Mingxin plopped himself down on the dragon throne with a gleeful grin.
It was as though a thunderclap had gone off inside every person in the hall.
The audacity of this man!
But seeing that everyone was barely holding their fury in check, he sat for only a moment before standing back up, remarking with a casual air, "This chair's a bit hard on the backside, isn't it? Not very comfortable at all."
Well, obviously. If it were comfortable, would the court have gone through three emperors in three years? This little emperor was already the fourth.
And Mingxin was already the fifth person to have sat on that throne over these three years!
"Never mind, it's too hard for me. I can't take it. Little one, come sit back down — someone bring me a chair."
Nobody moved.
Mingxin turned to look at the Chief Eunuch standing nearby. The man produced a smile more painful to look at than outright weeping, then personally went and fetched a chair.
Mingxin sat down without the slightest ceremony, crossed one leg over the other, and made himself entirely at home, as if he were lounging in his own quarters.
Yet the fury in the room was already ebbing. Outrageous as his present posture was, it was plainly better than him sitting on the dragon throne.
And that was the trick of it — every line existed to be crossed. Once you'd done something truly beyond the pale, something merely improper became almost acceptable by comparison.
One brief sit on the throne was enough. The barbarians in this hall hadn't been here very long; their backbones hadn't yet been thoroughly dissolved by comfort and luxury. You couldn't tease them the way you'd tease Han ministers. They'd bristle far too easily.
So one provocation was fine. A second would be unkind. A third would carry genuine risk.
"Gentlemen," Mingxin said, "I've come for no other reason than to discuss the matter of reparations."
"Reparations? What reparations? We owe you nothing!"
One of the regent princes could no longer hold his tongue. If he stayed silent any longer, there was no telling what further outrages might follow — like the man lifting the curtain behind which the Empress Dowager sat, for instance.
Sarilang was the most beautiful flower on the steppe, a pearl dropped from heaven itself, not to be profaned by any Han man's eyes.
Only I—
Mingxin looked positively scandalized. He shot to his feet, eyes wide, and erupted in righteous indignation. "You owe us nothing? Do you have any idea what it costs to build a great city? What it costs to maintain ten thousand wolf cavalry? Because of that blockhead Aguda — that absolute pig of a man — we've spent millions! Are we supposed to pay for that out of our own pockets?"
"If you won't give us silver, then you can pay with heads! One head per tael — how does that sound? We'll stop when we've collected five million!"
The figure of millions was, of course, entirely invented — but that was beside the point. Five million heads was equally invented; counting every barbarian yet to be born in the next hundred years still might not add up to five million. But this was negotiation. The whole point was to open with an astronomical asking price, then wait for the other side to haggle it down.
Exactly like sitting on the dragon throne — set the price high, then walk it back, and suddenly your terms felt reasonable.
An hour later, Mingxin departed, carrying with him a contract signed with the young emperor.
Within three years, the northern court would deliver to White Tiger City a population of one hundred thousand people — Han people, naturally. Sending a hundred thousand barbarians would be tantamount to surrender. And Mingxin wouldn't have wanted them anyway. What was he going to do with them, herd sheep? White Tiger City had no grasslands.
In addition: fifty thousand head of cattle and sheep per year, for ten consecutive years.
Let the barbarians have a taste of what it felt like to pay tribute.
---
Back in Dragon City, the newly built university had been completed.
Dragon City University — the world's first university — officially opened its doors.
Eight departments were established from the outset: language and literature, mathematics, physics, chemistry, electrical studies, mechanical engineering, agriculture, and military science.
Zhao Baihui possessed, in truth, only the secondary-school curriculum the system had granted him, but this did not prevent him from calling the place a university in the slightest.
University education was inevitably for the few. Most people still needed to farm, labor, build, and fight — to generate value for the whole community. So admission would be determined by examination.
Anyone who had completed primary school was eligible to sit for the exam.
The university opened a month-long preparatory course for all candidates. After that month of study, the examination would follow. The top one hundred scorers in each of the eight departments would be admitted — eight hundred students in all.
Preparatory classes were held simultaneously at three locations: Dragon City, Taoyuan Town, and Taoyuan Street in Qingjiang Prefecture. Anyone wishing to participate could come to one of these three places. The formal examinations would also be held at all three locations at the same time, with the top hundred in each discipline selected from across all test sites.
The terms were also announced.
Given the large numbers in the preparatory classes and the short duration of study, candidates would need to arrange their own room and board during that month.
Those who successfully passed into the university, however, would receive a first-tier wage supplement of three yuan per day.
Upon graduation, the government would furthermore hire them at a generous salary.
The moment this announcement appeared, it shot to the top of the trending list, finally displacing the item that had dominated public attention for so long: the story about the lord's mount.
All hundred-odd thousand souls within Dragon City's sphere of influence stirred with excitement.
Registration numbers surpassed twenty thousand.
*More new knowledge from the lord — wonderful!*
*A stipend while we study — even better!*
*Higher wages after we graduate — why wouldn't we try? My marks have never been brilliant, but what if the lord — no, what if heaven itself is feeling blind that day?*
*Absolutely wonderful!*
And then the tens of thousands of people took their seats in the classrooms, and every single one of them was struck dumb.
Because there were no teachers.
In each temporary classroom, fifty students sat waiting. A young man walked in carrying a thick sheaf of materials, distributed one copy to each student, and said: "Classmates, please form groups of five and work through these materials together. The examination is in one month. Best of luck to everyone." Then he left.
The room erupted.
No teachers. The students were expected to study the content on their own.
This was precisely why, though the township-grade system had been available for quite some time, Zhao Baihui had only now opened the university. There was simply no one to do the teaching. It was also why the stipend existed — some acknowledgment that this was genuinely asking a great deal of everyone.
The month of preparatory study passed quickly.
The frantic examinations came and went, and the countless students who had been tearing their hair out felt the relief of release. People returned to their jobs and their work and waited for the results.
Before long, letters of admission were distributed, sent out to each candidate's registered address. The government notice boards also published the names of successful candidates, along with their identification numbers and scores.
Those who had not been admitted could collect their own examination papers from their testing site, see their scores, and judge for themselves how far they had fallen short.
The examination was scored out of one hundred. Looking down the published list, even most of those who had been admitted had scored below the passing mark of sixty.
Again — no teachers. It really had been asking a great deal.
Scores above sixty were rare. Those above eighty were extraordinary.
People eagerly tried to find out who these high scorers were.
*That brilliant — they'll go far.*
It was rather like the old imperial examinations. Now that they'd gotten into university, they could expect, at minimum, some kind of leadership position within the government after graduation.
And those with truly remarkable scores — like the old holders of the juren degree, their futures were beyond reckoning.
The government notice also stated that those who had not been admitted should not lose heart. The examination would be held once every year, and a new cohort would be recruited each time. Candidates who had come close to the admission line were welcome to try again next year.
Those who had fallen considerably short, however, were advised to consider giving up. There was little point in grinding through years of attempts, scraping in by sheer stubbornness, only to struggle through the coursework and never graduate. No one wanted to spend their whole life drawing a first-tier stipend.
There were other promising lines of work to be found — and those were worth pursuing too.
With the letters of admission delivered and the opening date set, the admitted students all arrived within a few days to begin.
And sure enough, it was exactly as they had expected.
Still self-study.
But by now the month of preparation had given them the right frame of mind. With study materials to reference — a direction in which to advance — there was at least the certainty that continued effort would eventually yield results. That was far better than having to invent knowledge from nothing.
They comforted themselves with the thought that the juniors who came after them would have it easier, for by then there would be teachers.
Their teachers, at that very moment, were grinding through the university curriculum on their own, just as miserably as everyone else.