Assembling the Dimwits for the Second Research Institute
The two boys from Jiangnan had blood trickling down their foreheads after losing a contest of durability against marble, each now sporting a fist-sized lump on their crowns. Still, they had survived.
“Gongjin, what do we do now?”
Sun Ce, utterly crushed by Gongsun Zan’s presence, quietly prodded the bump on his head before asking Zhou Yu.
“What do you mean, what do we do? We go back.”
“But Lord Yuan Gonglu is going to throw another tantrum. What then?”
“...If you hadn’t run your mouth, things wouldn’t have spiraled this far.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to that. But we can’t just sit on our hands, can we? You’re the one with the better head on your shoulders, so I’m sure you’ve already cooked up some brilliant scheme. Right?”
“Sigh… For now, let’s stall for a few months. If we claim we spent months trying to persuade them but failed, even he won’t be able to complain.”
Zhou Yu had ended up with a cracked forehead and a lump on his skull from cleaning up Sun Ce’s mess. He had every right to be furious, yet his voice remained eerily calm. The wrinkles etched across his brow proved he was angry, but these incidents happened so often that he seemed to have simply accepted it as his lot in life.
“Won’t this just spark an unnecessary war?”
“Baofu, think it through. If Jingzhou wants to attack Yan territory, what exactly would they have to do?”
“They’d have to strike Pingyuan through Yanzhou or cross Xuzhou and Qingzhou… Ah!”
“Exactly. By land, there’s no route that doesn’t pass through Cao Cao’s domain or the territories of those two old men, Tao Qian and Gong Rong. If they sail the Yangtze and cross the Yellow Sea, Lu Kang of Yangzhou will catch them by the ankle. And even if they somehow reach the Yellow River, fighting at sea with warships built for river combat would be disastrous. The man will surely rage and stomp his feet… but what can he do? There’s simply no other way.”
“What if he uses this as an excuse to appoint my father as vanguard? Then what?”
“Pull the general away to another front while he’s at war with Lu Kang of Yangzhou? Baofu, Yuan Shu is not Dong Zhuo. He doesn’t have generals to spare.”
Having heard the rumor that the Emperor had vanished, Yuan Shu had begun openly flaunting his ambition to become the next ruler and was scrambling to seize more territory. The softest target in his sights was Lu Kang of Yangzhou, conveniently nestled right beside Yuzhou. Yuan Shu had promised to appoint Sun Jian Governor of Yangzhou on the condition that he lead the vanguard against Lu Kang.
Lu Kang’s forces had spent far longer in the jungles along the Yangtze than Yuan Shu’s, and they were veterans of this green hell—masters at fighting amid malaria, dysentery, and every poisonous plant imaginable. Among Yuan Shu’s generals, only the Tiger of Jiangdong, Sun Jian, could punch through that nightmare environment and conduct a siege. The rest wanted nothing to do with that cursed land.
“If we simply wait here until General Sun seizes Yangzhou, everything will sort itself out. We move our families and generals there, then form an alliance with Yan. You understand what I mean?”
“…Block the Yangtze in exchange for the right to develop Jiangdong? You’re planning to use the old Yuan Jiao Gen Gong strategy?”
“Precisely. Properly drain and cultivate those wetlands and the entire swamp could become farmland. We’d at least secure the minimum capital needed for trade. It’s a plan that will take more than ten years… but time is on our side.”
“You bastard. So you had a plan all along?”
Sun Ce broke into a bright grin and clapped Zhou Yu on the shoulder. The crease between Zhou Yu’s brows deepened, veins rising at his temples.
“You’re shaving years off my life! If I die young, it’s all your fault, you son of a bitch!”
It was always Zhou Yu who cleaned up after Sun Ce’s impulsive blunders. He was used to it, but that didn’t make the anger disappear.
“Hmm… So Yuan Shu is attacking Yangzhou.”
After delivering a light flick to the two brats’ foreheads, I ran into old man Dadun on the way back. It turned out he had already sent a messenger when Yuan Shu first proposed the marriage alliance, but our paths had crossed and the man had only just arrived. Crossing winter mountains with snow up to the waist was no small feat, so the delay was perfectly understandable.
“Hmm… The vanguard of that war is the brat’s father… What’s the state of the campaign? Who holds the advantage?”
“Both Yuan Shu and Sun Jian are wary of using outsiders, so the information isn’t precise. Still, reports from Yangzhou suggest Sun Jian’s side is putting up an impressive fight. They say the mere name ‘Tiger of Jiangdong’ fills them with dread.”
“Even your boys are afraid?”
“Yes. Even ours.”
Oh. Now that was interesting.
It was true that Dadun’s Wuhuan had been pushed back by me, but instilling terror in nomads whose entire lives were lived on a tightrope was no simple matter. As for me… I’d learned through thievery, so I could implant fear the way I always had. But without specialized technique, scaring nomads through raw strength alone was something even Lu Bu had never managed. Or had he? I couldn’t be sure.
“Have they left?”
“They’re still here. According to the boy named Fan Ah, they plan to stall until summer arrives and then claim, ‘We tried to persuade them but failed.’ For someone so young, his head works surprisingly well.”
“Khaha, that pretty little brat? He’s quite entertaining. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes. I heard he even deflected Your Lordship’s anger with a single sentence.”
“Indeed. Quite the spectacle. Honestly I wasn’t that angry, but it felt like paying off a thousand-tael debt with one word. Is that what they mean?”
“…To be honest, I don’t quite understand. Even if they were in an empty place, shouldn’t those beggars who insulted Your Lordship be shown the taste of real pain?”
“In empty places, people curse even the Son of Heaven. Rather than wasting money and manpower trying to seal their mouths, it’s better to let them vent a bowlful of curses where no one can hear. If I’d done well, they wouldn’t have reason to curse me, would they?”
Unexpectedly, the very concept of freedom of expression had already existed during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period. I couldn’t fathom what kind of temporal storm that era had endured to produce everything from freedom of speech to glassmaking, primitive anarchism, and more. Still, rather than trying to explain principles I didn’t understand, I simply chalked it up to the Creator’s convenient grace that let me dismiss it all with ‘It’s Mozi’s principle’ or ‘It’s Han Feizi’s principle.’
Xunzi and Han Feizi had argued that using money and manpower to silence the people’s mouths was far more profitable for enriching the state and strengthening the military. In an age without television, radio, or even newspapers, there was little real benefit to be gained from sealing every commoner’s lips individually. The worst the people of this era usually said about their ruler was that a good harvest was the emperor’s virtue and a bad one his fault. As long as we built proper reservoirs, collected taxes at reasonable rates, and avoided sending waves of young men to be slaughtered in pointless wars, public sentiment would not turn against us.
The board was slowly being set in order. Wars had been reduced to professional soldiers clashing over fiefs, and taxes were kept within rational bounds. Of course, most warlords still harbored the desire to declare a war economy and total mobilization to attack their neighbors, but the risk of triggering a second Yellow Turban Rebellion kept them compromising at a sensible line. The peace of this era was indeed as fragile as that of the Belle Époque, yet the scholars at the research institute claimed that simply maintaining the current situation could bring the chaotic age to an end within ten years.
Dong Zhuo would surely die of adult diseases within a few years. Once he was gone, the Imperial Guard of Sili Province would clearly follow His Majesty’s commands. The Bingzhou and Xiliang armies already nursed deep grudges and could be split apart. Swallowing Xiliang and Bingzhou at the right moment would allow us to naturally absorb the Yongzhou caught between them. At that point the entire northern Central Plains would be pacified. Afterward, incorporating the isolated Qingzhou and Xuzhou before seizing Jiangnan and Ba-Shu would perfectly conclude the turbulent era—that was the institute’s conclusion.
Of course, no one had predicted that Yuan Shu would suddenly strike Yangzhou and propose a marriage alliance to His Highness the Prince of Bohai… but since it still fit within the larger framework of Jiangnan, the grand strategy appeared to remain valid.
“And… anyone who can curse me with genuine logic and coherence clearly possesses considerable insight. We should simply recruit them as officials to fill our administrative gaps.”
Yes. Discussing current affairs required connections or power to gather information in the first place. Intellectuals capable of submitting proper memorials could be directly employed to patch the holes in our bureaucracy.
“I… see. Your Lordship’s thoughts run so deep that this old man cannot hope to comprehend them.”
“What’s so profound about it? Old man, you don’t scold your younger siblings or son when they talk behind your back, do you? It’s the same logic.”
“…”
“Anyway, with Yuan Shu and Lu Kang at war, which side should we support…? Did you send word to the research institute?”
“I dispatched a messenger. It is scheduled to be raised as the main topic at this week’s regular meeting.”
“Good, good. Anything else?”
“…There is one more matter. A rebellion has broken out in Bingzhou.”
“What?”
No. Why? Had the crushing defeat at Pingyuan caused Dong Zhuo’s army to fracture? That was impossible. Dong Zhuo might be hopeless at grand strategy, but he was perfectly capable of taking care of his own. No matter how crucial a link Lu Bu had been between Bingzhou and Dong Zhuo… shouldn’t they instead unite against us as a common enemy?
I simply could not read the minds of this era’s warlords. Their thinking was irrational, illogical. The horse-riding nomads were easier—they followed their instincts. These semi-civilized men mixed the tiniest sliver of reason into their base urges and bounced around like rugby balls, making their thought processes nearly impossible to follow.
“They claim Dong Zhuo has abandoned Lu Bu… and that they would rather submit to Your Lordship’s army.”
“We’re the ones who killed Lu Bu. Yet they want to surrender to the man who killed their leader? Instead of clinging tighter to Dong Zhuo to kill us?”
“They say that at least he died honorably in battle… and that it is better than being stabbed in the back by the petty Dong Zhuo. They have already sent a messenger to General Yu. If we cross Hulao Pass, they will rise up from within to support us.”
“Goddammit. What are the chances this is a trap?”
“We are verifying it now… but the general who wrote the letter, Zhang Liao, was the second-in-command of the Bingzhou Army.”
Ha… Really, I understood none of it. I felt like a two-eyed man who had wandered into a village of cyclopes.
“Old man, contact the research institute. Tell them to gather some slow-witted kids and young fellows and have them study why these warlords move the way they do. I genuinely cannot understand what the hell these bastards are thinking while they live their lives.”
“…Would it not be better to entrust the matter to the Cultural Research Institute?”
“That would only work if the levels matched. Smart kids can’t comprehend the principles by which people who don’t use their heads commit these acts of idiocy.”
Yes. Since I couldn’t understand it, I needed to assemble a group of dimwits and create a dedicated Idiot Management Task Force. That way, at least my stress levels might decrease.