Qiu Ling looked at the palace himself and thought of the past. He had more or less carefully chosen each of his advisers even though his approach had differed a lot from previous kings. It couldn’t be helped. He had grown up alone for the most part and far away from their civilization. Where would he know people to fill those positions immediately upon acceding to the throne as others had in the past? It simply wasn’t possible.

As a result, he took on the burden of ruling the realm by himself. Even though he certainly gave tasks to some people, much of it was done by himself as well as he understood those things. He watched those around closely, slowly learning what he didn’t know before but his trust in others was too low to trust anyone further than that.

The reason he picked Fu Heng and Fu Min as the first two was that he somewhat watched them grow up at the periphery of the palace. After all, Fu Heng was the son of General Ming Wei. Even though she had been gravely injured during the war and couldn’t return to her position even after a long time, her knowledge was there so she could give advice in many situations regarding the upcoming battles or how to deal with the people who had been displaced due to the war.

Qiu Ling had definitely taken advantage of that and lingered around to fill in the gaps left by the sudden stop of his father’s education. Of course, General Ming Wei also made it a point to teach her own son about these things, basically raising the next generation’s general for him. Why wouldn’t he take advantage of that?

Of course, wherever Fu Heng was, Fu Min was never far. And while Fu Min didn’t excel in commanding soldiers and planning battles as Fu Heng did, he found his own adjoining tasks that made him a valuable addition to the team of advisers he envisioned for the future. Seeing how close they were also made him trust in their characters more and that was what he needed the most to feel even somewhat comfortable with those people around him.

Later on, he picked Yi Zan and Qiang Wei from the children of the soldiers residing in the palace for a similar reason: Even though their skills weren’t as deep as Fu Heng’s, they could fill in wherever they were needed and their close bond let them work together easily. With two pairs of advisers, he also felt that he himself would get a lot less attention.

Xiang Yong was the only one who came to him on his own accord, showing off the skills he had learned specifically to work as an adviser. At first, he had doubted his intentions and worried that he might have exposed something but after watching for a while, he still felt that he couldn’t pass up on someone with such well-rounded skills so he finally accepted him.

It seemed odd to think about it now but when picking advisers, his idea had always been that when put together they should possess all the skills needed to govern the realm so that if he vanished one day to go into hiding again, they’d be able to come together and lead the dragon race without issues. With only the first four, this would have been impossible but Xiang Yong filled a large gap in their available knowledge and skill, making this ideal almost reachable. The only thing lacking was an actual scholar who could venture into new territory for them.

When governing a realm for a long time, there would always be new situations you were confronted with. A large base of knowledge even outside your direct responsibilities was indispensable to deal with them successfully and circumvent potential drawbacks or even dangers. Of course, you could always consult experts from the outside but more often than not, being familiar with a topic even in general terms was necessary to help you figure out what questions needed to be asked. The advisers he had until then weren’t well-rounded enough. What he needed was a person who was interested in everything there was to know and wanted to continue learning every day of their life.

Finding such a person was definitely the toughest part about finding his advisers. After all, most scholars had a special area of interest, even if they indeed learned a little more about other topics than the average person. But that wasn’t what he wanted. Ideally, he wanted someone who was willing to study everything as much as their time allowed. Even if not everything, it should be a wide variety of interests. At the same time, he needed someone who could work with the others. Someone who was too focused on their research and stand-offish with others wouldn’t do.

Picking An Bai … even though it must have seemed like he picked him randomly, he had actually kept an eye on the scholars for a while and this person was who stood out to him. He had still been young and maybe that was why his approach differed a little from others but he caught him studying different topics several times which made him pay more attention.

Admittedly, the main reason he finally chose him … it was An Bai’s admiration for Jinde. Part of the collection in the library of the dragon king’s palace were books annotated or even written by Jinde himself. The local scholars knew but it wasn’t necessarily advertised so outsiders were usually unaware. As a result of that, he caught An Bai finding one of those books and the way his eyes lit up and how he excitedly talked about it later with one of the others allowed him to see how high his opinion of Jinde was.

In Qiu Ling’s eyes, Jinde had been a great king and a great person to boot. Admiring him … that spoke for the person’s character so he finally just barged into that room, pointed at him, and asked him to be his adviser. No matter how random it seemed, it had been because he managed to touch the part of his past deeply buried in his heart and his memories. The part that he would think of whenever he took a moment to look at the palace up front.