How, then, should one speak of Xu Zijin?
At that moment, Mingyue Tower…
Several scholars from the Imperial Academy, clerks from the Ministry of Rites, and seven or eight censorial officials had already surrounded the empty space in the middle so tightly that not even a drop of water could pass through.
Spittle flew as they shouted, their fingers nearly poking Xu Zijin in the forehead.
“You demon who has thrown the government into chaos and cast aside all human order!”
“Your outrageous essay is trying to dig up the ancestral tomb of Great Qian!”
“Why has the Court of Judicial Review still not taken him into custody? If this man, who honors neither ruler nor father, is allowed to establish his own school, then in the future, which scholar in the realm will still respect heavenly principles and uphold family law?!”
The curses came one after another.
Those eminent officials and great scholars who usually prided themselves on being men of upright principle were all red-faced now, their necks flushed from rage.
Xu Zijin stood in the center of the circle without even raising his eyes.
He lowered his head and looked at the empty white-jade wine cup in his hand.
Its walls were as thin as a cicada’s wing, translucent in the faint lamplight.
First Prince Xiao Jingxing sat in the broad chair at the highest position, a detached, mocking smile playing at the corners of his mouth as he watched the spectacle.
The questioning pressed closer and closer. One man even took a large step forward, the hem of his purple-red official robe sweeping directly across the edge of Xu Zijin’s garment.
And then—
Crack!
Xu Zijin suddenly clenched all five fingers and crushed the white-jade cup to pieces in his hand.
The shards stabbed into his flesh like blades. Bright red blood seeped between his fingers, falling drop by drop onto the floor.
The Imperial Academy scholar who had been shouting the loudest abruptly froze, his extended index finger stopping in midair.
He stared at the steadily dripping blood, then looked up and met Xu Zijin’s clear black-and-white eyes. His feet carried him backward of their own accord, and he staggered two steps.
Even the musician behind the beaded curtain, who had been plucking the zither strings, was frightened into stopping. A fingernail scraped across the strings, leaving behind a harsh, grating note.
Xu Zijin slowly raised his hand. Before all the civil and military officials present, he spread open his palm, slick with blood.
The bloodstained fragments of jade were lodged in his flesh, a shocking sight to behold.
“You people would speak to me of human order? Of heavenly principles?”
Xu Zijin finally spoke, his tone almost as casual as if he were making conversation.
“Very well.”
He said softly, “Then today, this Xu will speak of nothing but that.”
He flicked the blood from his hand. His gaze passed over the censors before settling on the painting of the Sage’s admonitions hanging above the main hall.
“The Great Void is qi; when qi gathers, all things are born.”
Xu Zijin gave a cold snort.
“The Way of Heaven moves on. Cold gives way to heat, spring brings forth life, and autumn brings death. When has it ever asked whether mankind lives or dies? In years of great drought, when the land stretches barren for a thousand li, have heavenly principles ever sent down a single drop of sweet rain? When floods come and rivers burst their banks, have heavenly principles ever saved a single drowning farmer?”
“Heaven and earth are fundamentally without feeling! When have heaven and earth ever possessed a heart?”
He paused for a breath, then abruptly turned and fixed his eyes on the Imperial Academy scholar who had shouted the loudest.
“That is why we need scholars.”
“We need scholars to walk through the mud and establish a heart on behalf of this unfeeling heaven and earth.”
Xu Zijin swept back his sleeve, the bloodstained hem tracing an arc of red through the air.
“We who study must establish the heart of heaven and earth.”
The words struck like thunder.
The Imperial Academy scholar’s expression changed dramatically. His lips trembled, yet for a long while he could not utter a single word.
“Establish the heart?” The Iron-Faced Censor, who had stepped forward to challenge him earlier, swallowed and forced out a cold laugh. “That is sophistry! The Sages established the bonds of human order—that is the heart of heaven and earth! You speak from beginning to end without a word about benevolence, righteousness, or morality. What do you mean by establishing the heart?”
Xu Zijin tugged at the corner of his mouth and regarded him coldly.
“Principle exists within practical affairs.”
“You gentlemen spend all day in these warm chambers annotating the words of the Sages, delving into elaborate commentaries and scholastic interpretations. You quote chapter and verse, spending your entire lives arguing over the difference of a single character, imagining that you have inherited the true Way.”
Xu Zijin took a step forward, forcing the Iron-Faced Censor to retreat a step in turn.
“But can the price of rice in Jiangning be found between the cracks of your words?”
The censor’s face turned the color of pig liver.
“Absurd! The civil examinations select men based on their mastery of the classics and their essays. The price of rice in the marketplace is the responsibility of the Ministry of Revenue and the local authorities. What does it have to do with the Way of the Sages?”
“Nothing to do with the Way of the Sages?”
Xu Zijin laughed, the sound brimming with scorn.
“You have placed the words ‘heavenly principles’ high upon the plaques of aristocratic clans and powerful families. You use them as a threshold, barring every poor commoner in the realm from entering!”
“You drink mist tea worth a hundred taels of silver per ounce, then lift your brushes to write of the people as the foundation of the state. Yet when you turn around, refugees are freezing to death in the ditches outside the city, and none of you even spares them a glance!”
An elderly official in a crimson robe could no longer sit still. He slapped the table and rose.
“Outrageous! The court allocates grain for disaster relief every year. Do you take us for men ignorant of the people’s suffering?”
“Do you truly understand it?”
Xu Zijin cut him off without the slightest courtesy, raising a hand toward the south.
“This Xu has heard that a workshop has recently been established outside Jiangning.”
“There is a female weaver in the southern part of the city who must sit before her loom before dawn and work the treadle for the entire day. The rough cloth she weaves can be exchanged for two sheng of broken rice—enough to keep her starving parents and little brother alive for one more day.”
Xu Zijin swept his gaze over the high officials and eminent scholars dressed in silk and satin, jade belts fastened around their waists.
“You gentlemen sit in warm chambers, gathered around charcoal braziers, eating rich delicacies, while cursing these women for showing their faces in public, violating propriety, and disgracing feminine virtue!”
The hall fell so silent that one could hear a pin drop.
Several civil officials who had just joined in condemning Jiangning’s customs instinctively shrank their heads.
“They have never read a single line about the Three Bonds and Five Constant Virtues. With nothing but their own hands, they support their entire families.”
Xu Zijin stared at the assembled grandees.
“May this Xu ask the gentlemen present: with all the principles and righteousness filling your bellies, have you ever personally kept even one person alive? Have you ever woven a single inch of cloth or harvested a single grain of food with your own hands?!”
“The calluses on that weaver’s hands are thicker than the commentaries piled upon your desks!”
Xu Zijin tucked his bloodied right hand behind his back, his voice turning ice-cold.
“So this Xu will speak the second line!”
“Establish the livelihood of the people!”
Boom!
At the back of the hall, Niu Dazhuang sprang to his feet, his eyes burning red.
He understood! He understood those words better than anyone!
He had spent his entire life tilling the soil in Niu Family Village. Whenever the officials came to collect taxes, their mouths were full of grand principles and lofty essays, yet behind closed doors they would strip his household of every last bit of grain.
Only these words from Xu Zijin spoke on behalf of people like them—the peasants who lived in the mud!
In the front rows, several young Hanlin scholars who had been preparing to continue their attack looked at one another. Not one of them could find a word to say.
The entire gathering of upright officials had been rendered speechless by a young provincial graduate barely in his twenties.
“Demon… demon!”
Amid the silence, an old, trembling voice suddenly rang out.
On the foremost seat to the right, an aged Confucian scholar with white hair and beard, draped in a crane-patterned cloak, shakily rose to his feet.
He leaned on a cane carved with a dove’s head. His aged body nearly caused him to fling it aside, and those nearby hurried forward to support him.
The old scholar shook off their hands and pointed at Xu Zijin, trembling with rage.
“Clever sophistry! Empty rhetoric!”
Yet even the old scholar could sense that fear had already crept into his voice.
“The Way of the Sages began with Yao and Shun, was passed down through King Wen, King Wu, and the Duke of Zhou, and continued through Confucius and Mencius! Generation after generation of eminent scholars have written commentaries and preserved its inheritance. If you do not study the annotations of the ancient sages, if you refuse to follow the laws of your family and the teachings of your masters, then what do you, you reckless madman, possess with which to pass on the lost learning of the ancient sages?”
He brought his cane down hard against the floor. “How dare you trample upon the teachings of Confucius and Mencius with the shallow opinions of the common streets!”
Xu Zijin turned his head toward the cane trembling in the air. There was no anger in his eyes—only a deep, sorrowful compassion.
“Mencius died, and the teachings of the sages were never passed down.”
Xu Zijin spoke softly. “It has been fourteen hundred years.”
The old Confucian scholar froze for a moment.
Xu Zijin stepped forward until he stood three feet before the old man, staring directly into those cloudy, yellowed eyes.
“For fourteen hundred years, countless men like you, Master, have clung to those tangled chapters, commentaries, and annotations. You treat them as unalterable heavenly law, as though they were the very lifeblood of your inheritance.”
Xu Zijin’s voice grew quieter, yet everyone present heard him clearly.
“But within that inheritance of yours… there is nothing.”
The old Confucian scholar’s entire body stiffened.
“Mencius taught that the people are more important than the ruler. You have studied him for fourteen hundred years, yet all you have managed to build is an insurmountable wall.”
Xu Zijin pointed outside the door, then back inside.
“Within the walls sit men like you from aristocratic clans and powerful families, feeding on the people’s wealth while pontificating grandly. Outside stand the common folk of the realm, clothed in rags and starving.”
“What you guard is not the true learning of the ancient sages. What you guard is your own families’ centuries-old legacy—the authority you have enjoyed for generations without lifting a finger!”
Xu Zijin drew back his gaze and flicked his sleeve.
“If the ancient sage could see from the afterlife how you have twisted his teachings into ropes used to bind the people, he would weep bitterly in the Nine Springs!”
“Today, this Xu offers my third statement: I shall carry on the lost teachings of the sages of old!”
…
By this point, everyone present had long since been left utterly speechless.
“There is… nothing in the inheritance?”
Master Li’s lips trembled, his pupils growing vacant.
From the age of seven, when he had first begun his studies, he had spent sixty years reading the classics and commentaries. He had written countless grand essays expounding upon the intentions of the sages and prided himself on being the greatest Confucian scholar of his time.
But now, this young man was telling him that the very thing he had guarded all his life was empty.
The teachings of the sages had been severed long ago?
Were all these white-haired scholars who had exhausted themselves studying the classics nothing more than worms crawling endlessly through an empty shell?
Yet how could anyone know?
Master Li had already begun to waver because of Xu Zijin’s writings.
“You… you…”
A breath caught in the old scholar’s chest. No matter how hard he tried, he could not draw it up.
Thud!
The cane with the carved head of a dove slipped from his hand and fell to the floor, rolling twice.
Immediately afterward, Master Li’s face turned blue. His body pitched backward, and he fell stiffly onto his back.
“Master Li!”
“Quick! Call a physician!”
Several officials nearby were scared out of their wits. They rushed forward in a flurry to support him.
One pinched his philtrum, another pounded his chest. The scene descended into utter chaos.
Several servants from the Office of the Chief Secretary hurriedly brought over a sedan chair. Amid the gasps filling the hall, they clumsily lifted the unconscious old scholar through a side door and carried him away.
The hall fell quiet once more.
This time, the silence was laced with a bone-chilling cold.
The officials who had previously been so indignant all shut their mouths. Almost instinctively, they shrank backward.
Even the third-rank officials now looked at Xu Zijin with a trace of fear.
Three statements.
He had forcibly argued a Grand Scholar of the Imperial Academy into fainting.
Seated in the center, First Prince Xiao Jingxing had long since lost his smile. His fingers clutched the armrest of the golden-thread nanmu chair.
Their gazes collided in midair.
Xiao Jingxing looked down from above, his eyes as sharp as blades. Xu Zijin stood beside the pool of blood, his blue-green robe stained red, his expression calm and composed.
“A moment ago, Your Highness asked where the New Learning should stand.”
Xu Zijin slowly began to speak.
“This Xu shall answer Your Highness now—”
“To establish peace for all ages.”
He looked at Xiao Jingxing, his expression unwavering.
“It is a peace that will secure the realm for generations to come and make the dynasty everlasting.
“More importantly, it is a peace in which the common people have enough to eat and the world gives its allegiance!”
Xu Zijin paused. Their eyes remained locked as he cast out his final four words:
“It shall stand for all ages.”
As his voice fell, the entire hall sank into silence.
First Prince Xiao Jingxing sat rigidly in his chair. The darkness in his eyes seemed almost tangible, yet it remained lodged in his throat, leaving him unable to utter a single word.
Xu Zijin no longer looked at him, nor at the assembled officials and scholars.
He turned and strode away, stepping across the mottled trails of blood on the floor.
Under the horrified gazes of everyone present, he walked straight toward the doors leading to the top floor of Bright Moon Tower.
Outside, the snow was falling heavily.
