Pain in the flesh could be endured through sheer strength of will.
But what if that will collapsed?
The men of the Three Guards had heard it clearly, and so had the residents of Beiping. The reason the New Army Strategy had not been introduced into the Prince of Yan's Three Guards lay not with the court, nor with the emperor, but with the Prince of Yan!
It was the Prince of Yan who refused to let the New Army Strategy into the Three Guards!
It was the Prince of Yan who had turned away such enormous benefits!
The rods struck their buttocks. It hurt, hurt terribly, hurt enough to make them want to cry.
Some wailed as though their hearts and lungs were being torn apart.
Some sobbed softly.
Some lifted their faces to the heavens, tears streaming down.
Why?
Why wouldn't His Highness the Prince of Yan allow the New Army Strategy into the Three Guards?
Prince of Yan!
We are your strongest force. We have followed you through life and death, fighting across battlefields. Will you deny us even the chance to enjoy the New Army Strategy and bring blessings to our descendants?
We have survived a hundred battles and suffered countless wounds. For our families and our country, we have galloped through wind and snow, crossed ten thousand miles of desert, and trodden over mountains of corpses and seas of blood. In the end, with a single word, you cast aside the interests of every last one of us?
Why?!
Your Highness!
Haven't you always shown the greatest concern for your men?
Why would you refuse to let us receive such generous treatment?
Why couldn't you simply agree?
Disappointment spread through the Prince of Yan's Three Guards.
Zhang Yu led his men away. They had arrived full of vigor, swaggering as though they feared no death. They left utterly bereft, like walking corpses.
Their hearts had scattered.
Zhang Yu and Zhu Neng understood the gravity of the problem. They hurriedly assembled commanders at every level of the Prince of Yan's Three Guards. After repeated deliberations, Princess Consort Xu Yihua made the final decision and issued a lockdown order, explicitly commanding the officers and soldiers of the Three Guards:
Anyone leaving camp without military orders shall be executed!
Anyone discussing the New Army Strategy without authorization shall be executed!
Anyone voicing dissatisfaction with the army shall be executed!
Anyone neglecting drills or disobeying training orders shall be executed!
When those murderous orders reached the camps of the Three Guards, not a single soldier said anything. They merely accepted them numbly, in a silence like a realm of ghosts.
The Prince of Yan's actions had chilled every heart in the Three Guards.
None of them could understand it. Even a blind and deaf man should have agreed to such a New Army Strategy. Why had the wise Prince of Yan refused?
After Ping An's speech, after the news spread, their respect for the Prince of Yan vanished without a trace.
Zhu Neng led more than a hundred men out of Beiping and headed straight south. He had heard that Zhu Di had already reached Jinan and would arrive in Beiping within a few days.
But Zhu Neng could not wait those few days. The New Army Strategy was now sweeping through Beiping Prefecture, and even Shanhai Pass had begun implementing it.
To ensure the smooth implementation of the New Army Strategy, although the court had allocated no money or grain from the Capital, it authorized Zhang Bing, Beiping's provincial administration commissioner, to allocate the summer taxes not yet transported to the Capital directly to the various military guards.
The camps' growing demand for grain and meat directly stimulated livestock farming around Beiping Prefecture.
Seeing this, Commissioner Zhang Bing encouraged the prefectures and counties throughout Beiping Prefecture to expand livestock farming, especially pigs, sheep, cattle, chickens, ducks, and geese. To dispel the farmers' concerns, he posted notices guaranteeing that future army purchases would never fall below the market prices of the ninth month of Hongwu Year 31.
At those ninth-month prices, pork cost nine copper coins per catty. An adult pig, depending on how lean or fat it was, weighed roughly two hundred catties. That meant eighteen hundred copper coins, nearly two taels of silver.
Farm households might have to work a little harder and suffer a little more, but wouldn't they earn more too?
Wouldn't paying their taxes be much easier in the future?
In the past, they had always worried about having nowhere to sell the animals they raised. Now there was no need to worry. The army camps would come to buy them directly and would never leave the farmers out of pocket.
Zhang Bing's measures greatly encouraged farmers to raise livestock and laid the foundation for ensuring the soldiers' food supplies in the future.
Both the "meat-eating" commissioner Zhang Bing and Ping An, the "New Army imperial commissioner," continued exploring new paths of development.
Zhu Yunwen had granted both men ample authority. Zhang Bing wanted to loosen the restrictions on merchants, recognize merchant household registration, and stop forcing merchants to register under other household categories, preparing the ground for commercial development in Beiping.
Zhang Bing wrote a memorial and arranged for it to be delivered to the Capital. At the same time, he began lifting restrictions on commerce.
The Provincial Administration Office.
Zhang Bing gathered merchants from Beiping's principal trades, including traveling merchants and itinerant vendors, and listened attentively to their requests.
The merchants asked for little. They only hoped the court would lift its restrictions and allow them to trade freely. If the court agreed, they could accept an increase in commercial taxes from one-thirtieth to one-twenty-fifth.
Zhang Bing did not agree to all their requests. He merely told them that, within Beiping Prefecture, the administrative authorities at every level would no longer restrict merchant household registration and would allow merchants to trade freely.
As for commercial taxes, that would be left to the court to decide.
The merchants were ecstatic when they heard this. Though the geographical scope was limited, the first step had finally been taken.
Naturally, Zhang Bing had not lost out either. By relaxing household registration restrictions, he gained the merchants' support. When he raised Beiping's current difficulty-plentiful grain but little money-the merchants gave their firm assurance that they would purchase grain with silver at prices set by the court.
Zhang Bing converted the tax grain into silver, retained thirty percent, and arranged for the remaining seventy percent to be transported to the Capital.
On the fourteenth day of the ninth month, an exhausted Zhu Di rode into Beiping Prefecture without even taking a carriage.
When Zhu Di had left Beiping Prefecture, soldiers and civilians had escorted him off in a grand display. But upon his return, everything had changed. Even the soldiers guarding the city gates merely offered him a perfunctory salute, their old smiles gone.
Zhu Di was exhausted in body and mind. On the journey home, his heir Zhu Gaochi had fallen ill, delaying them for two days in Jinan. Not long after leaving Jinan, he encountered Zhu Neng and learned about Ping An's implementation of the New Army Strategy, the disturbance the Prince of Yan's Three Guards had caused at the Regional Military Command Office, and the lockdown order imposed on them.
Things were worse than Zhu Di had imagined.
Zhu Di had never expected Ping An's implementation of the New Army Strategy to become known throughout the city, much less that Ping An would tell the whole world that he had refused to let it into the Three Guards!
This was not Ping An's handiwork!
Zhu Di understood that Zhu Yunwen stood behind all of it!
Zhu Yunwen must have told Ping An how to handle the matter and instructed him to stir up resentment in the Prince of Yan's Three Guards, blow the affair up, and finally shove Zhu Di forward to take the blame, turning the Three Guards against him until no unity remained!
Only now did Zhu Di understand. Zhu Yunwen did not intend to pursue the Abolition of the Fiefdoms, but he did intend to strip every soldier of the will and courage to resist the court!
The Prince of Yan's Palace.
Zhu Di summoned all his key personnel, including the commanders of the Three Yanshan Guards, and asked, "How are the Three Guards now?"
His eyes deeply sunken, Zhang Yu forced himself to rally. "Your Highness, the soldiers are deeply disgruntled. They all long for the New Army Strategy. If this problem is not resolved, I fear unrest."
"Ah, the New Army Strategy, the New Army Strategy!"
Zhu Di gritted his teeth. He had pondered it throughout the journey, yet still could not find a way to break the trap.
Had Ping An promoted the New Army Strategy only within the army camps, keeping the news from reaching the Prince of Yan's Three Guards, matters would have been manageable. He could simply have blocked the news. But Ping An's methods were too formidable. Not only had he made it known to everyone in Beiping Prefecture, he had also carved it into the bones and hearts of the Three Guards!
"Your Highness, if we can offer a better policy, we can not only regain the trust of the Three Guards, but also attract soldiers from the other guards in Beiping Prefecture and win more support."
Yuan Rong spoke confidently.
"Idiot!"
Zhu Gaochi muttered the word.
"What did you say?"
Yuan Rong sprang up, pointing at Zhu Gaochi as he shouted.
Zhu Gaochi looked coldly at Yuan Rong. "I said you're an idiot! Have you forgotten that the Prince of Yan's Three Guards are troops formally established by the court, paid and fed by the court? What policy can we offer? What authority do we have to offer one? The moment the Prince of Yan's Palace intervenes in military provisioning, believe me, the Regional Military Command's army could march straight to our gates!"
"Besides, how much wealth does the Prince of Yan's Palace possess? Can it support the expenses of eighty thousand soldiers? The New Army Strategy explicitly allows retirement after twenty years of service. Those who remain after twenty years and pass their assessments receive double annual pay, doubled again after another five years. Go count how many soldiers in the Prince of Yan's Three Guards are veterans with twenty or thirty years of service!"
"Some joined the army at fifteen or sixteen. Now they're only forty, still fierce and strong. Who would dare force them to retire? And if they don't retire, can you provide all that money and grain? Take Qiu Fu, for example. He rose from the ranks and has now served for thirty-five years, hasn't he? Under the New Army Strategy, his annual pay would exceed a thousand taels. Can you afford that?"
Zhu Gaochi's words left Yuan Rong pale.
Although Zhu Gaochi was corpulent and had trouble with his legs, he was a man of considerable insight and ability. His words were entirely sound.
Imitating the New Army Strategy lacked both legal grounds and the means to sustain it.
Yuan Rong's notion was far too naive, far too fanciful.
Zhu Gaochi looked down on Yuan Rong. Had it not been for his handsome exterior and the fact that he was Yuan Hong's son, why would Zhu Gaochi's father have betrothed his eldest sister, Princess Yong'an Zhu Yuying, to him?
On ordinary days, Zhu Gaochi ignored Yuan Rong's arrogance out of consideration for his sister. But now, with the Prince of Yan's Palace facing a crisis of life and death, he still posed as a suave genius with every answer in hand.
If you have no brains, don't pretend you do.
Otherwise, when your face gets slapped, every blow will ring loud and clear.
Zhu Gaoxu and Zhu Gaosui glanced at Zhu Gaochi without objecting. Although they often clashed with him, they had to admit that his analysis was correct.
Zhu Di rose and rubbed the space between his brows. "If Dao Yan were here, we would surely not be so helpless."
"Your Highness, did Master Dao Yan leave any stratagems?"
Zhu Neng asked.
Zhu Neng had personally delivered Dao Yan's letter to Zhu Di. Neither he nor Zhang Yu knew what Dao Yan had written.
Zhu Di frowned. "He left no stratagems, but he did recommend someone to me."
"Who?"
Zhu Gaochi and the others asked.
Zhu Di looked around at them and said slowly, "Jin Zhong."
Everyone was puzzled.
Zhu Di sighed. "Years ago, I instructed Dao Yan to seek out men of wisdom and strategy. First came Yuan Zhongche, then this Jin Zhong. You already know Yuan Zhongche, a grandmaster of the mystical arts. But Jin Zhong is even more remarkable. He understands not only yin and yang, but also military strategy. He is a man of great talent."
"Father, what are we waiting for? Where is Jin Zhong?"
Zhu Gaoxu asked hurriedly.
Zhu Di sat down and sipped his tea. Gradually regaining his composure, he looked at Zhu Gaoxu. "Go to Quiet Alley and invite the fortune-teller there to the palace. Remember, keep it out of others' eyes and ears."
Before you continue