The Imperial Court's decisions on Jingzhou had arrived.
For his foremost contributions in quelling the rebellion and pacifying the barbarians, Wang Yi was appointed General Who Assists the State, granted acting authority with the imperial tally, and given military supervision over the six provinces of Jingzhou, Liang, Yi, Ning, and Northern and Southern Qin. He would serve as acting Governor of Jingzhou while retaining his post as Cavalier Attendant.
These needed explaining one by one. First, General Who Assists the State.
This was a third-rank generalship, also known as a "military designation." Since Wei, provincial governors of nonimperial families who held no general's designation had been called "single-carriage inspectors."
At this time, there were two kinds of provincial inspector. One was the single-carriage inspector, who administered civil affairs without commanding troops; the other was the military inspector, who held a general's designation and commanded troops to garrison the province. A vital stronghold such as Jingzhou had never been entrusted to a single-carriage inspector. Whoever governed it was invariably granted a general's designation.
But these designations varied in standing. From the Generals of the Front, Rear, Left, and Right downward, they were classified as miscellaneous-designation generals. From the four Generals of the Household of the East, West, South, and North downward, they were also called minor-designation generals.
The four Generals of the Household already fell within the miscellaneous designations. Immediately below them came Champion General-the military designation Chen Qing Shan's father had once held-followed by General Who Assists the State. This sat precisely on the third-rank dividing line between miscellaneous and minor designations.
Below that, General Who Pacifies the North and General Who Pacifies the Far Reaches dropped to the fourth rank. Fourth-rank generalships were generally granted to commandery governors. In other words, General Who Assists the State was the lowest