BST - Chapter 13
Chapter 13: Following in the Yellow Turbans' Footsteps
The sparks of the Heavenly Screen were reflected in Wang Shen'ai's eyes.
The instant she spoke those words, from Wang Xun's perspective, they were steeped in a desperate gamble for survival.
Well, why wouldn't it be survival?
By Wang Xun's understanding, Emperor Yong'an was still mixed in among the crowds of Jiankang, his identity unknown. What was certain was that his skill at reading the situation and bending it to his purpose, at provoking two rivals into tearing at each other, was truly formidable. A man like that could already claim a seat at court.
And on top of that, he was ruthless enough.
What did the emperor and empress of Jin amount to? When the need arose, they were nothing but tools he used to shape public opinion.
Just look at what the Heavenly Screen had said.
She had hanged herself and been found by the palace servants, which was the only reason she did not die. But if they had arrived a little later, wouldn't it have become a real death?
Wang Xun himself could not explain why he had urged Wang Gong to withdraw his troops, and just now he was being equally "fair" in not asking why Wang Shen'ai might have been deceived by Yong'an into doing something so foolish.
Anyway, it wasn't too late to set it right!
He had already heard Wang Shen'ai's next words: "With no Sima Daozi acting as regent now, the empress wields more power than the Heavenly Screen described. If... if power can be gathered into my hands swiftly, at least I need not end up a piece on someone else's board!"
"But with the Heavenly Screen before us now, and the realm in turmoil besides, my advocacy alone for the Crown Prince's enthronement is far from enough. I ask you, Uncle, to mediate on my behalf."
Her attitude was clear.
She had accepted Wang Xun's proposal: she would become empress!
Wang Xun, terrified she might change her mind, said hastily, "Good... good! So long as you can see your way to it."
No matter what news the Heavenly Screen gave next, or how long it would last this time before vanishing, the direction was settled for now, and Wang Shen'ai was willing to cooperate. On the whole, that set his mind somewhat at ease.
After a moment's thought, he added one thing more: "If this goes smoothly, there is one further matter you will need to keep watch over."
"You mean the strategist from the palace, the one the Heavenly Screen mentioned?"
"Exactly!" said Wang Xun in approval.
Talking with an intelligent person was a straightforward pleasure, especially a quick-witted one like Wang Shen'ai.
If they couldn't lay hands on Yong'an, then seizing the strategist who carried out his orders first was never a bad move.
This time there was an added qualifier: "from the palace."
The empress commanded the six palaces; screening candidates was far easier for her than for anyone else.
Wang Shen'ai frowned slightly. "But the Heavenly Screen said this man went by the assumed name Jiang Ding, without giving his real name. That makes the screening rather difficult..."
Wang Xun's mind happened to be working faster than before. "A surname is the most telling thing; let us begin by looking for people surnamed Jiang. Only, since the flight south across the Yangzi in the Yongjia era, the palace personnel have been a mixed lot, and for generations afterward their origins were often left out of the records entirely. The surname by which someone is called in the palace may not be their original one, so search by ancestral home. If I am not mistaken, the surname Jiang is found mostly in the Sichuan and Gansu regions and in Shandong."
"I understand," Wang Shen'ai replied gravely. She had plainly taken the matter to heart, and softly repeated the name "Jiang Ding" several times.
What Wang Xun did not see was that, as she turned the name over and over, a strange smile crept onto Wang Shen'ai's face.
Jiang Ding, was it...
She had not been in this unfamiliar Eastern Jin era for long, and the people and names Wang Shen'ai had encountered were still pitifully few against the whole of the imperial palace, the whole of Jiankang.
But as luck would have it, she really did know someone connected to those two words, "Jiang Ding."
The character "Jiang" was common not only as a surname, but often appeared as one element in the names of Jin women.
So the person she knew was not called "Jiang Ding," but "Ding Jiang."
Noble Lady Zhang gazed up at the Heavenly Screen and fell into deep thought.
Those two familiar words inevitably left her dazed. They were her own name, reversed.
But bold as she was, she truly dared not link herself with the word "strategist."
She had been cursed as a wicked consort who brought ruin upon the state; she had even killed the late emperor herself, which only made the label fit all the better. What did that have to do with being a strategist?
Surely she couldn't really have acquired such a mistaken notion merely because of the Crown Princess's remark about "recruiting worthies" that day.
Yet the name "Zhi Miaoyin" made it hard to keep that thought of hers down; no sooner was it suppressed than it bobbed back to the surface like a piece of floating wood.
She had been Sima Yao's favored consort; Zhi Miaoyin was the Buddhist nun Sima Yao trusted most.
Over ten years the two of them had dealt with each other a good many times. They could not exactly be called close friends, but when the Heavenly Screen mentioned that Zhi Miaoyin had had Sima Yuanxian killed, putting herself in the other woman's place, she could understand her thinking entirely.
So she too had a guess that was almost instinctive: when the palace was in turmoil and no one had leisure to spare for Jianjing Temple, Zhi Miaoyin might well do as the Heavenly Screen said, drawing herself swiftly out of the chaos of Jiankang and withdrawing with her followers, but she should not have gone to Qiantang!
Zhi Miaoyin had always known how to grow her religion in the shelter of a great tree, using that banner to seek profit and advancement. Having fled Jiankang, then, she ought to have gone on to Jingzhou, delivering to Huan Xuan a piece of intelligence about the turmoil behind the chaos of Jiankang and trading it for a safe harbor.
Unless the strategist called "Jiang Ding" was an old acquaintance of hers, and had the means to persuade her.
On that telling, the guess that had sounded so absurd at first no longer seemed quite so absurd.
But...
Could this really be possible?
[Why did Emperor Yong'an lose all faith in the great clans? Because the road ahead ran counter to the clans from the very beginning.]
[The mission Yong'an gave his strategist to carry to Qiantang seemed, too, to answer that question left again and again on bamboo slips and on paper: where does power come from?]
Wang Shen'ai stared at the four characters that had appeared once more.
After the earlier upheaval and her gamble with her life, those four characters now seemed to carry the force of a question wrung from blood and tears.
So, unlike the others who wanted to keep studying the handwriting for clues to Yong'an's identity, she had already guessed what her other self was thinking.
For people of later generations, the answer was actually not so hard to arrive at.
Still, without Wang Gong's withdrawal, perhaps this would not have come to the fore so quickly.
The tide of history...
This was the tide of history!
Her heart was heavy, and the voice from the Heavenly Screen grew grave as well.
[During the Eastern Jin, because of the nine-rank system, the gentry were sorted into nine ranks according to their 'family background', which included the official posts held by grandfathers and fathers and the family standing of their in-laws, and their 'assessment', that is, their personal ability and moral character. This served as an important credential in the Ministry of Personnel's selection of officials.]
[But as time went on, family background carried ever greater weight in that standard of evaluation, until it became the universal rule of the realm that no son of humble birth could rise to nobility. The talent who could hold their ground at court, the heroes who could take up posts as provincial and commandery governors, likewise came for the most part from the aristocratic houses.]
[Yong'an's initial aim was to end the Eastern Jin's internal strife as quickly as possible and stop the country from consuming itself. That meant accepting one premise: relying on the strength of the great clans. Yet it was precisely those lofty houses that dealt Yong'an a punishing blow during the campaign against Sima Daozi.]
Her first plan was shattered.
Or perhaps she had merely been jolted awake from an unrealistic dream.
[From this, one could see that Yong'an seemed born for the imperial position. Faced with this blow, the future emperor responded with remarkable speed, sending the allies out of Jiankang and establishing a policy wholly unlike the one before.]
[As turmoil engulfed Jiankang, Yong'an had already turned her gaze southeast. In answering the question 'Where does power come from?', she offered a new answer and set an unprecedented example for future revolutionary uprisings.]
[In ancient times there were the uprisings of Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, and the Yellow Turban uprising. Though both were suppressed not long after their stirring calls to arms, once launched they could rally people by the tens of thousands within a very short time. Does that not tell us where the hearts of the people lay?]
[It was only the limitations of the age that made these uprisings first fall victim to the collapse of order within their own ranks, and never gave them the chance to build up their armed strength, so that once they were routed the defeat was utterly devastating.]
[But thanks to Chen Sheng and Wu Guang crying, 'Are kings, nobles, generals, and ministers born to their stations?', and Zhang Jiao proclaiming, 'The Azure Sky is dead; the Yellow Sky shall rise,' Emperor Yong'an's transformation would not be a rootless duckweed. It was a rekindled spark on southern soil, an unprecedented experiment: could it change this order, pit the people's will against the great clans, and remake the south from the bottom up?]
[Of course, for a spark to sweep across the plains is far from so simple. First there must be ground for it to burn. Did the Eastern Jin dynasty have such a place?]
[The answer is yes!]
Slowly a map took shape on the Heavenly Screen, splitting into blocks of provinces and commanderies.
One corner in the southeast leapt free of the black and white tones and turned a striking color.
Beneath the Heavenly Screen, Liu Yu, commander of the Crown Princess's personal guard, looked upon this map and, for no reason he could name, suddenly felt a heat rise in his chest.
Compared with the aristocratic officials around him, whose expressions were all shifting with the news, he, a common soldier from a poor family, seemed to feel the force of the words 'from the bottom up' more deeply.
His experience of nearly starving to death as a child made him understand the meaning of "the will of the people" all the better.
Though he still did not know what Emperor Yong'an hoped to attempt, he found himself craning his neck, as if drawing closer to the Heavenly Screen would let him see what came next a little sooner.
The voice of the Heavenly Screen continued to reach everyone at once.
[Yuzhou and other prefectures north of Jiankang lay under the watch of Wang Gong's troops. To the west, Jingzhou would soon be seized by the rising Huan Xuan. So what of the southeast?]
[Here stood the great clans of Jiangdong in their multitudes. Even the Wang Clan of Langya, after supporting the Sima clan's flight south and the founding of the state at Jiankang, actively sought marriages with the Jiangdong clans in order to draw them into their fold. And most of the gentry families that had come south from the north chose to build their estates here as well.]
[In other words, this was where the estates and lands of the northern and southern gentry were most concentrated.]
At first glance the place was a picture of flourishing prosperity, its hills, forests, lakes and marshes all beautiful to behold.
But beneath that splendor...
[Estates spanning thousands of mu have swallowed up the local people's farmland, yet their owners pay only a pittance in taxes, leaving everyone else to shoulder the remaining burden. Within twenty years, or ten, perhaps even sooner, these people will buckle under it: some will become slaves or tenant farmers, while others flee into the mountains and form settlements.]
[Do you think people would not resist? Of course they would!]
[And as though by a fateful bond, the people here believe in the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice.]
[Though this religion has already changed somewhat since the days of the Yellow Turban uprising. Not only common folk believe in the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice, but officials too, among them Wang Ningzhi, second son of Wang Xizhi. Du Zigong of Qiantang, one of the leaders of the Way of the Celestial Masters, and his successor Sun Tai, long since became welcome guests in officials' homes.]
[But there is no doubt that, under harsh levies and heavy taxes, some people are left with no choice but to seek deliverance through religion. At any moment, they may rise like the Yellow Turbans of old, raising sickles and iron hoes against the high officials above who wallow in pleasure!]
[It was at this moment that Zhi Miaoyin and Jiang Ding came to Qiantang.]
[According to the historical records, Zhi Miaoyin had first been lured here by a wager, and had no intention of staging a clash between Buddhism and Daoism. The one in charge was Jiang Ding.]
[So the people of Jin in history would soon witness the astonishing power unleashed when a madman met an even madder, enlightened ruler.]
[But in the present, what happened first was that Zhi Miaoyin asked Jiang Ding a question: what exactly are you trying to do? Or rather, what exactly does the Yong'an behind you want to do?]
[It was a question that went straight to the root of things.]
It would determine whether she stayed here to watch and wait.
[The histories recorded this scene in the barest of strokes, which hardly seems fitting. But perhaps no amount of ink could ever do this scene justice.]
[In the early spring of Qiantang, until now there had been only the merry voices of the Jiangdong gentry; now one more voice had joined them.]
[Jiang Ding and Zhi Miaoyin were old acquaintances, and he did not hedge; he gave her his answer from the very start: 'We intend to follow the old example of the Yellow Turbans.']
In the silhouette on the Heavenly Screen, the disguised scholar unrolled before the nun a handscroll in the handwriting of Emperor Yong'an. The original Chinese line consisted of only seven characters.
[Trample every last bone of the nobles and ministers underfoot in the imperial streets.]
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