Volume 2: The King's Way Chapter 135: The Scholars Are Surprised
When Bai Tu came out of Jin Lingji's Chengji Mansion, he felt even heavier in his heart - although "letting everyone know" was very beneficial to Bai Tu, it also made Bai Tu bear Jin Lingji's "emotions".
Everyone was informed of this, which avoided to the greatest extent possible the original intention of Bai Tu being distorted by the aristocratic class and instead showed it directly to the common people.
Bai Tu could only calm down and prepare to deal with the changes that this incident would bring, as well as... the changes after Yuan Shu proclaimed himself emperor.
As for Jinling Ji herself, she is being taken care of by Yu Ji for the time being, and Bai Tu can't do anything else. After all, Cheng Ji's existence is a "mystery" to Bai Tu, and it is not something that an ordinary doctor can diagnose.
Fortunately, according to Yu Ji, Jin Ling Ji is not in any danger now...
Bai Tu soon felt the "variable" brought about by this incident. First of all, the Naxianguan system received several times or even dozens of times more self-recommendations than before in just a few days!
The lists were entered one by one and then presented to Bai Tu.
Among them, there are even many names that Bai Tu is "familiar with". Especially with the passage of time, the names of some outstanding people who were not born in Jiangdong also appeared in the Naxian Hall.
Bai Tu often reviewed the list of candidates for the Naxian Hall, and he would occasionally see familiar names among them, such as Pan Zhang...
However, for these familiar names, Bai Tu only drew up a list of key observations and did not meet with them directly and entrust them with important tasks - no "talent" is born, and starting from the grassroots level is also a part of growth.
The talents who come to the Naxian Hall are basically young and up-and-coming people from humble backgrounds.
A truly talented person who is already famous in a state or a county will rarely lower his status to go to the Naxian Hall. If he really wants to join Bai Tu, he will prepare a visiting card and come to see Bai Tu directly. If he is from a noble family, he can also go directly through the route of recommendation!
Therefore, for these "newcomers", only when Bai Tu feels that their development in Jiangdong has been suppressed and has not been reasonably developed, will he directly pull them up from top to bottom to avoid burying them or losing their talents.
After the "public envoys knew about it", the recruitment halls in various places were overcrowded...
Although Bai Tu's "Killing one man is like killing my father" could only win a 50-50 support in public opinion, there were almost no disadvantages in the Naxian Hall.
After all, most of those who have prejudices against this are the kind who would not recommend themselves to the Naxian Hall, while for those who have good intentions towards this, this will become their motivation to join Baitu...
At the same time, even those who had the most objections to Bai Tu did not dare to come to Naxian Hall to cause trouble, and would not even comment on Bai Tu about the incident itself.
Now that Bai Tu has won the love of the people in this matter, they will not directly provoke him and lower their own popularity, but will find other weaknesses of Bai Tu!
After all, what they were targeting was not "Killing one person is like killing my father", but the philosophy behind it...
The most intense criticism came from the famous Confucian scholars - compared to those who represented the aristocratic families, they were more simple-minded and did not have to worry about whether they would be abandoned by the people.
In general, they are the great scholars who are indeed very famous in the current era, but whose names are not recorded in "The Records of the Three Kingdoms" and "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms". Only they have the ability to express public opinions and have no political baggage.
In this regard, Kong Rong advocated for Bai Tu. From then on, Kong Rong started a debate in the Confucian community that lasted for several years.
On the second day, Kong Rong used "Respect the old as one's own and the old of others" as a fulcrum and some of Mencius' ideas to find the legal basis for Bai Tu's words in the Confucian community...
Of course, Kong Rong was inherently at a disadvantage in this debate - Mencius's "as people grow old" meant there were differences in levels, and even Kong Rong himself did not believe his excuses for defending himself.
Just as Mozi's "universal love" would make Mencius curse in the streets, any provocative remarks based on "patriarchal blood relationship" would greatly touch the nerves of Confucianism.
However, Bai Tu was known as a saint, and no one dared to carry him out of the Shennong Temple...
Kong Rong had now become somewhat famous as a literary figure, and his status as a descendant of Confucius allowed him to confidently say, "No one understands Confucius better than I do." This could at least attract some votes from passers-by.
However, the battlefield that Kong Rong was in charge of was too "dangerous". After all, it was too difficult to prove a statement that went against the core idea of Confucianism in the home ground of Confucianism, and Kong Rong was also very troubled.
The first people Kong Rong had to face were the great Confucian . As for the great Confucian scholars in the Central Plains, Hebei and other places, even if they wanted to argue with Kong Rong, they did not have such a fast channel for communication.
And even these great scholars “nearby” whose literary reputations were far inferior to Kong Rong’s were enough to make him extremely anxious…
It was not until half a month later that Wang Lang privately visited Kong Rong and gave him some advice - if you really can't win the argument with others, find a way to force them to make mistakes!
In other words... deliberately provoke the other party to fiercely criticize Bai Tu's character, or even better, directly erase Bai Tu's contribution.
When Kong Rong first heard Wang Lang say this, he was very angry and thought that Wang Lang was going to betray Bai Tu. However, after listening to Wang Lang's explanation, he understood - this was Bai Tu's greatest advantage!
No matter how high those great scholars place their status and how much they want to look down on Bai Tu, as long as they do not want to be cleared out of the battlefield of public opinion, the principle they must adhere to is: they can criticize some of Bai Tu's ideas to prove that Bai Tu is wrong, but they must never directly criticize Bai Tu as a person.
A great sage who twice caused the vision of a great sage to be born, and the second time directly caused the vision of a divine appearance in the Shennong Temple, his character and prestige cannot be criticized by anyone.
The first person to be infected was the Jingxiang scholar Song Zhong, a guy with a very unlucky name...
He worked as a civil servant under Liu Biao. His abilities in military and literary strategy were average, but he had some experience in studying classics and annotated many of them. He was considered one of the leading Confucian scholars .
Because he had a thorough grasp of Confucian classics, Kong Rong was often unable to argue with him...
Later, under the guidance of Kong Rong who seemed to be showing weakness, Song Zhong was the first to openly slander Bai Tu's personal reputation, and even proposed that Liu Biao issue an order to prohibit the establishment of a temple for Bai Tu in Jingzhou.
As a result... the next day, Song Zhong's door was splashed with blood and everyone spat on him when he walked on the street.
On the fourth day, Song Zhong received a letter from Zhang Ling's family in the countryside, saying that the Song family's land was deliberately destroyed by unruly people, and because the surrounding villagers were shielding each other and hostile to the Song family, they did not dare to ask the county magistrate for justice. Instead, they took the initiative to make a big deal out of a small matter. The letter warned Song Zhong not to speak nonsense for the sake of his own literary reputation.
On the sixth day, Song Zhong received a reply from Kong Rong. He directly deviated from the topic and ignored the fact that Kong Rong could not refute the theory based on Confucianism. He just said, "Shameless old thief, don't you know that everyone in the world is willing to eat your flesh? How dare you argue with me!"
Song Zhong vomited blood and resigned from Liu Biao despite his illness...
As for his previous suggestions, Liu Biao simply ignored them, including the Kuai family and the Cai family. Even if they did not agree with Bai Tu in their hearts, they would not directly confront Bai Tu's reputation on such matters.
After realizing this advantage of his side and making good use of this skill, Kong Rong's fighting power increased sharply. Even among the Confucian scholars, no one could put Bai Tu in the category of "undisputed mistakes".
Even in other aspects, Bai Tu also had unexpected gains, for example... to Bai Tu's surprise, what he waited for first was not the fierce opposition from a certain family, but Wei Teng of the Wei family and Gu Yong of the Gu family, who immediately expressed to Bai Tu through Lao Lu the idea of joining the governor's mansion...
