The summer sun shone down upon Jianmen Pass, where travelers streamed back and forth. Besides the merchants who frequented the area before the war, there were now many wandering swordsmen and scholars. Young scholars strode forward with a sense of spirited ambition, while older Confucian scholars observed everything with cautious eyes. Since the city gate tower was still under repair, remnants of the war were visible in some places, often causing people to stop, watch, and discuss.

Initially, the Huaxia Army held a casual attitude towards the onlookers, but as the crowds grew and began to obstruct the passageway, they had no choice but to occasionally drive them away.

"Keep moving! Head forward. All the way to Chengdu, there are plenty of places for you to see!"

Ning Yi and Zuo Xiuquan watched from the nearby hilltop.

"...So, Mr. Ning, what do you think of the new emperor's decision?"

Zuo Xiuquan posed the question. Ning Yi smiled. "What are the Zuo family's thoughts? To follow, or not to follow?"

"As Mr. Ning says, the new emperor is strong-willed. Observing his actions, he possesses a resolve akin to burning the boats and fighting to the death, inspiring passionate admiration and heartfelt loyalty. However, the story of burning the boats is so admired because it rarely succeeds in practice. Judging by the current situation, my Zuo family, internally, is not optimistic about this reform..."

Ning Yi looked at him. Zuo Xiuquan paused. "...However, the Zuo family will follow."

Ning Yi chuckled. "Not surprising. Zuo Duanyou truly has a knack for managing his family..."

"Before Uncle passed away, he said that Mr. Ning is broad-minded and that some matters can be discussed openly without offense. The new emperor's ability, disposition, and talent far surpass those of the previous emperors. It is a pity that the Wu Dynasty obtained him so late. But since he has ascended the throne, no matter what the situation ahead, the Zuo family will accompany him through it."

Zuo Xiuquan cupped his fist in a respectful salute, his words sincere. Ning Yi nodded. "The logic of reform holds... The new emperor ascended, co-opting all sides. It seems he can immediately inherit legitimate power, but what will he do after inheriting it? Tinkering and patching up, its limit is clear today. Prolonging existence for a few years, facing the idiots in Lin'an, those eager fools like Wu Qimei and Liu Guangshi, you can defeat them, kill them, but soon it will be a dead end. You can't defeat the Jurchens, you can't defeat me... I'll be frank, in the future, you probably won't even be able to defeat that woman in Jin. Without reform, you're doomed... But the problem with reform, you also know clearly."

Ning Yi's gaze met his. "This isn't a matter of a few families supporting or not supporting. If we were talking about business, this is a problem with the entire game framework, the incompatible talent cultivation system. For the past two hundred years, the Wu Dynasty has been operating within the framework of 'ruling the world together with the scholar-officials.' Your talent cultivation, in countless details, is coordinated with this theory. Today, the Wu Dynasty is on the verge of collapse. Like you power holders, it's not that you lack the determination to sacrifice for the Wu Dynasty. The Zuo family will follow, and many great Confucian scholars and insightful individuals will bankrupt themselves to share the national crisis. But what about the people below you?"

"In a relatively long process, those who follow Emperor Wu will consciously contribute more and receive less. Someone like you, Mr. Zuo, is driven by a sense of mission. You don't want money or rewards, but just the Zuo family involves thousands of scholars, indirectly affecting tens of thousands of people who eat at your table. For them, it's about daily necessities. For the emperor, you can impoverish your family, but you still won't go hungry, but they will."

"If this continues for long, everyone will see the difference more clearly. Those who flock to Lin'an can become superiors with a little connection. Why can't you? You could get away with cheating in the past, but why are today's laws so strict, to the point that 'officials can't make a living'? Then they will start looking for reasons. It's because you moved the foundation of the country that caused this result. Everyone will start saying that this won't work... Most people in this world are like this, most of the time they are making up reasons for their own purposes, rather than recognizing the reasons and then doing something. Those who can truly deal with matters on their merits are always few and far between."

"Your Zuo family may be the most steadfast family standing by the little emperor's side in this reform, but two-thirds of your internal strength will become obstacles in this reform. This obstacle is even invisible and intangible. It is reflected in every act of laziness, fatigue, complaint, every incense stick of lip service... This is the Zuo family's situation. For more great families, even if an old man expresses his support for Emperor Wu, his family, that part of our thinking that doesn't want to bother, will still turn into a quagmire, dragging down this reform in every way."

"This is the problem with every reform."

Distant voices could be heard. Ning Yi paused here, and a moment of silence passed between the two. Zuo Xiuquan said, "In that case, the root of reform lies in people's hearts. Then Li Pin's Neo-Confucianism and His Majesty's Jiangnan Military Academy are not wrong."

"Many problems lie not in concepts, but in degree." Ning Yi smiled. "I once heard a joke. Someone asked an old farmer, if the country is in trouble today, if you have two large houses, would you be willing to donate one to the court? The old farmer readily answered yes. Then, if you have one million taels of silver? Would you donate it? The old farmer answered, also willing. Then he asked, if you have two cows, would you be willing to donate one? The old farmer shook his head, unwilling. He asked why... 'Because I really have two cows.'"

Zuo Xiuquan was stunned, then burst into laughter.

"Today, the Wu Dynasty is in danger. You ask the people of the world, do they want reform? Everyone says, yes. If it requires you to wear one less piece of clothing, do you want reform? I don't know what everyone would say. If it requires everyone to eat one less meal? Still reform? Some say yes, some say no, but the truly complex thing is that many people will say they want reform while saying that your method of reform is wrong. There are true and false reasons in between... The core of the problem is how much can the little emperor make people sacrifice their own interests to support reform, how many interests can he make people sacrifice."

Ning Yi looked at the crowd passing through below, pausing. "Actually, you all know these things I'm saying."

"I just don't know what Mr. Ning would do if he were in that position."

"Haha... Look, you've finally revealed your true intentions."

"With Mr. Ning's cultivation, if you are unwilling to say, we probably won't be able to ask anything. It's just that when you and my uncle discussed Tao in the past, you said that what you liked most was the attitude of people struggling and shining in adversity. From last year to now, the actions of the Fuzhou court might be pleasing to Mr. Ning's eye."

Zuo Xiuquan's words were sincere. These words were neither provocation nor concealment, but rather appeared open and magnanimous. Ning Yi glanced at him, not angry.

"...Mr. Zuo, what can counter a mature ecosystem that has become a cycle is only another ecosystem."

Zuo Xiuquan frowned. "What is... a cyclical, mature ecosystem?"

"To put it simply, the idea that the emperor should rule the world together with the scholar-officials has taken root in the hearts of the Wu Dynasty today, supported by a whole set of matching theoretical systems. In a village, when adults give birth to children, even if the children don't study, they will constantly receive bits and pieces of these ideas in the process of growing up. When they grow up, when they hear the theory of 'ruling the world together with the scholar-officials,' they will also find it natural. The mature, cyclical ecosystem lies in its ability to operate on its own and constantly reproduce."

"The Confucian system used by the Wu Dynasty today is highly self-consistent. 'Ruling the world together with the scholar-officials' is of course only a part of it, but if you want to change it to honoring the king and repelling the barbarians, saying that the imperial power is too decentralized, or that it is better to centralize it, you must first cultivate people who sincerely believe in this statement, and then use them to cultivate more people, so that it circulates naturally like a stream of water."

"Today's Fuzhou, from the actions, it seems that the little emperor's initial idea was of course not wrong. He used Neo-Confucianism to annotate the honoring of the king and repelling the barbarians, preparing for centralization, and used the Jiangnan Military Academy to unify the control of the military, turning the military leaders into the emperor's disciples... On the one hand, because tens of thousands of elite soldiers are temporarily concentrated in his hands, no one can compete with him. On the other hand, because everyone was just massacred by the Jurchens, everyone painfully reflected and temporarily agreed that reform was needed, so they began the first step."

"But next, is Li Pin's theoretical height enough to annotate a cyclical, self-consistent system of honoring the king and repelling the barbarians? Is the loyalty thinking promoted by the Jiangnan Military Academy a rigid indoctrination, or does it truly possess unparalleled persuasiveness? What you need is mature theory, mature statements, to defeat the 'ruling the world together' idea that is, in fact, more mature. Only when these ideas have formed a solid cycle in the current small range will you have truly taken the first step. If the court issues an order today, everyone must love the country, no one will listen."

"The formation of a theory requires a lot of questioning, a lot of accumulation, a lot of conflict of thought. Of course, since you are asking me today, I do have something here that I can provide to Fuzhou."

Zuo Xiuquan narrowed his eyes, seeing Ning Yi's gaze looking over with a smile that was not a smile. The feeling in his heart gradually became strange. The two were silent for a moment, but he still sighed in his heart and couldn't help but say, "What?"

He saw Ning Yi spread out his hand. "For example, the first idea, what I can recommend to them is the 'Four Classes' - the people's livelihood and the people's rights can be somewhat transformed, such as combining them into one: Human Rights."

"Mr. Ning, you are..."

Zuo Xiuquan couldn't help but speak, and Ning Yi pressed his palm down with a sincere expression. "Listen to me."

Zuo Xiuquan didn't want to listen a little bit...

"...I once told people that from ancient times to the present, almost all the reforms in the imperial court have been about factionalism. A group of privileged classes has formed a group, and a political problem has become a lesion. What to do? We unite other ministers, persuade the emperor, to overthrow the problem that needs to be overthrown. But the problem in the middle is that once you can overthrow the previous interest group, the reformers you have gathered will inevitably become a new interest group."

"...Any interest system or group will automatically maintain its own interests, which cannot be changed by individual will. That's why we see a cycle of governance and chaos of a dynasty for hundreds of years, an interest system appears, another overthrows it, and then another overthrows the previous one. Sometimes it will temporarily alleviate the problem, but at the most critical problem, it must be constantly accumulating and constantly increasing. When it comes to two or three hundred years, some problems can no longer be reformed, and the dynasty begins to disintegrate, from governance to chaos, becoming inevitable..."

"...To defeat an interest system, you can only become a bigger interest system. To solve a problem, you yourself must become the problem... Is it possible to change this simplest game rule? It couldn't be done in the past, but it may not be today. We can see that in the past political games, the people were never taken into consideration. Even if someone said they were doing it for the people, the people couldn't tell who was good and who was bad. They couldn't participate in the struggle. Even if they participated, both sides would just say some grand principles, deceive them a little, and their choice would be meaningless..."

"...But today, we are trying to incorporate civil rights into consideration. If the people can be more rational, their choices can be clearer, and the share they occupy is not large, but it will definitely exist. For example, today, the interest group we want to fight against, their strength is ten, and your strength is only nine. In the past, you had to have at least eleven strengths to overthrow the opponent, and the interest group with eleven strengths would have to divide eleven shares of benefits..."

"...Today is different. Millions of people can listen to you. Of course, because of their degree of stupidity, they can only generate two points of power at the beginning, but if you promise them, you can temporarily borrow these two points of power and overthrow the opposite interest group. After overthrowing, you are the privileged class, you will divide nine points of interest, but you must at least fulfill part of the promise, and two points or at least one point of interest will return to the people. This is, the power of the people. This is a possible change in the rules of the game."

Ning Yi's fingers tapped a few times in the air, his eyes serious.

"...Today, Emperor Wu of Fuzhou wants to confront the scholar-officials of the entire Wu Dynasty, to confront their thinking and confront their theories. With just you, Mr. Zuo, and some rationalists, hot-blooded people, and the passion of some great Confucian scholars, you can't do anything. The power of resistance is like a quagmire, which will be fed back in all aspects. Then the only way is to bring the people in."

"...But stupid people are useless. If they are easily deceived, the scholar-officials on your opposite side can also easily instigate them. If you want them to join the political calculation and produce a controllable tendency, they must have a certain ability to distinguish, to distinguish where their interests lie... It couldn't be done in the past either. Today is different. Today we have the investigation of things, we have technological progress, we can start making more paper, we can open more training classes..."

"...These training classes don't need to be too in-depth, you don't need to cultivate them into great Confucian scholars like you. They only need to know a little bit of characters, they only need to understand a part of the truth, they only need to understand what human rights are, let them understand their rights, let them understand that everyone is equal, and Emperor Wu can tell them that I, the emperor of the Wu Dynasty, will lead you to realize all of this, then he can win a force that everyone had never thought of before."

"...The whole tendency, in fact, Li Pin had already been subconsciously doing it for the past two years. He runs newspapers, and he tries to write in vernacular in the newspapers. Why? He wants to win over more and more grassroots people, those who only know how to read or even like to listen to storytellers in restaurants and teahouses. He realized this, but what I want to tell you is a complete Enlightenment, stuffing the vast majority of people that the scholar-officials have not won over into literacy classes and night schools, telling them the essence of this world is that everyone is equal, and then make certain adjustments to the emperor's identity and explanation..."

"...Then, you will be able to co-opt the masses and counterattack the clans. At that time, anything like 'ruling the world together,' which seems to have accumulated for two hundred years, will become a small problem. This is the only possibility you have to win today..."

Zuo Xiuquan looked at Ning Yi. When he heard 'Four Classes,' he thought Ning Yi was just being glib, and listened with some defensiveness and some amusement. But at this time, he couldn't help but become serious, his brows almost twisted into a circle, and his expression was unconsciously a little terrifying.

On the opposite side, Ning Yi's expression was calm and serious, sincere and direct, talking eloquently... The sun shone down from the sky.