No Repeats

Strange protocol

Shu Mei looked bewilderedly at the imperial inspector who was equally confused at this unexpected turn of events. He had stood stunned and looked imploringly at a man standing at the front of all the officials, ignoring the low murmur from the hundreds of officials present in the hall and the shuffling of their body which signals that this was outside their calculations.

She sneaked a look around and saw that the hall was spilt evenly into two sides, officials on the right-hand side was dressed in blue robes while the left in black robes. The man that the Imperial Inspector looked towards was the obvious leader of the blue robed ministers, he himself was dressed in a deep royal blue official's robe, an embroidered black belt and the official's black headdress. He was bent over in a half bow while the Emperor and the two royal women departed, but once they did, he stood up straight with his hands behind his back and turned around, his eyes rapidly scanning the room.

The more she looked at his posture and kindly face, the more she felt drawn towards the man's imposing dignity and bright eyes. He looked to be around only fifty years old, but his long hair has turned completely white, giving him an otherworldly feel. She immediately guessed that this man is the current Prime Minister of the Great Han Empire, Rui Hao Liang.

According to the Imperial Inspector, his adoptive father is the Empire's youngest Prime Minister and one of two most powerful ministers of this generation. Shu Mei looked at his handsome but stern face and the deep furrows that have etched itself on his forehead which are tell-tale signs of the pressure that this man has endured over the years. Hao Liang had inherited the Rui clan's patriarch position at the young age after his father was assassinated and thrusted into the fight between the Zhou clan and the Murong clan.

Once he inherited the patriarch role, Hao Liang spent all his efforts to forging a powerful alliance with scholarly and established families in the Empire. Through his efforts, the Rui clan consolidated power and gained enough ground against the growing force of the Murong clan. Once he married his own daughter to the ailing Emperor, Hao Liang had thrown in the clan's fate with the Zhou clan.

The marriage alliance was the point of no return for the Rui clan who had historically chosen to specialise in administration instead of warfare. In this current generation, only Hao Liang had the intelligence, wit, and political support to directly oppose the Murong clan's patriarch, the Grand General and Supreme Commander of the Imperial Military.

Years of an evenly match battle was thrown out of the window with the appearance of Huang Yu Li. The General of the empire's most powerful military army, is obviously supportive of the Murong policies and have engaged in numerous raids on the Rui clan's affiliated countries and regional power bases.

With the rise of Huang Yu Li's powers, it was as if the Grand General and the Murong clan has grown extra wings, effectively holding a monopoly on the Empire's military powers and stranglehold on its trading nations. Regional scholars that have written in protest of the Murong clan's actions are either suppressed until they willingly offer a retraction or just simply disappear.

Rui Hao Liang have seen and investigated too many of these cases, so he is painfully aware of the terrifying powers of the Murong clan and its cancerous impact on the freedom of the empire's citizens. When a country is run by military men, there are inevitable policies that would favour military conquests and campaigns. Hao Liang is philosophically opposed to this and historically, his clan only advocates for peaceful administration and trade as the cornerstones of the empire.

The Rui clan supported the establishment of the empire by force because they saw that the small nation state's population was growing too rapidly and could not be supported by the country's small footprint and arid lands. But once the Empire was established, they were entrusted with its governance and administration rather than expansion. For the Rui clan, their fundament belief was that the people must be kept happy for the progress and growth of the Empire and people do not need the devastating ravages of war, instead, they need stability and economic wealth.