ATPnovel Chapter 51 Pretending to Have Big Waves
Chapter 51 Pretending to Have Big Waves
What kind of person do I want to become?
"You must be well aware that you have offended the Yuwen clan of Wuchuan and the Yang clan of Hongnong today, and your career in the capital will likely be difficult from now on."
"minister……"
While Li Mi was still in a daze, Yang Yan continued to apply pressure.
"Do you want to stay in this bustling city of Daxing, wearing this gleaming silver armor, like a beautiful but rootless 'mirror flower' placed on a desk? To have your strategies and talents slowly eroded in this endless factional strife, theatrics, and infighting?"
Li Mi looked down at the exquisitely crafted Qianniu armor he was wearing.
That was the glory of the emperor's close ministers, but now it seems to exude an indescribable irony and coldness.
Like a mirage, fragile and easily shattered.
"Or perhaps..." Yang Yan suddenly stopped, turned his head, his gaze intense, "you want to go to the real battlefield, to temper yourself in the mud and blood, even if it means becoming a flawed 'blunt blade'?"
Li Mi's heart skipped a beat.
A blunt knife?
The image of the old soldier clumsily sharpening his knife on the drill ground reappeared before his eyes.
Yang Yan did not urge him to give an answer, but continued talking on his own.
"When the First Emperor dispatched 500,000 soldiers and warships to conquer the Baiyue in the south, his momentum was overwhelming. However, if it weren't for Shi Lu later digging the Tongling Canal, connecting the Xiang and Li rivers, and facilitating the transport of grain, the army would have been unable to keep up, and the three commanderies (Guilin, Nanhai, and Xiang) would not have been established. The events of the past serve as a lesson for the future."
He paused briefly, holding the jade tablet, his voice turning solemn as he got down to business.
"Now, our dynasty has made little progress in managing Lingnan, pacifying the Li chieftain Lady Xian, and digging the Guangtong Canal. The area is also plagued by miasma and the roads are rugged."
"Use the troops of the Central Plains to expand the southern frontier."
At this point, Yang Yan stopped, turned around, and faced away from the setting sun.
"Li Xuansui, don't you think that's what a true man should do?"
He looked directly into Li Mi's eyes, his voice carrying an irresistible, stirring quality: "To expand territory, to seal the wolf's lair, to have one's name etched not in the court's register of merit, but on the very borders of the empire, to be written in history books for eternity! How magnificent! How aspirational!"
Li Mi felt a surge of heat rush to his head.
Which man doesn't yearn for such achievements? Compared to that, the intrigues and power struggles in the capital seem like child's play!
But he didn't understand why His Highness Prince Changning would suddenly bring up this history, or why he would say these words to him.
"Your Highness, please speak plainly." Li Mi cupped his hands, his voice unconsciously carrying a hint of urgency.
Then, Yang Yan fixed his gaze on Li Mi and said, word by word, "It won't be long before I leave Lingnan to govern."
Yang Yan looked at him, slowly exhaled a breath of white air, and said, word by word:
"It won't be long before I leave the capital and go to Lingnan."
This sentence struck like a bolt from the blue.
"Lingnan?!"
Li Mi suddenly raised his head, his pupils contracted sharply, and his eyes were filled with disbelief.
What kind of place is Lingnan?
That was a place of exile! A deadly land teeming with miasma, poisonous insects, and where rebellions by local gentry were commonplace! Officials in the court turned pale at the mere mention of it; if any minister were demoted to Lingnan, it was no different from a death sentence.
Why would the Prince of Changning, a man of noble birth who had just distinguished himself on the training ground, go to such a perilous place?
This is clearly an exile!
"Your Highness, this...this is absolutely impossible! There..."
Li Mi was about to dissuade him, but Yang Yan raised his hand to interrupt him.
Yang Yan's face showed no sign of the frustration of being demoted; instead, it radiated a fervor and confidence that Li Mi had never seen before.
"Have you forgotten what I just said? Lingnan, miasma? Barbarians? A dead land?"
Yang Yan chuckled lightly, his laughter carrying an air of arrogance that seemed to look down upon the times.
"The world regards Lingnan as a perilous place, but I regard it as a place where hidden dragons lurk in the abyss."
He took a step forward, approaching Li Mi, and said loudly, "I am not going to Lingnan to avoid disaster, much less to wait for death."
"I will build highways there, so that carriages and horses can travel to the ends of the earth; establish village schools, so that the sounds of Confucius and Mencius can drown out witchcraft; establish laws and regulations, so that every inch of land there knows the laws and decrees of the Great Sui Dynasty; and quell the rebellion of the Li people, not through killing, but through integration!"
Yang Yan stretched out his hand and grabbed at the air, as if he were holding the entire Lingnan region in his palm.
"I want to teach those primitive tribes etiquette, literacy, and farming. I want them to understand that they are no longer conquered barbarians, but proud subjects of the Great Sui Dynasty!"
"I want to accomplish a great feat that even the First Emperor could not truly achieve—to thoroughly and completely integrate Lingnan, from flesh to bone, into Chinese civilization, forever inseparable!"
Li Mi stared blankly at him.
At this moment, the boy before him was no longer the prince who needed him to explain military system.
This is clearly a monarch who harbors ambitions to conquer the world and possesses the ability to change the world!
Even the sages of today probably do not have such grand vision to assimilate foreign races from the root!
Li Mi felt his long-dormant heart pounding wildly inside his chest, an instinctive yearning for some great cause.
Stay in the capital and become a "mirror-like blade" rusted by power struggles?
Or should we follow the person before us, venture into the wilderness, and create an unprecedented enterprise, becoming a true "blunt sword" that will be remembered in history?
The answer is self-evident.
The confusion in his eyes dissipated, replaced by an almost pilgrimage-like fervor.
"Your Highness..."
Li Mi's throat bobbed, his voice hoarse, as he was about to kneel on one knee to express his feelings.
"No rush."
Yang Yan suddenly reached out and grabbed his arm, stopping him from kneeling.
He patted Li Mi's cold iron armor, a meaningful smile curving his lips, as if the domineering aura he had just displayed was merely an illusion, and he had reverted to being the gentle and refined young prince.
"This is, after all, a path with a slim chance of survival. Go back and think it over carefully. It was meant to be a fallback plan, but I just had faith in it..."
……
When Yang Yan returned to the Eastern Palace, it was already dusk.
The atmosphere in the East Palace was terrifyingly oppressive. The palace servants who came and went all walked with their heads down, not daring to even breathe loudly.
"Your Highness, His Highness the Crown Prince has been waiting in the study for an hour."
The personal eunuch came forward, his voice extremely low and his expression fearful: "Your Highness has smashed two teacups. You...you'd better be careful when you go in and speak."
Yang Yan nodded, his expression unchanged, and pushed open the heavy nanmu door of the study.
The study was brightly lit by candlelight, but it couldn't illuminate the gloom on the face of the middle-aged man pacing back and forth in the room.
Crown Prince Yang Yong, the nominal second-in-command of the Sui Dynasty, was like a caged beast, anxious and fearful, yet helpless.
Hearing the door open, Yang Yong turned around abruptly.
"Get out of here! No one is to approach the study without my order!"
He roared at the palace maid who tried to follow him in to serve tea.
After the door closed again, Yang Yan bowed and said, "Your subject greets you..."
"Alright, alright! It's just the two of us here, father and son, let's skip the formalities!"
Yang Yong rushed forward in three strides, grabbed a beautifully bound register from the table as if it were a hot coal, and shoved it directly into Yang Yan's arms.
"Yan'er, look at this! It's a roster sent by the Empress Dowager!"
His voice trembled, filled with suppressed worry and even a hint of fear of the unknown.
Yang Yan took the roster; it was warm to the touch, covered with fine Shu brocade, and exuded a faint fragrance.
He turned to the first page, glanced at it, and raised an eyebrow slightly.
Above, names were listed in a very familiar, yet somewhat sharp, small regular script.
Each name is accompanied by detailed information about its family background, age, character, talents, and even its birth date and time.