Chapter Thirty-Four: The Water That Capsizes the Boat Is Made of the People's Tears; Unless the Flood Overwhelms You, You Shall Never Know.

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Offend Feng Bao, and you may lose your official rank simply for stepping into a government office with your left foot.

Offend Zhang Juzheng, and you may be dismissed and ordered to remain idle merely for entering with your right foot.

Offend them both, and you might well be exiled to Yongning Temple, where you will have to chisel through the ice to catch fish.

After receiving messages from Feng Bao and Zhang Juzheng, Xu Zhenming began coordinating and arranging every aspect of the plan. The emperor had to take part personally in farming and sericulture, while the dirty and exhausting work could be done whenever His Majesty was absent.

“Weren’t we supposed to sow after the Qingming Festival? It is only the first month of the year. Can the seedlings already be raised?” Zhu Yijun asked with a deeply furrowed brow. He was taking the experiment truly seriously.

Looking at the enormous glass hothouse, Xu Zhenming once again marveled at the power of authority. It really could accomplish anything. He lowered his voice and said, “Your Majesty, sowing around Qingming is mainly because of the soil temperature and irrigation.”

Did the glass hothouse lack warmth in the soil? Did it lack irrigation? It lacked neither.

Looking at the hothouse, Zhu Yijun understood what Xu Zhenming meant. Even a lack of sunlight could be remedied.

The taste of power was indeed exquisite.

“Your Majesty, this way.”

Xu Zhenming led Zhu Yijun to the seedling room. There were three varieties of potatoes—yellow, purple, and white—and four varieties of sweet potatoes—red-fleshed, white-fleshed, yellow-fleshed, and purple-fleshed.

These three kinds of potatoes and four kinds of sweet potatoes had all been sent to the capital by Luo Gongchen, the Assistant Commissioner for Coastal Defense at Yuegang Provisioning Office.

Zhu Yijun’s task was to lay the various potatoes and sweet potatoes out on the ground alongside everyone else and wait for them to sprout. Once shoots appeared, they could be cut apart and used to raise seedlings.

Moving the potatoes and sweet potatoes was not especially troublesome. Zhu Yijun held a brush in his hand and carefully recorded Xu Zhenming’s words in a ledger, one point at a time.

Xu Zhenming and several old farmers spoke for a long while about raising water chestnut seedlings, discussing the matter over the potatoes and sweet potatoes spread across the floor. Zhu Yijun merely listened and did not say a word.

Only after Xu Zhenming had finished speaking with the farmers did he come before His Majesty and say, “Raising the seedlings is of the utmost importance.”

“Water chestnuts are like potatoes and sweet potatoes. They are propagated from tubers, but when tubers are planted repeatedly, they degenerate and become severely susceptible to toxins. In other words, the yield becomes low and unstable. When cultivated, they often produce male water chestnuts: the plants become stunted and grow in clumps, fail to form corms, and ultimately produce nothing.”

In many respects, water chestnuts shared characteristics with potatoes and sweet potatoes. They were cultivated in Guangdong, Fujian, Guizhou, and Zhejiang, and since the Song Dynasty, people had sought to grow them on a large scale because of their extremely high yields.

Yet no one had ever succeeded. In the end, water chestnuts could only be used to relieve famine during years of scarcity. Turning them into a staple crop was exceedingly difficult.

More often, they were cultivated as fruit. And in the north, they could not grow at all, because the climate was too cold.

“Do water chestnuts, potatoes, and sweet potatoes have no seeds?” Zhu Yijun asked, somewhat puzzled.

Xu Zhenming shook his sleeve and drew out a cloth pouch. When he opened it, it contained an assortment of kidney-shaped seeds in various colors. He answered with certainty, “They do. But the germination rate is too low, and the yield is extremely poor.”

Even after repeatedly replanting a whole acre, the resulting plants still failed to reach the necessary density.

When the water chestnuts flowered, the blossoms had to be removed, their floating roots severed, and their attached leaves cut away. Under those conditions, there was even less hope of harvesting enough seeds.

After Xu Zhenming’s explanation, Zhu Yijun finally understood. The reason people avoided growing them from seed was not preference, but necessity: it simply could not be done successfully.

When it came to farming, Zhu Yijun never casually offered an opinion. He truly knew nothing about it. A man who could even kill a pothos plant had wisely chosen to follow the advice of professionals.

Let professionals handle professional matters.

When Zhu Yijun planted anything, it died. He took each surviving day as a gift and left the rest to fate. Thus, if Xu Zhenming and the farmers genuinely wished to grow potatoes and sweet potatoes successfully, they first had to contend with the emperor using imperial authority to interfere.

Xu Zhenming was a successful examination graduate. From the standpoint of a civil official, he could have flattered the emperor and praised His Majesty’s wise words and sound judgments. But he did not.

He had never considered doing so. He was simply accompanying the emperor in farming, sincerely hoping to do the task well.

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Xu Zhenming knew little of anything besides farming. Had he understood how to adapt to circumstances, he would never have entered the capital carrying a bamboo-bound book chest on his back.

As the sun set, the emperor of the Great Ming returned once more to the Palace of Heavenly Purity. After washing and eating his evening meal, he went straight to his desk and began recording every bit of the day’s harvest.

This time, he also added a collection of questions. These were all problems that currently remained unresolved: how could crops such as water chestnuts, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, which were propagated through tubers, be detoxified? Only through detoxification could their yields be maintained.

But solving that problem was not Zhu Yijun’s present objective.

What he had to do now was summarize the experience and lessons recorded in agricultural texts and learned by farmers through the ages, then make the potatoes and sweet potatoes survive in the soil of the north.

On the paper before him, he repeatedly sketched a glass device. One end consisted of a large glass bulb, while the other was open. Water would be poured inside, and by using the principle of thermal expansion and contraction, the rising and falling water level could be used to measure temperature.

He set down his brush, thoroughly pleased with the model in his hands. It was the most primitive thermometer, but it could determine the temperature at which potatoes and sweet potatoes germinated, the temperature at which they flourished, the temperature at which they flowered, and the temperature at which their seedlings froze and had to be replanted.

He was truly serious about farming.

Although Empress Dowager Li always felt that the child was working too hard, Zhu Yijun himself found every part of it fascinating. He was already considering how to encourage the cultivation of potatoes and sweet potatoes once the experiment succeeded.

“The way of ruling as a sovereign must begin with preserving the people. If one harms the people in order to nourish oneself, it is like cutting flesh from one’s own thigh to fill one’s stomach: the stomach may be satisfied, but the body will die.”

This was a passage Zhang Juzheng had explained that day while discussing Emperor Taizong of Tang, Li Shimin. Its meaning was simple: a ruler must place the people first in his heart. If he harmed the people in order to sustain the ruler, it was like cutting meat from one’s thigh to eat. Though the stomach might be filled, the body would already be dead.

“The people are like water: they may carry a boat, but they may also overturn it.”

The principle was exceedingly simple and not difficult to understand. Yet under ordinary circumstances, the emperor was the last person to learn that the state was about to perish.

At the end of the Eastern Han, the turmoil caused by the Yellow Turban Army seemed to spread across the entire realm in an instant, like a wildfire racing across the wilderness, as though it had suddenly been ignited.

“The Azure Heaven is dead; the Yellow Heaven shall rise. The year is Jiazi; the world shall enjoy great fortune.”

Those words seemed to resound throughout the Eastern Han within only a few short months, erupting everywhere at once.

But was the Yellow Turban Army’s surging momentum truly an accident?

It was not.

Long before the Yellow Turban uprising, the slogan “The Azure Heaven is dead” had already spread widely among the people.

There was even a brick known as the “Azure Heaven Shall Die Brick,” carved on the fourth day of the fourth month in the third year of Jianning—fourteen years before the Yellow Turban uprising.

The change from “The Azure Heaven shall die” to “The Azure Heaven is dead” represented the transformation of popular resentment from a hidden undercurrent into a fury that boiled over and filled the heavens.

“The water that overturns the boat is the people’s tears. Until they run across the land, the ruler does not know.”

The water that could overturn the dynasty and destroy the state was the tears of the common people. Yet until those tears flowed in torrents, neither nobles nor rulers could see them.

Zhu Yijun had not seen the tears of the people, but he knew the fate awaiting the Great Ming. He also knew the responsibility resting upon his shoulders.

“Done! Tomorrow, give this to Grand Eunuch Feng and have him fire it. Put it inside the glass hothouse at Jing Mountain. If we are going to do it, then we must do it properly—make it precise and make it clear.”

Zhu Yijun handed the drawings to Zhang Hong, then walked toward the bedchamber, threw himself onto the bed, and fell into a deep sleep.

Early to bed and early to rise makes one grow tall.

Zhang Hong handed the rough paper to a palace maid. The maid passed it to Xu Jue, and Xu Jue delivered it to Feng Bao that same night. Feng Bao ordered the Armament Bureau to fire the piece overnight.

Officials throughout the empire, inside and outside the palace, stood ready to serve His Majesty at any hour. That was one of the rights of being emperor.

On the second day of the second month, when the dragon raised its head, a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky. A thunderous roar rolled and cracked through the air, eventually reaching the Hall of Literary Brilliance, where the court conference was underway.

At that moment, Tan Lun, Minister of War, was once again submitting his resignation.

This time, it was not because he had neglected his duties or obstructed Wang Chonggu’s list of candidates for the office supervising the capital’s military commanders.

Rather, during the Spring Equinox, Tan Lun had gone to the Altar of the Sun to perform the rites. The sudden cold spell had given him a chill, and he had coughed repeatedly, committing a breach of decorum.

If the emperor overturned tables and chairs or was scolded by Empress Dowager Li for failing to walk with proper composure, then when attending sacrifices, officials who coughed, sneezed, crouched down from weakness, whispered among themselves, or committed similar acts were likewise guilty of violating ritual propriety.

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The officials who impeached Tan Lun were Jing Song and Han Bixian, Supervising Secretaries of the Fujian Circuit in the Censorate.

“The position of chief military minister is entrusted to the wrong man. If, by some misfortune, the northern barbarians invade our borders, how can a man who cannot even complete a sacrifice on a single occasion be entrusted with the empire?”

After Chief Censor Ge Shouli finished reading Jing Song’s memorial, he handed it to a young palace eunuch, who placed it before Zhang Juzheng.

“Oh, yes, yes, you are right. Tomorrow I will write another resignation memorial, citing illness and requesting retirement. Isn’t it simply that you cannot stand the sight of me? Then I shall no longer remain here to offend your eyes.”

Tan Lun suddenly rose and moved to leave.

Zhang Juzheng reached out to restrain him and said calmly, “Minister Tan, this is the Hall of Literary Brilliance.”

At those words, Zhu Xixiao, standing at the doorway with an embroidered spring saber and a ceremonial whip, let out a breath of relief.

Tan Lun was acting on impulse. He had actually risen in anger and tried to leave the assembly. Should the officers responsible for enforcing decorum stop him or not?

Tan Lun’s unauthorized departure was unquestionably a breach of decorum. By regulation, the officers responsible for court discipline were required to seize him on the spot. It was their duty.

Yet Zhu Xixiao was a military noble. If he seized the Minister of War in public, he would only be creating trouble for his elder brother, the Duke of Chengguo, Zhu Xizhong.

Hearing Zhang Juzheng call him back, Tan Lun angrily flung his sleeves, cast a scornful look at the smug Ge Shouli, and returned to his seat.

Tan Lun had abandoned the Shanxi faction, and the faction had seized the opportunity to impeach him. Tan Lun had indeed committed an offense: he had violated ritual propriety. In the Great Ming, where the rites were enforced with exceptional severity, that was undeniably a grave charge.

Zhu Yijun paused his brush and thought for a moment before continuing to write.

Whatever Ge Shouli’s words truly meant was unimportant.

Tan Lun had fallen ill before the Spring Equinox and requested leave on grounds of illness, intending not to attend the sacrifice at the Altar of the Sun. The Ministry of Personnel had refused his sick leave, so Tan Lun had gone to the altar while ill. The icy wind had nearly killed him on the spot. He had only just recovered, and the hounds of the Censorate had already begun to lunge.

The attacks came one after another, all because Tan Lun had changed allegiance over the matter of the list of commanders selected to supervise the capital’s military camps.

At least, that was what most members of the Shanxi faction believed.

Tan Lun’s position was exceedingly difficult.

“Chief Censor Ge, Minister of Rites Lu Shusheng was also coughing repeatedly at the Altar of the Sun. Why has no one impeached him?”

Feng Bao began speaking in a mocking, pointed tone.

“There was such a thing?” Ge Shouli’s brow furrowed deeply, and he looked at Feng Bao in confusion.

“Could it be that Chief Censor Ge knows only one side of the matter and not the other?” Feng Bao let out a cold laugh.

Could the Shanxi faction’s leading spearhead really impeach a senior minister without possessing complete information?

Whenever the young emperor left the palace, he first made Feng Bao account for every detail.

As a palace eunuch, Feng Bao’s foremost duty was to protect imperial authority. Tan Lun had offended the Shanxi faction because of the matter of selecting commanders for the capital’s camps. Whether his purpose had been to prevent the faction from becoming overwhelmingly dominant, or whether he had intended to present the matter to Zhang Juzheng as a pledge of allegiance, his actions had directly or indirectly protected the emperor’s safety.

Feng Bao naturally had to protect Tan Lun.

Feng Bao straightened in his seat, unleashed his full force, and calmly addressed Ge Shouli.

“The Analects, in the chapter ‘Duke Ling of Wei,’ says: ‘Be severe toward yourself and lenient toward others, and you will keep resentment at a distance.’”

“Chief Censor Ge is a man of learning as well. What does this mean? Explain it for us. If you do not wish to explain it, that is fine. This eunuch can explain it instead.”

Ge Shouli’s expression changed at once.

The eunuch was once again wielding the Analects like a great club and beating people with it.