The Five Great Clans were wiped out overnight. The news quickly spread throughout the Great Sui.
It struck every noble clan in the Great Sui Dynasty like a thunderbolt from the heavens.
They were left scorched, stunned, and terrified to their very core.
They simply couldn't believe the news was true. The Five Great Clans had been completely wiped out in a single night.
These were the Five Great Clans, lineages that had endured for nearly a thousand years!
They were powerful enough to rise and fall alongside the nation, wielded immense influence throughout the imperial court, and were so formidable that even the late Emperor Lin Batian had feared them.
Their roots ran deep, their influence spanned the realm, and nearly twenty Xiantian masters stood ready beneath their banners.
Yet these five colossal powers had been uprooted and reduced to ashes in a single night.
When their spies reported that the heads of the Five Great Clans' patriarchs were hanging above the Meridian Gate in the Capital City, every last trace of wishful thinking and watchful hesitation turned into profound terror.
The new emperor, Lin Hanzhou, had used the most unmistakable means possible to show the entire realm the terrifying extent of his power.
The power of an example was boundless.
Once this "example" had been made, Lin Hanzhou's subsequent purge of the Five Great Clans' remnants went smoothly as well.
Over the next month, most of the Five Great Clans' forces entrenched in the various commanderies and counties were uprooted.
Those who moved against them were not just government officials, but local noble clans and powerful families too.
These noble clans and powerful families acted not only for their own benefit, but also to curry favor with the new emperor, Lin Hanzhou.
They had no desire to provoke this god of slaughter. He held all the power, and helping the Five Great Clans' remnants would be no different from courting death.
Another month soon passed, and by then, the Five Great Clans' remnants within the Great Sui had all been eradicated.
Perhaps a few deeply concealed forces had survived, but they could no longer threaten the Great Sui.
The Five Great Clans had lost their momentum, and their old era had come to a definitive end.
The new era ushered in by the new emperor, Lin Hanzhou, had begun.
Over the past two months, alongside the eradication of the Five Great Clans' remnants, the three new policies had also been implemented as scheduled.
With the Five Great Clans' fate serving as a warning, the new policies—which had initially faced obstacle after obstacle—suddenly met with no resistance.
The local officials and powerful families who had once paid lip service while defying the new policies now seemed, overnight, to have become their most devoted supporters.
Commanderies and counties that had delayed building government schools, citing "financial difficulties," somehow found large sums of silver.
One brand-new school after another sprang up at astonishing speed.
The grain merchants who had secretly manipulated prices voluntarily opened their granaries and lowered prices again and again.
They feared that if they lowered them too slowly, Lin Hanzhou would confiscate their property and turn it over to the state.
In the end, prices fell even lower than they had been before the new policies. Their faces were wreathed in ingratiating smiles as they claimed to be "sharing the nation's burdens."
The most crucial reform, the land reform, spread across the nation at an unprecedented pace.
Local clans volunteered to surrender the farmland they had seized and actively cooperated with the authorities to measure, register, and distribute it.
At the same time, there were no so-called "popular uprisings." The "mobs" who had besieged government offices just days before had vanished into thin air.
Faced with this complete reversal, Lin Hanzhou sneered inwardly.
He knew this was merely a temporary submission under intense pressure.
These forces, entrenched for centuries, would never give up their interests so easily.
Their roots still ran deep into every corner of this land.
If this was all there was to it, they would bide their time and then rise again.
Thus, after striking fear into the realm, a sweeping purge across the entire Great Sui Dynasty officially began.
With the force of a thunderbolt, Lin Hanzhou issued several imperial decrees.
He ordered every commandery and county in the Great Sui to establish a Brocade Guard office to oversee the realm.
In addition, he ordered Xuan Ya to lead the Shadow Guard across the nation and, together with the newly established Brocade Guard, thoroughly investigate every official.
Anyone found colluding with the Five Great Clans, embezzling public funds, neglecting their duties, or oppressing the people was to be dismissed on the spot, have their property confiscated, and be thrown into prison.
If they resisted, those whose offenses were serious could be killed on the spot!
For a time, every official in the Great Sui Dynasty's bureaucracy lived in fear.
They no longer dared to collude with the local clans as they had before. One by one, they kept their heads down and did their jobs.
They feared that one day, they would hear the words "The Brocade Guard is here" at their door.
The local power brokers who had long oppressed the common people also found themselves targeted by the Brocade Guard.
They tried to resist, but they could not stir up the slightest trouble against the Brocade Guard, whose ranks were filled with masters.
Over the next six months, the Great Sui underwent a sweeping overhaul unlike anything it had seen before.
More than a third of the old officials were dismissed and imprisoned, including many high-ranking officials like commandery governors.
Hundreds of local power brokers and lawless noble clans were uprooted.
Vast sums of wealth and tracts of farmland they had seized returned to the state treasury and the hands of the people.
Though the purge was ruthless, it swept away the Great Sui's long-standing corruption with astonishing efficiency.
As talented men from humble families, selected through the new imperial examinations, began taking up posts across the Great Sui,
the new policies Lin Hanzhou had introduced finally began to show their true power.
Across the vast fields, farmers who now owned land of their own for the first time were fired with unprecedented enthusiasm for work.
They rose with the sun and rested at dusk, tending their fields with care, smiles of hope on their faces.
Within just a few years, the Great Sui's grain output doubled.
From the bright, spotless government schools came the clear, steady sound of children reading aloud.
For the first time, countless children from impoverished families had the chance to gain an education.
They were no longer fated to spend their lives bent over the soil. They now had the chance to change their destiny through learning.
This provided the Great Sui Dynasty with a steady, inexhaustible reserve of talent.
The reformed imperial examination system also completely broke the noble clans' monopoly on government posts.
Countless talented young people of humble birth rose above the rest through fair examinations and gained the opportunity to join the Great Sui's administration.
They brought fresh ideas and vitality, setting the entire bureaucracy on a path toward efficient, honest governance.
The Great Sui Dynasty's social structure was undergoing a profound and turbulent transformation.
The society of noble clans, bound together by blood and pedigree, was crumbling.
A whole new social order, founded on merit and ability, was slowly taking shape.
The Great Sui Dynasty's national strength was soaring at an unprecedented pace.
Lin Hanzhou stood at the highest point of the palace, gazing down upon the new dynasty he had built with his own hands, his heart at peace.
He knew that an era belonging to him, a true age of prosperity, was about to arrive.
And amid this magnificent transformation, he had completely changed the course of the Great Sui's future.
Before you continue