Chapter 60: Great Ming: Chongzhen Begs Me to Rebel!

[In the 90th year of Chongzhen, the seas were calm and the rivers clear!]

[In the 91st year of Chongzhen, the Nanyang region presented a Qilin!]

[In the 92nd year of Chongzhen, the Luo River dried up, revealing a stone dragon-horse bearing the Luo River Map on its back!]

[In the 93rd year of Chongzhen, the Celestial Master of the Zhengyi Sect on Mount Longhu gazed into the distance to divine the Chancellor's fortune, seeing multicolored vapors resembling dragons and tigers, indicating an exalted status beyond measure!]

[In the 94th year of Chongzhen, the Duke Yansheng of Qufu excavated an old house and chanced upon ancient bamboo slips inscribed with tadpole scripts. Through the Duke's personal interpretation, they turned out to be the "Classic of Poetry: Greater Odes: King Wen". For reasons unknown, the rest of the text was poorly preserved, leaving only a single sentence clearly legible: "Though Zhou be an ancient state, its mandate is renewed." When viewed at night, golden light lingered among the characters!]

[In the 95th year of Chongzhen, a fox in Mizhi County, Shaanxi, cried out: "The Great Zhou shall rise! Zhou Liangwang!" Another person fishing in the Wei River found an inscription inside a fish's belly: "The Great Zhou shall rise! Zhou Liangwang!"]

[In the 96th year of Chongzhen, yet another person proclaimed: "Shaanxi is the land of the former Zhou and naturally possesses the aura of a Son of Heaven. Now that the dragon aura of Fengyang under the Great Ming has waned, it is time to return the mandate of government to the Son of Heaven of the Zhou land!"]

[“Furthermore, the Ming corresponds to the virtue of Fire, while the Zhou corresponds to the virtue of Earth. Among the Five Elements, Fire generates Earth; thus, the succession of the Zhou following the Ming, and the abdication of the Ming to the Zhou, accords with the mutual generation of the Five Elements and the will of the Heavenly Dao!”]

[As time fermented, the rumors among the common folk grew increasingly eccentric and mystical. If the aforementioned accounts still maintained a shred of logical theory, the following ones were somewhat lacking in basic etiquette...]

[“The Blue Sky is dead, the Yellow Sky shall stand! In the year of Guimao, great fortune under heaven!”]

[“The Ming house has lost its virtue, detested by both Heaven and men! The imperial star is obscured; it is fitting to abdicate the throne!”]

[“Speak of Fengyang, praise Fengyang, Fengyang was once a fine place. Ever since Emperor Zhu arose, nine out of ten years brought barren waste... Old Thief Zhu! Do you know why Fengyang remains barren? It is simply because the dynastic title your Zhu family chose was Ming! Ming means the sun, with a sun hanging in the sky every single day, how could Fengyang not become barren?”]

[“Moreover, the Zhu family attained the throne improperly, originally rising to power by betraying the peasant uprisings across the realm. Zhu Chongba constantly claimed to act for the common people, yet after ascending the dragon throne, he began slandering the Red Turban heroes as mere bandits, while portraying himself as a righteous gentleman who had inadvertently strayed into a den of thieves...”]

[“True! And how did the Junior Emperor Ming die? Was he soluble in water?”]

[“And Yongle was also a mass murderer! That supposed sagely grandson Xuande abandoned a thousand miles of territory! Emperor Zhu sent Grand Guardian Yu to his grave! Every single household of those old Daoists is cleansed! Wanli's dereliction of duty, arrears in military pay, and slaughter of soldiers...”]

[“The Heavenly Dao is in chaos, and disasters frequently befall the mortal realm—all caused by your family's loss of virtue! Why do you not hastily tumble down from the dragon throne!”]

[“Indeed! Without Chancellor Zifang, you damn well are just a stray dog by the roadside! Roll down quickly! Roll down!”]

[The Divine Emperor: ...]

[Absurd... I merely told you all to manufacture a few auspicious omens so that that brat's true colors would be exposed. What kind of mess have you concocted for me?!]

[The increasingly aged Divine Emperor was trembling all over with rage caused by the grievances of the realm, terrifying the group of eunuchs into kowtowing and crying out in defense: Your Majesty, spare us... At most, we only arranged some conventional auspicious omens urging accession. These latter curses and revilements are definitely not our doing at all!!!]

[These are entirely the spontaneous ramblings of one hundred million unruly subjects across the land! There are wicked individuals among the common folk!]

[Precisely! The entire realm is filled with unruly subjects! Scoundrels who accepted silver from overseas foreigners! To dare to curse even His Majesty transcends ordinary subversion! We must strike with an iron fist!]

[Your Majesty! Quickly use your invincible divine power to send every single unruly subject in the realm straight up to heaven!]

[The loyal eunuchs wiped away their tears and made this plea, burning with the desire to exterminate all unruly subjects across the world who dared to insult their master.]

[To the eunuchs' surprise, however, faced with their tearful pleas, the Divine Emperor did nothing at all. He merely took a deep breath, and then cast his furious, bloodshot gaze toward the distant Chancellor's Residence, as if waiting for something...]

[...]

[Do not harm me!]

[Meanwhile, you inside the Chancellor's Residence were genuinely terrified: There really are wicked individuals among the common people!]

[Actually, those preceding auspicious omens could be overlooked; after all, you had long ago resolved to strictly adhere to your official duties and play the role of a replica Zhuge Liang. What did auspicious omens matter? Ignoring them would suffice.]

[However, this subsequent barrage of verbal abuse from the common folk genuinely caused you to completely lose your composure... Good grief, even if one has never tasted a purple egg, surely one has tasted a primitive purple egg?]

[Have you forgotten?! Those wronged souls whom the Divine Emperor sent flying to the heavens one punch at a time from the old crooked-neck tree on Coal Hill are still glaring at you day in and day out!]

[In short, you were terrified that the Divine Emperor would be driven to a mental breakdown by the sharp insults of the common folk, dropping the act entirely and directly striking out at you and the people of the realm...]

[Yes, you had actually perceived long ago that He was merely acting. Although you did not know why He was staging this performance, His intentions were far too obvious—He clearly wanted to provoke you into actively harboring disloyal ambitions!]

[Yet, His acting method—which involved ripping off the very skin of His own ancestors—truly left you somewhat baffled: Was this not laying it on a bit too thick...]

[Regardless of what scheme the Divine Emperor was plotting, you had to make a resolute response to this matter!]

[Thus, you hurriedly had the imperial scholars of the Chancellor's Residence draft numerous "rumor-debunking announcements" to appease the hearts of the people: Children, I truly only made a tiny contribution! The improvement of the world is genuinely the result of His Majesty's grace!]

[In any case, remember this well: "Do not utter words unconducive to unity!"]

[Following this round of appeasement, the populace more or less recalled the terrifying might of the Divine Emperor. Therefore, after venting their grievances and satisfying their tongues, everyone sensibly shut their mouths to avoid being struck dead by the tower for excessive structural building...]

[One must always remember to take the Rice Sage as a negative example; ethereal concepts like "Tower Studies" are never things mortals can master...]

[Nevertheless, although the masses recovered their rationality under the threat of the primitive purple egg, constrained by the limitations of their era, they still expressed their dissent toward you.]

[“Chancellor, anything else can be discussed, but how are those auspicious omens to be explained? The calm seas and clear rivers, the Qilin, the dragon-horse bearing the map, the multicolored vapors of dragons and tigers, the bamboo slip Classic of Poetry... These auspicious omens clearly manifested because Heaven was moved by your benevolence, and thus bestowed them specifically upon you!”]

[You smiled helplessly and could only reluctantly popularize some science for them.]

[“The seas running calm and the rivers running clear is a natural law to begin with. Back in the era of Emperor Huizong of Song, the Yellow River also ran clear—was Emperor Huizong consequently an enlightened monarch?”]

[“As for the Qilin... that thing is not called a Qilin, but rather an ordinary animal with a peculiar appearance from thousands of miles away. Compared to a Qilin, it ought to be called a giraffe... If that truly were an auspicious Qilin, wouldn't the land that produced it be a celestial realm where immortals fly about unconstrained?”]

[“The dragon-horse bearing the map... I inspected that dragon-horse; it is merely a stone sculpture carved recently. Clearly, it was deliberately manufactured by external hostile forces to disrupt our Great Ming!”]

[External hostile forces... The eunuch lurking in the distance could not help blushing fiercely...]

[“As for the multicolored vapors of Mount Longhu and the Kong family's bamboo slip Classic of Poetry... those are merely tricks used by Daoist and Confucian swindlers to delude the masses! Neither the Grand Mansion of Mount Longhu nor Duke Yansheng of the Kong family can be permitted to remain; they are both feudal superstitions, and only His Majesty is the sole true living god!”]

[Ah?!]

[A Daoist and a Confucian hiding among the crowd turned pale with fright and scurried back to report...]

[In short, you explained all the aforementioned auspicious omens as scientifically as possible, even though they might not actually have been very scientific, with an invisible transcendent hand most likely manipulating everything behind the scenes...]

[Hearing this, the crowd understood vaguely.]

[Yet someone still refused to submit: “Chancellor! Everything you have said makes sense, but there is one point I cannot fathom: why has the imperial star in the heavens grown dim? Over these past few years, the imperial star has truly grown dim and precarious—is this not a manifestation of the monarch losing his virtue?”]

[This...]

[You were momentarily speechless, for you did not quite understand either: No matter how formidable the Divine Emperor might be, He was at best a terrestrial-level entity. Altering the course of the Yellow River or suppressing the waves of the East China Sea—while exceedingly exaggerated—was still somewhat comprehensible... But what on earth was going on with the imperial star? That was a star countless light-years away! Even if the Divine Emperor had attained the supreme might to shift stars and reposition constellations, light itself would not even have had time to travel from such a distance across so many light-years?!]

[Furthermore, the Divine Emperor was clearly weakening; He could not accomplish such feats in the past, and it was even less possible now... Unless He had been acting the entire time, it was impossible! No... even with acting, it was impossible!]

[You racked your brains yet still could not figure out how the Divine Emperor accomplished this. After hesitating repeatedly, you decided to bite the bullet and force an explanation.]

[“As for this... it is likewise a natural astronomical phenomenon... As Xunzi put it well: The operation of Heaven has its constant regularity; it does not exist for the sake of Yao, nor does it perish for the sake of Jie! There is no reciprocal resonance between celestial phenomena and human affairs; these are merely rumors fabricated by Dong Zhongshu to bamboozle the emperor!”]

[After much persuasion, the crowd finally dispersed somewhat reluctantly. As for whether they actually believed it or not, nobody knew...]

[Having finished all this, you finally let out a long breath of relief, slowly turning your head to gaze far off in the direction of the Forbidden City.]

[Though you could not see His gaze, you knew He was undoubtedly watching you...]

[You said nothing further, merely bowing calmly toward the distant horizon.]

[...]

[In the 96th year of Chongzhen, the fifty-three-year-old Chancellor Zhou Liang requested permission to retire to his hometown!]