The System (1)
Obvious as it may sound, Luoyang had been in an uproar ever since the failed assassination.
We had barely finished supper and were drifting off toward sleep when the cry of "Catch the assassin!" went up and every conceivable ruckus broke out across the city — quiet would have been the stranger outcome. Drums and gongs rolled out in every direction as an overwhelming host of soldiers came pouring from every corner of Luoyang, and the spectacle was truly something to behold. I'm not joking — they came boiling out as though someone had stirred up a hornet's nest.
On paper, I knew Luoyang commanded a sizable garrison, but experiencing it firsthand gave me an entirely new appreciation of the fact.
Well... what startled me most of all, though, was the reaction of the people around me.
I hardly need to mention the Empress, the very first to seek me out before the sun had even risen — but everyone close to me showed at least one flicker of agitation.
"They've lost it, they've completely lost it.... How dare those worthless little punks even try...."
"Sima Yi?"
"Don't talk to me right now. I'm busy."
"Uh... right, sure."
Sima Yi had been muttering who-knew-what under her breath for some time, skimming rapidly through one written document after another.
"My lord, are you unharmed?"
"Yeah. I'm fine."
"Then I am glad."
Zhuge Liang posed the question in a voice so perfectly unruffled, then flashed a bright little smile. It was unmistakably her usual self — and that was precisely what terrified me. Something about the whole atmosphere felt off.
"Th-thank goodness you're safe...."
"...Pang Tong."
"If you had been hurt, I c-can't bear to think what might have happened...."
Sharp-minded as she was, Pang Tong had evidently pictured that awful hypothetical in full, and now shuddered from head to toe. Thank goodness you never change, at least.
I sidled up beside her and asked, casually, "Hey, do you know what Sima Yi's doing right now? The air around her warns me I'd regret interrupting, so I haven't dared ask."
"Ah... you mean that...?"
Nodding as though she understood it all, Pang Tong went on.
"She's probably hunting for information."
"Information?"
"Yes."
"The assassin's name — was it Jang Gae-yang? She's pulling together every last scrap of information connected to him...."
"......"
"Gate registries, household ledgers with names recorded in them... anything her hands can reach, all of it...."
Good grief. Luoyang may well have held mountains of records, but did she truly intend to comb through every single one? It was no exaggeration to call the documents mountains piled from bamboo slips — if anything, that understated it.
...Was I allowed to take that as proof of how much she cared about me? A warm swell of pride rose in my chest all at once.
"Not this one either.... This one's no good either...." Even in that moment, Sima Yi kept muttering away, eyes glued to her bamboo slips. "So he was moving under a false name after all.... In that case there's nothing for it but to send men out to search...."
I could feel the will behind those words: if a mastermind existed, she meant to hunt them down and exterminate them to the last. My own assumption was that this had been the work of Yuan Shu's remnants — oddly well-loved by their own men, that crowd — acting entirely on their own initiative. But you could never be too careful. What if some genuine lunatic, playing at madness, had sent an assassin with nothing more than lottery fever? And people are people: even knowing the lottery will never pay out, they keep scratching ticket after ticket on the faintest sliver of hope. If a true mastermind existed, this attempt would not be the last. If it really had been the remnants acting alone, then this once would be the end of it.
"......"
Judging by how Zhuge Liang and Pang Tong had each buried themselves in their own bamboo slips, they were hard at work digging for that mastermind too. There was no sense in butting in and making a nuisance of myself at a time like this.
Even if I had wanted to help, I couldn't have. That kind of detective work demands the intuition and the observational eye to catch something in the smallest detail, and a first-rate mind to weave the resulting clues into a coherent whole. My only duty now was to trust my tiny strategists and wait patiently until they reached their conclusion.
So what ought I to be handling in the meantime...? The cold was finally settling in for the season, so excursions beyond the walls would have to wait. At the earliest, I could lead an army out only once winter had passed and spring had warmed the air again.
If campaigning was off the table, then all that remained was domestic governance, I supposed.
Arms crossed, lost in thought, I eventually hit upon one stroke of genius. To put it slightly more concretely: handing my subordinates a nice, fat pile of work.
Ah, whatever. That's what people at the top are for — flicking tasks down the ladder and grinding their underlings to dust. Wage thieves... no, thieves of the official stipend — the coin and goods doled out to officeholders by the year or by the season — would not be tolerated under my watch. Have a taste of my workload bomb, everyone.
"Then I'm counting on you."
"Yes, yes! Leave it to me!"
Rising from my seat, I gave Pang Tong's head one gentle pat before making my way out.
"...Tch."
"...I, too, shall have to claim a seat closer to you next time."
Whatever the two tiny strategists muttered as they watched me go, I regretfully failed to catch.
The room I set out for belonged, at present, to another soul entirely — one hard at work. A woman who executed every task entrusted to her without a hair's breadth of error, and who even within our faction, teeming as it was with brilliant strategists, ranked comfortably among the very best.
Standing at her door, I spoke in a voice loud enough to carry inside. "Ahem. Might I come in for a moment?"
"—My lord? Yes. Please, come in."
At those words, I opened the door without hesitation.
"What business brings you to me today?"
Eyes of clear blue, like a cloudless summer sky.
'The court has lost the hearts of the whole realm — the age of chaos has already begun.'
'For now, bide your time, my lord.'
The woman who had once devised stratagems for me and lit the road ahead while I was starved for talent in those early days now gazed at me. Jia Xu — courtesy name Wenhe. She had served Dong Zhuo, one of the most notorious villains in Romance of the Three Kingdoms; then his officers Li Jue and Guo Si; and after their downfall had gone on to serve Zhang Xiu, nearly driving that Hero of Chaos to the very brink of death. And yet this was the strategist who had later surrendered to Cao Cao and savored a long natural life until nearly eighty before passing from the world. To her, I spoke.
"There is something I wish to discuss with you. Have you any prior engagement?"
"No. I have no prior engagements, so you may speak freely."
Years had passed, and that side of her hadn't changed one bit. Apart from official duties, Jia Xu shared words with no one at all — you could call her a self-appointed loner without the slightest exaggeration. I could roughly guess why. Wasn't it to avoid becoming entangled with any... questionable characters? It bordered on pathological self-management, but I suspected that very trait was how she had lived out her days in comfort under Cao Pi in the original history. Or perhaps she was simply the sort who found her own company pleasant. Either way, I felt no urge to argue the point. It wasn't as if it harmed anyone.
In fact, it was precisely because I knew Jia Xu formed no personal attachments that I had chosen her for what I was about to ask. Looking at her, I opened my mouth in a level, even tone.
"I've been giving some thought to the way we recruit talent."
"...Yes."
"Besides the existing Recommendation System, I'm thinking of building an entirely new system of recruitment."
"...I beg your pardon?"
Oh? Well, that was a first. I had never once seen Jia Xu caught off guard.
The Recommendation System. On paper the name sounded dreadfully sophisticated, but the idea behind it was nothing special. One person recommended another, and that other was appointed to office. In other words — parachute appointments. But with an absolute overlord, an emperor or a king, perched at the very top, whenever one of those parachute appointments blew up, the one who had made the recommendation was frequently seized by the scruff and dragged down alongside. The Talent to Assist Kings, Xun Yu, had brought Cao Cao a multitude of talents through precisely this method. Xun Yu brought someone in; that someone recommended yet another; that other recommended someone still further — and the ranks of talent kept swelling.... No wonder they called her the Talent to Assist Kings; the woman was phenomenally well-connected. The moment Xun Yu fired up the imperial Wi-Fi, fresh talent came raining down from the heavens by the fistful.
Of course, this method had its flaws as well — namely, the stagnant-water phenomenon, better known as a league of their own. Let the rot fester, and a mutation called the hereditary aristocracy would be born: clans that seized the high posts generation after generation, then ruined the country all on their own — a farce of the highest order. Still water breeds rot; who in the modern world doesn't know that? A state ran well only if you somehow kept drawing in fresh, unstained newbies... ahem, fresh, clean water — from outside, keeping the offices in constant rotation.
The chronic ills of the Recommendation System claimed a sizable share of the blame for why Cao Cao's Wei fell, and why Sima Yi's Jin fell after it. In this generation it would hold, since I sat firmly in place wielding immense power — but what would happen once I left this world? ...Come to think of it, retirement had long since sailed clean out of reach. Even if I laid down my offices and retired to some back room to idly scratch my backside, far too many people would still be hanging on my every glance. A nation rarely falls to foreign invasion; it falls when internal rot knots itself into turmoil, and then collapses under the aftershocks. There was no reason to sit back and let that happen.
All I intended was to haul the Civil Service Examination System — the one enacted under the Sui, or was it the Tang? — forward by several hundred years.
"Rather than being recommended by whoever already holds the seat — examinations. Selecting brand-new talent outright."
"......"
In the original history, she had served lord after lord and risen to Grand Commandant on her own ability alone. She kept no personal ties with anyone, which meant the so-called old-boys' network carried no weight with her whatsoever. I stepped close to Jia Xu and said, smiling.
"What do you think? I have a feeling you'd manage it beautifully."
The power and wealth to make something real. A fine idea. And even the talent needed to see it through.
"What's your take?"
"...I...."
And why on earth would she refuse?