Chapter 20

As for Cai Yong, his mood was far from good.

How boisterous had Luoyang been at the tale that a boy not yet of age would become yirang; even Cai Yong, past forty, had only just been elevated by recommendation to that post. Yet he was chosen as examiner to determine whether that boy deserved to ascend to yirang.

Thus Cai Yong’s task was transparent.

“…He is to give this boy a favorable assessment,” he thought.

And so his mood soured. To give suitably good marks to the verse of that young master Im Huaseo and thus make him yirang—this would be the charge the Emperor had handed him.

“For the sake of my house, I ought to do so…”

Cai Yong knew the Emperor’s nature: willful, and using men like pieces on a board, then discarding them. Under such a ruler, survival demanded proving one’s usefulness at every turn; now was the moment to show that use. Yet the pride of a man who had studied calligraphy and verse would not permit it.

“Yan’er…”

The image of his cherished daughter wavered before his eyes. The hubbub of the throngs who had crowded Hongdu to glimpse the rumored Im Huaseo further unsettled Cai Yong’s already tangled temper.

“What is it that troubles you so?”

A sweet voice, like a celestial tone, alighted at Cai Yong’s ear.

“Are you not the examiner, Lord Cai? There is no need for you to mind me.”

He had thought this upon first hearing that voice; even the finest zither would not sound better. Gifted also in music, Cai Yong involuntarily opened his eyes and lifted his head.

A pale beauty, taller than he by a handspan, was looking down at him.

“……”

Eyes shot through with gold, hair black as pitch in contrast—Jaheon was truly a beauty. Even Cai Yong, who had endured the Disaster of the Partisans and all manner of hardship, found himself struck dumb at such closeness to that face.

“So the talk of an immortal reborn was no idle rumor,” he thought.

He understood why Young Lord Cao had gone so far as to vault a wall to see Jaheon, and why the Son of Heaven, upon seeing him, had at once bestowed excessive favor. Yet Cai Yong still had a measure of pride left. Refusing Jaheon’s proffered white hand, he said,

“So—you mean to have this old man killed.”

“……”

“If I give you a meager assessment, His Majesty will not let me be.”

Withdrawing his hand at Cai Yong’s reply, Jaheon asked evenly,

“What gain would there be in my killing you, my lord?”

“……?”

“I have no profit to reap by seeing you dead.”

At that, Cai Yong looked at him. There seemed no falsehood in Jaheon’s words. Hence Cai Yong was taken aback. Even so, Jaheon merely smiled at him. At this, Cai Yong forced himself to ask,

“…Then let me ask you this.”

Who in Luoyang did not know the men of letters at Hongdu were utterly vulgar? Merely to graduate from the Hongdu school won imperial favor and a wealth of offices.

“Who made you take the examination at Hongdu?”

Surely Jaheon himself had chosen to be examined at Hongdu with that in mind.

“Who was it that made me assess your verse?”

Even a graduate of Hongdu could recover his reputation if he won recognition from Cai Yong. For Cai Yong was, after all, a man of letters respected by countless scholars; the day he set up a stele collating the Confucian classics, multitudes of scholars came to Luoyang to copy it by hand.

“Is not all this your own plan to become yirang?”

At Cai Yong’s words, those around grew still. Though all in Luoyang knew Cai Yong’s way—pretending otherwise, yet always speaking the necessary words—standing before him now was Jaheon, who in a mere week had monopolized the Emperor’s favor.

“My lord.”

There was a reason, in the original course of history, that Cai Yong did not live out his full span. Smiling at Cai Yong’s boldness, Jaheon said,

“I am not so dull.”

Then he added in a low voice,

“It is the same as your reason for not opposing the recommendation of Hongdu’s literati.”

“……!”

At Jaheon’s matter‑of‑fact statement—that, minding the eyes of the Emperor and the eunuchs, Cai Yong too had not raised remonstrance—Cai Yong’s face flushed red.

“If even you are so, would I do anything so foolish?”

“……”

With his tightly pressed lips twitching, Cai Yong spoke.

“…Then this is not a situation you desired?”

But Jaheon did not answer. He only ground ink in the inkstone. At this, Cai Yong’s brow furrowed. His displeasure spread, and the Hongdu students seated in the academy watched the air nervously. The mood sank. Then Jaheon, quoting the Master, spoke.

“One cannot deceive a gentleman with what departs from propriety…”

Unbothered, he took up the brush in a white hand and dipped it in ink.

“This shall be my answer.”

The ink borne on the brush fell upon the precious paper and moved like a painting. From Jaheon’s hand, a regulated verse unfolded upon the paper—one praised even in later ages.

“……!”

Seeing that poem, Cai Yong could not help but spring to his feet.

From childhood, Zhang Rang had been quick to read the room.

“Does Your Majesty require a blade?”

Thus Zhang Rang had grasped power. By taking the side of the child‑emperor who, to all eyes, would be no more than a puppet, he survived and gained power.

“This slave shall be Your Majesty’s blade.”

He had lived as the blade the Emperor desired, wielding the power the Emperor bestowed. Hence none knew better than he how the Emperor contrived to purge and bend his ministers. Knowing this, Zhang Rang was ill at ease. He could not forget the expression the Emperor had worn in the study.

“It is the same as then,” he thought.

The day of the Disaster of the Partisans, when the scholar‑officials were swept away—this was the same expression the young Emperor had worn then. At the recollection, Zhang Rang squeezed his eyes shut. The Emperor seemed to look upon the eunuchs as he had upon the scholar‑officials of that day—while toward that youngster called Im Huaseo, he seemed to gaze as he had then looked upon the eunuchs.

And in that gaze, there seemed even a trace of affection.

Tap, tap—tap, tap—

Zhang Rang’s dry fingers, restless, tapped the fine table. Thoughts rose and vanished without end. He was still drumming ceaselessly when a servant stumbled anxiously into the room.

“How goes it?”

He was the servant Zhang Rang had sent to learn the situation at Hongdu.

“Just now, Im Huaseo entered the Hongdu academy.”

“And Cai Yong’s face?”

“He did not look pleased.”

At the report, Zhang Rang nodded.

“…So it should be. He should not be pleased.”

The day Jaheon’s recommendation was decided, Zhang Rang had, upon leaving the palace, spread rumors of him through Luoyang with all his might: an eleventh eunuch had appeared; Wang Yun had offered up a male favorite… Every rumor that could tarnish Jaheon’s name, he set loose.

It was not only to sow discord between Cai Yong and Jaheon.

“I took him lightly, as a rustic…”

Zhang Rang had not thought Jaheon a true enemy. He might be too beautiful for a man—but that was all. How could a boy not yet of age contrive such stratagems?

“Wang Yun, that cur.”

Surely it was Wang Yun who had sent Jaheon to Luoyang and thus stirred up this mess, Zhang Rang thought. And Wang Yun was a talent recommended to the center, having gained renown among the Pure‑Stream.

“We must not give Luoyang’s scholars a chance to rise again.”

If Wang Yun’s stratagem were to set the Emperor’s eyes upon Jaheon, the Pure‑Stream—ever checking the eunuchs at every turn—would become a force no longer to be taken lightly.

For the rigid and inelastic Pure‑Stream who had only provoked the Emperor’s ire, this would be no different from giving them a new breath in Wang Yun. Wang Yun knew when to strike and when to slip away; it meant the Emperor had more than enough reason to use him. And if scholars began to gather under such a Wang Yun…

“His Majesty will use them.”

The Emperor would employ the forces gathered under Wang Yun as a card to check the eunuchs.

Therefore Zhang Rang had to scour Jaheon’s reputation with all his might. Because it was Wang Yun who had sent Jaheon to Luoyang, because Pure‑Stream scholars pinned their hopes on Wang Yun—Zhang Rang had to shatter that hope.

“If only Cai Yong will render a harsh judgment upon Im Jaheon’s poem, all will do.”

No—harshness was not even necessary. Even a favorable assessment would bring censure that he had stolen office for nothing. Were not the Pure‑Stream scholars hidebound fellows who could not tolerate the slightest blot?

To split such rigid men—this was child’s play to Zhang Rang.

Tap—tap—

Waiting for another servant to bring news from Hongdu, Zhang Rang drummed again upon the table.

“Sir…!”

Soon the second servant, whom he had sent to hear the examination’s outcome, returned. But the man’s face was pale as paper.

“What is it?!”

At the unexpected reaction, Zhang Rang’s brow twitched.

“It is…!”

Flattening himself before Zhang Rang, the servant cried out,

“Cai Yong read Im Jaheon’s poem, praised it to the skies—and wept!”

“What…?!”

Zhang Rang’s face twisted at once. It was a result he had not foreseen in the least.

Yet one thing was certain.

“They say he called him the rebirth of Qu Yuan of Chu—that Im Jaheon is a great blessing heaven has bestowed upon the Han!”

This was, beyond doubt, the very worst outcome for Zhang Rang.

Footnotes:

 

1. “Hongdu” 鴻都 refers to an imperial academy favored by Emperor Ling for poetry/calligraphy; its reputation for “vulgar” taste reflects court tensions between eunuch‑aligned aesthetic patronage and scholar‑official ideals

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1. The “Disasters of the Partisan Prohibitions” refers to two crackdowns (166 and 169 CE) in late Eastern Han when the court’s powerful eunuchs branded Confucian scholar-officials and their student supporters as “partisans” and purged them through arrests, bans on civil rights, and executions in Luoyang.

• First crackdown (166 CE): After tensions between officials and eunuchs escalated, leading scholars and some 200 imperial university students were arrested; many were dismissed and politically blacklisted rather than killed.
• Second crackdown (169 CE): Following a failed move by scholar leaders (notably Dou Wu and Chen Fan) against the eunuchs, the eunuchs convinced young Emperor Ling that the “partisans” were seditious; prominent scholars were executed, others imprisoned or deprived of civil rights.
• Aftermath (to 184 CE): The disabilities on surviving partisans remained until Emperor Ling lifted them amid fear they would join the Yellow Turban Rebellion; by then, the official-scholar cohort had been severely traumatized and factionalized.

Core dynamics:

• Factions: “Partisans” (Confucian officials + Taixue students) versus palace eunuchs competing for imperial access and agenda-setting.
• Methods: Arrests, proscription lists, dismissal from office, bans on holding posts or participating in politics; the second disaster included executions.
• Significance: It crippled the moral authority and institutional capacity of the scholar-bureaucracy, deepened court polarization, and helped unravel late Han governance, feeding into broader unrest (e.g., the 184 Yellow Turban uprising).

Key figures commonly linked:

• Scholars/officials: Li Ying, Du Mi, Fan Pang; senior statesmen Dou Wu and Chen Fan (whose defeat precipitated the 169 wave).
• Emperors: Huan (first disaster) and Ling (second disaster).
• Eunuchs: Court clique that orchestrated accusations, arrests, and proscriptions, leveraging proximity to the throne.