Take control of Wei Zhongxian at the start and confiscate 100 million from him!

Chapter 146 A Major Event That Keeps the Emperor Up at Night
Inside the Provincial Administration Office, the stench of blood mingled with the deafening roar of "Long live the Emperor!" outside, creating an eerie yet intense atmosphere.

Zhu Youjian stood with his hands behind his back by the window, with Li Ruolian and other trusted confidants standing by his side. The atmosphere in the hall remained tense.

Sun Chuanting stood there, witnessing the dramatic upheavals in his soul, from the execution of the Prince of Qin to the bloodbath in the officialdom, and then to the earth-shattering "Edict on Recommending Talents."

But even more so, he knew that if he didn't say some things now, he would regret it in the future.

Sun Chuanting took a deep breath, suppressing the surging blood in his chest, stepped forward, and bowed deeply to the emperor's back: "Your Majesty, I have some heartfelt words to say, which I wish to present to you privately. I humbly request Your Majesty... to dismiss all attendants!"

The voice wasn't loud, but it carried an undeniable resolve.

Zhu Youjian slowly turned around, his gaze falling on his trusted minister. Seeing the minister's extremely solemn expression, he understood. He nodded slightly and said calmly, "You may all leave."

"According to the order."

Even Li Ruolian, whose murderous intent had not yet subsided, only gave Sun Chuanting a deep look before bowing and accepting the order, quietly leading her men out of the inner hall and gently closing the door behind them.

In the blink of an eye, only the emperor and his minister remained in the inner hall. The room, which had been bustling with people just moments before, was now so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

A room separated two worlds. Outside the door was fervor and relief, inside, however, a silence heavier than death itself.

Sun Chuanting stood there, and at that moment, his official robes seemed to weigh a ton.

At this moment, he no longer regarded the young emperor before him merely as a high and mighty monarch.

When he stepped into Shaanxi and witnessed the devastating human tragedy of thousands of miles of barren land and countless starving corpses, he truly understood how heavy the burden on his shoulders was.

This was no longer a simple matter of suppressing a rebellion and bandits; it was a race against a catastrophe that could engulf the entire Northwest. The urgency of the situation and the weight of the responsibility were unlike anything he had ever experienced in his life.

However, in such a desperate situation, the emperor did not choose anyone else, but chose Sun Chuanting! He entrusted him with this heavy responsibility that concerned the lives of millions of people and the fate of the Ming Dynasty!
What trust! What a profound entrustment!
Thinking of this, a surge of intense emotion welled up in Sun Chuanting's heart. Faced with such a profound sense of gratitude, if he were to hide his true feelings for fear of offending the Emperor, he would be worse than a beast!
He gathered his thoughts, which were still reeling from the shock, lifted the hem of his official robes, and knelt on the cold ground.

"His Majesty."

Sun Chuanting's voice was hoarse, yet unusually firm.

"I have something to say, something I must say. This may offend the Emperor, but for the sake of the nation and its people, I... would gladly die for it!"

Zhu Youjian slightly raised his eyelids, his gaze falling on this most valued and loyal minister of his. He remained silent, simply waiting quietly. He knew that what Sun Chuanting was risking disobeying to say at this moment was no small matter.

Sun Chuanting prostrated himself on the ground and said in a deep voice, "Your Majesty has beheaded the princes and executed hundreds of officials, opened the granaries and distributed grain to save the people from suffering. This is a thunderous measure and an unparalleled achievement, unprecedented since Emperor Taizu Gao. The people of Shaanxi are all grateful and regard Your Majesty as their second parent."

He then changed the subject, his voice filled with an overwhelming sense of worry.

"However, Your Majesty, while your execution of the vassal king and the massacre of officials today may have vented the anger of the people of Shaanxi, what will the vassal kings and royal families think once the news spreads beyond the capital? What will the high-ranking officials and ministers of all ranks think?"

Sun Chuanting's voice trembled slightly, knowing the weight of his words: "They will be afraid! Everyone will feel insecure! The princes will be afraid that the system of sharing the fate of the country, established by the founding emperor, has collapsed; the officials will be afraid that they will be the next unlucky ones to have their families confiscated and their clans exterminated."

When fear gripped the entire royal family and officialdom, they would inevitably become disloyal and passive in their duties to avoid making mistakes, and even... they might secretly form cliques to escape punishment for their numbers!

"If one person's power suppresses the fear of an entire nation, and this continues, the laws of the court will cease to be laws, and will become a sword hanging over everyone's heads, ready to fall at any moment! At that time, I fear that no one in the vast land will dare to be loyal and serve His Majesty!"

He slammed his head down heavily, his voice filled with deep sorrow:

"Your Majesty, I dare to say that this action may repeat the mistakes of Emperor Ling of the late Han Dynasty."

"Emperor Ling of the late Han Dynasty." Sun Chuanting spoke very softly, yet it was like a heavy punch that slammed into the deathly silent inner hall.

This is the most vicious, and also the most painful, advice.

Emperor Ling of Han sold official positions, leading to many local officials being cruel and corrupt, treating the people like fish and meat. This ultimately sparked the Yellow Turban Rebellion, ushering in a century of chaos at the end of the Han Dynasty!

Sun Chuanting's meaning was very clear: Your Majesty, although you are eliminating a scourge for the people today, you have bypassed all procedures and concentrated the power to execute powerful regional officials entirely in your own hands. This is essentially the same as Emperor Ling of Han deposing and installing officials based on personal likes and dislikes, which is an extreme violation of the law of the country.

The air seemed to freeze in that instant.

After Sun Chuanting finished speaking, he lay prostrate on the ground, waiting for the expected thunderous wrath.

However, what he received was a long sigh.

"Get up."

Zhu Youjian's voice contained no rage, not even a trace of displeasure, only deep weariness.

"Please sit down as well."

Sun Chuanting looked up in astonishment and saw the emperor looking at him with a complex gaze, a gaze that contained approval, contemplation, and even... a trace of sorrow.

……

Emperor Ling of Han?
Zhu Youjian was not surprised that Sun Chuanting could see this layer.

He unleashed a massive wave of bloodshed in Xi'an. The cheering people inside and outside the city probably only saw the emperor's power, his decisiveness, and even his... madness.

However, any reasonably rational and insightful official, like Sun Chuanting, might be worried about the potential collapse of the rule of law that this madness could bring.

Political corruption, land annexation, widespread displacement of people, border crises... the ills of the late Ming Dynasty were strikingly similar to those of the late Han Dynasty. Sun Chuanting was able to see through these layers of appearances to the deepest crisis, and he was not blinded by the immediate victory. He truly deserves to be called a man who can hold up the sky and protect the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Youjian felt that he had indeed not misjudged him.

But... in the end, he only saw "personnel matters".

The enemies that the Ming Dynasty was about to face were far more terrifying than Sun Chuanting had imagined.

Looking at Sun Chuanting's face, which was filled with loyalty and worry, Zhu Youjian felt a strong impulse surge in his heart.

He decided to personally tear open the veil woven from ancestral laws and sage words before this pillar he relied on, allowing him to glimpse beyond this world an unprecedented and far more turbulent era that had already arrived!
Zhu Youjian slowly stood up, walked to the huge map of Shaanxi, and turned his back to Sun Chuanting.

This posture was both like someone organizing their thoughts and like an invisible mountain slowly pressing down on Sun Chuanting's heart.

"Boya," the emperor's voice came from ahead, calm yet carrying a desolation that seemed to come from ancient times, "Do you think that everything I have done on this journey is merely imitating the harsh laws of the founding emperor to remedy temporary problems?"

Sun Chuanting's heart skipped a beat.

Zhu Youjian slowly turned around, his deep eyes no longer filled with any murderous intent, but instead with a sharpness bordering on despair.

He stared intently at Sun Chuanting and asked, word by word:

"I ask you, do you know... why natural disasters have been so frequent and so severe in my Great Ming Dynasty since the end of the Wanli era?"

Sun Chuanting was taken aback upon hearing this.

As a northerner, he deeply felt the effects of the recent droughts and locust plagues. However, as a subject, adhering to Confucian teachings, he naturally attributed it to "the ruler's moral failings, a warning from Heaven." He was about to speak when Zhu Youjian raised his hand to interrupt him. The emperor seemed to have no expectation of an answer; he was more like a cold-faced scribe settling old scores, beginning to list the deeply hidden secrets, each entry sending chills down Sun Chuanting's spine—

"Since my ascension to the throne, I have been unable to sleep at night. I ordered the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Hanlin Academy to spend several months searching through the Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty, copies of the Veritable Records of the two capitals (north and south), and the local gazetteers of various prefectures and counties that have been collected. I have discovered something... a major matter that has kept me up at night."

His voice was very low, as if he were telling a forbidden secret.

"Starting from the 45th year of the Wanli reign, the atmosphere of the world suddenly turned cold!"

"In the 46th year of the Wanli reign, the Huai River froze over; in the first year of the Taichang reign, Lake Tai also froze over. Boya, have you ever heard of the Huai River and the Yangtze River, stretching for thousands of miles, when have they ever seen a thousand miles of ice?

"Several years ago, I personally witnessed the snow on the Western Hills in the capital, which had not yet melted by the beginning of summer! And the secret report I received stated that Guangdong, a hot place that is free from frost all year round, has experienced heavy snowfalls several times in the past ten years, with snow accumulation reaching a foot high, freezing countless people and livestock to death!"

"Do you think," Zhu Youjian's gaze was like a knife, piercing straight into Sun Chuanting's heart, "that this is merely a rare calamity that occurs only once every ten years?"

A series of questions struck Sun Chuanting's understanding like heavy hammer blows.

He had certainly heard of these "strange tales," but most of the time he dismissed them as fabricated reports by local officials to gain sympathy and exaggerate the extent of the disaster.

Sun Chuanting had never imagined, nor had anyone, let alone the emperor, would connect all these seemingly isolated and scattered events and conduct such a detailed analysis and deduction!

He began to realize that what the emperor was about to say was probably more terrifying than anything he had imagined.

As expected, the emperor gave him no chance to catch his breath. He walked back to the map and slowly ran his finger across it, as if he were tracing a deeply ingrained malignant tumor.

"Come and see."

Zhu Youjian's voice was low and hoarse, as if he were narrating a tragedy that had nothing to do with him, yet was destined to devour everything.

"The root of this calamity lies in Heaven." He first pointed to the north, "The weather has turned cold, the frost has come early, and the thawing has been delayed. The millet and wheat sown in the north are dying before they ripen; the rice in the south, which should have been harvested twice, is now only harvested once, or there is no harvest at all! This is not something that will happen in a year or two, Boya," his voice revealed a chilling coldness, "This is a catastrophe of crop failure sent by Heaven, affecting the entire Ming Dynasty, and no one can escape it!"

“Natural disasters are pitiable, but man-made calamities are even more abhorrent.” His finger turned to the heart of the Central Plains. “If I hadn’t come to Shaanxi, the world would be in this state—the fields would yield no harvest, the people would be bankrupt and forced into exile. And the court, for the sake of the war in Liaodong, would inevitably impose three additional taxes, making the national tax even heavier. Local officials would then exploit the people at every level, making taxes five or six out of ten! What other way would those people who can’t survive have to take up arms and join the bandits to steal a meager living?!”

"Thus, the foundation of the nation rotted away section by section." Finally, the emperor's hand slammed heavily on the Great Wall at the nine borders. "The more bandits there were, the greater the military expenditure for suppressing them. The national treasury was already empty, and there was simply no way to pay the full amount of wages! The soldiers at the nine borders had not received money or food for months or years. Would they starve to death to serve their country, or would they mutiny to save their lives? The garrisons and military settlements had been completely seized and were rendered useless. As a result, the bandit army spread like wildfire and could not be stopped!"

Zhu Youjian's finger pointed to Shaanxi on one end of the map and to the Later Jin in Liaodong on the other.

"One from within, one from without. It's like two giant axes simultaneously hacking at my Great Ming, this towering tree whose heart has long been hollowed out by countless termites!"

His voice became incredibly cold and heavy at that moment.

Zhu Youjian turned to look at Sun Chuanting, whose face had turned deathly pale, and asked a question that froze his very soul:

“Boya, tell me, if this weather continues for another ten years... twenty years... or even longer…”

"How many more years does my Great Ming Dynasty have left?"

Sun Chuanting's mind went blank.

He was struck dumb, frozen in place, his face ashen, his body ice-cold, as if he had fallen into an ancient ice cave.

The scene depicted by His Majesty the Emperor, this hellish picture strung together by countless real, bloody facts, is a hundred or a thousand times more hopeless than the "situation at the end of the Han Dynasty" that he feared!
The problems at the end of the Han Dynasty stemmed from human affairs: a foolish ruler, treacherous ministers, and corrupt officials. Ultimately, it was a problem with people! If a wise ruler had appeared and capable ministers had assisted him, and if the chaos had been rectified and the government had been diligently governed, there would still have been room for redemption.

But now the emperor is telling him that the root of the Ming Dynasty's illness lies in the timing of events!

What they were fighting against was not corrupt bureaucrats, not fierce bandits, and not even the powerful Later Jin.

What they are fighting against is Heaven! It is this land that has nurtured the Chinese people, and it is the very workings of this universe!
What an immense, suffocating sense of powerlessness!

How can man fight against the heavens?!

"thump!"

Sun Chuanting could no longer hold on; his knees buckled, and he collapsed to his knees once more. His beliefs, his pride and resolve as a Confucian disciple and a subject of the Ming Dynasty, were utterly shattered at that moment.

He always thought he had seen things deeply and far enough. He believed that the Ming Dynasty's problems lay in its bureaucracy, factional strife, and external threats. He firmly believed that as long as the emperor was wise and the court officials could set aside their differences and work together, there would always be a chance to save the country, and the Ming Dynasty would eventually regain its glorious prosperity!
But now he realizes he was terribly wrong.

They were like a group of passengers on a sinking giant ship, fighting tooth and nail for a more comfortable cabin, completely unaware that the entire ship was being swallowed up by a boundless, slowly freezing ocean.

The emperor was the only one on the ship who looked up and saw that deadly, icy sea.

Sun Chuanting understood.

He finally understood why His Majesty had resorted to such drastic measures.

Killing princes, slaughtering officials, and promoting talents without regard to precedent... all these seemingly crazy and rule-breaking behaviors were surprisingly reasonable and logical under the huge and irresistible background of "Heaven is going to destroy the Ming Dynasty"!
Because of the rules, the Ming Dynasty could no longer be saved!
Faced with impending annihilation, all laws, rituals, and ancestral traditions become useless and laughable decorations!

Sun Chuanting suddenly kowtowed again, this time with a fear and awe from the depths of his soul, and a sense of relief at having found the final answer.

"Your Majesty... Your Majesty is foolish!!"

His voice was already trembling with uncontrollable sobs, and his forehead was pressed against the ground.

"Your Majesty, I only know human affairs, not the timing of events! I failed to understand Your Majesty's desperate measures and deserve to die!"

"Your Majesty, I am utterly incapable of sharing your burdens, and deserve to die a thousand deaths!!"

Zhu Youjian stepped forward and helped him up from the ground.

There was no trace of relief on his face from having persuaded Sun Chuanting.

Sun Chuanting saw it the instant he looked up.

He saw that in His Majesty the Emperor's eyes, the cold sharpness and deep worry had not dissipated, but instead... a fear that was deeper, darker, and more despairing than the chilling, demonic scene that filled the world.

The chill returned, even colder and more biting than before, as if an invisible hand had gripped Sun Chuanting's heart, making it almost impossible for him to breathe.

His fingertips trembled almost imperceptibly inside his sleeve.

"His Majesty……"

Sun Chuanting silently recited the words to himself, but his gaze remained fixed on the young emperor.

Natural disasters have already led to a dead end. Is there any scene in this world more despairing than the will of heaven to freeze the land for thousands of miles? What could be more terrifying for an emperor than the heavens threatening to sever the Ming dynasty's lineage?

Where does the unfathomable terror in His Majesty's eyes originate? What kind of hellish landscape, even surpassing the heavens themselves, lies hidden in the future he envisions?
Sun Chuanting forced himself to stop thinking; he dared not delve any further.

Because he clearly sensed that once the answer was revealed, it would be a thunderbolt that would shatter his lifelong beliefs and pride!
(End of this chapter)