I am not Yuan Shu

Chapter 294 Zhang Jian Can't Control
Yuan Shu’s meaning was very clear.

Settle old scores!
Bring me up old accounts!
Zhang Jian is not a perfect man without any dark material. Zhang Jian is a guy with dark material. Dig deep into his dark material and spread it out, use this incident to stir up public opinion, attack and condemn him from a moral level, force him to the moral bottom, and let him feel what a rat crossing the street is!

Didn’t Zhang Jian question whether Yuan was sincere as a Han minister?
Aren't we suspecting that Yuan was not a qualified Han minister but a traitor to the Han Dynasty?
Well, before you question the Yuan family, let us first examine whether you have the qualifications to question the Yuan family!

Duan Wei immediately knew what he should do.

It is his duty to supervise all officials in Luoyang.

When something like this happened, he would naturally take the lead and criticize Zhang Jian to the point of condemnation, or even go a step further and make him die socially. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

The reason why the Duan family was able to gain a foothold in Luoyang was all thanks to the help of the Yuan family, or in other words, it was all thanks to the trust of Yuan Shu. Without Yuan Shu's protection, how could they have stayed safe until now?
So Duan Wei prepared to take action.

He ordered his well-trained Zhongdu officials and clerks to take action. All of his trusted subordinates went out to spread rumors about Zhang Jian in the streets and alleys inside and outside Luoyang City and in crowded places.

Why did he not face the eunuchs' sudden attack with courage and fight bravely instead of dying bravely but fleeing for his life? He talked a lot but when it came to a real fight he just ran away. He was as cowardly as a mouse and it was laughable.

It's okay to run for your life, but you should never run to crowded places, ask people to take you in, and provide you with good food, drink and accommodation. You should not run to places like deep mountains and forests where you are not easily discovered.

what's going on?

Can you live comfortably while running for your life?

That would have been fine, but when Cao Jie and other traitors executed those who had been protected by you one after another, you did nothing but run forward, and continued to look for people to take you in, providing you with good food, drink and shelter, and then went on to kill those who were willing to take you in.

You were fleeing while the eunuchs were chasing you all the way. Nearly a hundred families and even officials were implicated in order to protect you. Some were dismissed from office and lost their future, some were unjustly killed, and even worse, their entire family was killed. How miserable is that?
Wherever you went, the locals were slaughtered, causing unrest in the local area. As a result, all the people who helped you died. But you lived a good life, plump and fair with a ruddy complexion, and spoke with full energy, without any sign of sadness on your face.

Did all those who died for you die in vain?
How heartless!
Yuan Shu knew that once these rumors spread in the streets and alleys, they would be extremely damaging to Zhang Jian.

Famous scholars and high-ranking officials of the Han Dynasty had to rely on a certain moral standard to establish themselves and build their image. Once their image collapsed, their power and status would be severely challenged, or even lost.

Whether in the classical era or the medieval era, although society's requirements for morality were not as strict and absolute as in the Ming and Qing dynasties, a person without morality could not conform to the traditional Confucian concepts, and a person with talent but no morality would be criticized and abandoned by society.

Not to mention that one of the party members’ major weapons against eunuchs is their superior moral standards.

No matter who you are, when you have talent, you must never neglect your own moral construction and personality building——

No matter whether you actually have it or not, you have to make others think that you have it and do a good job on the surface. What you do in private is your own business.

Moreover, it’s not that no one cares about what Zhang Jian did before.

For example, Xia Fu, who took refuge with him in Yuanshu Maoling Liangzhuang, once couldn't help but complain that Zhang Jian's actions during his escape were a bit too much and killed too many people.

Xia Fu respected Zhang Jian on the surface, but privately he complained about Zhang Jian's character to Liu Biao many times, making Liu Biao very embarrassed to be caught between the two of them.

However, due to the fact that Zhang Jian was the leader in fighting against the eunuchs and even killed the eunuchs' family members, he was a banner, so people did not criticize Zhang Jian in depth.

But now, the standard-bearer against the eunuchs is no longer Zhang Jian, but the Yuan family, Yuan Feng and Yuan Shu. In this case, Zhang Jian no longer has that uniqueness, and no longer has his invincible golden body.

Therefore, a public opinion storm against Zhang Jian broke out.

It was in the middle and late April of the second year, when Yuan Shu was recruiting soldiers in Luoyang, and the public opinion storm inside and outside Luoyang City was getting more and more intense. In response to a series of events on Zhang Jian's way to escape, there was a fierce public opinion dispute inside and outside Luoyang City, and many people had a heated debate on this matter. The focus of the debate was nothing more than whether it was wrong for Zhang Jian to kill so many people in order to escape.

Some people think that this is not a mistake, and that it is the eunuchs who are wrong, not Zhang Jian.

Some people think that Zhang Jian also had a problem. Why did he escape through the deep mountains and forests but not through the prosperous areas?

You are already running for your life, why do you still care whether the road is easy to travel on or whether there is anyone to take you in?
After some debate, public opinion gradually turned against Zhang Jian. More and more people believed that what Zhang Jian did was wrong and problematic. Among so many party members who escaped, he was the only one who was implicated and killed so many people. It was really wrong.

This trend became even more obvious after people began to compare Zhang Jian's behavior with that of Yuan in late April.

Rumors began to spread in Luoyang City that when the Yuan family was framed by eunuchs and targeted and criticized by so many people in Luoyang, they endured the humiliation and did not take any harsh actions against those who criticized them. They did not kill anyone, and they did not retaliate against anyone afterwards. After killing all the eunuchs, they still maintained a state of good fortune for everyone.

What an honest family this is!

Now let's look at Zhang Jian. He didn't do anything to deal with the eunuchs, but he was very sharp in targeting the Yuan family. Why did he target the Yuan family without even looking at himself? Suspecting the Yuan family?
The main reason was that the Yuan family had been framed by the eunuchs and questioned by the people of Luoyang in the previous round. This time, it quickly awakened everyone's memory of the time when Yuan Shu overwhelmed the heroes of Luoyang and debated with the scholars.

That time and that moment, just like ~ this moment!

Then Zhang Jian couldn't stand it anymore.

Why did public opinion suddenly start to criticize him?
How come he suddenly became the person who was neither a human nor a human?
And he felt that everyone was missing the point.

He criticized the Yuan family because they were monopolizing power and disrespecting the emperor, and because they did not return the real power to the emperor!

What does it have to do with his previous dealings with the eunuchs?
He felt very bad for having implicated so many people in the past, and he had been suffering from the condemnation of his conscience for so many years. Although this condemnation did not exceed his psychological limit, he still had to eat and drink as usual, continue to live his own life, and even find time to criticize the Yuan family.

But this doesn't mean that he doesn't care!
He still cared, and said that he would definitely go and apologize to those people after he died - but that was something after he died, and it was completely different from when he was alive now!

He tried to speak out, saying that what should be paid attention to now is the Yuan family's autocracy, not some personal things that happened to him during his escape. The two should not be confused, right?

If you really want to talk about it, then this is indeed the truth, but it is difficult to stir up a storm of public opinion these days, and it is even more difficult to calm it down. Everyone's attention has been diverted. Zhang Jian wants to control the direction of the public opinion trend with his own strength...

It cannot be said that it is completely impossible, it can only be said that it is impossible at all.

The water was too deep for him to control.

No matter how hard he tries, Yuan Shu, who is controlling the situation behind the scenes, can mobilize thousands of times more resources than him to fight against him. He is more qualified and more capable of controlling the direction of public opinion than him. He is like a fish caught in a net. No matter how hard he struggles, he cannot escape from the terrible fishing net.

At the beginning, there were still people willing to speak for Zhang Jian. In the public opinion field and social occasions, there were still people willing to say a few good words for Zhang Jian, saying that there was nothing wrong with his character and morals, and that the previous problems were the eunuchs' fault, not his.

It was the eunuchs who should be killed, not him.

But some people could not help but ask why other people could die and escape alone, but Zhang Jian implicated so many people, and yet he was still alive and well, still so fat and white, and even able to serve as an official.

Why is he special?

(End of this chapter)