Volume Two: The Great and the Petty Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Counterstroke, the Savage Slaughter, the Final Blow (Part Two)

“Young Master Huang, what exactly do you mean by that? And what grave offense have they committed?”

The moment Huang Ming finished speaking, Zhang Han at his side spoke up in time, smoothly picking up the thread.

With this verbal sparring, the two men, who had still been somewhat flustered moments before, finally steadied themselves and reacted at once.

Huang Ming cast them a glance and said with equal ease, “Even if you are not court officials, you all come from distinguished scholarly families. Have any of you ever heard of court officials impeaching an ordinary commoner?

“To put it mildly, that is a failure to distinguish rank from rank. To put it harshly, it is a disregard for the dignity of the court.

“If word of this gets out, I fear it will not only make them a laughingstock, but also turn the court itself into a joke in the eyes of all under heaven, and of generations yet to come.”

That was what one might call instant retribution. Just a moment ago, they had tried to use this very sort of matter against Huang Ming, and now he had turned it back on them with one clean stroke.

As the saying goes, some things may be done, but not spoken of. Once one truly examined them, the problem became enormous.

At first, these officials had banded together to impeach Huang Ming merely to create the right atmosphere and manufacture a legitimate pretext for dealing with him.

But now that he had exposed the problem in their argument, the matter had become serious.

And Huang Ming was not finished. With a cold laugh, he went on, “What is more, every charge you have pinned on me is a trumped-up one. It is a false accusation!”

“What false accusation? Is your cooperation with those pleasure houses fake? Did you not just admit it?” Lin Jinyan, now on the back foot, could only make a futile struggle.

Huang Ming was quite blunt and admitted immediately, “My cooperation with them is real, of course. I have never lied to excuse myself.”

“Then what more is there to say? Your conduct itself is harmful to others. Even if there are other ways to word it, you cannot deny that fact!”

“I do not need to deny it, but I do need to make one thing clear: when I cooperated with the Twelve Towers, I never once intended to harm anyone. Do you really think that working with them and making the business bigger counts as harming people?

“Then every merchant in the world would be guilty!”

“That is sophistry. Surely you know what kind of place a pleasure house is? By making them do such things, you are harming those poor women who have fallen into the dust. That is what it means to hurt people!”

“So Lord Lin is talking about that, then. I did not realize you were such a tenderhearted man.”

“You need not waste breath on such nonsense. I ask you only this: yes or no?”

“No!”

Huang Ming’s answer was ironclad. “Perhaps, Lord Lin, you have never set foot in a pleasure house, so you have no idea how such places operate. Then allow me to enlighten you.

“What you call exploiting pitiful women for more money may indeed be harmful, but that kind of method is low-grade from the outset.

“What I have done with the new courtesan ranking created by the Twelve Towers is entirely different. We rely only on the talent and skill of these courtesan girls themselves, not on making them sell their bodies, and certainly not on forcing them into such filthy acts.

“In fact, I can say without hesitation that this new ranking we have established has not harmed these poor women at all. On the contrary, it helps them.

“Any woman who makes it onto our courtesan ranking has already changed from an ordinary woman of the dust into a celebrated star. From that point on, she need never again do such things with men merely to support herself. She can even use the opportunity to save enough money to redeem herself from the pleasure house and truly leave that life behind.

“My lords, have you not always loved to talk about persuading women of the dust to return to a proper life? What I have done is nothing more than truly accomplishing what you wished to do but could not.

“And what about you? Instead of taking pride in me, you have been swayed and solicited by certain people into treating me like the dregs of the scholar class, a disgrace that shames learning and culture. That is nothing but twisting black into white!”

Those words left the entire group of officials speechless. Even their original anger had largely evaporated.

If the earlier exchange was a counter-kill, then this was a crushing annihilation.

Huang Ming had used these words to defeat them utterly.

No one had expected him to produce such a flawless argument. Even Wei Ziru, the official of the Ministry of Rites with the highest rank among them, could no longer pressure Li Kejian into expelling and dismissing Huang Ming.

This time, they had truly stumbled.

A muscle twitched on Wei Ziru’s face. Though he did not want to admit it, he had no choice but to accept the fact.

This Huang Ming was far more difficult to deal with than he and his colleagues had imagined. And thinking of what would happen next, his heart tightened further.

But what came after was even more despairing.

Huang Ming did not stop while he was ahead. Instead, he suddenly said, “Vice Rector Li, this student has a few more words.”

Li Kejian froze for a moment, then smiled and nodded. He had grown quite fond of Huang Ming by now.

This argument of his had preserved not only his status as a student at the Imperial College, but also the already meager dignity of the Imperial College itself. This was a fine student indeed.

“This student would like to ask: is our Imperial College an independent office, or is it merely a subordinate bureau of the Ministry of Rites, like the Court Entertainment Office?”

“Of course it is an independent office,” Li Kejian said without hesitation. That was simply the truth.

Huang Ming nodded, then his tone turned cold. “Then this student does not understand. Since we are not under your Ministry of Rites, what authority does a director from the Ministry of Rites have to come to our Imperial College and run wild, bringing a crowd of outsiders with him and shouting for our Imperial College to give an account and expel its own students?”

With that one sentence, he fully awakened Li Kejian, along with the other officials of the Imperial College.

Yes, indeed. By what right?

Just because his rank was higher and he served in a more important office?

But in Great Ming, there had never been any power that allowed an official of higher rank to dictate everything within a lower office.

Not to mention in the capital; even in the provinces, a prefect or even a provincial inspector could only send notifications to a county yamen. They had never possessed the power to interfere in how a county magistrate carried out his duties.

A flash of clarity struck Li Kejian. He looked at the visiting officials, whose faces had already changed, and said, “Your actions truly go beyond your proper bounds. I shall certainly impeach you for this!”

The Imperial College had indeed declined, had indeed been marginalized, but it was not yet utterly incapable of striking back.

The officials were tense and could not help but turn toward the director of the Ministry of Rites who had brought them here.

Wei Ziru’s face stiffened as well, but he still managed to say, “I brought these colleagues here today because of their memorials, and also by order of Lord Vice Minister. Do not forget, Lord Vice Minister is also rector of the Imperial College…”

“And so what? He is not here today!” Huang Ming cut back mercilessly.

“Even if Rector Wu were truly present, as a student of the Imperial College, I would still ask him in what capacity he is speaking today!

“If he is speaking as rector of the Imperial College, then he ought to defend the reputation of our college and protect us students. If not, then he is not fit to be rector of our Imperial College!”

A killing blow.

At that, everything came to a dead stop.