By the time Zhang Xing returned after being notified, the discussion of his discarded draft had already reached a new level.
As it happened, Wei Xuanding finally remembered that he had studied under distinguished scholars. Something he had learned at the Wang Clan's school suddenly came back to him, and, citing the classics, he told everyone that similar proposals seemed to have existed when Great Zhou established itself in Northern Jin. Xie Minghe then recalled that there had been something of the kind after the Tang Emperor returned west. They compared their recollections, then looked through the relevant books, and indeed found the so-called Eight Discourses of Tang and Six Articles of Zhou. The former had been proposed by the Tang Emperor, the latter by a renowned minister of the Cui Clan who had entered Great Zhou's service. On closer examination, they were astonished to find that several of those articles and discourses corresponded to the items in the draft-or at least their meanings did.
This discovery raised the discussion's fervor to an entirely new level.
The reason was simple. Many who had remained inwardly noncommittal and offered only perfunctory praise now felt that there was a precedent for this. Great Dragonhead Zhang's proposal was actually a potent remedy and sound policy, not something thrown together at random. It was workable.
This allowed them to join in the praise boldly and without reservation.
The very few with genuine discernment were even more surprised. They could plainly see that the Eight Discourses of Tang and Six Articles of Zhou were rather vague by comparison, nowhere near as detailed as Great Dragonhead Zhang's proposals, nor as clearly organized. Here, a single glance told you what "leniency in punishment and imprisonment" meant, or what "making full use of the land" involved.
Yet those