[Lighscreen]
[It could be said that the great Jin general Zhao Gou spent a remarkably comfortable old age in the Southern Song.
The poet Zhou Mi recorded a verse in Qidong Yeyu:
The name Deshou fills the marketplace,
One household still taxed three thousand coins.
No need to ask about brocade lanterns,
Even dung boats bear the palace banners.
The lines were not exaggeration.
Contemporary accounts described in detail the commercial empire Zhao Gou built after abdication. At the time, the Deshou Palace constructed corridors and properties throughout the markets. The overseers handling construction barely understood propriety, so whenever they installed a door or gate, they simply wrote "Deshou Palace" on it. From mansions to alley latrines, the same name appeared everywhere.
In practice, as long as Zhao Gou remained alive, every toilet in Lin'an might as well have carried the palace label.
Viewed from a modern perspective, after stepping down Zhao Gou effectively became the CEO of the Deshou Palace Development Consortium. His portfolio covered brewing, fertilizer trading, and real estate development, a surprisingly diversified operation.
Later, a remonstrance official named Yuan Fu submitted a memorial to Emperor Xiaozong, protesting what he called "private palace brewing" and urging Zhao Gou to stop trampling Song law.
No one expected Zhao Gou's response.
He simply gifted Xiaozong a bottle of wine bearing the inscription: "Private Brew of Deshou."
Xiaozong later described his own reaction with four words. He said he felt utterly helpless.
The affair ended with Yuan Fu requesting reassignment to a distant post, which everyone politely understood as a forced retreat. Xiaozong even issued an additional order requiring the Liangzhe Transport Commission to supply the Deshou Palace with five thousand shi of glutinous rice annually so the Retired Emperor could continue brewing.
From this alone, one could see how well Zhao Gou lived.
The situation was the sort that would make even Li Yuan weep if he knew.
No one ever told him retirement as emperor could be this pleasant.
Looking across history, the only ruler who might compete with Zhao Gou in this regard was the Ming Fort Emperor, though that man reached such heights largely because of the disasters he caused. If one measured purely by the quality of being a terrible human being, even the Fort Emperor still fell short of Zhao Gou by a fair margin.
Morality could not restrain him. Responsibility could not bind him. Emotion could not move him. Reputation did not concern him in the slightest. If selfishness were a contest, it would be hard to find anyone in history who could surpass him.
The price, of course, was paid by everyone else.
Loyal ministers, capable generals, patriotic militias, Emperor Xiaozong, and the Song dynasty itself. Anyone even remotely connected to Zhao Gou generally ended up unlucky.
Because of this, during the years when the Retired Emperor effectively dominated the political scene, the life of Xin Qiji was almost destined to be difficult.
Oh, and the reason Song people found dung boats particularly disgraceful also traced back to a historical anecdote.
According to the Zizhi Tongjian, the Tang emperor Li Zhi once heard a proposal from the Director of Palace Supplies, Pei Feishu. Pei suggested that selling the manure from the imperial stables could bring in two hundred thousand strings of cash annually.
Li Zhi was tempted.
But he was ultimately stopped by a single remark from the official Liu Rengui, who warned, "I fear later generations will say the Tang court sold horse dung."
This story, recorded by Sima Guang and sourced from Zhang Zhuo's Chaoye Qianzai, might or might not be true. Regardless, the attitude behind it was rather unfortunate.
Ancient China actually possessed one of the world's more advanced systems for handling urban waste and fertilizer recycling. Yet because people found the topic distasteful, management often became sloppy.
Officials charged wealthy households for waste removal, then charged poor farmers again to buy the resulting fertilizer. From this system emerged the so-called "dung bosses," a phenomenon that caused trouble from the Song through Yuan, Ming, Qing, and even into the Republic era, lasting nearly a thousand years before finally being dealt with in modern times.]
Empress Ma could no longer remain lying comfortably in bed while watching the glowing screen on the folding panel.
She was no stranger to Song history. More than once she had cited Emperor Gaozong as a cautionary example while urging her husband to govern diligently.
But what was this "Ming Fort Emperor"?
Did such a posthumous title even exist?
She felt genuinely confused.
The remnants of the Yuan had not yet been fully eradicated. How could there already be a Ming emperor bearing such a strange title? And the screen's voice claimed that this ruler's foolishness rivaled Song Gaozong's.
It could not possibly refer to her husband.
Whatever the meaning of the character "Fort," she absolutely refused to believe her man resembled Zhao Gou in the slightest.
He had expelled the Mongols, restored Han rule, entered Yingtian, studied constantly, and handled court affairs with care and diligence. He was her husband, the partner she herself had chosen. How could he ever be the sort of man who harmed the realm to benefit himself?
Without noticing, she had already climbed out of bed. Wrapped only in a thin quilt and not bothering to fix her hair, she paced back and forth before the screen.
Even setting aside this mysterious Fort Emperor, the voice had clearly spoken of "Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing." She heard it perfectly.
Yuan replacing Song was common knowledge. Founding Ming in place of Yuan was something she herself had lived through. Yet now, this Ming, only recently stabilized, was supposedly destined to be replaced by something called Qing. And what was this "Republic"? What state was meant by "our founding"?
If the voice's timeline were true, then from Song to that later founding was only a thousand years. Song and Yuan together already spanned four centuries. Ming, Qing, the Republic, and whatever followed would share the remaining six hundred.
The thoughts collided in her mind, tumbling over one another. The hardest questions her tutors had ever asked, the isolation at Hezhou, the siege by Chen Youliang's forces in Jiangning, none of them had ever left her as unsettled as this moment.
But perhaps it was all false.
After all, prophets and mystics spreading cryptic predictions were nothing new. Men who claimed to foresee destiny often used vague riddles to fool the ignorant.
Yet she also knew those prophecies were always deliberately obscure. Never had she heard predictions spoken this plainly, this naturally.
After several turns across the room, she finally made up her mind. Standing by the palace doors of Kunning Palace, she called a maid over and quietly instructed her,
"Watch for the moment after His Majesty finishes drinking with the officials. Ask him to come here."
"If the Emperor asks why…"
"Just repeat those words exactly."
She listened as the maid acknowledged and withdrew, the footsteps fading into the distance. Only then did she press her fingers to her brow and return to the glowing screen, reaching out almost involuntarily.
Ripples spread outward from where her hand touched, like a stone dropped into water.
She reached further and felt woven brocade beneath her fingers. It was still only the screen.
Drawing her hand back and watching the ripples fade, Empress Ma no longer hesitated. She quickly found paper and brush, writing down the few lines from the screen that had disturbed her thoughts, along with the many speculations now crowding her mind.
Li Shimin curled his lip slightly, forcing his attention away from reflections about how comfortable retired emperors could be, and gave a dismissive snort.
"If it is merely an anecdote, then it must be false."
"And even if the Tang sold horse dung, so what?"
Privately, he added that one only needed to arrange intermediaries to handle the trade discreetly. What difficulty was there in that?
Since the previous year, taking advantage of a peaceful time without disasters, he had pushed through several major fiscal reforms.
The money-lending agents later criticized as state usurers had been abolished. Workshops and regulated markets had been established for sugar refining, papermaking, glass production, and several other industries.
These were only the broad measures. The detailed regulations, the appointment of officials, and the administrative adjustments had consumed a great deal of effort from both him and his ministers.
He knew that if examined further, each of these industries would eventually require even more detailed reward and punishment systems. Fortunately, those matters no longer required his direct attention.
From the current revenue figures of the regulated markets alone, the wealth of the Zhenguan era already far surpassed that of the Wude years. Perhaps before long they could accelerate their efforts in managing the Western Regions.
What Zhangsun Wuji had said earlier in casual discussion now seemed especially sensible. As long as India and the western lands had not yet learned the method of producing refined white sugar, they should sell it entirely through the Western Regions and exchange it for wealth and goods.
At present, Li Shimin only felt that another source of income had opened before him.