Chapter 154: What If I Defy the Heavens? The Subconscious

Lingering fear?

Zhu Biao had considered many possibilities, but he had never imagined that the Emperor would utter the word "fear."

Zhu Yuanzhang picked up his teacup, took a sip, and said calmly, "I am fortunate that Zhang Yi informed me in advance about the matter of the Northern and Southern Examination Rankings! In the past, when I decided to promote the Northern and Southern Examination Rankings, I still could not see the true significance of this matter. I wanted to be an emperor of through the ages, wanting to heal the rift between the North and the South, but I never felt it was so urgent. I reckoned that a few years earlier or later would not make much difference. It was only after hearing about the Little Ice Age that I truly sensed the terrifying might of the heavens. Oceans become mulberry fields and the political situation shifts; it turns out the heavens ultimately possess an invisible hand that manipulates everything. I have been thinking, if the matter of the Little Ice Age is true, then relocating the capital to the northern territory is an inevitable outcome. However, if we relocate the capital north, there is a hidden danger that must be resolved."

"Imperial Father, what danger is that?"

"Power and wealth."

Zhu Yuanzhang said, "The nomadic invasions triggered by the Little Ice Age require our Great Ming to station troops in the northern borderlands for the long term to resist foreign enemies. However, if the sovereign is too far from the army, commanders in the field may not obey imperial orders. Over time, this easily creates a situation where the border armies become too massive to be controlled. If we want to control this situation, placing the capital in the north allows the imperial capital to keep the border armies in check."

Zhu Biao nodded. This was precisely the logic Zhang Yi had just explained. Yet why had he clearly listened to it as well, without managing to deduce anything else?

Realizing that his son had not yet figured it out, Old Zhu continued, "Zhang Yi also mentioned that with the arrival of the Little Ice Age, the dragon vein of China resides in the South. The South is the economic center of the empire. The North and the South respectively represent military power and financial power. If Great Ming establishes its capital in the north, the realm will be stabilized, but it will be far removed from wealth. Those people in the South harbor no small amount of resentment toward me. Ever since my ascension, I have always paid attention to balancing the factions within the imperial court. Do you truly believe I was blind to the struggle between Liu Bowen and Li Shanchang? The art of statecraft relies heavily on balance. Yet my miscalculation was that I only saw the balance of factional struggles, and I only saw the balance between meritorious officials and southern scholars! But all of these people hail from the South! I completely forgot about the balance between the North and the South! Yet this is precisely what will be needed most in the future! If the imperial court distances itself from the South, and we continue to allow southerners to dominate the court without any checks and balances... when future developments unfold, this situation will become unimaginably difficult to handle, even for me! Therefore, I pondered for a long time just now: the policy of the Northern and Southern Examination Rankings is actually meant to strangle this hidden danger in its cradle for me..."

Before Zhang Yi brought up the healing of the North and South, Zhu Yuanzhang might have instinctively attempted to do this, but he had not executed it well, which was why the original Northern and Southern Examination Case had occurred. However, after Zhang Yi's pointing out, with Zhu Yuanzhang's political wisdom, it was not difficult for him to deduce how much trouble these hidden dangers could cause.

Zhu Biao understood only half of what he heard, but Old Zhu did not make things difficult for him. As the Crown Prince, he had already performed well enough, yet he was still not quite mature. After all, not everyone was like Zhang Yi!

"Imperial Father, do you truly wish to relocate the capital to Dadou?"

Zhu Yuanzhang shook his head. "It is not yet decided. I intend to take a trip to the north afterward! Originally, I wanted to visit Kaifeng this year, but I was delayed by various matters. Now that I think about it, there is no longer any need to go! However, since Zhang Yi mentioned Dadou, I shall go to Dadou and take a look!"

"Imperial Father, your body is worth ten thousand pieces of gold; how can you court danger!"

Hearing this, Zhu Biao was greatly shocked and sought to dissuade Zhu Yuanzhang. It was fine for the Emperor to visit Kaifeng, because that was a place the Great Ming army had long since conquered and controlled. But Dadou was completely different. Even if Dadou was captured, the Yuan army still possessed formidable military strength and could launch a counterattack at any moment. This was deliberately walking into danger.

"Rest assured, I have commanded armies for so many years after all; I am not a reckless man... I merely wish to go and see whether Great Ming's predicament is truly as difficult as Zhang Yi described! If it is difficult... if the heavens insist on giving me a path filled with thorns, I will use the sword in my hand to hack out a smooth highway for you younger generations! If the heavens refuse to bless Great Ming, what of it if I act against the heavens?"

When Zhu Yuanzhang reached this point, his heroic ambition was no longer concealed. Zhu Biao's eyes were filled with adoration; he seemed to see his father, who had fought across battlefields, soaked in blood, yet holding him high in the air.

"This son is willing to follow Imperial Father and measure the rivers and mountains of our Great Ming with our own feet!"

Hearing this, Old Zhu smiled. Just as he was about to say something, Zhang Yi came running back from outside.

"Uncle, I asked Senior Brother Deng to buy some roast goose at Chen's, along with some wine. Do you think that will do?"

The father and son exchanged a glance and tacitly halted their conversation. Old Zhu laughed heartily. "It will do, it will do. Sit down!"

"By the way, I heard that your *Twelve Volumes of Mathematics* is now being published in various prefectures and commanderies. Even in distant places, I can see news of students rushing to buy the textbooks! Master Yi, you can now be considered a moderately famous person, Zhang Yi! It is just a pity that the Emperor refuses to make your name public!"

Zhang Yi chuckled. "It is better not to make my name public. What use is such empty fame? If those scholars knew that the *Twelve Volumes of Mathematics* came from Mount Longhu, who knows what kind of trouble they would stir up? As long as the work gets pushed forward, that is enough. A cultivator should maintain a humble heart and keep his achievements deeply hidden..."

Seeing Zhang Yi boasting shamelessly, the Zhu family father and son wore expressions of disdain.

Unable to continue blowing his own horn, Zhang Yi hugged his stomach and laughed. The father and son smiled, chuckling along with him.

"Actually, making money is the ultimate truth! It is a pity that Uncle is not in the bookstore business, otherwise this youngster would have gone to negotiate business with others..."

Zhang Yi did not treat Old Zhu as an outsider, openly sharing his cooperation with Kong Ne and Chen Ke. Although the father and son already knew, they still secretly clicked their tongues in wonder. This little fellow had schemes upon schemes; Kong Ne possessed so little worldly experience that he would be sold by Zhang Yi without even knowing it.

However, Old Zhu was also somewhat interested in Zhang Yi's obsession with publishing books and selling them for money. How much money could these things sell for? Strictly speaking, booksellers were not an extraordinary business, because after all, the number of literate people in the world was small, and their consumer base was limited. Coupled with the high pricing of books, Old Zhu deeply doubted whether Zhang Yi would end up rejoicing over nothing!

Yet seeing him so full of enthusiasm, they did not wish to pour cold water on him.

"Buying study aids and selling test papers—this is a rigid-demand market. Uncle, do not disbelieve me; this year I can at least earn several thousand silver taels relying on this. Five thousand taels should be about right..."

Several thousand silver taels was not a small amount. Grain was very expensive in the early Ming dynasty; according to the market price, one tael of silver could currently purchase two shi of grain. This meant Zhang Yi was confident he could earn nearly ten thousand shi of grain this year?

"I do not believe it..."

Zhu Yuanzhang dampening Zhang Yi's enthusiasm slightly, asked, "With so many ways to make money, why are you so enthusiastic about doing this? Speaking of making money, the wealth earned from writing books is ultimately a minority pursuit..."

"Because I had a dream when I was a child..."

"What dream?"

"To make all the scholars in the world weep from their exams..."

Zhu Biao and Zhu Yuanzhang were stunned for a moment, then realized Zhang Yi was joking, leaving them simultaneously amused and exasperated.

"Uncle says this is not a good business, but actually, I think this business is extraordinary... If I were not barred from directly engaging in commerce, I would definitely become a bookseller. Uncle, do not underestimate the power of booksellers! If operated well, these fellows can influence a man's pure reputation, leaving him a legacy through history, or they can leave him infamous for eternity!"

Zhu Yuanzhang originally wanted to change the subject, but hearing this, his interest was piqued. "Elaborate!"

Zhang Yi thought for a moment and said, "The stroke of a pen can kill people, and those scholars can be utterly vicious when seeking revenge! Their most common method of revenge is naturally utilizing their monopoly on the dissemination of culture to kill with the brush... And the most common trick of these fellows is spreading rumors in their own books... For instance, those who hate the emperor might write a book after the emperor passes away, deliberately fabricating anecdotes about the emperor. That is quite normal, isn't it? Or, if I harbor unrequited love for some aristocratic young lady, what if I write a vernacular novel using her name and depict her as a promiscuous wanton?"

The examples Zhang Yi cited were events that had truly occurred in history. They were also frequent ploys of certain scholars. Wu Dalang and Pan Jinlian were originally very upright figures, yet because of a novel like *The Plum in the Golden Vase*, they became the king of cuckolds and a universally known harlot... Similar examples were by no means isolated cases. It was just that the books fortunate enough to be known to later generations were, after all, a minority.

"Just like the people who say the emperor has a shovel-like face?"

Whenever Zhang Yi brought up similar matters, the Emperor could never get past the hurdle of the shovel-like face!

"Hehe, who knows? Perhaps the Emperor truly is..."

Before Zhang Yi finished speaking, he felt Zhu Yuanzhang's gaze, which practically radiated murderous intent, and promptly shut his mouth! Forget it, it was better not to provoke Uncle Huang on this matter.

Zhu Yuanzhang took the initiative to ask, "What you speak of seems to have miraculous parallels with the cyber-troop tactics you advocated last time?"

"There are similarities, but their essence is not the same! The method of cyber-troops is to utilize the characteristics inherent in the process of information dissemination to insert the messages one wishes to implant, thereby achieving the purpose of manipulating public opinion! This method is very advanced, but strictly speaking, it lacks a sufficient platform in this era! However, the operational methods of those Confucian scholars are much more normal; they already monopolize the power of information dissemination, and they do not lack a platform!"

"Platform?"

Zhu Yuanzhang had long since grown accustomed to Zhang Yi occasionally popping out strange vocabulary. Leaving aside terms like "information" and "dissemination," Zhu Yuanzhang was certain that "platform" did not mean what he understood on the literal surface.

"Roughly speaking, it is a stage that allows them to perform... For instance, in a certain sense, booksellers also provide a platform for information dissemination to those scholars! Scholars hold a monopoly on culture, but dissemination itself is sometimes extremely metaphysical... You may write a book with painstaking effort, yet no one can guarantee it will be passed down! Booksellers can help you accomplish this. Especially starting from the end of the Yuan dynasty, Yuan opera gradually tended to be adapted into vernacular stories; this kind of interesting dissemination method makes it even easier to smuggle private agendas... For example, suppose I write a book using the current Emperor as a vague prototype, and then hint that the Emperor is the incarnation of the Black Tortoise, coming to this world precisely to heal the North and South and win the allegiance of the Han people across the realm... As long as the story is written interestingly, the image of the Emperor as the incarnation of the Black Tortoise will deeply take root in people's hearts! This is far more useful than any official government propaganda! If one additionally finds a few storytellers to recount this book in every tavern across the land, you tell me, what would the effect be?"

Zhu Yuanzhang's hair instantly stood on end; Zhang Yi's method indeed seemed feasible. Simply fabricating rumors could indeed be achieved in certain special events, but tailoring rumors was completely identical in strategy to the experiment Zhu Yuanzhang had conducted in that small tavern.

Actually, the methods Zhang Yi employed were nothing new. When folk religions instigated rebellions, they often used similar tactics. However, knowing how to apply them and figuring out the logic behind them were the keys to elevating such methods into a systematic doctrine. Zhang Yi's *Communication Studies* was valued by Old Zhu because he had systematically organized these things.

Having finally waited for this youngster to actively discuss *Communication Studies*, how could Old Zhu easily let Zhang Yi off?

"How is this communication studies you speak of any different from those folk religions bewitching people's minds?"

"The methods are similar, but the essence is different. Actually, as for many future doctrines, you cannot really call them entirely novel! There is nothing new under the sun; the ancestors had already played thoroughly with many things long ago! Yet future people, when facing the same phenomena, ultimately possess more tools for observation and summarization than the people of our era, so the things they study might be more thorough than what people understand now! Let me give an example: didn't my book *One Hundred Thousand Whys* introduce the human body... Is this knowledge entirely novel? Not really... A coroner who has dissected corpses for a long time will not understand human bodies any less than later generations! But he will not proactively study which nerve corresponds to which human reaction... nor will he study the appearance of adipose saponification and its relationship with maggots, nor pay attention to the differences among maggots. Even if someone has studied these things, he would treat them as secret family techniques and never reveal them. Actually, what is the difference between later doctrines and the doctrines of our era? I have studied this! Doctrines of our era like to speak in grand terms, opening their mouths to talk about human life and closing them with the heavenly Dao... While people of later generations prefer to start from details and minutiae... If they can make some minor changes, they often spend over ten years doing so, but accumulated over time, these minute changes will converge into a torrent powerful enough to transform heaven and earth! Communication studies is roughly the same! It seems similar to the things you have witnessed in your life, yet it possesses certain differences."

"This is the origin of achieving great principles through minor techniques!"

It was not the first time Old Zhu had seen Zhang Yi express similar thoughts. Zhang Yi did not like talking about grand principles; instead, he preferred to change the world tangibly from minute details. And Zhu Yuanzhang also saw that these minute changes would link up at a certain point in time, transforming into something astonishing. This was Zhang Yi's "Dao"; Old Zhu was lost in thought.

His own behavioral pattern was influenced by the heavenly book in his dream, which made him appear out of step with this world.

"Actually, whether it is communication studies or the cyber-troop tactics you spoke of, they are completely different from ordinary moral education. Moral education follows the grand and righteous path to transform people's thoughts! Whether it is the three teachings of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, or the hundred schools of philosophy of the past, all are like this! But the things I played with last time change people's subconscious... smuggling private agendas through entertaining methods! And then manipulating human hearts when people are unaware!"

"What is the subconscious?"

Unawares, Zhu Yuanzhang sat up straight. Ever since the Yangzhou affair, his interest in communication studies and "cyber-troops" had grown immensely. This was a kind of authority that seemed capable of wresting "control of public opinion" from the literati class; for a monarch with an extremely strong desire for power, it possessed incomparable attraction.

"Subconscious... how should I put it? What we think and feel influences our actions! For example, when you crave something delicious to eat, that is conscious awareness! But actually, within our psychological activities, there is another portion of thought of which even we ourselves are unaware! For instance, our Emperor whom I have mentioned before—why is he so vigilant against officials and so hostile toward the official class? In truth, if you asked him himself, he probably couldn't say why! Yet tracing back through the past, if you look at His Majesty's life and growth experiences, you will roughly understand why he is like this! In fact, aside from moral education, a large part of the factors that shape our behavioral patterns and personalities is related to things we cannot see. Setting aside the Emperor, let us talk about myself..."

Thinking for a moment, Zhang Yi decided to speak out anyway:

"I grew up on Mount Longhu, but because my father said my birth characters conflicted with his, I was isolated and marginalized... I said I didn't care, but who can say my current rebellious temperament wasn't formed because of this matter? Later, I reconciled with my father, and I know he is treading carefully and trying his best to compensate me... But has the vigilance in my heart truly vanished? Even I dare not be certain!"

Zhu Yuanzhang fell into complete silence. Indeed, before Zhang Yi pointed out the reason for his hatred of officials—which originated from the night his parents died—he had actually never connected these things together. Hatred of corrupt officials, vigilance against the literati class, and a yearning for family unlike any other emperor... perhaps they all came from that night! Perhaps there was a voice inside his heart constantly reminding him, but Zhu Yuanzhang could not hear it. This was what Zhang Yi called the subconscious...

Old Zhu did not wish to entangle himself in this question; this was a past he was not quite willing to face.

"So, how does the subconscious alter the hearts of the people?"

"Alteration is out of the question; it can only be described as subtle guidance! Still using the Emperor as an analogy: if we wish to achieve a goal—namely, establishing the Emperor's image—how does the official approach it? By increasing the Emperor's mystery, propagating the Hong-Wu Emperor's might and virtue, causing the common people to generate awe toward the Emperor, and thereby guiding the people's hearts! Is this approach good? Of course it is very good. If it were not good, what would be the use of those fellows in the Ministry of Rites? But if we switch to using the methods of communication studies to influence the public's image of the Emperor, it is a different approach! The official method turns the Emperor into a symbol, preventing him from being a human being; whereas if we are to propagate the Emperor, we must turn him into a human..."

"Turn him into a human?"

"That's right, turn him into a human. A mysterious and symbolic Emperor makes people feel awe, while an Emperor of flesh and blood makes people feel close! Since we are shaping a human being, he must have memorable focal points. It can be his appearance; if you write that the Emperor has a dignified appearance, probably no one will remember it, but if you write that he has a strange physiological anomaly, a shovel-like face..."

The shovel-like face was something they could never get past, wasn't it?

Zhu Yuanzhang's face darkened with gathering clouds.