The officials who had once opposed Fang Yun stared at him, speechless.
They had been the ones opposing ritual restoration a few days earlier. If they opposed Fang Yun now, they would be the ones saying yes and the ones saying no, handing him a weapon to use against them. Fang Yun would not mind using his authority as Left Prime Minister to remove them.
The officials who had remained neutral all along breathed a deep sigh of relief. In truth, they stood outside the struggle and saw it more clearly than either Fang Yun's supporters or his opponents.
Some had suspected Fang Yun's true intentions from the beginning. After all, someone of his talent and wisdom could not possibly do anything so absurd. Those who opposed him had considered that possibility as well, but their arrows were already on the bowstrings; they had no choice but to loose them.
Had they opposed him then, this would have been the result. Had they not opposed him, Fang Yun would have seized all authority for himself and eventually turned his sword on them anyway.
From the moment Fang Yun became Left Prime Minister, this outcome had been inevitable.
Most importantly, Fang Yun's final words had been powerfully beguiling and persuasive.
These men knew Confucius's life, words, and deeds intimately, and understood one thing very well: even before his Saint Enfeoffment, Confucius had not been a man without desires or ambitions. He had been a talented politician with lofty aspirations.
Born to humble circumstances, with no influential patron to help him, he had relied on constant learning to rise from a minor official managing storehouses and livestock to one of the highest officials in Lu State. How could such a man not have wanted to establish new rites of his own?
If