"Lord, Liu Bei's move is truly vicious. We absolutely cannot allow it!" Chen Qun said, holding the books sent from Hebei by fast horse, his face ashen and his eyes flashing with icy light. "Liu Bei's move is no different from trying to drive our Aristocratic Clans to extinction. These books must never be distributed! All sales must be sealed, and anyone privately keeping such books must be dealt with. We must also sever all ties with Liu Bei completely."
For someone like Chen Qun, who came from an Aristocratic Clan among Aristocratic Clans, what Liu Bei was doing was practically the same as digging up his ancestral graves.
He was a staunch supporter of Aristocratic Clan politics, the future founder of the Nine-Rank Official System, and a proponent of the notion that there should be no commoners among the upper ranks and no Aristocratic Clans among the lower ranks. As for the laws of the court, centralization of power, and education without distinction—all of it was utter bullshit.
Wife-lover Cao flipped through the book in his hands. It was specifically about how to survey farmland and calculate taxes. If it could be widely distributed, it would truly be very useful to Wife-lover Cao. In fact, although he had considerable territory and many talented people under his command, most of them still came from the great Aristocratic Clans.
How much tax each region paid and how it paid it were entirely controlled by the local Aristocratic Clans. Cao Cao's control over the various localities was genuinely weak. For Cao Cao, who had lofty ambitions, this was excruciating. Whenever he lay awake at night, he had often thought about issuing a Talent Recruitment Order and, like Liu Bei, appointing large numbers of people from the lower classes to break the Aristocratic