet govern such quick-witted literati, and besides, the man was the Prefect of a province, one of the empire's top officials, and would never submit to being recruited by him. Forcing the man to stay might well do harm instead—what if he came up with some rotten scheme?
He was not familiar with this world; there was a great deal of information he didn't know, and he couldn't guarantee he would perceive every detail clearly in every matter.
After hosting a banquet to entertain him, Wang Chong courteously saw this greatly talented Tongzhou Prefect on his way. Compared with when the man had arrived—sent off with only a single page boy—the send-off Wang Chong gave him was more than ten times grander.
The superior strategy this Tongzhou Prefect taught could be put bluntly in a single line: the crying child gets the milk.
This "crying" was not about whether one could or couldn't—it required top-tier skill.
For instance, Wang Chong, being a modern man, thought of coaxing his men; but the Tongzhou Prefect, being a top-tier scholar, thought along these lines: the Prince of Yan goes to take up his fief, is framed by others, and nearly killed by the allied forces of the eighteen grassland tribes—so he flies into a little temper and demands to return to the Yan lands. And this Yan land was not even under the current dynasty's control. It was still a rebellion, but the name and pretext were now entirely different.
It had a certain aesthetic quality about it—like a child throwing a fit at his parents and screaming, "I don't want to live anymore, I'll go die outside!"
Even the court's remonstrance officials could only say that he did not know how to behave, that he was being rebellious—a young man's rebellion. They could not call him a rebel and a traitor.
Now, when the men under him heard that Wang Chong was going to take up his fief, eighty or ninety percent would eagerly follow him, and at most ten or twenty percent would urge him to be careful. Had he gone with his own idea and said something about coming to the throne's aid on the Heavenly Empress's orders, it might have bluffed a group of people at the time, but most would have grown suspicious, and that lie would have needed more lies to cover it—sooner or later it would come apart. It was far less practical than this Tongzhou Prefect's strategy.
After Wang Chong sent the Prefect off, the more he thought about it, the more extraordinary a man he felt him to be.
It was only a pity that, though the realm was unstable these days, it was still not an age of great chaos. Moreover, the phoenix reigns on high, and the one who rules the world is "his" mother. Rebellion was only a strategy of pressing forward in order to pull back; the time to truly rebel had not yet come.
In the days that followed, Wang Chong strained every ounce of strength to consolidate this band of subordinates from all manner of backgrounds. By holding out the rewards and ranks that had yet to be handed down, he kept the greater part of the Chrysanthemum-Killing Alliance's young lords; the men from the various gangs and societies who had come over to pledge allegiance he even fitted out with temporary posts, binding them to Tongzhou Prefecture.
And he fabricated a batch of letters written by Wen Zhengxi to the eighteen grassland tribes, the Wen family, and the other great clans, along with a batch of letters written by the eighteen grassland tribes to Wen Zhengxi, the Wen family, and the other great clans. Together with the solid evidence Li Qingge had uncovered and the evidence "found" on the bodies of those who had died fighting among the grassland coalition forces, he sent the whole lot to Chang'an in one go.
Who knew how many people would be left with guilty consciences over this affair? Once this batch of true-and-false material was sent up, the court would be in for quite a turmoil.
While Wang Chong was stirring things up to the fullest in Tongzhou Prefecture, two unexpected people quietly entered Tongzhou Prefecture.
Su Luo Yan and Lu Yaoniang rode in the same carriage, both women wearing expressions of disbelief and whispering to each other without pause, while Sun Mingke rode a yellow horse, looking left and right, his face full of wonder.
After the two women entered the city, they went to Li Qingge's residence. Li Qingge had already settled ninety percent of the White Chrysanthemum case; the one or two cases that remained no longer carried much weight and could be handed down to the constables to handle, so she had been quite at leisure lately. She welcomed the three of them into the residence and said with a smile, "Now that the Prince of Yan has proven his innocence, you two needn't be afraid of being forced by this man anymore."
Chapter 82