"Your servant bows in thanks, Your Majesty!!"
Ji Kang knelt before Cao Mao and did not raise his head for a long time.
Cao Mao remained silent for a long while.
Just that day, Cao Mao had still been preparing to establish the mountain battalion and naval battalion when Ji Kang suddenly requested an audience. The moment they met, Ji Kang knelt before him.
Ji Kang had been among the first to support Cao Mao, yet even now, they had still failed to come together.
Cao Mao could not quite understand how these celebrated scholars' minds worked.
And they could not quite understand Cao Mao's thinking either.
To them, it seemed that as long as one employed harsh officials and cruel punishments, one was a tyrant and had nothing to do with benevolent governance.
Sometimes, Cao Mao wondered just what sort of person fit the image of an enlightened ruler in their minds.
After thinking it over and over, he felt that Sima Yan and Sima Zhong probably best fit their image of a benevolent ruler.
Or perhaps Emperor Wen... oh, Emperor Wen of Han, of course.
If he acted like Emperor Wen of Han, getting things done without being too direct and securing both face and substance, perhaps they would have nothing left to say.
But Cao Mao did not consider himself as capable as Emperor Wen. Between face and substance, he could only choose substance.
Still less would he act like Sima Yan, so generous that his ministers could walk all over him and the common people throughout the realm lived inside a horror story.
At first, Cao Mao had wanted to mingle with these celebrated scholars and change them.
His thinking then had been simple: if he let them speak and abolished the restrictions imposed on them,