Yinreng came up with a brilliant "harm yourself to benefit others" kind of plan.

The First and Third Princes had been sent out of the palace to escape the curse. If he could just fall seriously ill once and "prove" he had absorbed the curse, then it would naturally justify bringing the First and Third Princes back.

It was a great idea, but extremely difficult to carry out.

Yinreng was just a child. In ancient times, with such poor medical conditions, even a common cold could kill. Just because he survived in history didn't mean that he would survive by deliberately falling ill now.

That wasn't even the most important part.

For some reason, Yinreng wasn't very sensitive when it came to his own life and safety. He didn't actively seek death, but he didn't seem to fear it either.

He hadn't realized this about himself yet.

After coming up with this self-sacrificing plan, what worried Yinreng most was whether the attendants serving him would be punished because of his illness.

Even when he did nothing, the people serving him had already been replaced several times. But if it was something he did that caused them to be replaced, his feelings would be completely different.

Not to mention, if things went sideways this time, those people might face mortal danger.

Yinreng kept racking his brains, thinking about what illness he should get and how severe it should be.

Time passed as he kept thinking, from spring snow flurries to spring blossoms in bloom.

When the First Prince was sent to the residence of Garu, Lady Ula-Nara knelt before Kangxi and wept.

Kangxi did not blame Lady Ula-Nara, and he even bestowed many gifts upon her.

But he immediately turned around and demoted Lady Ula-Nara's father and reprimanded Mingzhu in court.

By this time, the early signs of Mingzhu and Songgotu forming rival factions and attacking each other in court had begun to show. But because the Revolt of the Three Feudatories was still unresolved and the whole court was in chaos, Kangxi hadn't noticed it yet.

Those in high positions tend to overthink. The moment Mingzhu was reprimanded, he assumed his factional dealings had been exposed. His arrogance subsided somewhat, and his hand at buying and selling official posts paused for the time being.

Songgotu was no fool. Seeing Mingzhu reprimanded, he didn't gloat, but quietly restrained himself too.

Although he was from the Crown Prince's maternal clan, he currently had no chance to make contact with the Crown Prince, and his relationship with the Crown Prince wasn't yet stable. He didn't dare to throw his weight around under the prince's name.

Mingzhu had always been smooth and tactful on the surface, working his schemes only behind the scenes, and even he had been dealt with. If Mingzhu could be punished, what chance did someone as openly domineering as himself have?

Songgotu was arrogant, but not stupid.

Mingzhu and Songgotu both quieted down, even cooperating to dispel Kangxi's suspicions. Because the two of them no longer dragged each other down, the attack against the Three Feudatories grew far more aggressive. Only then did Kangxi finally realize what was going on.

Carefully reflecting on the details of court affairs, he finally discerned the early signs of these two forming factions.

Kangxi's mood at the moment was complicated.

Of course, he was angry. But more than that, he was thinking… that by such a strange twist of fate, the two old foxes had let their tails show?

Kangxi looked toward Yinreng.

The milk-scented round dumpling, Yinreng, had recovered from his low-grade fever and was bursting with energy. He dashed around the room with a wooden toy sword, making a ratta-tat-tat sound, completely oblivious to the fact that his father was in the room reviewing memorials and needed some peace and quiet.

Could this all be thanks to my son's good fortune? As expected of my son. Truly blessed with great fortune!

Dashing around the room, Yinreng noticed Kangxi staring at him in a daze, so he stopped and looked up. "Ga?"

Ga? Kangxi's smile cracked.

This brat, why is he starting to quack like a duck? Who taught him that? The people serving Baocheng really do need to be replaced again!

And so the people serving Yinreng were completely replaced once again.

Yinreng felt very helpless. This time, the people around him had stayed for three months, and just when he had finally started to recognize some of them, they were swapped out again.

At this rate, he was going to develop face blindness and recognize no one besides Father and the Grand Empress Dowager's people.

——————

Some time later, the Third Prince was also sent out of the palace.

Kangxi didn't want the Third Prince sent out so soon. But yet another of his sons had died.

Changsheng, the younger brother of Yinreng, whom he never met, died of illness one month after the Third Prince's birth.

Changsheng had been sickly since birth, so the imperial physicians had tactfully informed Kangxi that Changsheng likely wouldn't live long.

When Kangxi had named him "Changsheng" (Longevity), it was as if he had already sealed the boy's fate.

But Lady Ma-Jia refused to give up.

In ancient times, there were no contraceptives. If one didn't want a child, the only option was abortion.

Lady Ma-Jia was highly favored, but this status came with a heavy price. She became pregnant every year, often conceiving before her body had fully recovered from previous pregnancies. Even after enduring the loss of her children, she continued to have more.

Birth after birth, death after death. Lady Ma-Jia was on the verge of collapse.

Others didn't know what had happened in the courtyard of Zhongcui Palace, but Lady Ma-Jia had heard rumors.

She suspected that the Crown Prince must possess something supernatural. When she suffered her difficult labor, perhaps it had been the Crown Prince who paid some price to save both her life and her child's.

So, could the Crown Prince also save Changsheng's life?

Lady Ma-Jia became frantic.

She forgot the Crown Prince's status and didn't consider how Changsheng and the Crown Prince ranked respectively in Kangxi's heart. Driven only by a near-collapsing mother's love, she carried Changsheng to beg the Crown Prince to save him.

Looking at Lady Ma-Jia, just out of her postpartum confinement, haggard and aged beyond recognition, Kangxi felt no pity. Only fury.

The Crown Prince has already saved you and your son, and you're still not satisfied? You actually want to trade the Crown Prince's life for Changsheng's?!

Everything has a price, and Changsheng was already beyond saving. If the Crown Prince could save Changsheng, wouldn't it mean exchanging one life for another?

Just as Kangxi's anger surged, Yinreng's adult-level reasoning kicked in. He rushed forward, shielding Lady Ma-Jia, interrupting Kangxi's outburst.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not capable enough to save everyone." While shielding Lady Ma-Jia, Yinreng touched Changsheng's face. "I couldn't save Mother. I couldn't save my elder brother. And I can't save Changsheng either."

Perhaps because of his prolonged illness, Changsheng's mind had been affected. He looked dazed, unaware of what was happening.

But when Yinreng touched him, he instinctively liked the warmth of Yinreng's hand. Smiling, he nuzzled against it and made a few "ya-ya" sounds.

Not even two years old, Changsheng experienced developmental delays and couldn't speak yet.

Kangxi's anger was interrupted. Watching the interaction between Yinreng and Changsheng, his fury finally turned into sorrow.

And the sorrow turned into an even deeper anger.

———

After Yinreng recovered from his illness, he was "finally" able to recite some of what Shunzhi had told him in his dreams.

The so-called Jurchen curse, he said, was a curse the Qing had to bear because Dorgon* had interrupted the integration between the Qing and the dragon veins of the Chinese heartland. (T/N: Manchu Prince and early Qing regent (1612–1650))

Kangxi finally made up his mind. Even if it meant overturning every ancestral institution, he would sever this curse aimed directly at his descendants.

Yinreng's fabrication wasn't entirely baseless. When the Qing army first crossed into the Central Plains, they hadn't actually enforced the queue order, only stating: "shave the soldiers, not the scholars; shave the troops, not the civilians."

But after surrendering, Ming officials were mocked. They voluntarily shaved their heads and submitted petitions, leading to the infamous policy: "Keep your head and lose your hair, or keep your hair and lose your head."

Yinreng told Kangxi that Shunzhi had felt deeply stifled at the time.

Shunzhi had set down two policies: first, "do not forcibly enforce the queue order"; second, "do not kill the innocent, do not plunder wealth, do not burn homes." But they were completely useless.

If those two rules had been followed, the Qing could have quickly integrated into the dragon veins of the Chinese heartland after entering the pass. On this land, dynasties came and went. As long as the new regime gave them stable lives, the vast majority of people didn't care who the new emperor was.

But Dorgon and his two brothers had no respect even for Hong Taiji. Dodo even gave Hong Taiji a lame horse for his birthday. It would be a miracle if they listened to Shunzhi.

Moreover, Shunzhi had studied the Chinese classics from childhood, while Dorgon and his brothers, similar to Nurhaci, loved nothing more than killing scholars and had no taste for learning. They scoffed openly at Shunzhi's constant talk of benevolence and virtue.

They had no concept of long-term stability. To them, entering the pass simply meant having more places to throw their weight around and tyrannize.

Dorgon and his brothers died one after another, but the bad fruit had already been borne. Shunzhi may have lacked the resolve to change the established order, or may have died of smallpox before he could change it. Either way, the unresolved tensions between Manchus and Han, and the unsettled question of the Eight Banners, were passed down to Kangxi's generation.

Although Yinreng was just a salted-fish kitten, he also tried to do something small for this era.

So in Yinreng's "dream," Shunzhi became a tragic figure who had finally stabilized the realm and was about to unfold his great talents and grand strategy, only to be "cut down on the path before his career was half-built."* (T/N: 創業未半而中道崩殂 — famous line from Zhuge Liang's Memorial on Dispatching the Army, used for leaders who die before completing their work.)

Yinreng said Shunzhi hoped Kangxi would finish what he had started and fully integrate the dragon veins of the Chinese heartland. Otherwise, the Qing would last only a little over a century, like the Yuan dynasty before it.

A "peaceful and prosperous future" alone might not have been enough to make Kangxi resolve himself. But this curse, rooted in "unintegrated dragon veins," was enough to make the young and ambitious Kangxi make up his mind.

To put it plainly, the Manchu people had only been established under Hong Taiji. The Manchu identity was created to serve Aisin Gioro's conquest of the realm, and not the other way around. Aisin Gioro was not there to serve a "newly born" Manchu people.

The unified ethnic name "Manchu" had only been settled in the ninth year of the Tiancong era, a mere forty-two years ago. Forget the Aisin Gioro themselves; even other Manchus had no deep sense of identity with "Manchu" as an ethnicity. This was the perfect moment to transform "the Manchus" into "subjects of the Great Qing."

Aisin Gioro was the emperor, lord of all under heaven, master of the newly established dynasty "Great Qing" in the Chinese heartland.

Manchu, Han, Mongol, or any other people were all subjects of the Great Qing. Subjects of Aisin Gioro.

In Aisin Gioro's eyes, all of them ought to occupy equally low station. Not as it stood now, with the old Mongol clans angling for Manchu-Mongol marriages to produce princes of Mongol blood, and the old Jurchens daily seeking to defend their banner-lords' interests and divide the emperor's power.

Kangxi was well-read in history and greatly admired Ming Taizu.

Yinreng said that Shunzhi also admired Ming Taizu. Conveniently, Shunzhi actually paid respects at Ming Taizu's tomb.

Shunzhi said, "In this realm, even a beggar can be emperor. We Aisin Gioro came from barbarian-mercenary stock, so why couldn't we?"

Shunzhi also said that without claiming kinship to that illustrious Jurchen royal ancestor, Aisin Gioro was already the emperor of Great Qing. That was already an established fact!

Yinreng stuttered out these grand declarations, thinking he would be exposed.

But children don't lie, and Yinreng's words hit Kangxi right where it hurt. Kangxi wanted his Khan-Father to be a tragic hero of grand vision and unfortunate fate, not a "love-saint" who'd live or die for a woman. With three points aligned, Kangxi believed Yinreng's words without doubt.

Now, looking at the heartbroken state of a woman he had once doted on, and at the frail bodies of his two beloved children, Kangxi's last shred of hesitation about reforming the Manchus and the Eight Banners vanished.

"Go back. I will have the imperial physicians attend to him at all times," Kangxi said.

When Lady Ma-Jia heard the Crown Prince say, "I'm sorry," she came back to her senses.

But she didn't feel afraid. She just wept uncontrollably.

She knew Changsheng couldn't be saved. Truly could not be saved. She didn't blame Yinreng, but she did blame Kangxi a little.

Yinreng was just a child. Kangxi was her man, her emperor, the heaven and earth she had once thought she knew, and the most powerful man in the world.

And yet Kangxi couldn't protect her child. While Yinreng, such a young child, wanted to do everything in his power to protect his younger brothers, whom he didn't even know.

"Your Highness, this servant has lost her composure." Holding her child, Lady Ma-Jia kowtowed to Yinreng, wiped away her tears, and walked away unsteadily.

Kangxi didn't know that the woman who deeply loved him had been disappointed in him, and even if he had, he wouldn't have felt much. At most, he would have punished Lady Ma-Jia.

He simply lifted Yinreng onto his lap, and then…

Pulled down his pants and gave him a thorough spanking!

When this little wretch had said, "I couldn't save Mother, I couldn't save my elder brother," Kangxi had nearly broken down in tears.

Such a shameful thing, I can't let it go without giving my son a good beating!

Yinreng: "……AAAAHHHH!!"

Trash dad! I’ll remember this! I swear I will!

……

After Changsheng died young, the Third Prince was sent to be temporarily fostered at the residence of Inner Minister Choerji.

Unlike Lady Ula-Nara, Lady Ma-Jia didn't wail to heaven. She calmly prepared her child's belongings and bent down to kiss his forehead.

"My child, if you live, you must remember the Crown Prince's life-saving kindness," the haggard woman said.

Meanwhile, in Qianqing Palace.

Seeing that even the still-nursing Third Prince had been sent away, Yinreng made up his mind. Tugging on Kangxi's sleeve, he said:

"Father! Milk is tasty, but I've never seen a cow! What does a cow look like? I want to see a cow! See cow! I want to see a cow! I've grown this big and never seen a real live cow!"

Worn down by Yinreng's pestering, Kangxi ordered the well-traveled Gu Wenxing to take Yinreng to see a cow.

 

 

 

 

Author's note:

Yinreng: "Mafa said…"

Shunzhi: "I never said that!"

Kangxi: "No, you said it."

Many years later, the Collected Works of Shunzhi was published.

Shunzhi: ???

(The values expressed in this story do not represent the author's. Saying that Dorgon and his brothers were idiots doesn't mean Shunzhi was actually a saint. Everything here serves the plot's need to bamboozle Kangxi. Please don't take it as a historical fact.)