I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 396 Winning over
The actions of the people around him made Zhan Bin very confused. He couldn't understand why so many officials were so cold towards him. Even if he was an official in the royal palace, he shouldn't be so obvious.

Secondly, he didn't understand why the petty official was so arrogant at first but so respectful later, and was so scared when he heard about the Jingwang Mansion.
Zhan Bin quickly grabbed the clerk and said, "Sir, why are you doing this? Why are you doing this?"

The clerk stopped and asked, "Has the Lord Chief Secretary forgiven me?"

"Yes!" Zhan Bin just wanted to settle the matter as soon as possible.

"Thank you very much, sir. Thank you very much, sir. I will complete the procedures for you as soon as possible." The clerk said with a nod.

"Thank you!" Zhan Bin said with a bow.

The clerk returned the greeting quickly, then hurriedly walked into a room with Zhan Bin's documents. After a while, the clerk followed an official in a green robe with a white pheasant embroidered on his chest. The official was a fifth-rank official in the Ministry of Revenue. He spoke to Zhan Bin in a cold tone, then asked Zhan Bin to wait for a moment, and then left with Zhan Bin's documents.
This made Zhan Bin even more uneasy. After a while, the official in the green robe came out with an official in a red robe. The most important thing was that the official in the red robe had a peacock embroidered on his chest. He was a third-rank official.
There are only two third-rank official positions in the Ministry of Personnel, namely the left and right vice-ministers, who are the two deputies of the Shangshu, and can be considered to be in high positions with great power.

Zhan Bin was so confused that he didn't expect that a fifth-rank official like him coming to the Ministry of Personnel would cause the Ministry of Personnel's assistant minister to handle the matter personally.
After the Minister of Personnel saw Zhan Bin, he asked a few detailed questions, but in the end he looked embarrassed and said to Zhan Bin very politely: "Zhan Changshi, I dare not deal with your matter without authorization. How about you take a rest for a while, and wait for Minister Shi to come back, and let Minister Shi deal with it personally."

Zhan Bin was even more annoyed, and couldn't help asking, "I am only a fifth-rank official, how can I trouble the Minister to personally ask about this?"

"You will know what is going on when the time comes." The Minister of Personnel was tight-lipped.

After that, he didn't talk to Zhan Bin any more, but took him to a reception room and had someone serve him some fragrant tea.
Zhan Bin racked his brains to figure out what was going on, but he could vaguely sense that this matter must be related to Zhu Houxuan.

Zhan Bin waited for more than half an hour and finally waited for a majestic old man wearing a scarlet official robe with a peacock embroidered on his chest. Zhan Bin knew that he was the current Minister of Personnel Shi Yan.

Shi Rong was also quite polite, or even friendly, to Zhan Bin, which made Zhan Bin feel a little flattered.

However, what puzzled Zhan Bin was that Shi Yan did not talk to him directly about business, but instead started chatting with him in a friendly manner.

Shi Yan asked him in detail about the sutra he was studying, his experience in studying, who his teacher was, who was the chief examiner when he passed the imperial examination, his family situation, etc. He even talked to him about some of the meaning of the sutra.
Although Zhan Bin was confused and didn't understand why Shi Yao, who was so busy with government affairs, spent so much time talking to him about this, he still answered all the questions seriously. He felt that he didn't answer some of the questions on the meaning of the scriptures very well because he was unfamiliar with them due to age, but he still got Shi Yao's affirmation.

Throughout the whole process, Shi Yan behaved like a great scholar with the temperament of a master, which made Zhan Bin feel good about him.

After talking about all this, Shi Yan finally brought the conversation to the point.

"The Ministry of Personnel summoned you to Beijing this time to entrust you with an important task. I hope you will not let the court down." Shi Yan said kindly.

"I will live up to the trust of the court and the adults." Zhan Bin stood up and said respectfully. He already felt that today's matter was not simple. Shi Yan nodded with satisfaction. He said solemnly: "The court has decided to promote you to the position of Shuntianfu Fucheng"

"Minister of Shuntian Prefecture?" Zhan Bin asked in surprise, "Fourth rank?"

"Yes, it is the fourth rank," said Shi Yan.

"This, this... This is against the system," Zhan Bin said somewhat incoherently. It was quite rare to be promoted twice in a row, and he also served as the very important position of Shuntian Prefecture. Shuntian Prefecture was the number one prefecture in the world. Although it only governed Wanping and Daxing counties, its status was very important and prominent.

The fourth-rank Shuntian Prefecture Chancellor is equivalent to the deputy mayor of the capital.

The most important thing is that he is just a scholar.
"Since the court has made such a decision, it must be in line with the system," Shi Yan explained.

In fact, Shi Yao was also very depressed. He also looked down on Zhan Bin. They did not want Zhan Bin to become the prefect of Shuntian Prefecture. They once used Zhan Bin's academic title as a juren to veto this matter. However, during the reign of Zhu Yuanzhang, there were many cases of people with low academic titles or even no academic titles ascending to high positions. Therefore, when Zhu Houzhao brought up the cases during the reign of Zhu Yuanzhang, the civil officials could not veto it at all.
It was quite common for juren to become officials in the Ming Dynasty, but there was basically a ceiling. This ceiling had been formed in the middle of the Ming Dynasty and had become an unspoken rule in the officialdom.

Officials who were born as Juren could only reach the fifth or sixth rank at most. There were very few who could reach the fifth rank, and there were almost no officials who could reach the fourth rank in the middle Ming Dynasty.
After all, the rank of official positions is pyramid-shaped, and the higher you go, the fewer positions there are. There are not enough positions for the Jinshi themselves, so how could they be given to the Juren?

In fact, the most outstanding juren in the Ming Dynasty was Hai Rui. When he was still a sixth-rank official in the Ministry of Revenue, he submitted the famous "Memorial on Public Security" to Emperor Jiajing, which made him famous all over the world.

There was no ceiling for him and he rose all the way to become a second-rank official.

Back to the topic, promoting Zhan Bin, a juren, directly from the fifth rank to the fourth rank was really shocking at that time. The most important thing was that he was just an official in the royal palace before and had basically no political achievements.

This was only pushed by Zhu Houzhao, who had unlimited power over personnel, otherwise the civil officials would not have accepted this matter.
"This, this. This." Zhan Bin was completely confused and didn't know what to do.

"Minister Zhan, this is your new certificate. Please keep it well. Remember to take it to the weaving hall to get your new official uniform." Shi Yan handed over a document.

Zhan Bin took the document with some trembling and read it carefully several times before he was sure that Shi Yan was not joking.

"Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir." Zhan Bin's face was flushed as if he was drunk. He said dizzily, and then carefully put away the letter of appointment.

He originally thought that this trip to the capital was because Zhu Houxuan remembered their old friendship and wanted to pull him out of the quagmire of being an official in the royal palace. He originally thought that since he had no political achievements at all, he would be satisfied if he could be sent out as a fifth-rank prefect. If he could get a fifth-rank doctor in one of the six ministries and become an official in the capital, that would be the emperor's great favor.

(End of this chapter)