The great affairs of state lay in sacrifice and war!
The feudal lords' audience with the Son of Heaven was one of the nation's most important affairs, representing a stable ruling order. Having lingered in Chang'an for a long time and finished conferring with one another, the princes and lords entered the imperial palace together.
The Great Han was no longer the fledgling dynasty it had once been. Its rules and institutions were largely complete, and naturally, the all-important rites and music were no exception.
The assembled ministers entered the grounds, taking their places to the strains of different pieces of music. The Son of Heaven's reception of the feudal lords followed a complicated procedure, and a long time passed before they reached the presentation of tribute.
Their reasons for offering tribute to the Son of Heaven varied. Many officials still hoped to ascend to heaven in a single bound by presenting some wondrous object, but most offerings were conventional. After all, finding a miraculous treasure like the He Shi Bi was essentially a dream.
Of all those presenting tribute, the people from Lingnan drew the most attention-not the Zhao Clan of the King of Lingnan, but the descendants of convicted ministers exiled there.
Ever since Liu Bang's reign, when the court established a dedicated policy of exile, whenever officials, powerful gentry, or princes and lords broke the law, the people banished to Lingnan numbered anywhere from a thousand or so to tens of thousands.
Over these past decades, had Lingnan not continually consumed this population, Guanzhong's population would probably have swollen rapidly. This brought up one of the shortcomings of the Lingyi System: the large-scale influx of people from Shandong. Moreover, these people needed to be settled after arriving in Guanzhong. Surely the court could not let those guarding