A son who doesn't resemble his father? Love you, old man, see you at Xuanwu Gate!

Chapter 220 Moving the Tomb
Your Majesty, please abdicate!
What a magnificent spirit!

What a terrible sin that is!

For a subject to do such a thing, he is by no means a loyal minister in the eyes of the monarch. It is not surprising that after Gongsun Hong's death, his grave was dug up, his bones were crushed and his ashes scattered by later rulers.

"After the old prime minister passes away, do you intend to accompany him to his tomb?" Wei Qing asked Gongsun Hong with a complicated expression.

Given Gongsun Hong's "crimes," only by being buried in the imperial mausoleum could he find peace in the afterlife.

Gongsun Hong shook his head and laughed, "His Majesty's crime is greater than mine. As for the imperial tomb, I wonder whether it is I, his subject, who will protect him, or His Majesty, his sovereign, who will protect me?"

His posthumous reputation is left to future generations to judge. He doesn't know if it will be good or bad, or if it will be good at times and bad at others. What is certain is that powerful officials of later generations will all recite his name.

As for the accompanying mausoleum?

If the Han dynasty were to fall into crisis, and the ancestral temples and imperial tombs were in imminent danger, Gongsun Hong was absolutely certain that His Mausoleum Maoling would be the first to be excavated. This was the power of reputation!
"After I ascend the throne, the first thing I will do is build the imperial mausoleum. Why don't you go inside first and wait, and then we will come back," Liu Ju said.

Throughout history, monarchical families have had a disheartening ancestral rule: upon ascending the throne, the first thing to do is to build a mausoleum.

Take His Majesty as an example. In the year following his ascension to the throne, the second year of the Jianyuan era, he began to build his mausoleum in Maoxiang, Huaili County, more than forty li west of Chang'an City. It is now and thereafter called "Maoling".

Twenty years have passed since then, and it is still not completed. During this period, hundreds of thousands of people and tens of millions of resources were mobilized. "Money, valuables, birds, beasts, fish, turtles, cattle, horses, tigers, leopards, and live poultry, totaling 190 items, were buried there." It is the "crown of the Five Mausoleums" of the Han Dynasty, and may even be the "crown of the Han Mausoleums".

This embodies the traditional Chinese concept of life and death: "treating the dead as if they were alive."

It is widely believed that the soul does not perish after death and will continue to live in another world, where it will need everything it possessed in life.

As the supreme ruler of the human world, the emperor's residence and grandeur in the underworld naturally had to match his supreme status.

The Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor is the ultimate embodiment of this concept.

The emperor was also deeply influenced by this idea. He not only pursued immortality, but also devoted great enthusiasm and expectations to his eternal residence after death.

The planning of Maoling far exceeded the functional requirements of a typical imperial mausoleum; it was practically a miniature, eternal underground empire.

After Liu Ju ascended the throne, he also built his own mausoleum. It may not be as elaborate as his father's, but it could still accommodate a considerable number of people.

It is not uncommon for an old minister to die before his monarch and be buried in the mausoleum for several or even decades, intending to serve the monarch again in the afterlife. China also has a complete burial procedure. If the old prime minister was willing, Liu Ju could place him in his own imperial mausoleum.

Gongsun Hong shook his head again, "I should not refuse the gift from Your Majesty, but I have served Your Majesty for many generations and wish to find peace in the underworld."

Having served four generations of Liu emperors since the reign of Emperor Xiaowen, he is almost drained of all his blood. The supernatural is beyond his knowledge, but he must continue to serve the emperor after his death.
Don't do it!

"Then how can the old prime minister guarantee peace after his death?" Huo Qubing asked.

Gongsun Hong said quietly, "Wear only ordinary clothes for the burial, without any funerary objects. Take Chang'an as the center, walk 100,000 steps, and then bury the coffin." He meant that the coffin should be placed in ordinary clothes for the burial, without any funerary objects. The coffin could be placed anywhere in the four cardinal directions, with Chang'an as the center. The coffin bearers would walk 100,000 steps to reach the burial site, and then the grave would simply be the place where the coffin was placed. If, even in this way, his descendants or grave robbers could still find and dig it up, then he would accept it.

"As a prime minister, his posthumous honors should not be like this..."

Before Huo Qubing could finish speaking, Gongsun Hong said, "There is gain in loss, and that is my wish. I hope Your Majesty will grant my request."

Liu Ju thought for a moment, then nodded and promised: "When future emperors of the Han Dynasty rebuild Chang'an, the limit will be 90,000 steps, with no increase."

The city of Chang'an will grow larger and larger in the future, and it is inevitable that the city walls will be expanded. However, Liu Ju set a limit of 90,000 steps, and the city of Chang'an could not be expanded in any direction beyond this number, so as not to disturb the peace after Gongsun Hong's death.

"Thank you, Your Majesty!" Gongsun Hong kowtowed.

Liu Ju left the embroidered stool and helped the old prime minister back to sit on it. "The Han should thank the prime minister, and I should thank the prime minister."

As the old prime minister was about to pass away, he did something that would be feared and despised by all future rulers. Despite his selfishness as the top meritorious official in the Qilin Pavilion, his sincere loyalty to him was as clear as day.

After the four of them, the emperor and his ministers, calmed down, Gongsun Hong was able to continue, "As for the families of princes and dukes, the families of officials, the clans of gentry, the families of scholars and gentry, the households of wandering knights, and so on, our great Han Dynasty has its own fine traditions. I request Your Majesty to issue an edict to 'move the mausoleum'."

Qin Tingfen, building upon the achievements of six generations, unified the country, implemented the prefecture-county system, abolished all local autonomous government offices such as the vassal states, and even the most basic county magistrates were to be directly appointed and dismissed by the emperor.

However, at the grassroots level below the county level, such as townships, pavilions, and villages, local powerful families could only be elected by rural clans to serve as township heads, pavilion heads, and village heads. Their ruling foundation was very weak. Although the laws were implemented in a strict manner according to Qin law, the local powerful families and clan forces were very stubborn, and the local areas never followed the government's orders and actions.

The patriarchal clan system since the Western Zhou Dynasty has deeply maintained the centrifugal force between the local areas and the imperial court, whether in terms of morality, belief, or actual control.

Especially in the economic sphere, the scholar-official class, the royal family, and the emperor's relatives and other powerful figures could easily grow stronger over time and then influence the central government's decisions through land annexation and other means.

Therefore, after the founding of the Han Dynasty, Emperor Gaozu Liu Bang implemented the political measure of relocating the six powerful noble families of the Chu Kingdom to his mausoleum, Changling, in order to suppress and eliminate the local clan forces of the six states that had been formed over a long period of time during the Warring States period.

This resulted in the illustrious nobles of the six former states, who had been prominent throughout the Qin Dynasty, being rarely mentioned in the Han Dynasty, and to some extent, disappearing altogether.

During the reigns of Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing, the Han Dynasty adopted a policy of resting and recuperating the people and governing by non-interference, which led to the reigns of Emperors Wen and Jing. "In the first seventy years of Your Majesty's reign, the country was at peace. Except for floods and droughts, the granaries in the capital and the countryside were full, and the treasury was overflowing with wealth."

Through the reigns of Emperor Gaozu, Empress Lü, Emperor Wen, and Emperor Jing, the social wealth of the Han Dynasty reached an unprecedented level.

The powerful and privileged elites of the Han Dynasty are bloated with greed and corruption.

In the second year of Yuanshuo, His Majesty issued the decree to relocate to Maoling, ordering all extremely wealthy families with assets exceeding three million coins to move to Maoling, which was essentially a redistribution of wealth.

The ruler's methods were clearly more sophisticated. Not only did he lower the standard of three million coins to one million coins, but he also rebuilt 18,000 magnificent mansions on the original foundations of Jianzhang Palace, Gui Palace, Bei Palace, and Mingguang Palace, intending to sell them to aristocratic families, powerful clans, and the extremely wealthy for 30,000 gold coins.

The powerful and wealthy of the Han Dynasty are in for a treat!
(End of this chapter)