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Chapter 1094: Continuation
🕑 Added 2024-11-22 12:40:06 +0000 UTCXu Shao was not considered exceptionally wise, but he had a pair of eyes that could see through human nature. Therefore, he understood very well that saints did not exist. This deep insight made him grasp Chen Xi's words with great clarity: a class will never betray its own class!
The aristocratic class, no matter how it changes, will never betray its own interests. The compromises made now were not because Chen Xi was stronger but because the benefits he offered were enough for the aristocracy to pause and consider, to pursue those advantages.
However, this could only delay the inevitable; it could not truly change the times. Xu Shao understood that he, too, was merely a sympathizer of the common people. But to give up everything and live like them? That was impossible. He was just a sympathizer, doing only what he could within his means.
As a beneficiary of this system, it was impossible to abandon his own interests for the sake of people who were irrelevant to him, unless there was a greater benefit to be had. Only in that case would the aristocracy loosen its grip.
Chen Xi was no saint—Xu Shao knew this very well. At best, Chen Xi could be called a reformer of the aristocratic class, someone who didn’t want his own class to be destroyed. Standing above others, he sympathized with and tried to win over the common people through gentle means.
The spirit of selflessness that you speak of, you don't actually possess. Xu Shao mused, looking at the spot where Chen Xi had disappeared. You know everything, but you cannot do everything. You're hesitant, you haven't fully planned for the future.
With your mild temperament, you seek a peaceful and stable transition, like in the era of sages. You don’t want to destroy your foundation, but at the same time, you don’t want it to confine you. You're striving for a dynamic and everlasting balance, aren’t you? Only then can there be stability and longevity.
Xu Shao sighed deeply. The path Chen Xi wanted to walk was too difficult. It wasn’t just about achieving peace and stability for one generation—he wanted much, much more.
Chen Xi was always reforming, always improving the living standards of the common people. And while it seemed he was weakening the aristocracy, Xu Shao could sense that what Chen Xi was really doing was separating the wheat from the chaff.
Indeed, the aristocracy needed to be cleansed—too much rot had infiltrated it. But even in the most corrupted groups, there were always elites. Moreover, the aristocracy had accumulated resources that inherently made it a group of elites.
To extract the essence and discard the waste was easy to say but incredibly difficult to do, especially when you don’t understand much yourself. If the majority of the common people still had to rely on self-study, even with Chen Xi's education system, the result would still be a division between aristocrats and commoners.
At best, it would only shuffle the people around. The relationship between the two classes would still be one of exploitation and the exploited. In more severe terms, the division between them would remain intact.
Clearly, this was not the relationship Chen Xi wanted. Throughout history, revolutions, whether from the top down or the bottom up, had always failed when they relied on a single class. Purely aristocratic self-reform was doomed to a tragic end, guaranteed.
Likewise, a purely bottom-up uprising would also amount to nothing in the end. True reform required cooperation from all classes. However, in this era, the Han Dynasty had only two real classes: the aristocracy and the common people.
Of course, the emperor stood above both, but most of the time, the emperor sided with the people to maintain balance. Therefore, any attempt to reform the aristocracy without involving the common people was destined for failure.
The people needed to see a path to advancement, and the aristocracy needed to stop recklessly exploiting the legacies of their ancestors. Only when both sides had relatively equal strength could they engage in fair dialogue. Chen Xi was working hard to create a new class, born from the common people yet strong and united.
This is where his investments in the veteran corps came into play. In this world, there exists a kind of camaraderie as strong as love, called "brotherhood"—the bond forged on the battlefield, where comrades would take a blade for one another. Such feelings are nearly indestructible, even with the passage of time.
By continuously increasing the welfare and honor of this group, Chen Xi sought to shape them into a new class, a group that existed purely to fight for the country. These people were mostly brave, straightforward, and unlikely to hold high positions. Untainted by corruption, they understood the importance of unity and knew the weakness of individuals. Naturally, they would work to unite their brothers, growing stronger as a collective.
A tripod stands on three legs. This was the most realistic and achievable path to stability that Chen Xi could envision. How far it could go, he wasn’t sure, but could things really get worse?
At least, with this plan, Chen Xi could glimpse some possible futures. And now that the path had come this far, even if Chen Xi wanted to stop, the inertia of history wouldn’t allow him to.
What Chen Xi was most proud of was that, before this grand historical momentum could spiral out of control, he had managed to grasp it again in his own hands—not the kind of momentum leading to Liu Bei unifying the land, which was already foreseeable, but a larger trend that only he was aware of.
The aristocratic alliance he had orchestrated, which seemed laced with sarcasm, was merely a front. It was important, but not so much that the world would fall apart without it—it was just a test.
As Chen Xi had predicted, when the major powers crumbled, everything he foresaw came back into his grasp.
Thus, after the great war between Yuan Shao and Liu Bei, when the grand power structures of the world were swept into the dustbin of history, Chen Xi remained calm. Always preparing for the worst, Chen Zichuan, with his own wisdom, smoothly took hold of the world's fate. At the moment when old and new histories collided, he seized the dawn of a new era!
This may sound vague, but what came next was that the marionette of history, which Chen Xi had been toying with, once again danced to his strings. Unlike before, when he relied on familiarity with the puppet, Chen Xi no longer needed such crutches.
It was because of this event that Chen Xi’s reverence for historical figures had completely dissipated. This was why he now acted so freely—no longer did he rely on mimicking the paths of past figures. He had developed his own methods.
If Chen Xi had been a skilled imitator before, now he was forging his own techniques. Though still raw and unpolished, there was no hiding the strength he had drawn from the shadows of the past.
It was no longer the same. He didn’t need to disguise himself as a perfectly mature strategist anymore. All he needed was the reckless energy of youth to ignite the beginning of a new era. Others would naturally follow and perform on this stage he had set.
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