Chapter 446

After the hour of noon, the side gate to the left of the palace entrance swung open. Feng Zikuan, the steward eunuch, holding the imperial decree, walked alongside Zhou Tieyi as they exited the palace. When it came to matters of the press, Feng and Zhou had collaborated exceptionally well. Now, the establishment of the Central Bank was primarily a balancing act between three competing interests: the Great Xia Emperor, the Confucianists, and Zhou Tieyi himself. Consequently, Zhou Tieyi had suggested that the Imperial Household Department, led by Feng Zikuan, should participate and provide the core backbone for the Central Bank. No matter how brilliant Zhou Tieyi’s vision was, creating a department of such scale from thin air required a massive number of mid-to-lower-level officials who were both highly capable and well-versed in economics. This was something the Zhou family—and indeed the entire military nobility—could not provide. They had to go through the Emperor and the Confucianists; no one could circumvent that, just as the Emperor and the Confucianists could not circumvent Zhou Tieyi, the man who had proposed the theory in the first place, when launching the bank. However, times had changed. Even while walking side-by-side with Zhou Tieyi, Feng Zikuan quietly yielded half a step, a gesture of deep respect.