Dark Sand: My Players Are All Actors
Chapter 280 - 212 The Way is Blocked

Chapter 280: Chapter 212 The Way is Blocked

Although Chuge had prepared himself for the failure of his modifications, he never anticipated a failure of such magnitude.

The first thing he saw were the snowflake-like petitions from the Imperial Censorate, impeaching him.

Many of these petitions targeted other clauses. Chuge didn’t look closely, because the other clauses followed the original approach of Wang Wenchuan, and Chuge roughly knew the impeached contents, there was nothing novel.

He was more concerned about the kind of backlash his reformed Green Seed Law would provoke.

As soon as he saw the officials’ impeachment memorials concerning the New Green Seedling Law, Chuge nearly passed out in anger.

Some said that he was "depleting the national treasury for personal fame," which meant taking the nation’s money and wildly distributing it to harvest a good reputation for himself.

Others accused him of "depleting the national treasury for cronyism," meaning he was not only wildly distributing the nation’s money, but in actuality, all that money flowed to his own interest group, secretly planning to establish factional networks.

There were also those who accused him of the crime of deceiving the Emperor, because the Green Seed Law not only failed to bring any income to the national treasury but also caused a massive drain on the granaries’ reserves everywhere, severely endangering local food security and possibly resulting in insufficient military rations during wartime and inadequate disaster relief grains during famines...

And these impeachments by the Imperial Censorate were clearly not the most suffocating.

After hastily going through these documents, the court assembly followed immediately.

In the imperial court, another wave of officials attacked him, and this time the words were even more outrageous, with various accusations piling crazily upon Chuge’s head.

These even included a large number of attacks on his private morals.

If it weren’t for Wang Wenchuan’s upright nature and his fearlessness of skewed shadows, his integrity, adherence to the law, copious grassroots administrative experience, and initially high reputation, anyone else less clean might have completely lost control of the situation by now.

Of course, even with Wang Wenchuan’s private morals posing no issue, these officials could always find grounds to attack him.

What chilled Chuge’s heart even more was the change in the Emperor’s gaze towards him.

Originally, the Emperor trusted Wang Wenchuan immensely; otherwise, he wouldn’t have consistently supported his reforms for a full decade.

At least in the first two to three years, the Emperor held a high approval of Wang Wenchuan. After all, when the new laws were first being implemented, even with some minor defects, the Emperor would consider them to be gradually improvable, rather than dismissing Wang Wenchuan outright.

But once Chuge modified the Green Seed Law, it all went downhill.

Under the questioning of the Emperor and the officials, Chuge still wanted to struggle one last time.

With his talent for eloquent speech, he now vindicated himself, explaining in detail his motives for reforming the Green Seed Law, especially reiterating that his actions were broadly beneficial, for the nation and the people. Although loaning out the grains temporarily reduced the national reserves, in the long run, it was advantageous for agricultural development.

As the economy developed, those grains would surely be recovered, thus achieving his previously promised goal of "increasing neither the nation’s levies nor the people’s burdens."

The talent for eloquent speech truly was effective.

Chuge could clearly sense some officials were rendered speechless by his rebuttal, and even the Emperor on his high throne, seemed quite moved.

Thus, the Emperor, deeply touched, promptly dismissed Wang Wenchuan from his post.

Chuge’s first attempt at reform met a very tragic end in just its first year.

...

Back to square one.

Chuge began to doubt his life.

"No, something’s not right, I had planned it so perfectly, so why did it end up worse than Wang Wenchuan’s original scheme?"

In Chuge’s view, his reformed Green Seed Law should have effectively prevented the issue of officials imposing arbitrary levies, and it shouldn’t have led to a financial crisis, should it?

After all, he was offering interest-free loans, not engaging in charitable handouts.

Since these were loans to the farmers, they would repay them eventually, wouldn’t they?

So how did it turn into exploitation for personal gain?

Chuge realized there must be significant issues with his reformed Green Seed Law, so after calming down, he settled his heart and started over from the beginning, carefully analyzing.

And the best starting point was the Imperial Censorate officials’ criticism.

"These officials’ attacks on me boil down to two points.

"The first, they believe I caused losses to the nation, with the rapid decline in granary reserves everywhere. This, in turn, would lead to insufficient funds for disaster relief should a calamity strike in the future.

"The second, they suspect I am pursuing personal gain. Some say I’m trying to garner fame; others say I’m profiting my clique.

"Though these conservative officials will try every means to attack me, their assault must have some substance to hit me where it hurts.

"And the Emperor, having so much trust in me, yet dismissed me in the first year... this shows their attack was indeed effective, making even the Emperor distrust me.

"That is to say, objectively, my new Green Seed Law did lead to these consequences?

"No, that can’t be right, it’s interest-free loans, why would they cause losses?

"Could it be... that 20% interest is indispensable?"

After much reflection and contemplation, Chuge suddenly had a moment of clarity, and his mind brightened.

He was a liberal arts student, after all, and his understanding of economics wasn’t profound. So, when he came up with the idea of interest-free loans on a whim, it wasn’t actually supported by any economic knowledge.

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