Chapter 1006: The Union of Strategy and Tactics

The knowledge Chen Xi had acquired taught him that matters involving personal issues could be handled freely. However, when someone uses a personal issue to target the forces behind you, it's either because they are so strong that they can disregard your power or because they are not thinking straight.

In the first case, whatever you say doesn't matter. In the second case, again, it doesn’t matter what you say. Both cases essentially boil down to someone looking for trouble, so targeting an individual by attacking their backing is just a pretext.

However, when you’re handling something beyond personal matters, the considerations multiply. The higher your position, the less you can act recklessly, and you may need to foresee decades into the future.

Eliminating the aristocratic families was one of those matters that could have ramifications for decades, if not centuries, and Chen Xi was absolutely certain of this.

Chen Xi believed that, with a generation’s effort, he could create an administrative system from the current aristocratic-official structure—a system that would be entirely independent of the aristocrats, with officials loyal solely to him or Liu Bei.

Such a feat wasn’t impossible, but what would happen afterward? If you can’t remain in that position forever, the people below and above you will inevitably change over time!

As time passes, the advantages of an imperial examination system become almost self-evident. Even if Chen Xi doesn’t mention it, future generations would create something similar. In such a case, it’s only a matter of time before a bureaucracy dominated by civil officials takes over, and corruption inevitably follows.

This is the most unsolvable dilemma. If you destroy the aristocratic families, civil officials will rise in their place, leading to chaos. If you don’t destroy the aristocrats, they will grow too powerful and block the flow of history.

History seems to prove that neither aristocratic families, civil service exams, bureaucratic groups, nor Confucianism are ideal. It seems as if they all deserve destruction!

The irony, however, is that these institutions were the finest products of their time. They played a crucial role in stabilizing and governing the country, and without their undeniable benefits, they wouldn’t have grown to such dominance.

This reflects the principle that "the way changes with time." Everything has its expiration date, and only by examining everything dialectically can we see the truth.

Chen Xi's thought process evolved over time, and in the end, he chose policies that were as fitting as possible. He couldn’t even guarantee that his current approach to the aristocratic families was correct.

But in Chen Xi's view, sometimes not seeing the future is better than seeing certain destruction. Returning to the old path guarantees death, so why not take a path no one has ever walked before?

How bad could it get? The aristocratic families had already become corrupt and beyond redemption. Yet compared to some of the traitorous civil officials and shameless, stubborn scholars, they were relatively better.

Since everything was already rotten beyond repair, and since Chen Xi couldn’t find a historical solution to avoid the problems that arose from either aristocratic dominance or civil bureaucracy, he decided to take a gamble. After all, if all paths lead to ruin, why not try a new one?

As Chen Xi had said before, facing an uncertain future was far better than facing guaranteed destruction. Who knows, the unseen path might not lead to doom. Even if it did, it would merely bring history full circle.

This was the fundamental reason why Chen Xi was lenient toward the aristocratic families. If no other method was feasible, then it was time to devise a realistic approach.

Chen Xi's ultimate goal had always been peaceful development, allowing the people of Zhongyuan to live good lives. In pursuit of this goal, he could tolerate war and some dark tactics, but those were merely means to an end, not the end itself.

In this exchange, Chen Xi was playing his hand well. He was offering the aristocratic families generous compensations—land, official positions, ancestral lands, and more.

Chen Xi knew that no aristocratic family would refuse this exchange. He had made it clear many times that he didn’t harbor deep malice toward the aristocrats. They simply stood in his way, and his true goal was the stability of Zhongyuan and the well-being of its people.

His clear goodwill, transparent policies, and upright approach had led the aristocrats to overlook the fact that this young man, who often spoke of "the grand momentum being with me," was not just skilled in righteous governance. He was also quite adept at intrigue and cunning, though he rarely had to use them.

Though the path of righteousness was his primary approach, it didn’t mean it was always the best. Sometimes, other methods worked better. This time, Chen Xi’s intentions were clear and reasonable, and even when he had demands, he balanced them with care.

However, from the very start, Chen Xi's core objective wasn’t the lofty ideals he had spoken of. His real goal was to have the aristocrats develop the five million qing of fertile land in the northeastern plains. And even that wasn’t his ultimate objective.

The true goal was to separate the aristocrats’ private slaves, private soldiers, and supporters from the families themselves. That was the crucial part.

Chen Xi estimated that the aristocrats present controlled at least three million private slaves between them. These individuals had no official household registration and were ideal candidates for relocation to the northeastern plains.

In addition to their supporters, the aristocrats might not even need to relocate their local populace, thus avoiding the public resentment Chen Xi had subtly hinted at.

Of course, Chen Xi knew that public resentment was just a facade. His real aim was to gather the aristocrats’ private slaves and soldiers in the northeast, where they would no longer be under the aristocrats’ control.

Once they were gathered there, it would be much easier for Chen Xi to manage them. Especially once these private slaves and soldiers were separated from their aristocratic masters, it wouldn’t be too difficult to convert them into regular citizens.

By the time that conversion happened, any attempt by the aristocrats to cause trouble would be futile. At that point, even the most astute aristocrats would realize that without their private slaves and soldiers, they would be no different from tigers without claws.

In reality, without weakening the aristocratic families to this degree, Chen Xi had no confidence in successfully reforming them. The only way to truly change them was through gradual inducement, luring them into swallowing the bait step by step, before delivering a final, decisive blow that would strip them of their resistance.

Chen Xi figured that when the aristocratic families finally lost all power to resist and, instead of delivering a fatal blow, he offered them a way out, they would likely express their profound gratitude. All the past grievances would vanish—a classic case of Stockholm Syndrome.

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