The eunuchs’ coup within the palace was crushed by the outer court with overwhelming force.
On the court, nearly all authority now rested in the hands of Grand General Dou Wu and Grand Tutor Chen Fan.
Empress Dowager Dou Miao, after this incident, seemed to give up on the idea of contending with her father Dou Wu for power.
Any decree presented by the outer court was passed without issue.
As for the young Emperor Liu Hong, he had become nothing more than a rubber stamp.
Cao Song played a significant role in the suppression of the eunuchs, and thus, as the Minister of Agriculture (Da Sinong), his prestige soared.
He now held immense power—so much so that he had all but usurped the authority of his superior, Minister of Works Liu Chong.
He had effectively become the third most powerful figure under Dou Wu and Chen Fan.
With one high-stakes gamble, the Cao family suddenly rose to prominence as a new force in the imperial court.
Their reputation among the scholar-gentry was thoroughly rehabilitated, and the rewards were substantial.
Now that Cao Song had made it, he practically strutted when he walked.
But while Cao Song was basking in his newfound glory, the young Emperor Liu Hong was clearly not enjoying himself.
In the original history, Grand General Dou Wu and Grand Tutor Chen Fan had both perished during the coup, and Empress Dowager Dou Miao was forced to move to the Southern Palace, completely stripped of her power.
Eunuchs in the Han Dynasty could never exist independently of imperial authority.
That’s why, in the original timeline, Liu Hong essentially won by doing nothing.
With both the powerful ministers and the empress dowager removed, he suddenly acquired full control and retained it until his death.
This is also why, even after being deceived by the eunuchs, Liu Hong rewarded them with promotions and titles after the affair ended—because he had been the biggest beneficiary of their victory.
From Liu Hong’s perspective, the eunuchs’ success had been entirely in his favor.
However, what benefited the emperor personally did not necessarily benefit the common people or the Han Dynasty as a whole.
In fact, nearly half of the factors that led to the Yellow Turban Rebellion in the original timeline could be traced directly back to Liu Hong’s reckless misrule.
Let’s not forget that this was the kind of emperor who imposed a ten-coin-per-mu tax across the entire empire just to fund the construction of a new palace.
As the saying goes, “A grain of sand in the age becomes a boulder on every person’s shoulders.”
Ten coins per mu might sound minor, but local aristocratic families were bound to evade taxes—meaning the burden ultimately fell on the commoners.
Maybe Liu Hong’s policy demanded ten coins per mu on paper, but once it reached local implementation, commoners were likely paying up to a hundred coins per mu.
If a farmer owned fifty mu, that would mean a tax bill of five thousand coins.
And where would ordinary people get that kind of money?
They would be forced to borrow from landlords or Koryo moneylenders.
In a feudal society, interest rates on loans were as high as 100% annually.
A “nine-out-of-thirteen” repayment scheme was considered generous.
So, once a farmer paid that tax, he would almost certainly go bankrupt.
And once he was ruined, he’d have no choice but to take to the hills and become a bandit—joining the masses rising against the Han Dynasty.
Right now, although Liu Hong felt frustrated being stuck in the palace as a powerless figurehead, countless ordinary people across the Han Empire were rejoicing.
Chen Fan was a member of the Qingliu (pure stream) faction.
Though he had complicated ties to aristocratic clans, he had no connection to local landholding elites.
So, after Dou Wu and Chen Fan assumed power, the very first thing they did was to use the hunt for eunuch remnants as an excuse to investigate illegally seized farmland held by powerful families—and then order its return.
In severe cases, they even confiscated entire estates.
While the Eastern Han wasn’t as aggressive as the Western Han when it came to cracking down on local elites, when they did decide to act, they did not hold back.
As Minister of Agriculture, Cao Song was responsible for taxes, land management, food supplies, and state finances—in essence, the dynasty’s Minister of Finance.
So he was naturally obligated to take part in the investigation of illegal land seizures, and he dispatched a large number of agents to assist.
Mengde, being a time-traveler from the future, also helpfully provided her father with a variety of methods to detect land fraud.
After all, post-Han dynasties had spent nearly two thousand years in a cat-and-mouse game with landlords over farmland, and countless techniques were invented along the way to expose hidden holdings.
With all this modern knowledge, the elite landowners of the Eastern Han were in for quite the reckoning.
***
It was now December of the first year of the Jian’ning era.
The New Year was approaching—
As one of the top powerholders in the court, Cao Song’s residence was naturally a hotspot for New Year’s visits and gift-giving.
Even high-ranking nobles like Minister of the Imperial Stables Yuan Feng and Minister of Ceremonies Yuan Wei personally came by with presents.
When Mengde heard about this, she gasped.
‘This is insane! The world’s been turned upside down!’
‘The elders of Yuan Shao’s family just came to toast my elder? That means… Yuan Shao effectively just toasted me, Cao Mengde!’
The thought that, thanks to her own schemes, the Cao family had risen to such heights that even noble clans were now visiting to pay respects made Miss Mengde indescribably proud.
Yet even as she felt triumphant, her rational mind quickly reasserted itself.
As she looked around the house—now filled with more and more expensive furniture and ritual items—an ominous feeling crept into her chest.
***
That very evening, after the Yuan brothers left, Mengde called her father Cao Song over for a private discussion.
Ever since the rebellion was quelled, and his status and reputation had skyrocketed, Cao Song had become fully convinced of his daughter’s abilities.
So, upon hearing she wanted to speak with him, he hurried back from seeing off the guests and sat down to listen obediently.
Mengde opened with a pointed question.
“Father… have you been embezzling lately?”
“Huh? What… what are you saying, Jili?” Cao Song’s expression turned nervous.
“Don’t try to hide it, Father.” Mengde gave a helpless smile.
“If you haven’t been embezzling, then why has all the lacquerware in our house recently been replaced? And why are there suddenly so many jade and luxury items? Not to mention the gold and coin reserves in the storeroom…”
Cao Song’s corruption wasn’t exactly a secret.
In the original timeline, years later, when he again served as Minister of Agriculture, he embezzled a staggering amount of wealth.
His most famous historical act was spending ten billion coins—yes, billion—to buy the position of Grand Commandant (one of the Three Excellencies) from Emperor Liu Hong.
To understand how insane that is: Mi Zhu, Liu Bei’s early-stage investor, was known as the richest man in Xu Province, and even his entire fortune only amounted to a bit over one billion coins.
And that already gave him a legendary reputation.
Cao Song spent ten times that amount just to buy an office.
And that wasn’t even the full extent of his wealth.
Later, during the chaos caused by Dong Zhuo, Cao Song was still able to fund thousands of private soldiers for Cao Cao and had enough leftover to retire to Xu Province with a massive fortune.
In fact, when he left for Xu Province, his wealth was so shocking that the province’s governor, Tao Qian, became jealous and eventually had him killed to seize the riches for himself.
Mi Zhu gave Liu Bei everything and was treated with immense respect, becoming the second-most important figure in Liu Bei’s faction after Liu Bei himself.
If he had given all that to Cao Cao instead?
At most, he would’ve just earned slightly better treatment.
No wonder Liu Bei always seemed so unlucky.