The Guo Clan's convoy traveled across the snowy plains and, about an hour later, reached a bend in a river in Chengze County.
A house stood at the bend, hidden in a bamboo grove. It looked like an ordinary farmhouse, but its owner, Wang Zhiyan,
was no ordinary man.
Confucianism existed in the north as well, though it was nowhere near as prosperous as in the south. Its only renowned representative was the Yongning Wang Clan, known alongside the southern Hualin Li Clan as "the Wangs of the north and the Lis of the south."
Wang Zhiyan was a descendant of the Yongning Wang Clan, with considerable ability and influence at court. After the former Chief Minister Chen She fell from power, he had once succeeded him in the post.
But although Empress Dowager Guo had a forceful style, she was broadly a conservative. Her approach to government was to pursue progress through stability and gradually restore Northern Zhou to its heyday. Wang Zhiyan, however, believed that after three hundred years, Northern Zhou had rotted through and needed reform-roughly speaking, abolishing the nobility's privileges, streamlining institutions, dismissing redundant officials, and so forth.
Empress Dowager Guo appreciated Wang Zhiyan, but the whole of Northern Zhou was controlled by the nobility, and her own hold on power depended entirely on the Guo Clan. Taking too large a stride could bring Northern Zhou to a sudden death. She preferred bloodless reform, spending decades slowly bringing matters within and without into order.
Wang Zhiyan, on the other hand, thought her methods treated the symptoms rather than the disease. However well she maintained appearances, she could only delay Northern Zhou's death. Neither side would yield, and in the end, he simply resigned and went home to retire.
At noon, Wang Zhiyan sat fishing alone beside