The World Is Picking on Me Unfairly
The World Is Picking on Me Unfairly
"Thank you, Inspector. Her Majesty the Emperor will also be most pleased with your resolve."
"I have merely done what a loyal subject ought to do. This Liu Biao, Inspector of Jing Province, will never abandon Her Majesty the Emperor. Be certain to convey this to Her Majesty without fail."
"Of course. It shall be done. Farewell."
With those final words, the Imperial Envoy from Bing Province spurred his horse and vanished into the distance.
Immediately after, a general who had been observing the situation at Liu Biao's side spoke up.
Wen Ping opened his mouth, his voice laden with deep concern.
"My lord. Is this truly correct? I do not care if it is an edict stamped with the Imperial Seal—how can we possibly join hands with such traitors?"
"Haha, traitors, you say. General Wen Ping, your words are far too severe."
"Inspector, you know this as well. The true Emperor of this land is not in Bing Province, but dwells in Luoyang."
"Wen Ping! Did our lord not command you to stop! If you spout further insolence, I will not forgive it!"
"Tch..."
Wen Ping scowled at the words of Cai Mao, who stood beside him.
Gazing at Wen Ping's still-disgruntled face, Liu Biao spoke with a deep smile.
"Now, now, brother-in-law, do not be so rigid. Is General Wen Ping not merely speaking out of his own concern?"
"Hmm..."
At Liu Biao's words, Cai Mao held his tongue for the moment.
Liu Biao then lightly clapped the shoulder of the dark-faced Wen Ping and continued.
"I fully understand your heart. But as I have said before, we are already in no position to join hands with those wretches of the Yuan clan in Luoyang. They are the very same lot who even now occupy Nanyang and the northern reaches of Jing Province as they please. What is more, the one stationed there is Yuan Shao, the younger sister of that Yuan Shu and the other dragon of the Yuan clan. Once the situation stabilizes, those people will surely try to seize Jing Province first, by whatever means necessary."
"But my lord, even so, this is..."
"And, however sophistical it may be, their argument is sufficiently reasonable. This body is a kinsman of the Han Imperial House, a man who carries the blood of Emperor Gaozu of Han. I cannot simply stand idle while the realm is toyed with by those Yuan cretins. Even for the sake of rescuing Her Majesty the Emperor, who is held captive by them, this is an unavoidable choice. Do you understand what I mean?"
It was a statement that mixed persuasion with a warning that no further defiance would be permitted.
Watching his lord, whose mind was already so firmly resolved, Wen Ping could do nothing but accept that the matter was irreversible.
"... Yes. I understand... my lord."
"Good. You may withdraw now. Ah, and brother-in-law."
"Yes, brother-in-law."
"Go at once and order a banquet prepared. Is today not a day of great joy? Let us all celebrate this day together with wine and meat, as is proper."
"Of course. I shall do so, brother-in-law. No... I shall carry out your command. Your Highness!"
"Hoho. Your Highness... how pleasing a phrase is that to the ear."
"I am overcome with awe, Your Highness!"
Cai Mao was already piling on the flattery, and Liu Biao unabashedly radiated delight.
Observing them,
Wen Ping could only let out a heavy sigh.
Jing Province's future...
No, more than that.
He felt ever darker storm clouds gathering over the future of this land.
*
154 BC.
The Han Dynasty was swept into a single colossal whirlpool.
The event that later generations would call the Rebellion of the Seven States.
At the time, a high minister named Cao Cao (...) who was implementing policies to reduce the power of the feudal lords, the King of Wu, Liu Bei (...), who nursed grievances against the Imperial House, and seven Imperial Clan Princes associated with Imperial in-laws all conspired to raise a massive revolt against the Son of Heaven in the central government.
As an aside, the Cao Cao and Liu Bei mentioned here are, of course, entirely distinct figures from the Liu Bei and Cao Cao who appear in Romance of the Three Kingdoms—their era is different, and even the Chinese characters and their readings differ.
In any case, amid the revolt thus formed, Cao Cao was brutally killed by the Son of Heaven, who had been attempting to placate the lords.
And the lords, including Liu Bei, who refused such appeasement and pressed on with the war, were also eventually defeated by the Son of Heaven and met a miserable end, swept away wholesale.
The Rebellion of the Seven States concluded with vast bloodshed in this way.
But while the damage was certainly immense,
this rebellion ultimately became a pivotal turning point that extended the lifespan of the Han Dynasty... no, more than that, it became the cornerstone for the entire realm of the Central Plains.
In the wake of this incident, the forces of the Vassal Kings, who under the system known as the Feudal Kingdom System had enjoyed powerful autonomy throughout the Han Empire, were, quite literally, exterminated.
What replaced them was the Commandery-County System, in which regions were governed by appointed officials.
Most of the Han realm was no longer ruled by entrenched local families but by bureaucrats whom the Son of Heaven could attach and detach at will—a centralized government system took root.
Such was the Commandery-County System, which served to bind a vast and mighty empire firmly within the grasp of the Son of Heaven.
But at this moment, two scraps of paper bearing the stamp of the Imperial Heirloom Seal, delivered to me by Chen Gong—
a secret missive prescribing the execution of my Yuan clan and myself as traitors,
and an edict appointing the Liu clan lords across the Han realm as the very same 'Vassal Kings' in question—
allowed me to see that the situation was spiraling beyond a mere rebel coalition into something far more dangerous...
that the Commandery-County System, the very foundation of this nation, had begun to shake at its roots.
"Who, exactly, are the bastards who accepted this?"
"Liu Biao, Inspector of Jing Province, and Liu Yan, Inspector of Yi Province. Besides them, a considerable number of lords have joined in, and though they may not yet be Vassal Kings themselves, they are said to have received higher offices and greater autonomy."
"Liu Yan... and even Liu Biao..."
Liu Yan I could understand—in the original timeline, his very assignment as Inspector of Yi Province had been to build his own power base.
But that Liu Biao had swallowed the bait so readily was honestly unexpected.
Wasn't he a man of some principle early on, and in the Romance generally evaluated as irresolute but at least moderately positive?
But on reflection, the possibility had not been zero, in truth.
It is not a widely known fact, but according to Records of the Three Kingdoms, once the turbulent times were fully ripening, Liu Biao had done everything short of openly calling himself Emperor as Yuan Shu did—he had worn imperial robes, eaten imperial food, conducted sacrifices—in short, he had played the emperor in all but name.
Since he was a man with a history of catching what might be called Emperor Syndrome and losing his grip, it was entirely plausible if, in this world, the illness had simply arrived a little sooner.
"Given that those two have gone over... we can practically consider Yi Province and Jing Province turned against us in their entirety."
"That is correct, my lord. And..."
"And?"
Chen Gong's expression, too, briefly showed reluctance.
Then she continued in an even heavier voice.
"It seems... that not only those two Inspectors, but also Liu Yao, the younger sibling of Liu Dai—one of the Coalition of Eighteen Lords—and the Inspector of Yang Province, has received the edict."
"... Ha... haha."
At this report, which made the mountain ahead seem ever higher, a hollow laugh escaped my lips.
Liu Dai—the former Inspector of Yan Province who, in the recent Rewards According to Merit, had been appointed Minister of the Household... in modern terms, a post akin to Minister of Government Administration.
Having met him in person, he was a gentleman of advanced age, of steady character, and deeply loyal to the Imperial House. I had personally thought him a good man...
But it seemed his younger sibling was not of the same mold.
The very edict that Chen Gong had obtained had been sent by Liu Yao to his brother Liu Dai, urging him to betray us. Liu Dai had then truthfully reported the matter to my strategist Chen Gong, and through that process, the document fell into our hands.
And that meant that, at this point in time, more than six-tenths of this realm...
effectively a force stretching across what in the original Three Kingdoms timeline would be the territories of Shu and Wu plus Bing Province, You Province, and beyond, had begun to level its blades at us.
"There is no need to ask aloud, but... all of this is Zhang Rang's scheme, isn't it."
"It must be. That old fox... he has made things impossibly difficult for us."
Zhang Rang was committing a move similar to what Dong Zhuo had done in the original timeline when he had scattered offices about to appease the lords.
I had naturally predicted that these bastards would not sit meekly by.
And I had, of course, also considered the possibility that they might try to incite other lords and form a coalition, depending on the circumstances.
But... no matter how cornered he was, I had not dreamed that even Zhang Rang would do something so unhinged...
that he would commit such an act, effectively carving the Han Empire into pieces by appointing Vassal Kings.
And as for what would happen if this trolling were dealt with complacently...
I could predict that outcome without much difficulty.
The Rebellion of the Seven States had at least been neatly resolved and became a foundation for the Han's development.
But the original timeline's history also contained, with stark clarity, an example of what happened when such a thing failed.
The fall of the Later Han and the subsequent era of the Three Kingdoms.
And the power that brought an end to the Three Kingdoms—
the Jin Dynasty of the Sima Clan.
The unified empire established after ending more than a century of chaos collapsed in mere decades. Part of the reason was simply that its legitimacy was weak as shit,
but a cause no less fatal was that, exactly like this, they had given Imperial relatives and in-laws excessively strong power.
The Sima clan members who ruled over various parts of the Jin dynasty as 'Imperial Clan Princes,' a role similar to the Vassal Kings.
And the resulting civil war among those Sima kin—
the War of the Eight Princes.
The War of the Eight Princes, a despair-version of the Rebellion of the Seven States, shredded the Jin dynasty's national strength into rags at blinding speed, and putting to shame the long, grand heroic tales of the Three Kingdoms, the Jin dynasty collapsed in a pitifully hollow fashion.
And it ushered in the Five Barbarians and Sixteen Kingdoms Period, a chaos far worse than even the Warring States era of old—the worst period of anarchy.
The War of the Eight Princes had clearly shown what happens when the centralized system is collapsed by endowing clan kinsmen with excessive power.
In that respect,
Zhang Rang's present scattering of Vassal King titles to the Liu clan lords could be called the equivalent of sowing the seeds that lead straight to such a hellscape far and wide.
'Zhang Rang, that bastard, must have foreseen this much... and yet...'
As a wily old politician who certainly knew about the Rebellion of the Seven States, he could not possibly fail to grasp such a basic fact.
And yet, the fact that he had committed this outrage, even stamping it with the Imperial Heirloom Seal...
meant he had resolved to discard even this realm for the sake of his own safety.
He was already a man I had resolved to kill, but this atrocity of Zhang Rang's wiped away even the thought of letting him die peacefully.
As I felt a dizzy spell under what could only be called the worst possible development,
for a moment my gaze drifted, trying to turn my eyes even slightly from this pitch-black situation, toward the seal clearly stamped upon the edict—
toward the imprint of the Imperial Heirloom Seal, which I had seen several times in the past.
'Come to think of it... I never imagined Zhang Rang, of all people, would get his hands on the Jade Seal...'
The Seal I had been unable to find even after scouring every well in Luoyang immediately after occupying the city.
Regarding the whereabouts of the object that in the original timeline was supposed to have passed through Sun Jian's hands and come to Yuan Shu, I could now be certain at last.
And at the same time, though my luck had already been shit, even the Jade Seal, which I had been treating as a fixed late-game drop, had fallen into the hands of the worst possible figure...
A man who held the Emperor in his grasp and plainly knew how to wield the power of an object like the Imperial Seal, as he was now demonstrating.
Once again, regarding this utterly demented misfortune...
No, regarding the cruel way the world was stacking the deck against me, I could do nothing but lament sincerely.
"..."
"My... my lord?"
"Are... are you all right?"
My subordinates asked cautiously, observing my coldly hardened face.
At this, I forcibly steadied my emotions and issued an order in a composed voice.
"Tomorrow morning, assemble every available official and general. Even those who are soon to depart for their posts... all of them."
"Ah... yes."
"Understood."
I wanted to summon them at once, but most people were no doubt already celebrating the results of today's Rewards According to Merit with cups of congratulatory wine.
Under these conditions, holding a normal council was impossible.
So, amid a feeling of my insides steadily burning away,
I trudged alongside my retainers, thinking that tomorrow would be an exceedingly busy day.
Just as I stepped out through the gates of the Imperial Palace, driven by that impatient mood...
"You are late, Gonglu."
"!"