Chapter 46: The Difference Between Military Generals and Civil Officials!

The Prince of Wu's Mansion.

By the time Zhu Yunreng led the brocade-clad imperial guards back to the estate, the sky had already darkened.

The moonlight tonight was exceptionally bright, rendering the lighting of too many torches quite unnecessary.

"You've all had a hard day. We'll disperse here for tonight," Zhu Yunreng instructed the accompanying guards.

Jiang Huan stepped forward and asked, "Your Highness, should the Embroidered Uniform Guard leave a contingent behind to assist with the watch?"

Zhu Yunreng shook his head and replied, "The manor has more than enough guards of its own. There's no need to trouble the brothers of the Guard."

Hearing this, Jiang Huan acknowledged the order. "Understood, Your Highness."

With that, he departed, leading the rest of the guards away.

Zhu Yunreng brought Lan Yu and Fu Ye into the inner chambers. Once the servants had all withdrawn, he untied Lan Yu's bonds and said, "Grand-Uncle, I ask for your forgiveness for the offense!"

Lan Yu, however, merely smiled calmly. He dropped to his knees and kowtowed, saying, "Today's grace of saving my life is something Lan Yu will never forget. If there is an opportunity in the future, I shall shatter my bones and body in return."

Beside them, Fu Ye widened his eyes in utter astonishment.

Having witnessed the day's bitter conflict firsthand, he simply could not comprehend how the two men had suddenly transformed into this state of accord.

Zhu Yunreng stepped forward and helped Lan Yu to his feet, saying, "As long as Grand-Uncle does not blame me for striking you, scolding you, and causing you such humiliation before so many people, Yunreng can finally set his mind at ease!"

When he had beaten and cursed Lan Yu earlier, he had been constantly terrified that Lan Yu might react violently.

Yet, he had had no other choice.

Lan Yu gently shook his head. "I am no fool, Lan Yu. How could I be so devoid of reason?"

"Ever since that day in the imperial court when Your Highness struck me across the face and bitterly berated me, I have long since been aware of my current predicament."

"It was only because I thought that meeting Your Highness in private might arouse suspicion and cause inconvenience that I never came to call."

"Today, when Your Highness arrived at the head of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, I understood everything."

"Your Highness was saving me—saving my entire family!"

Zhu Yunreng smiled. "To save Grand-Uncle is to save myself. You and I are fundamentally one, sharing the same breath and advancing or retreating together."

Lan Yu cupped his fists and said, "Back when Your Highness's esteemed father was still alive, I always followed his commands."

"At the time, I thought Your Highness was still too young and might not yet be able to shoulder the weight of the great pillars of the realm."

"Now it seems that ever since Your Highness's father passed away, Your Highness has grown up overnight."

"Splendid! Truly splendid!"

"From this day forward, I shall look only to Your Highness's horse for my direction."

The two men exchanged a glance and burst into hearty laughter.

Watching this from the side with a dumbfounded expression, Fu Ye suddenly blurted out, "So Your Highness the Prince of Wu and the Great General had already planned this out and were merely putting on a show?"

"It was no act!" Zhu Yunreng corrected him. "We never discussed this in private. Everything simply unfolded naturally. Tomorrow in the imperial court, there is still a truly fierce battle to be fought."

"Whether we can pass through it safely remains unknown!"

Fu Ye felt as though he were completely lost in a fog.

Lan Yu explained, "The Prince of Wu came to arrest me in order to protect me."

"If the one who arrested me today had not been the Prince of Wu, but someone else, that truly would have been the end of Lan Yu."

"However, whether I can be pronounced innocent and survive this ordeal is not something the Prince of Wu alone can decide. It will depend on public opinion in the court tomorrow."

Hearing this, even a man as dense as Fu Ye could understand a thing or two.

The two men had simply acted in tacit understanding, each doing what needed to be done.

He glanced at Lan Yu, then turned to Zhu Yunreng, a look of awkward embarrassment crossing his face. "So Your Highness the Prince of Wu harbored such good intentions, while I, Fu Ye, was blind and wronged Your Highness. I beg Your Highness to grant me your forgiveness."

Zhu Yunreng glanced sideways at him and said, "I know your loyalty to the Great General is steadfast. However, you had no regard for me whatsoever in your heart, committing the offense of a subordinate lashing out at a superior. I must still punish you."

"As for the nature of the punishment, we shall speak of it after tomorrow's court session of questioning and judgment."

"If we fail to clear tomorrow's hurdle, you will lose your head, and there will be no need for my punishment at all."

People of this era held two distinctly different interpretations of loyalty to the sovereign.

To the literati, loyalty to the sovereign meant loyalty to the emperor himself, not to one's immediate superior.

For military generals and low-ranking soldiers, however, loyalty was more of an extension and expansion of the code of brotherhood found in the pugilistic world.

One had to be loyal to one's sworn brothers, and the superior officer was simply the eldest brother among them. Thus, they remained fiercely loyal to their commanders.

Concepts like the emperor were simply too distant for them.

They cared nothing for such matters.

They understood nothing of the rigid bonds between sovereign and minister.

If the commander leading them one day suddenly declared, "Follow me in rebellion to slay the emperor," they would join without a moment's hesitation.

Because they valued brotherhood—a simple, unadorned sense of brotherhood.

If you are brothers, you live and die together!

With eyes closed, following the big boss was the only right path.

If the boss said march east, they marched east.

If the boss said march west, they marched west.

If the boss was loyal to the emperor, they were loyal to the emperor.

If the boss ceased to be loyal to the emperor, they would cease to be loyal as well!

Educated men, however, were entirely different, for they had undergone professional training in "loyalty to the sovereign."

Let the sovereign be sovereign, the minister minister, the father father, and the son son!

The literati possessed their own cognitive standards and judged right from wrong according to those principles.

The object of a scholar's loyalty was never his immediate superior.

Nor would scholars blindly uphold simplistic camaraderie like common soldiers or coarse generals.

If a civil official's superior declared an intention to rebel, unless the subordinate official shared deep financial and political ties with him or had no other choice, he would never obey the order, let on that he agreed, or follow him into rebellion.

On the contrary, he would likely be the very first to leap forward and eliminate his superior himself.

On one hand, this was the result of the conditioning of Confucian ideology.

On the other hand, it was driven by self-interest.

Civil officials had to rely on the operation of the state apparatus to wield power and secure their interests.

If the order of the state ceased to exist and the majesty of the nation vanished, civil officials would become nothing at all, entirely incapable of commanding a single soul.

Of all things useless, scholars are the worst!

Based on this, the literati were compelled to uphold the state system and remain loyal to the sovereign!

Military generals, on the other hand, could rely on the brothers under their command to carve out their own territories and reign as kings even after the state order collapsed!

This was the fundamental reason why imperial courts throughout history favored governance of the military by civil officials.

Civil officials might be systemically corrupt and degenerate within the bureaucracy, caring only for the collective interests of the scholarly clique while severely harming the nation's interests.

Yet no matter how corrupt they became, they still had to rely on the functioning of the state system to exist.

Severed from that system, the source of their power vanished.

Historically, the only path to "rebellion" for a civil official was to gradually master the power of the system, become the ultimate powerful minister, and slowly replace the ruler.

To put it plainly, he still had to exist by relying on the system.

He could not afford to destroy the system!

Military generals, possessing their own "private armies," effectively constituted independent systems unto themselves.

They could break away from the grand system of the state at any moment and forge a new one.

A military general's power did not necessarily derive from state authority; it could equally stem from the brothers who supported him!

With these brothers at his side, even if the state ceased to exist, the general could retain his "power"—power derived from raw violence!

Precisely for this reason, no matter how loyal an individual military general might appear, he would forever remain a subject of suspicion.

This was determined by the inherent nature of the military caste!

Fu Ye was one of Lan Yu's "private soldiers." Whatever Lan Yu told him to do, he would do.

Even if ordered to assassinate the emperor, he would not hesitate.

Men of this caliber were not solitary figures under Lan Yu's command; there were at least several hundreds of them.

They were widely distributed across various armies of the Great Ming.

Within the military, they in turn had their own subordinates and sworn brothers.

Each of them could rally a faction of men belonging uniquely to them.

Gathered together, these individuals formed a massive network of relationships.

This was what granted Lan Yu such pivotal and heavyweight influence within the military forces of the Ming dynasty.

This was precisely why the Old Emperor could never fully set his mind at ease regarding Lan Yu.

What Zhu Yunreng was contemplating was not merely punishing Fu Ye or curtailing Lan Yu's power.

It was how to fundamentally resolve this deep-seated issue.

This was not targeted solely at Lan Yu, but aimed at eradicating a chronic malady that had plagued the military of feudal society for ages.

Until this was eliminated, an emperor could never truly place absolute trust in his military generals.

Even when he himself ascended the throne, it would remain the same.