The atmosphere inside Huagai Hall was somewhat awkward.
The ministers stood in silence, their sleeves hanging low, their eyes lowered. Even the flicker of candlelight seemed cautious.
Zhu Yuanzhang had not yet fully emerged from his thoughts when movement broke the stillness.
Crown Prince Zhu Biao stepped forward.
Two paces.
Then he knelt.
"Your son begs forgiveness on Teacher's behalf."
He pressed his forehead to the floor.
"I ask Father to consider that Teacher is advanced in years and has labored long for Great Ming..."
"Enough. Rise."
Zhu Yuanzhang waved his hand impatiently.
His voice was rough, but not truly angry.
"Since I already accepted your plea and the Empress's plea and spared him execution, I will not pursue it now."
The case had once shaken the court.
Song Lian's grandson, Song Shen, had been implicated in the Hu Weiyong affair. By law, Song Lian should have died under collective punishment. Only because the Crown Prince knelt and Empress Ma personally pleaded was he spared death and exiled to Maozhou.
In the past, Zhu Yuanzhang would not have hesitated.
Law was iron.
But now things were different.
He had just learned that in another future, both his wife and his son would die before him.
That knowledge did not merely disturb him. It shifted something deep within.
There was no need to reopen old wounds over a seventy year old scholar and force his wife and son to kneel again.
And stepping back further, History of Yuan had been completed ten years ago. He had read it casually and noticed no obvious faults.
Could it be that those great Confucian masters, who could recite the Classics without pause, truly failed to see a single issue?
Unlikely.
They had seen.
They had chosen silence.
That thought weighed more heavily than any textual error.
It meant governance in Great Ming still had unseen cracks.
Compared to that, debating whether an elderly man should live or die over a decade old oversight was insignificant.
Before today, Zhu Yuanzhang believed Great Ming was flourishing like the rising sun.
He believed his household harmonious.
Now it all felt fragile.
Near at hand were wokou raids along the coast.
Farther south, unrest in Annam.
Beyond the seas, foreign powers stirring.
Within the palace, his wife's illness.
Beyond the palace walls, hidden traitors weaving quiet schemes.
Even the Son of Heaven could feel overwhelmed.
Yet the more numerous the problems, the calmer he became.
Panic solved nothing.
Resolve did.
Hearing his father's decision, Zhu Biao finally exhaled and rose.
"If there are flaws, then your son requests permission to revise History of Yuan."
His tone was steady.
Zhu Yuanzhang considered.
Then he shook his head.
"Great Ming has already swept away the remnant Yuan. There is no urgency."
"Have the scholars of your Eastern Palace examine and annotate it carefully."
"When the Northern Yuan is completely extinguished, by then the scholars raised under Ming will be many."
"And once Northern Yuan falls, those people will have no one left to rely on."
His lips curved faintly.
"At that time, whether to supplement or to rewrite, it will not be too late."
"And if we revise now, using the same paste and glue scholars, what difference would there be?"
Zhu Biao understood perfectly who those people were.
Some had once served Yuan.
Some had once cursed Ming.
Some still harbored divided loyalties in their hearts.
Until Northern Yuan truly fell, their shadows would remain.
Perhaps only when that small northern court was utterly destroyed, when those who knew only their monarch and not Huaxia had nowhere left to turn, could Yuan's coffin lid truly be nailed shut.
Meanwhile, Zhu Yuanzhang's thoughts had already moved elsewhere.
"Razing their courts and sweeping their burrows."
He repeated the phrase slowly.
"Well said."
"For these Hu Yuan remnants, Great Ming shall plow their tent courts and sweep their rat holes."
"Leave them nowhere to hide."
Then his expression shifted.
"But to sweep them away requires eight more years?"
"Brother Xu Da..."
The call carried complicated emotion.
If Hongwu twenty one marked the final annihilation of Northern Yuan, then by that time Xu Da must already have passed away. Otherwise, no matter what, it would not have been Lan Yu who delivered the final blow.
Zhu Yuanzhang knew Lan Yu well.
Brave.
Sharp.
Ferocious in battle.
Yet courage exceeded strategy. Martial strength outweighed calculation.
He could carve a path across the battlefield.
But to stabilize the realm afterward required a different kind of talent.
After Buir Lake, there would still need to be a Grand General to settle Heaven and Earth.
More importantly, Xu Da's determination to destroy Yuan was absolute.
The regret at Liuhe River had never faded.
Xu Da suddenly stood.
"Your Majesty, I am willing to pledge. Four years."
His voice was firm.
Zhu Yuanzhang looked at him and felt a warmth rise in his chest.
Instead of accepting the pledge, he spoke gently.
"No need."
"The remnant Yuan is already a dying situation."
"Compared to my brother's health, it is not worth mention."
"If my brother stands in good health, Yuan's only path is destruction."
The hall fell silent.
Loyalty like this was rare.
Elsewhere in another strand of thought, Zhao Kuangyin listened to the discussion of legitimacy.
"Song, Liao, and Jin all legitimate."
He had long known the verdict.
Yet hearing it reasoned aloud stirred anger.
"If not for the disaster at Gaoliang River, would my Great Song suffer such humiliation?"
To Zhao Kuangyin, who had sworn to recover Yanyun and restore Han and Tang unity, placing Song on equal footing with two northern regimes was an insult.
Yet he could not refute the logic.
As later generations observed, the two Song dynasties together controlled Hebei for less than two years.
What claim had they to exclusive orthodoxy?
His words were sharp.
The monk before him lowered his head further.
Li Yu and Qian Chu exchanged curious glances.
This disaster at Gaoliang River sounded important.
Something worth investigating.
History did not grant dignity without price.
[Lightscreen]
[After returning to power, Toghto faced a Yuan dynasty already near collapse.
Floodwaters ravaged the Yellow River.
The Grand Canal, lifeline of the empire, was severed.
Without the canal, grain could not reach the capital.
Without grain, the capital would starve.
Opposition at court was intense.
The arguments were practical.
First problem.
No money.
River control was a colossal undertaking. The manpower and materials required were astronomical. Meanwhile Yuan suffered from the same disease that had plagued Song and Jin before it. Overissued paper currency. Constant depreciation. A financial system already crumbling.
Second problem.
Unrest.
Gather several hundred thousand laborers to repair the river. If wages were not paid or food not supplied, those hundreds of thousands could become a rebellion overnight.
Great Yuan might collapse in a single stroke.
But Toghto had resolved himself.
"Though difficult, it is like an illness difficult to cure."
"Since ancient times the river has been such an illness."
"Now I must remove it."
It was profoundly Confucian in spirit.
Throughout Han history, water control had always been a foremost duty of governance. To tame the Yellow River was to demonstrate Heaven's mandate.
Toghto saw curing the river as removing the root disease of the state.
To address the fiscal crisis, he reformed the currency.
In early Yuan, though gold and silver circulation among the people was restricted, paper currency was still backed by silver reserves.
Toghto shifted the standard to copper.
Paper notes became primary currency. Copper coins auxiliary.
Old and new notes circulated together.
The new notes carried double the face value of the old.
In essence, paper buying paper.
Using new notes to scrape away the people's old wealth.
But by abandoning silver backing, he opened the gate to reckless issuance.
Within two years, prices rose tenfold.
What was meant to be medicine became poison.
Toghto had intended to remove the illness.
Instead, he shoveled another layer of earth onto Great Yuan's grave.]