The Emperor Jingtai lived frugally all his life and left behind a final decree: keep the funeral simple. Aside from a few things he commonly used, nothing was to be buried with him, and there was to be no Martyrdom Sacrifice.
On behalf of his elder brother, he had abolished the Martyrdom Sacrifice system. Even under the late Emperor, no concubines had been buried alongside him. Once the policy was carried out in his generation, it would be firmly established; by the next generation, it would become ancestral law, difficult to change again.
Zhu Jianji followed the decree, though he slipped quite a few of his own possessions into the mausoleum. He also obtained many cultivation manuals and handwritten notes from Pan Yun, placing them solemnly beside the coffin.
Though it was impossible, what if they proved useful?
Only after the Emperor Jingtai was buried did Zhu Jianji ascend the throne. He changed the reign title to Shengjia, which would take effect after the first month of the following year.
Thus, in the fifth month of the eighteenth year of Jingtai, the new Emperor began dealing with the incident in which the Imperial Guards had stormed the palace while the late Emperor was gravely ill.
Shi Heng was sentenced to death by a thousand cuts. The Imperial Guards who had followed him were punished according to rank: those of high office were beheaded outright, while lower-ranking men and followers, though spared death, were exiled across the land. More than six thousand people were implicated. For a time, everyone in the Capital City fell silent, and the grief over the late Emperor's passing grew all the heavier.
Zhu Jianji established his authority splendidly in this affair. Both officials and commoners still had to praise him as benevolent, after all. Other than