Volume One: River City Tune Chapter 61: The First Day in Office

Since paying a visit to Wei Liang on the third day of the Lunar New Year, Li Ling had entered a mode of intensive study. Every day was spent either reading books or composing essays, and he had not even stepped outside his doorstep, treating the writing of his god-conferring novel simply as a way to rest his brain.

Writing a prompted essay every single day tested one's writing abilities quite severely, and Wei Liang's standards for him were far from low. Coupled with nearly an hour and a half of meticulous explanations almost every day, Li Ling could genuinely feel that he had made substantial progress in the realm of imperial examination essays.

If his past writings had merely been on-topic and fluent, they now possessed a few sparkling highlights. Certain essays even managed to express the profound words of sages, articulating lofty principles from a commanding vantage point. These were heights that Li Ling could never have achieved through his former groping and fumbling; such accomplishments were only possible under the direct guidance of Wei Liang. After all, this style of essay writing, also known as stereotypted imperial prose, required far more than just a thorough familiarity with the classics. Diligence, talent, experience, and countless other factors were utterly indispensable, and as a palace examination third-place scholar, Wei Liang naturally stood at the very pinnacle in the latter three aspects.

However, the vast improvement in his essay writing was not what made Li Ling the happiest. He felt his greatest gain was actually the few notebooks and volumes that Wei Liang had lent him. The contents within those pages were true treasures—a key that gave him a much clearer understanding of the Dayue Dynasty.

Originally, Li Ling only knew that the Dayue Dynasty he currently inhabited had somehow emerged out of nowhere after the Song Dynasty. In this era, there had been no invasions of the Central Plains by foreign tribes like the Jurchens or the Mongols, which meant the Han Chinese commoners had not suffered brutal ravages, and the Han costume and civilization had not been nearly severed... As for further details, his knowledge was pitifully sparse.

Now, things were different. Reading the notes, he learned that between the Song and the Dayue, there had actually been a short-lived Chai Zhou Dynasty. Although Emperor Letong of Zhou abdicated the throne to the founding Emperor of Dayue, Sun Tu, after merely a few years, it remained an unignorable and crucial historical node.

Following that, many of the core policies established at the founding of the Dayue appeared rather progressive in retrospect. For instance, civil and military officials were mutually independent, devoid of the dynamic seen in the Song and Ming dynasties where civil bureaucrats suppressed military generals to the point of directly issuing tactical commands on the battlefield. This made the combat effectiveness of the Dayue army many times stronger than that of the Song. Moreover, the selection of military officers did not solely test archery, horsemanship, and martial prowess as it did later on; greater emphasis was placed on examinations of military strategy and command, relegating personal martial valor to a secondary position.

Furthermore, to ensure the imperial court maintained firm control over the frontier armies, an ancestral precept was established during the reign of the founding emperor: every crown prince, upon reaching adulthood, was required to spend a full three full years among the border troops. Only after experiencing true trials of the battlefield and winning the allegiance of the frontier generals could he return to the capital to administer state affairs. This ancestral precept was still strictly enforced by the royal family to this day; the current crown prince of the realm was still stationed among the northern border troops.

Yet, many policies had also been shelved or altered in the decades following the founding emperor's demise. For example, the early advocacy for imperial examination reform featured a system where the six ministries of the court each examined scholars through a distinct set of standards before selecting the best candidates. During the founding emperor's reign, the imperial examinations were split into five or six different subjects evaluated separately. Yet this examination and recruitment system, which Li Ling deemed extremely advanced, was rolled back in the later years of the Taizong era, ultimately giving rise to the contemporary imperial examination system. The only comforting aspect was that it had never devolved into the rigid Eight-Legged Essay, which prescribed strict rules even for paragraph styles and word counts. At present, the imperial examinations still focused primarily on prose, fu poetry, and policy discourse, while conventional poetry had fallen out of favor.

Gone, too, were the exceptional promotions of the founding emperor's era, when even individuals skilled merely in arithmetic could be directly appointed to the Ministry of Revenue. According to the notes, Wang Luo, the third Minister of Works, had even been an illiterate bricklayer...

All these historical records left Li Ling wide-eyed and deeply enlightened, while further convincing him that the founding martial emperor of the Dayue Dynasty, Sun Tu, must have been a time traveler—and an extremely rational one at that, possessing the mighty capability to change the world. It was only a pity that no matter how powerful a time traveler might be, they ultimately could not resist the rolling torrents of history. Although the Dayue Dynasty he founded still stood, the numerous laws, decrees, and reforms he instituted had long since become dead letters, and the era had ultimately drifted back onto its destined path...

Of course, these lofty matters of the imperial court were still far too distant for the current Li Ling. He merely viewed them as a fascinating spectacle, though they granted him a broader and more comprehensive perspective for understanding the classics and their commentaries—insights that naturally manifested in the essays he composed.

From this, Li Ling could perceive just how vast the gap was between the scions of noble families and the children of humble backgrounds. Such insights were completely inaccessible to someone like him previously, yet to a noble scion like Wei Liang, everything was readily available. That was why they maintained an absolute advantage across successive imperial examinations, whereas humble scholars required extraordinary talent or immense good fortune merely to reach the starting line of a noble offspring.

This realization made Li Ling even less willing to squander his current golden opportunity. Consequently, his reading and writing at home became all the more diligent; he did not even step out to admire the lanterns during the fifteenth Lantern Festival, merely allowing Gu Yuezi to take Yue'er out to play near Yanshang Street for a short while.

***

Then, time arrived at the seventeenth day of the first lunar month. With the three-day Lantern Festival concluded, the New Year celebrations officially drew to a close, marking the reopening of the government offices and the moment for Li Ling to report for duty at the county yamen.

Winter days were short, and today was overcast, so just as the hour of *mao* was ending, the sky was merely growing faintly bright. Yet the two Li siblings had long since risen. After finishing their meal, Li Ling prepared to step out for the yamen, only to be stopped at the door by Yue'er. "Brother, wait a moment..." she said as she walked up to him, gesturing for him to stand still. Standing on tiptoe, she smoothed down the slightly crooked back collar of his clerk's robe. "Much better now. You look truly imposing."

Li Ling looked down at his own dark-fabric robe and cap, utterly unable to associate them with the word "imposing." Setting aside this attire, even the green robes of the two assistant magistrates looked somewhat tacky in his eyes; only the county magistrate's cyan official uniform barely passed muster.

"Brother, and this—wear it, and it will bless you so that everything goes smoothly." As she spoke, Yue'er tied a red string threaded with two wooden beads around Li Ling's wrist.

Li Ling smiled, allowing her to do as she pleased, before asking with mild amusement, "Where did you get this thing?"

"Sister Gu and I specially prayed for it during the Lantern Festival. It's terribly efficacious," Yue'er said with a solemn expression, lifting her right wrist to display a matching red string of her own.

Very well, as long as the little sister was happy. Li Ling smiled without further comment, waving a hand at her. "I'm off then. Cook yourself a bowl of noodles for lunch, and I'll bring back something delicious tonight."

"Mm-hmm!" The young girl nodded vigorously with a radiant smile, seemingly lost in some pleasant thought.

"And don't forget to copy out that poem *Li Sao* three times; I'll be inspecting it when I get back tonight." Dropping these final words, Li Ling departed with a smile. Behind him, Yue'er's face instantly collapsed into a mask of despair. *Ah... I let my guard down and got ambushed by my brother...*

At the hour of *chen*, Li Ling had already arrived before the county yamen. Although he had visited this place quite a few times in recent days, his state of mind today was entirely different. Reaching the open gates, he paused noticeably, gazing deeply at the surroundings and the interior. If he had a smartphone in his hand right now, he might have taken a selfie with the county yamen as a background and posted it on his social feed to show off: *Look at me, a nineteen-year-old civil servant of this county, and an official above the section chief rank at that! Aren't you all envious? Wahahaha...*

With a somewhat eccentric mood, Li Ling stepped across the high threshold, officially entering the county yamen. The bailiffs on both sides bowed in salute upon seeing his attire: "A happy New Year, Chief Clerk Li."

"A happy New Year to you all as well. Is His Honor the Magistrate in the second hall?"

"Yes. The grand assembly of officials will begin shortly, so Chief Clerk Li should prepare himself."

"Understood." Li Ling nodded. Through the notes provided by Wei Liang, he at last knew what the assembly of officials was—it was essentially the morning court session for local supreme magistrates. However, unlike the emperor's morning court, this assembly generally took place only once a month. The spectacle was nonetheless quite grand, allowing the seal-holding official to fully indulge his authority, serving as a unique privilege for local officials.

Since there was still some time before the grand assembly, Li Ling decided to visit the revenue office first to meet his subordinates and foster some rapport, laying a good foundation for future cooperation. With this in mind, rather than heading to the magistrate's official residence upon entering the second hall, he turned directly toward the revenue office's signing room located at the second room on the right.

Though the county yamen occupied a considerable area, much of it was taken up by the main hall and the magistrate's inner residence, leaving the actual administrative workspace rather cramped. Thus, even though the revenue office held the most substantial real estate and practical authority among the six departments of the yamen, their signing room consisted of only a single chamber, albeit slightly more spacious than those of the other offices. Yet it also housed the most personnel: previously seven or eight people, reduced to five—including Li Ling as Chief Clerk—following the recent purge and restructuring.

As Li Ling stepped into the signing room, the four individuals conversing inside instantly fell silent, then stood up one after another to offer a salute. "Your subordinates pay respects to Chief Clerk Li, and wish you a prosperous year."

"No need for such formalities, gentlemen. A happy New Year to you all as well," Li Ling said with a smiling wave of his hand. "We've crossed paths before, but I don't know all your names yet. Since we have some time now, let's introduce ourselves. As for me, my name is Li Ling, and I am temporarily serving as the Chief Clerk here."

"This humble subordinate is Lin Qing!" said a round-faced man with a smile.

"This humble subordinate is Zhao Han!"

"This humble subordinate is Zhou Linyuan!"

"This humble subordinate is Fang Zhiyuan."

The men formally stated their names with respectful compliance, seemingly leaving no room for fault. Yet Li Ling clearly sensed an underlying alienation emanating from them. In particular, the one named Fang Zhiyuan, while cupping his fists in a salute, wore a lazy, dismissive expression, carrying a barely concealed hostility.

It seemed his appointment by the magistrate as the chief clerk of the revenue office was not going to be easily accepted by his subordinates.

Just as Li Ling was pondering this, the resonant chime of a bell rang out, and the men instantly stood up and headed for the exit. Only Lin Qing, wearing a festive smile, tossed out a parting remark: "Time for the assembly of officials; we mustn't be late." Realization dawning, Li Ling followed closely behind them toward the exterior.