Within less than two months of winter's arrival, Liu Cheng's wife and concubine became pregnant, one after the other.
This had its causes and its consequences.
The cause was easy enough to explain, rather like that anecdote about our Great Jin's Emperor Yuan and Yin Hao's father. In any case, it had nothing to do with anyone else; Liu Cheng simply had time on his hands... After gritting his teeth and burning down the Zhuge family's Private Estate, then sending Zhuge Heng off to Xingyang, the last theoretical resistance disappeared, and Liu Cheng soon completed this miniature, gradual reform.
Thinking about it, that made sense. Even the new measures of Wang Anshi's reforms worked properly when confined to a single county, much less here, where the only thing meeting any resistance was Liu Cheng's gradual Tuduan.
Once Tuduan was complete, construction of the school began.
As for its location, he unceremoniously chose a site between South Garden and North Camp, beside Jurong Avenue.
It was close to home. The erudites of the previously dissolved Imperial College all came from distinguished families and could not possibly be recruited, so he merely asked Fan Wang, who had experience running schools, to find a few people. They were all so-called second-tier gentry, and even Liu Jing, the former Administrator of Dong'an, who was sitting idle at home, was called in. These people could simply be housed in South Garden.
Under these circumstances, Liu Cheng did as he had proclaimed he would, occasionally holding a winter hunt and shooting a rabbit or two with a crossbow, but otherwise spending most of his time quietly at home. With one thing leading to another, his wife and concubine naturally became pregnant in succession.
As for the consequences, the first was that people from the Shen Family