He had only just transmigrated into Zhu Youcheng's body and had not yet adjusted to his identity as Crown Prince when he had to take up the burden of ruling the realm in a hurry. Facing the virtuous ministers, famous officials, and wise empresses praised in the history books felt like playing a series of Schrödinger's cat games.
Issue the Inquiry into Criminal Statutes? How can you remove the ancestral rule that sends officials who embezzle eight hundred strings of cash to hell! Publish the New Exemptions? You claim to speak for the people, so why did you end up only making yourselves exempt from taxes and labor service? Abolish the Recommended Officials? Your Nine Ministers' court nominations were stolen in the first place!
This is the story of Emperor Hongzhi awakening. There is no longer a grand feast in which civil officials carve up power, no virtuous empress who ruins her husband's legacy and leaves him without an heir, no famously treacherous officials who pretend to be loyal, and no scholar-officials jointly ruling the realm.
The Hongzhi Renaissance... is gone too, because the people who kept praising themselves have actually all died out.
