Wang Su had passed away.
It was said that he had gone very peacefully. He had given his children and disciples many instructions, and as he spoke, he simply stopped moving.
His death ought to count as an auspicious funeral.
When Cao Mao learned the news, he still could not help feeling a pang of grief.
With Wang Su gone, Cao Mao truly had no great scholar of classical studies at his side who could take his place.
There was still Zheng Chong, who could just about undertake scholarly work. Zheng Chong's mastery of the classics was profound, but that was only because he had studied them deeply enough. It was not enough to make him a great master like Wang Su. To be called a great master, one still needed a set of theories and positions of one's own.
Whether those positions were good or bad, even a position like Zheng Xuan's demand that everyone in the realm be slaves to the emperor, at least counted as something of one's own.
Zheng Chong understood his predecessors' work thoroughly and had studied it deeply, but he lacked creativity and had nothing of his own.
The next person capable of creating something would be Du Yu.
But that was Du Yu in his old age. The present Du Yu was still learning and had yet to reach the level of a great master.
As for those gentlemen in the Bamboo Grove, they certainly had positions of their own, but Cao Mao disliked those positions. He had always suppressed their ideas and views, and could not possibly adopt them as official doctrine.
This gave Cao Mao quite a headache.
Still, Cao Mao did not rush to address the matter. He sent people to arrange Wang Su's funeral and granted him posthumous honors,