Chapter 338: Court Struggle

The various rooms in the inner study courtyard had different levels of access. Therefore, the further he went in, the fewer people were around Leng Ningyun. By the time he stepped into the warm chamber of the inner study, only Wu Kaidi was left by his side.

On the table were the court gazettes and various documents that the secretaries had sorted and translated. These were collected and sorted by special personnel every day. Now that he was busy with Sun Yuanhua’s work, the intelligence gathering work in this area had become even more intense.

Wu Kaidi was Leng Ningyun’s indispensable assistant and often had to handle some more sensitive matters for him. So some simple intelligence gathering work was now handled by the local servants.

In the winter in the capital, a large number of refugees from North Zhili, Shandong, Henan, and other places had flocked in. These refugees slept on the streets and barely survived on the gruel provided by the Shuntian Prefecture. Many people froze to death or starved every day. Leng Ningyun had taken in dozens of orphans from them. After screening, he kept seven or eight clever and reliable ones to be responsible for going out to buy the court gazette and listening to news in the teahouses every day. The other children whom he deemed “unsuitable” were sent back to Lingao.

These children could more or less recognize a few characters. They would go out with a few pancakes every morning and return around three in the afternoon. After returning, they would tell the secretaries what they had seen and heard, and the secretaries would compile it into a draft. Every week, the Beijing intelligence station would send a “Beijing Weekly News Summary” to Lingao through the Qiwei Escort Agency. After this intelligence was sent to Lingao, besides being used by the intelligence analysis department, it was also an important reference material for the historical materials group of the Great Library.

After changing his clothes with the help of his personal secretary and drinking a few sips of tea, Leng Ningyun flipped through today’s information compilation. What he was most concerned about, of course, was the material related to the situation in Dengzhou.

From the material in the court gazette, the debate over pacification and suppression had gradually begun to fade, and both the court and the public were beginning to lean towards suppression. This was not only due to the lobbying of the Shandong officials, but also because the attitude of the original proponents of pacification, such as Xiong Mingyu, Xu Guangqi, and Zhou Yanru, had changed.

Obviously, Sun Yuanhua’s letter had already reached the capital, so these proponents of pacification were beginning to change their tune. However, in order to avoid a change that was too fast and too abrupt, these former proponents of pacification proposed “slow suppression.” And Sun Yuanhua’s memorial had also reached the capital a few days ago. Leng Ningyun had already seen the full text. Besides his escape and the current military and political arrangements, Leng Ningyun noticed that he had painfully reviewed his previous policy of pacification and proposed to “focus on suppression, supplemented by pacification.” This was very consistent with the current change in attitude of Zhou Yanru, Xiong Mingyu, and others—obviously, the two sides had already fully communicated in private.

This had calmed the originally fierce debate over suppression and pacification in the court. The various parties were only arguing over “urgent suppression” or “slow suppression,” and the focus of the conflict in the court had returned to the issue of how to deal with Sun Yuanhua and the others.

Yu Dacheng had already completely fallen from grace. His fall was not only due to his ineffective handling of the Dengzhou rebellion, but also some old problems from the past, especially his inaction in suppressing the White Lotus rebellion, where he blindly advocated for pacification, not only requesting the court to grant official positions to the rebellion leaders, but there were even rumors that he had become sworn brothers with its leader. So it was not surprising that he was overthrown by a concentrated attack this time.

Because Sun Yuanhua had the protection of Zhou Yanru and others, and had escaped in time, he was not subjected to the same accusations of “rebellion” as in the original time and space, but the public opinion in the court was still very unfavorable to him.

When Leng Ningyun was studying at the “farm,” he had heard lectures and knew that the people attacking Sun Yuanhua were actually not interested in the wine, but rather in the wine pot. It was not so much about holding Sun Yuanhua responsible, but rather using this opportunity to attack Zhou Yanru.

Whenever a major event occurred, the various factions in the court would use it to attack their opponents and engage in partisan struggle, using it to launch a major purge to exclude and attack their political rivals. After the Yuan Chonghuan case occurred, the former members of the eunuch faction who had been suppressed after the Donglin Party came to power used this event to have the grand secretary Qian Longxi, one of the main leaders of the Donglin Party, sentenced to death. Although his life was eventually saved through the strenuous efforts of the Donglin Party members such as Wen Zhenmeng and Huang Daozhou, he was still exiled to Dinghaiwei until the fall of the Ming Dynasty, and was only pardoned by the Southern Ming regime.

Although Zhou Yanru was not a member of the eunuch faction, he also used this event to operate privately, driving away the chief grand secretary Cheng Jimei and becoming the chief grand secretary himself.

The Dengzhou rebellion, this major event, naturally became a great opportunity for various political forces in the court to stir up trouble. Attacking Sun Yuanhua was attacking Zhou Yanru.

Zhou Yanru had many enemies, but his biggest enemy was his fellow grand secretary, Wen Tiren. Although Wen Tiren had been brought into the cabinet by Zhou Yanru, after driving away the chief grand secretary, the two had gone from being partners in crime to fighting each other.

From the spring of the fourth year of Chongzhen, Zhou Yanru and Wen Tiren began to fight openly and secretly. At the instigation and incitement of Wen Tiren, the censors constantly submitted memorials to impeach him. After Zhou Yanru gained great power, he acted unscrupulously. Even his domestic slaves became generals. There were many people in the court and among the public who were dissatisfied with him. By the eleventh month of this year, the impeachment of Zhou Yanru had reached a climax. Attacking the Deng-Lai governor Sun Yuanhua, whom he had promoted, was also an important means to attack Zhou Yanru.

The Deng-Lai mutiny had given the anti-Zhou faction enough ammunition, so the attacks on Sun Yuanhua became more and more fierce. Judging from the content of the impeachments, they ranged from his squandering of military funds to corruption, to smuggling goods to Liaodong, and so on. There was a tendency to brand Sun Yuanhua as a “traitor to the state.”

This matter was not so much about protecting Sun Yuanhua as it was about protecting Zhou Yanru, Leng Ningyun thought. Sun Yuanhua was not the key; the key was Zhou Yanru.

From the perspective of the Senate itself, it did not matter whether Zhou Yanru or Wen Tiren was in power. But for him, who was carrying out the mission on the front line, to protect Sun’s position, he had to start from the political struggle between Zhou and Wen.

The historical research group of the Great Library had also made a similar speculation. Although Leng Ningyun did not know what the Foreign Intelligence Bureau planned to do next, judging from the various signs at present, the Foreign Intelligence Bureau had obviously already begun to take action.

The biggest manifestation was that since the middle of the fourth year of Chongzhen, a large number of posters attacking Wen Tiren and his accomplice Xue Guoguan had appeared. Although a large number of the texts accusing them of being “remnants of the eunuch faction” seemed to be the work of the Donglin Party, Leng Ningyun was well aware that these posters were most likely the work of the “Office of Truth.”

The large-scale defamation of Wen Tiren’s reputation—of course, his reputation was not very good to begin with—was undoubtedly to prepare enough ammunition for the Donglin Party. The Donglin Party would not let go of this opportunity to deal with Wen Tiren.

This involved operations in a larger situation. Leng Ningyun thought, would it be a simpler choice to directly assassinate Wen Tiren? With the current operational capabilities of the Foreign Intelligence Bureau and the special reconnaissance team, it was no longer a difficult task to eliminate a figure like Wen Tiren without leaving a trace—it was just a question of whether it was necessary. This all needed to be weighed.

“Forget it, let Jiang Shan and Li Yan worry about this,” Leng Ningyun decided not to think about it anymore. He would still follow the instructions of the Foreign Intelligence Bureau and first do a good job of winning over the powerful eunuchs—a few words from a eunuch at a critical moment were more powerful than a long speech from a minister outside. As for the work on the deeper political struggle, let others do it.

Leng Ningyun’s report was transmitted to the main telecommunications station in Lingao via radio. The receiving naturalized citizen radio operator found that it was a coded telegram. According to the call sign at the beginning of the telegram, she knew that it was a “Department 13” telegram. According to the regulations, she immediately numbered and registered the telegram, and then put it into the confidential folder of Department 13.

That night, the mid-shift correspondent took the folder from the main telecommunications station. The telegram was then handed over to the confidential section to be deciphered. The female confidential clerk knew from the number at the head of the telegram that this was an important piece of intelligence from an overseas station. The telegram was put into a red folder with a lock and immediately sent to the desk of Li Yan, the director of the First Department, also known as the Domestic Department or the Ming Department.

After reading the report, Li Yan immediately went to find Jiang Shan. Afterward, Jiang Shan held a working meeting in the meeting room of the Foreign Intelligence Bureau with Li Yan, Wang Ding, and the invited chief researcher of the historical research office of the Great Library, Yu E’shui, and the director of the Office of Truth, Zhang Haogu.

The meeting concluded that Leng Ningyun’s analysis was generally accurate. Although the latest “Beijing Weekly News Summary” had not yet arrived, judging from the various intelligence obtained before, to save Sun Yuanhua’s political life, it was still necessary to start from the overall situation and clean up the forces opposing Zhou Yanru.

Assassinating Wen Tiren was not technically difficult, but after discussion, everyone believed that assassinating Wen Tiren was not very meaningful. Wen Tiren’s death would only lead to Zhou Yanru’s sole dominance, and the Donglin Party would definitely turn the spearhead of the struggle against Zhou Yanru. Zhou Yanru was not an ally of the Donglin Party either. In the struggle to overthrow Qian Longxi and drive away Qian Qianyi, Wen Tiren and Zhou Yanru could be said to have been partners in crime. The Donglin Party might not miss this opportunity to overthrow Zhou Yanru by attacking Sun Yuanhua.

Only by keeping Wen Tiren alive could the Donglin Party possibly choose to cooperate with Zhou Yanru. Although Zhou Yanru had dealt with the Donglin Party, there was still some connection between them. In the metropolitan examination of the fourth year of Chongzhen, it was under Zhou Yanru’s tenure as the chief examiner and his secret operation that a large number of Fu She scholars, including the leader Zhang Pu, passed the examination. It was hard to say whether there was any secret deal between the two.

“The Fu She and the Donglin are actually the same thing,” Yu E’shui said. “Zhang Pu’s power has actually surpassed that of the old Donglin bigwigs. At that time, Zhou Yanru, disregarding the old rules, squeezed out Wen Tiren to be the chief examiner. Besides taking care of his good friend’s son to become the top scorer, he also intended to recruit famous scholars as his followers to expand his power in the court. From this point of view, although the Fu She and Zhou Yanru were not on the same side, there was a basis for cooperation between the two. After all, Zhou Yanru’s second reinstatement to the cabinet was also greatly related to the secret operation and support of the Fu She. They were not as irreconcilable as they were with Wen Tiren.”