The news that the court was going to hold imperial examinations in Jiangnan to select officials based on talent spread quickly. For a time, the entire world was shaken. This was because prior to this, the mainstream methods for the court to select officials were limited to recommending the filial and incorrupt, recommending the exceptionally talented, direct recruitment by the state, hereditary privilege for officials’ sons, or purchasing titles.

The so-called recommendation of the filial and incorrupt or the exceptionally talented meant that local chief executives, such as provincial inspectors, governors, and prefects, would use moral conduct, academic learning, decisiveness, and knowledge of the law as criteria to recommend scholars from their own provinces. The court would usually select talents from among these recommended scholars to enter the court as court attendants. After a period of grooming, they would be sent out to various provinces and commanderies to serve as local chief executives.

The recommenders bore joint liability for the talents they put forward. If a recommended person committed an offense after becoming an official in the court, the recommender would also be punished accordingly. (This was one of the reasons why Zhao Buji was so excited when he heard the Emperor appoint him as the Inspector of Yizhou. An inspector of a province controlled the advancement channels for that province’s talent. Based on this single power, Zhao Buji could engage in numerous exchanges of interest with the elite families and powerful clans of Yizhou.)

This was also the primary method by which the elite families and powerful clans currently monopolized the pathways to official appointments.

Viewed from this perspective, although the rule that recommenders bore joint liability for the actions of the recommended individuals objectively prevented them from recommending bad people due to negligence or oversight, such a regulation fundamentally sowed the seeds of disaster. Although the law stipulated that recommenders must prioritize a scholar’s learning and moral conduct when putting forward talent, who among the ordinary citizens could make their learning and moral conduct known to a provincial chief executive, and make that executive willing to risk joint liability to recommend them for office?

Setting aside those sages who were truly selfless and willing to recommend talent for the sake of the court, most local chief executives merely viewed this power as their greatest bargaining chip for pursuing personal interests. For instance, if I am a native of Xuzhou serving as the inspector in Yizhou, you are a native of Yangzhou serving as the inspector in Xuzhou, and he is a native of Yizhou serving as the inspector in Yangzhou, then when I, as the Yizhou inspector, recommend Yizhou talents as filial and incorrupt or exceptionally talented, the Xuzhou inspector can recommend talents from the Zhao clan of Xuzhou. In exchange, the colleague serving as the Yangzhou inspector can recommend the clansmen of the Xuzhou inspector. As fellow members of the elite class, everyone recommended each other’s clan members to become officials in the court. By sharing resources in this manner, they naturally could monopolize the primary channels through which the court selected its scholars.

What about the remaining children of humble families who did not come from elite families or powerful clans but possessed genuine learning? They either had to submit to the elite families and powerful clans, or, if they refused to adapt and blend in, they could naturally go find somewhere else to cool their heels.

As for direct recruitment by the state, that goes without saying. The so-called direct recruitment meant that when the Emperor or high officials and lords heard that there were overlooked talents living in obscurity, they would actively summon them to enter the court as officials. Summons by the Emperor were called imperial recruitments, while those by high officials and lords were called official recruitments. So here lies the question: if a person’s learning and moral conduct had already reached such a high level that even the Emperor dwelling deep in the imperial chambers and the high-and-mighty lords knew their names like a clap of thunder, would such a person still be an ordinary citizen?

Hereditary privilege meant that serving officials would recommend their own children to enter the court as officials. The bureaucrats of the Yin Dynasty truly managed to recommend talent without avoiding their own kin. This was also very easy to understand. After all, the ancestors of these major elite families had fought alongside the Founding Emperor to win the realm. The imperial family of the Yin Dynasty had never thought about giving up the throne to someone with a different surname, so the major elite families naturally would not give up their own noble titles and official positions to outsiders. Regardless of whether their descendants were virtuous or not, they ultimately wanted to make sure the wealth and power stayed within the family. The final method, purchasing titles, was even easier to understand; it simply meant spending money to buy an official position.

Look at that: every single one of the above methods for selecting officials targeted family background, family wealth, and personal networks. In other words, in this era, if you had no money and no power, you did not even have the possibility of becoming an official. The Yin Dynasty had been established for over six hundred years, and counting back another thousand years before that, there had never been an opportunity for ordinary commoners to become officials.

But now, the court had suddenly come up with an imperial examination system to select scholars. The decree announced to the world that officials would be selected solely based on talent, with no need to consider family prestige or door status, nor any need to consider family wealth or personal networks. As long as one possessed learning, one could immediately become an official by passing an examination. For the ordinary commoners whose channels for advancement had been monopolized by elite families and powerful clans, this decree was simply a fairy tale.

For a time, the scholars of the realm were shaken. Needless to say how the local scholars of Jiangnan were filled with boiling enthusiasm, the neighboring scholars of Shuzhong were so envious that their eyes were turning red, wishing they could immediately move their household registrations to Jiangnan. Even the scholars from the central plains and the two provinces of Youzhou and Bingzhou could not help but submit petitions to the court, hoping the court would popularize the Jiangnan imperial examinations throughout the entire realm.

They completely forgot that when the court was still in Luoyang, it had actually held an imperial examination once. It was just that the imperial examination that time did not cause much of a stir because it was intentionally treated with cold neglect by the meritorious elite families.

Now, after a mere few years, the imperial examination held by the court in Jiangnan caused a worldwide sensation in an instant. The deep meaning contained behind this was completely obvious.

Although the petitions from civilian scholars flew into the palace like snowflakes, Yin Shuhuai still did not act recklessly. The second imperial examination opened by the court was still restricted to the single region of Jiangnan, but it gave special permission for scholars from all places to rush to Jiangnan to take the exam.

On the surface, it seemed like an act of extraordinary grace from the court, but in reality, it made the muddy waters of both Jiangnan and Shuzhong even cloudier.

However, Shentu Yang was delighted to see this happen.

The Emperor wanted to develop Jiangnan, which required a massive amount of manpower, material resources, and financial resources. The latter two were easy to handle. Shentu Yang possessed hundreds of thousands of troops; wherever his blades pointed, he could naturally exert pressure on the elite families and powerful clans of the various commanderies in Jiangnan and Shuzhong. Those unclaimed fields and the confiscated estates of elite families were part of Shentu Yang’s harvest during this period.

Now, Shentu Yang held funds, grain, and policies that benefited the people. He had the favor of time and the advantage of place; all he lacked was the harmony of people. If he could use an imperial examination to bring the talents and commoners of all commanderies across the realm into his grasp, it would not be a waste of the Emperor’s efforts to set up this stage.

Shentu Yang could not help but imagine that Jiangnan at that time would probably be like surging river waters flowing into the sea. The local powerful clans would naturally suffer a powerful impact, and the court in Jixian far away, or even the overall situation of the realm, would likely change because of this. Moreover, this vast ocean of people, formed by the gathering of local commoners and talents from all over the realm, would also achieve twice the result with half the effort for the development pace of Jiangnan.

This was probably what the Emperor often meant by saying, “If you keep the land but lose the people, both land and people are lost; if you keep the people but lose the land, both people and land are saved.”

Shentu Yang deeply agreed.

From leading a million troops into Luoyang to coercing the court to move its capital to Youzhou, Shentu Yang had watched with his own eyes how the Emperor transformed from a puppet emperor into the wise ruler he was today. He had never doubted Yin Shuhuai’s wisdom; he merely felt that the development speed of Jiangnan was still a bit too slow, delaying his triumphant return to the court to reunite with the Emperor.

By the time the flower-carried messages transmitted from the Emperor to Shentu Yang accumulated to eighteen letters, the Jiangnan imperial examinations that had caused a sensation throughout the realm were also held as scheduled.

During the scorching heat of the sixth lunar month, just as the first batch of mature Champa rice brought a massive harvest to the various commanderies of Jiangnan, three thousand scholars who had rushed to Jiangnan from all commanderies across the realm to take the examinations also arrived in Xuzhou one after another. Looking at the heavy, drooping rice on both sides of the official road, the eyes of the scholars from various places went completely wide. If most of them had not personally tilled the fields themselves and been intimately familiar with the growth patterns of various grains, they really would have thought they were foolish people who did not use their limbs and could not distinguish the five grains.

They could not be blamed for expressing such wonder. Since the founding of the Yin Dynasty over six hundred years ago, there had been countless auspicious omens, but who had ever seen rice that matured in the summer? Furthermore, who had seen such a grand occasion where all the fields in the entire Jiangnan enjoyed a bountiful harvest?

Could it truly be that because the sovereign was wise and virtuous, heaven had sent down an auspicious omen?

“This is grain that the Emperor had people bring back from Champa; it can be harvested three times a year,” a farmer harvesting early rice in the field said with some helplessness as he looked at the foreign scholars shouting and making a fuss by the roadside, correcting them for the hundred and eighth time. “This is a good variety of seed that the Emperor specially ordered the naval fleet to go to Champa and bring back because he pitied the commoners for not having enough food to eat. This is the Emperor’s kindness to the millions of people across the realm. What does it have to do with the heavens?”

Although the Emperor was the Son of Heaven, even the heavens could not steal the Emperor’s credit.

Ever since Shentu Yang led the court’s grand army to sit in governance over Jiangnan, it had not only spared the commoners of Jiangnan from the ravages of wandering bandits, the disasters of war, and the oppression of local powerful clans, but under the direction of the Duke of Yan, refugees who had lost their fields and houses could also rent fields from the court. After a bountiful harvest, there was no need to pay complicated and heavy taxes; they only needed to pay a small amount of rent, and all the remaining grain belonged to themselves.

Now, every family had fields to plant, and every person could eat their fill. Although they were pulled by the grand army during the slack farming season to clear canals and build water systems, they were paid for that work.

They heard that after the autumn harvest, the court would also open community schools in the various commanderies of Jiangnan, allowing all children over five years old to go study and learn to read, and would also open literacy classes in every village so that even they would have the opportunity to learn to read. Seeing these benefits, which they dared not even dream of in the past, about to be realized one by one, the common people of Jiangnan were deeply grateful to the Emperor and the Duke of Yan, who led the grand army to stay in Jiangnan and manage all affairs. They had all enshrined longevity tablets for the Emperor and the Duke of Yan in their homes, hoping that this pair of wise ruler and virtuous minister could live for a hundred years, a thousand years, ten thousand years.

Standing by the roadside, the foreign scholar looked with some surprise at the local farmer, whose mental outlook, speech, and manners were completely different from the commoners of other commanderies: “What you say is absolutely right, old sir. I have been shallow.”

After speaking, he could not help but strike up a conversation with this old man. This was because this foreign scholar was truly curious about what kind of magic that Emperor dwelling deep in the court chambers and the Duke of Yan currently in Jiangnan possessed, to actually be able to bring such a massive change to the entire Jiangnan within a mere few months.

In fact, it was not only this scholar who harbored doubts in his heart. The three thousand scholars who came to Jiangnan to take the examinations, as well as the elite clans of Jiangnan and Shuzhong who had personally witnessed all these changes, felt a deep longing for the Emperor and the court in Jixian. According to the Youzhou soldiers who came to suppress the rebellion, ever since the Emperor moved the capital to Jixian, the changes in the two provinces of Youzhou and Bingzhou were even greater than those in Jiangnan today. Under the vivid descriptions of numerous Youzhou soldiers, a grand scroll of a prosperous era slowly unfolded before everyone’s eyes.

However, talk alone provided no proof. Many people hoped to enter the court as officials through this imperial examination. They wanted to go to Jixian personally to see it with their own eyes, to see how the court under the rule of the Son of Heaven was any different from the rest of this world.