HCT – Chapter 243 The Confucian Sage-King

Xueji and Cai Ze’s health had recovered.

But when Ying Zheng tried to persuade Cai Ze to return to the position of Chancellor, Cai Ze refused.

I, Cai Ze, have served as elder minister under three generations—King Zhaoxiang of Qin, King Renwen of Qin, and King Zichu. It’s time to hand this burden to the young.

Cai Ze lifted his teacup.

Lin Zhi pointed at his own nose. “The young person you’re talking about… don’t tell me you mean me?”

Cai Ze silently nodded.

Zhu Xiang smiled and helped him along: “Zheng’er has a lively mind—he’ll match well with you as ruler and minister.”

King Zheng of Qin: “…I am not lively.”

Lin Zhi and Cai Ze: “Zheng’er… Your Majesty is lively.”

Zhu Xiang asked curiously, “Zheng’er, why aren’t you calling yourself zhen anymore?”

King Zheng replied gloomily, “Master Xun scolded me. He said zhen is a self-address even commoners use. A monarch should refer to himself as gu ren (the ‘lonely one’). He told me to keep using gu ren until I get used to it.”

Only then did Zhu Xiang remember that zhen at this time was a common form of self-reference—even farmers in the fields could call themselves zhen.

For Zheng’er to call himself zhen now, in Xunzi’s eyes, was practically like Zhu Yuanzhang or Zhu Di still calling themselves “I/your boy” after becoming emperors.

King Zheng huffed, “Once I… once gu ren becomes emperor, I’m changing zhen into the emperor’s exclusive title. No one besides the emperor will be allowed to use it!”

Zhu Xiang clapped like a happy seal in encouragement.

Cai Ze and Lin Zhi also expressed support. Although they felt the matter was unnecessary and a bit childish, so what? Zheng’er liked it—what was wrong with being a little willful? It wasn’t as if it hurt anyone.

King Zheng asked once more if Cai Ze would return as Chancellor, and once again received a refusal. Depressed, he left.

His government affairs were extremely heavy, and he had very little time to leave the palace.

King Zheng began to consider whether he should convert his estate into a traveling palace. From then on, aside from major events, he would handle state affairs and receive ministers at his estate.

It would just make returning to the harem to perform filial visits a bit troublesome.

Although he could rotate the concubines he brought with him outside the palace, he worried they might misbehave at the estate and upset his uncle and aunt.

Though in truth, King Zheng knew his uncle and aunt were magnanimous and probably wouldn’t be upset. He was the one unhappy—he just pushed the blame onto them.

Even though Zhu Xiang temporarily held the position of Chancellor, he still didn’t go to the palace often.

Other nobles and ministers saw Zhu Xiang’s special status and didn’t dare speak out.

Those who did say something were all reassigned by King Zheng for one excuse or another. This King of Qin… his temper was far worse than King Renwen and King Zichu…

“His late Majesty also had quite the temper whenever it involved Lord Changping. Do you remember the families he executed in the marketplace?”

“Oh, right. Those families gossiped a few lines about Lord Changping and His late Majesty had them executed. Our current king merely reprimanded them and exiled them—he’s already quite mild.”

Those who once thought King Zheng was reckless and tyrannical reconsidered immediately. Compared with what King Zichu did for Lord Changping, King Zheng was practically mild-tempered.

Lord Changping was merely King Zichu’s friend, but he was King Zheng’s foster father. By reason, King Zheng should have punished people even more severely for targeting Lord Changping.

When King Zheng learned of these bits of gossip, he was so angry he muttered complaints to Zhu Xiang for a long time.

Was he unwilling to have them executed? No—he just couldn’t find a proper charge!

His father executed people because he truly found evidence that they were colluding with foreign states. He… he hadn’t found anything. They were just big mouths!

Zhu Xiang felt deeply gratified.

A typical King of Qin could execute powerful ministers simply because he was in a bad mood.

But Zheng’er now only increased the punishment according to actual wrongdoing. Clearly, Zhu Xiang’s teaching wasn’t without effect.

What he didn’t know was that King Zheng kept a little notebook. Everyone who said bad things about his uncle was listed there—he intended to deal with them one by one in the future.

His uncle desired neither power nor wealth, and lived wholeheartedly for Qin and for him. Anyone who slandered such a person clearly had issues.

Ironically, this lesson—the one that made him protect Zhu Xiang so fiercely—was taught to Ying Zheng by King Zhaoxiang of Qin, the person who had been most suspicious of Zhu Xiang.

Lord Changping Zhu Xiang—a convenient filter for sorting ministers.

In the year King Zichu passed, Qin remained peaceful. King Zheng steadily centralized power and established authority.

Those ministers who originally thought to take advantage of his youth now realized that the rumored prodigy who helped Lord Changping manage household affairs at the age of five or six was no exaggeration. The mature bearing of a seasoned ruler and the suffocating pressure of his authority made it feel like he had reigned for many years already.

Elder officials who had served since the time of King Zhaoxiang sighed—no wonder the late king was so fond of him the moment he saw the current King of Qin. The current king truly resembled King Zhaoxiang in an uncanny way.

Qin had gone through two relatively gentle rulers—King Renwen of Qin and King Zichu of Qin—and now they were finally about to welcome another domineering, forceful monarch.

But some people argued that King Zichu of Qin wasn’t truly gentle either. It was just that those few years happened to be plagued by famine, and he had been forced to let the people recuperate.

Regardless of what the ministers discussed in private, they all reluctantly accepted a fact: King Zheng of Qin was not someone easy to deal with, and the days ahead would likely be difficult.

A few Confucian disciples went to find Xunzi, worried that King Zheng was too domineering and would not practice benevolent rule.

Xunzi couldn’t be bothered to respond.

Even benevolent rule must wait until after the unification of the realm. Right now, what Qin needed was precisely a ruler with thunderous resolve.

Everyone assumed that after ascending the throne, King Zheng would surely continue a period of recuperation for one or two years, wait until he had secured his footing in court, and then begin large-scale actions.

No one expected that right after the autumn harvest, before even changing the reign title, King Zheng would order Lord Xinping, Lian Po, to attack Wei.

Last year, due to insufficient grain supplies, after Lian Po opened the route connecting Qin to Qi, he didn’t continue attacking Daliang, but instead remained stationed in the newly conquered Wei territories to oversee agricultural settlements.

In Zhao, Lian Po only had to fight battles, but now he had long grown accustomed to overseeing farming and pacifying the populace.

To help Qin fully absorb those newly conquered cities, he hadn’t returned to Xianyang to bid farewell to King Zichu, nor did he witness King Zheng’s ascension.

King Zheng’s reason for starting the war was perfunctory, yet flawless.

He declared that this war was merely a continuation of the previous one. At that time, when the King of Wei died, his father withdrew the army due to Wei’s national mourning. Now that the mourning period had passed, they should resume the attack on Wei.

Back when King Wei Yu had faced the powerful King Zhaoxiang of Qin, he had once been forced to submit to Qin. Afterwards, neither side mentioned it much, and when war came, they still fought as usual. This was the first time King Zheng solemnly brought up this matter.

King Zheng proclaimed that since the King of Wei had once acknowledged Qin as his overlord, Wei was Qin’s vassal—a lord-vassal relationship.

When Wei suffered a locust plague, Qin, in its responsibility as the suzerain, had even taken care to inform both the King of Wei and the Crown Prince, urging them to prepare.

But Wei repaid kindness with enmity—when Qin was finishing off its own locust disaster and King Zichu was gravely ill, Wei actually joined four other states to attack Qin.

Since Qin was Wei’s suzerain, Wei’s attack on Qin was an act of disloyalty; and since Qin had offered (verbal) assistance during Wei’s crisis, Wei’s attack was an act of injustice.

A nation that was both disloyal and unjust naturally deserved to be punished by the former king.

However, when King Wei Yu later died, the late king still recalled the Qin army, refusing to strike Wei during its mourning period. This was Qin’s moral conduct toward Wei.

Now that the mourning period was past, as the successor to the Qin throne, he must once again punish Wei.

King Zheng summoned renowned scholars to draft the official proclamation—a war manifesto—to be sent to Wei.

Qin’s attack on Wei was presented as a fully legitimate “righteous war.” Wei deserved the beating—and deserved to be destroyed!

The scholars were stunned.

Not at King Zheng’s shamelessness, but because they were moved that in these chaotic times, there was still a ruler who would actually write a proclamation before going to war.

In the early Spring and Autumn period, states would still find excuses and write manifestoes before fighting.

By the late Spring and Autumn period, annexation was the norm, and the only thing that mattered was speed—if you could ambush, you ambushed.

Who bothered with proclamations? Who announced war? When General Bai Qi’s army arrived under your city walls, that’s when you learned Qin was attacking.

King Zheng truly lived up to being the child raised on the lap of the great scholar Xunzi—this was a Confucian sage-king!

Xunzi: “…”

He was utterly speechless at King Zheng.

This was how the boy used Confucianism?

Fine. It worked. Qin would inevitably destroy the remaining five states, and if King Zheng could declare war with full decorum each time before he destroyed a country, well—wouldn’t that make him number one in moral and ritual standards across the entire Warring States?

Thinking that way, Xunzi decided Zheng’er wasn’t so bad after all. His teaching wasn’t wasted.

Zhu Xiang gave a thumbs-up at King Zheng’s instinctive mastery of the “Confucian pen-wielding” tricks.

A capable scholar was naturally fit for high office.

As for the incapable ones—they were merely twisting themselves into knots for one thing: to earn the reputation of “the king favors me.”

By entrusting this important task—the war proclamation—to those not-so-capable scholars, the king allowed them to feel “important,” just like later emperors kept a group of literati around to write poetry and polish essays for them. They posed no threat to governance and only elevated the ruler’s prestige.

Moreover, this time Qin’s expedition was exceptional in its adherence to ritual, carrying out every formality of announcing war. With such grandeur, and if paired with unbroken victory, even the noble elites of the Six States would have to sigh, “This is Heaven’s mandate.”

His own Zheng’er was truly packaging Qin’s war of unification as a righteous crusade.

Zhu Xiang sighed, shook his head, and went to mobilize supplies to prepare for logistics.

Food must come before soldiers. Even though Lian Po had agricultural settlements, with Zhu Xiang around, he would make sure Lian Po fought with abundant provisions.

When King Wei Zeng received Qin’s declaration of war, he panicked. He sent pleas for help to other states while simultaneously begging Qin for mercy.

He even sent one of Lord Xinling Wei Wuji’s former retainers to persuade Zhu Xiang, hoping to use the friendship between Wei Wuji and Zhu Xiang to force her to intercede on Wei’s behalf.

After listening to the retainer’s passionate speech, Zhu Xiang said calmly, “Failing to break Daliang before King Wei Yu died and forcing him to kowtow before Wuji’s grave—that is my failing. When Wuji was driven to his death, Wei and its king should already have been buried with him. Zhu Hai is guarding Wuji’s tomb in Wu Commandery, waiting for the day Wei is destroyed.”

The retainer’s vigorous persuasion was shut down in an instant. His expression changed repeatedly, as if unable to believe that Lord Changping wasn’t fooled by such rhetoric.

Seeing his face, Zhu Xiang sneered. “But your words did remind me—should I personally lead the army to attack Wei?”

Before Zhu Xiang even dismissed him, the retainer fled in shame.

Once he left, he sighed. The world knew Lord Changping was kind, and thus assumed he was weak and easy to bully. They forgot that he had once persuaded King Zhaoxiang alone to release fifty thousand Zhao soldiers, and with twenty thousand Guangling defenders had shattered Xiang Yan’s ‘million-strong’ Chu army. He was clearly both a brilliant strategist and a fierce general.

He confessed that not only could he not persuade Lord Changping, but he had been persuaded instead. Thus he gave up his post, refused to return to Wei, and went south to seek his true lord, Lord Xinling.

Lord Changping’s fame rose once again.

King Zheng commented, “Uncle, was this guy’s real purpose in coming to Qin to deliberately boost your reputation and disgust the King of Wei?”

Zhu Xiang didn’t answer. He was thinking: Where did Changping get fifty thousand Zhao soldiers? And where did Xiang Yan get a million Chu troops?