Inside the Palace of Heavenly Purity, Emperor Kangxi set down his brush and rubbed his neck. Spotting Crown Prince Yinreng peering through the doorway, he barked, "Get in here! Sneaking around without an announcement—where are your manners?"
Despite the harsh words, the Emperor's tone lacked genuine reprimand. Yinreng entered with calculated ease. "I am simply assessing if my Imperial Father is too occupied to receive his birthday gift's full report."
Kangxi chuckled, lightly tapping his son's head. "The silage project is excellent. Its strategic value in controlling the steppe cavalry rivals the hybrid rice." He looked at Yinreng affectionately. "What reward do you seek?"
"I merely require you to acknowledge the contributions of my operative, Ling Guang, who manages the Shandong facility, and the Fourth Brother, Yinzhen, whose innocent question sparked the concept," Yinreng replied smoothly.
Kangxi raised an eyebrow. "Is this why you insisted on bringing a five-year-old on a classified field inspection? To claim credit for him?"
"Not credit, Imperial Father. I seek a specific authorization," Yinreng corrected. "I request the Fourth Brother be granted early enrollment into the Imperial Library."
Standard protocol dictated princes began formal education at age six. Yinzhen was five and a half.
Kangxi looked skeptical. "Why the rush for a mere six months?"
Yinreng deployed his prepared justification. "He exhibits exceptional cognitive aptitude. When Ling Guang and I discuss foundational mechanics or mathematics, Yinzhen grasps the underlying logic immediately. He should not be held back by arbitrary age restrictions. After all, I enrolled early."
"You enrolled early because you threw a tantrum," Kangxi retorted.
Yinreng blinked. 'Error: Memory not found.'
[System Interjection: Host, during the initial binding sequence, I synchronized your first six years of biological memory. Prior to your past-life memory restoration, you were highly competitive. When the First Prince flaunted his studies, you cried in your blankets until the Emperor permitted your early enrollment. The data logs are intact.]
Kangxi corroborated the System's humiliating data. "You cried until your eyes swelled. The servants were terrified. You were quite pathetic."
Yinreng suffered a rare, catastrophic failure in facial management. His face flushed dark red. Humiliated by his own pre-awareness childhood logic, he turned on his heel and marched toward the door.
Kangxi roared with laughter.
A moment later, Yinreng stiffly reversed his trajectory and returned to the desk. "You have not answered the request, Imperial Father."
Suppressing a smile, Kangxi relented. "Approved. If he possesses the intellect, he may begin."
Yinreng immediately capitalized on the concession, closing the trap. "Given his aptitude, I intend to personally tutor him in advanced subjects. My schedule is volatile, meaning lessons will often occur late at night. Therefore, he will sleep in my Yuqing Palace rather than returning to Chengqian Palace."
Kangxi nodded, missing the operational reality. He assumed Yinreng meant occasional sleepovers. In truth, Yinreng had just secured an Emperor-sanctioned mandate to permanently extract Yinzhen from his abusive adoptive mother, Consort Tong. She could not protest an academic arrangement ordered by the Emperor himself.
"Agreed," Kangxi dismissed the logistical detail.
"Now, onto matters of state security," Yinreng announced, his demeanor shifting instantly from a petulant child to a calculated statesman. "Regarding the technical manuals left by my Grandfather, Emperor Shunzhi. You have secretly commissioned scholars to decode them, haven't you?"
Kangxi's expression hardened. "I have. And the results are non-existent."
"Expected," Yinreng stated. "Those texts are fragmented data logs from a destroyed System. They lack transitional logic—one chapter details basic agriculture, the next jumps to automated combustion engines. More importantly, Imperial Father, you assigned the wrong demographic to the task."
Kangxi frowned. "I assigned the brightest minds in the empire."
"You assigned classical scholars," Yinreng corrected. "Men who have spent decades mastering Confucian philosophy, history, and poetry. The texts require knowledge of physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering. Asking a classical philosopher to reverse-engineer advanced mechanics is like asking a poet to perform surgery. The cognitive frameworks are fundamentally incompatible."
"I am aware of the difficulty," Kangxi sighed. "But these technologies are disruptive. If I recruit unknown mechanics from the civilian sector, the knowledge could leak. The technology must remain a monopoly of the State."
"It will," Yinreng assured him. "The State already claims the prestige of hybrid rice, cement, and silage. We must institutionalize this knowledge. Offer high official ranks and massive salaries for mechanical and scientific aptitude. Talented individuals will flock to the throne. 'Learn the martial and literary arts to sell to the Imperial Family.' Science is no different."
Yinreng paused, navigating a delicate political variable. "For example, the Han weaponsmith Dai Zi recently developed a 28-round repeating firearm. The manuals contain advanced ballistic data. He should be given access."
"Firearms are different," Kangxi warned instantly. "They conquer cities. I will consider it."
Yinreng did not push. He specifically omitted Ferdinand Verbiest, the Jesuit missionary currently serving the court. While Verbiest possessed the requisite scientific background, his ultimate loyalty lay with his foreign church and homeland. Giving foreign operatives advanced weapons schematics was a catastrophic security risk. Dai Zi, a Qing subject, was a safer investment for future militarization.
"Relying solely on existing adult scholars is a stopgap measure," Yinreng pivoted to his ultimate objective. "Adult minds are rigid, locked into the Confucian paradigm. We need blank slates. We need to overhaul the imperial education system."
Kangxi's eyes narrowed. "Explain."
"Ling Guang and I will establish a new curriculum within the Imperial Library focusing strictly on physics, chemistry, and mathematics. We will mandate enrollment not just for the Princes, but for the young sons of the Eight Banners nobility. Young minds absorb new paradigms easily.
"This creates an exponential cascade. Ling Guang and I teach ten students. Those ten master the foundation and teach a hundred. If even three of those hundred possess genius-level aptitude, they will invent technologies that ensure the Qing Dynasty's absolute supremacy."
Yinreng leaned forward, pressing the geopolitical reality. "Furthermore, the Eight Banners are degrading. Peacetime is breeding decadence and laziness among the Manchu youth. Forcing them into a hyper-competitive, scientifically rigorous academic environment—backed by mandatory physical and martial training—will cull the weak and forge a disciplined new generation. We must do this, Imperial Father, because war is inevitable."
The mention of war darkened Kangxi's gaze.
"The Dzungar Khanate under Galdan is expanding. He intends to resurrect Genghis Khan's empire," Yinreng analyzed coldly. "The Khoshut Mongols in Tibet and Qinghai are fracturing into ambitious, unstable factions. They have already probed our borders.
"Silage is a logistical deterrent. It prevents them from starving, but it does not make them submit. To crush nomadic empires, we cannot rely solely on matching their cavalry. We require an overwhelming technological overmatch."
Kangxi tapped his fingers on the desk, the silence heavy. He recognized the truth in Yinreng's assessment. The decadence of the Eight Banners was a growing tumor; the Mongol threat was a looming storm.
Seeing the Emperor's internal alignment, Yinreng smiled faintly. His overarching strategy was now in motion.
He could not build a modern superpower alone. He needed an entire generation of engineers, chemists, and physicists. By manipulating the geopolitical threats and the Emperor's paranoia, Yinreng had just laid the foundation to transform the Qing Dynasty from an agrarian philosophical state into an industrialized, scientifically literate empire.