"My family is not far from Xiling. I am a very ordinary child from a big mountain valley. I only have a few vegetable plots at home. I grow vegetables and sell them on weekdays. My parents have to rent a few acres of land for farming..."
"A family like ours is as fragile as mosquitoes in summer. The smallest thing will break up the family. My father became ill from overworked farming, and my mother really couldn't support me, so she had no choice but to let me get stabbed and become a eunuch... …”
"Haha... I was only that old at that time, and I didn't even know what it meant to be stabbed. My childhood memory is just one word... hungry!"
"I'm hungry...I've been looking for food since I was a child, flying in the sky, running on the ground, growing in the grass, I've tried almost everything..."
"Later I heard that if you cut off the place where you pee, you can avoid starvation for the rest of your life! I wish I could just cut it off with a kitchen knife..."
Zai Chun only knew that Er Mao said that he had Xiao Letian rescue him before entering the palace and saved his life from Eunuch Zheng. However, this was the first time he had heard from Er Mao about what happened before Er Mao purified himself.
He had asked before when he was a child, but Er Mao was still afraid of the strict rules in the Forbidden City at that time. He would never dare to tell the little emperor about the real darkness of the people, and could only talk about the good side of the pastoral scenery.
Tell me about the interesting things you did when you were herding sheep for the landlord's family, such as playing pranks and hiding sheep dung eggs in black dates to trick the landlord's silly boy into eating them.
There are also catching fireflies in summer, catching fish in the river, and various birds and animals in the mountains...
Er Mao was Zai Chun's first window to understand the people, but at that time, Er Mao's shop was stained glass, and he automatically filtered a lot of darkness for Zai Chun.
Today, Er Mao didn't want to hide it. "Children from poor families have no future. Do you know what standards children who can study must at least meet?"
"At least the child who is studying must have five acres of land in his family, be a farmer, and the family must not have too many people. Only then can parents support a child to study!"
"They say that studying changes your destiny, but Your Majesty, you know that the price of a writing brush in our countryside can be exchanged for half a pocket of sweet potatoes!"
"Our life actually has no way out. If we castrate ourselves in exchange for entering the palace to have enough to eat, I thought at the time that it was actually a very cost-effective business!"
"But I didn't expect that a stupid kid like me who wanted to enter the palace would be exploited by an old eunuch who asked me for five taels of silver! Your Majesty, haha... If my family still had five taels of silver, would it be possible for me to get stabbed and become a eunuch?"
Er Mao shook his head, "I'm not complaining, that's all in the past, and I'm not complaining to His Majesty. In fact, what I want to say is that I'm so miserable, but compared to those of me who were young, I'm still lucky!"
"My brother Liu, who grew up with me herding sheep, later heard that he was sold by his family to dig coal in a Shanxi coal mine!"
"My sister next door, who is four years older than me, has a beautiful big black braid. She made some good tortillas at that time... What happened in the end? Hahaha..."
"In order to buy a wedding gift for her brother and build a house...her parents sold her to the city for ten taels of silver and used her as a concubine!"
"Where is the concubine? Later, I sent someone to find out. The sister next door was actually sold to the Eighth Alley in the capital. Her parents were afraid of being embarrassed and afraid of others poking their backs, so they said she was being treated as a concubine!"
"Now I am considered a prominent figure in the capital... How many people did I mobilize to look for this sister? None of them were found, neither alive nor dead..."
"Your Majesty, don't believe in the nonsense of the prosperous times...the things that happened in the Capital Iron Factory are happening every day in the Qing Dynasty. Don't think that I am alarmist!"
Zai Chun's face turned pale, and he gritted his teeth and retorted, "It's... not that bad, right?"
"Hahaha... Your Majesty! I am lucky enough to fly to the sky and see the scenery at a higher level. What can the people at the bottom see?"
"If you don't believe it, then please ask the Ministry of Household Affairs to adjust the schedule. How many times has Yixian County been exempted from money and food due to floods and droughts since the Daoguang period?"
"I have checked that since I was born, the court has actually exempted me three times... Why has it never happened to our family once?"
"Regardless of floods or droughts, the government forces food collectors to send people to the village again and again. The rich landlords in the village will force us to pay for food!"
"Hahaha... Your Majesty, where do you think all the money and food that was obtained by forcing people to die have gone?"
"The imperial court exempted it, but the local government still took it. Who dares not to give it? I remember that several landowners in the neighboring village united with several scholars to go to the capital to file a complaint..."
"But this group of people were captured by the guards of Xiling before they even left the boundaries of Yi County. They said they stole the trees from the imperial mausoleum and secretly communicated with the bandits... In the end, two people lost their heads, and everyone else also Dispatched to the army!"
"Why are the guards of Xiling able to interfere in civil affairs? Do you think they got any money from it? How come Mr. Lian, the man who tried to rob Mrs. Hu Niu and Hu, was so rich?"
"Your Majesty! The Qing Dynasty is ten thousand times darker than you think. Do you really think the world is peaceful?"
Only Ermao, an alien in the Forbidden City, dared to talk to the emperor like this. He showed no mercy at all, leaving Zai Chun speechless and his face turning white and red!
"You...then you mean to ask me to deal with it strictly?"
Er Mao smiled bitterly, "Wrong... I didn't mean that. I told His Majesty these things, but the purpose is actually the opposite. I don't want Your Majesty to strictly investigate!"
"Haha... Because I don't want His Majesty to be defeated by those people in the end! You have to know that their power is too great, and they are so intricate that they are not just one or two people..."
"Your Majesty! You are still young, you are still young... You really can't fight them right now!"
Er Mao really used his friend's heart to persuade Zai Chun today, "I don't want to flatter him, and I don't want to say nice things to His Majesty... I just want to tell His Majesty that you have to wait and be patient..."
"You can't take risks forever, not just by luck!"
Zai Chun's face was stunned, and gradually turned ugly. "You...you always thought that I got to where I am today by luck? Is this how you view me?"
Er Mao heard the emperor's anger but he didn't want to give in. He wanted to tell the truth, "That's right! Your Majesty, you have won the battle time and time again, and the six points are all luck!"
"The opponents you face always fail to kill you by mistake! You must know that the conservative forces in the court are far more powerful than you think!"
"You know? I sweat for His Majesty every time! It's such a fluke..."
"That's enough!" Zai Chun said irritably, "Why don't you even believe me? It doesn't matter if others question me, why are you questioning me too?"
"What did I do wrong? After I took office, I implemented the industrial plan, won a great victory in the northwest, and the Tsarist Russia and France retreated...attracting funds from other countries..."
"This gives me ample financial resources to carry out reforms and train new troops!"
"The Yulin New Army, Guaizima, and the adapted Xishan Battalion are all powerful armies in my hands! Isn't all this a real achievement?"
"In your eyes, this is all luck? Is this luck? You have disappointed me so much... Go and have a rest. You don't need to serve me here anymore!"
Zai Chun suddenly lost his temper and kicked Er Mao out without letting him speak.
