A live-streamed Chinese language lesson under the sky—the ancients were taken aback.

Emperor Qianlong sat in the Hall of Mental Cultivation, casually reading through the account of the celestial phenomena, and then let out a sneer.

The laughter was heard by all the civil and military officials in the hall, but no one dared to raise their heads.

Emperor Qianlong stood up, a smug smile on his lips, and glanced at his ministers below.

"I thought that after they overthrew my Great Qing Dynasty, they would establish some kind of peaceful and prosperous era?"

He couldn't stop laughing, and his laughter echoed in the Hall of Mental Cultivation for several seconds before finally subsiding.

"Is this what they call equality for all? Is this the new world they're pursuing? Haha."

"Do you see? Without an emperor, without the proper etiquette between ruler and subject, without the Three Cardinal Guides and Five Constant Virtues, people will become beasts. The rich can drive the poor to their deaths, wives can betray their husbands, and sons can disobey their fathers."

His tone was sarcastic.

"Without a wise ruler like me above to keep order, wouldn't those rich and powerful people devour the poor until there's nothing left?"

"Zhou Puyuan is no more benevolent than I am, and Master Lu is no more compassionate towards the poor than I am. They are more ruthless than I am. At least I still think about the country and its people, while they only think about the rules in their own living room."

He walked up to Heshen, patted him on the shoulder, and said, "Heshen, tell me, what would have happened if Xianglin's wife had been born in the prosperous Qianlong era?"

Heshen immediately bowed and replied, "Your Majesty, according to the established law of this dynasty, if a widow has remained chaste for more than twenty years, the local officials will verify and report the matter, and the court will provide silver to build an archway in her honor. If her family is unable to support her, there are also almshouses and chastity halls in the local area to provide relief. If Xianglin's wife were in this dynasty, she would not have frozen to death on the street."

"Well said." Qianlong nodded in satisfaction, turned back to face the sky, and said with increasing certainty, "This sky is truly laughable. It was clearly them who overthrew my Great Qing Dynasty and distorted the moral order, which caused so much trouble."

What do you call this? It means that with an emperor, the established rites and rituals are benevolent governance; without an emperor, they become cannibalism.

He turned and walked back to the dragon throne, saying one more thing before sitting down, his tone filled with unquestionable confidence.

"If Kong Yiji had lived in the Qing Dynasty, at least he would have had food to eat and could have taken the imperial examinations. Who would have dared to break his legs? If Xianglin's wife had been born in the Qing Dynasty, would her clan have dared to refuse to support her with just one imperial decree? If Zhou Puyuan and Shi Ping had been born in the Qing Dynasty, a servant would be a servant, and a master would be a master. If they broke the rules, they would have been dealt with according to family law. Why did it come to the point of the entire family being wiped out? Their descendants overthrew the emperor, demanding freedom and equality. And what was the result? Freedom to the point of starvation, equality to the point of being crushed to death. Is this what they wanted?"

He sat back on the dragon throne, picked up his teacup, and took a leisurely sip.

Inside the Taiji Hall, Li Shimin was also pondering this question.

"Tianmu previously said that there would be no emperors in later generations. I've been wondering what they relied on to maintain the empire." He turned his gaze from Tianmu's direction to the ministers below the steps. "Now it seems that they didn't manage to maintain it at all."

"Zhou Puyuan, I have met him."

Wei Zheng and Fang Xuanling both looked up at the same time.

"This isn't a play." Li Shimin sat up straight, his gaze sweeping over the ministers below the steps. "In my prefectures and counties, there are retired officials who have returned to their hometowns, powerful clans that have dominated the local area for three or four generations, and gentry who are local emperors behind closed doors."

No one dared to speak.

He looked at the several high-ranking officials below him and said the question word by word: "In the Republic of China of later generations, there were Zhou Puyuan and Master Lu everywhere, those local gentry, those clan chiefs who set up private courts, and those big households who treated tenant farmers like cattle and horses."

My imperial edicts are issued from the Taiji Hall, reaching the prefectures and counties, but it becomes difficult to get them any further down the line.

They collect taxes in the township, resolve disputes in the village, and set rules for the ancestral hall.

I use them, and I guard against them; they are my helpers, and also my adversaries.

(This is somewhat similar to the idea that imperial power does not extend to the county level, but in the Tang Dynasty, the imperial power did attempt to extend to the county level, although it was very difficult.)

"Imperial power does not extend to the county level" is a modern academic concept, mainly used to describe the grassroots governance model during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Its core meaning is that the formal administrative institutions of the state were only established at the county level, and the villages below the county level relied on informal forces such as gentry, clans, and baojia (local security system) to maintain order. However, this model was most mature in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the situation was different in the Tang dynasty.

The grassroots system of the Tang Dynasty was the township system, with townships below the county level. Each township had a township head, and each village had a village head. The village head was responsible for household registration, taxation, and public security, and was a semi-official body. The equal-field system and the rent-labor-tax system from the Northern Wei to the early Tang Dynasty showed that the state had a deeper control over the grassroots than in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

This change in administration has many causes, including demographic differences and land reforms.

Li Shimin stopped, picked up the tea that had gone cold from the table, and took a sip.

"The Republic of China overthrew the emperor, but it did not overthrow these people. They are still here. The rich are still here, and the landowners are still here. The emperor is gone, and they have become the biggest masters. That is the Republic of China."

He stood up, put his hands behind his back, and walked into the hall.

"Without the absolute authority of the emperor, local landlords and gentry would be like wild horses, uncontrollable by the court and unpunishable by the law, because they could buy everything with money. Zhou Puyuan was just a coal mine owner, yet he could act as a local emperor in his own living room."

He turned around and looked at Fang Xuanling.

"Xuanling, tell me, are there more people like Zhou Puyuan, or more people like Shiping?"

Fang Xuanling was silent for a moment, then said, "Zhou Puyuan is the minority, while Shiping is the majority."

"That's right." Li Shimin walked back to his desk, but didn't sit down. He rested one hand on the desk and leaned forward slightly. "A minority oppressing the majority is something that no society can avoid. The difference is that in my time, I am still at the top. I have to accept advice, exercise restraint, and be responsible for the country. But in their time, there were countless Zhou Puyuans oppressing them. None of them accepted advice, none of them exercised restraint, and each of them was only responsible for themselves."

His tone wasn't one of triumph like Emperor Qianlong's, but rather one of deep regret.

His regret was not that the imperial system was overthrown, but that after its overthrow, the ferocious local forces were not checked by any force, and a great emperor was replaced by countless small emperors. In his view, this was not progress.

He walked back to his desk, sat down again, and picked up his vermilion brush.

Just then, Wei Zheng suddenly spoke up.

"Your Majesty, I have been looking through previous records. I remember that Tianmu mentioned an article called 'Delighted to See the Waves of Rice and Beans,' in which a man named Yuan Longping developed hybrid rice in the fields." Wei Zheng raised his head. "This gentleman first developed high-yield rice in 1974."

The hall fell silent.

Li Shimin's hand remained suspended in mid-air, the vermilion brush hovering above the paper, not falling.

He slowly put down his pen, took out the roll of records that had been lying around for several months from the corner of the desk, and unfolded it. It was a record he had someone write down when Tianmu talked about grain production. The final yield of rice was more than 1,000 kilograms per mu. He had checked it several times at the time, thinking that he had misheard.

He placed the two bamboo scrolls side by side on the imperial desk and compared them carefully.

On the left is "Thunderstorm," from 1933, depicting a cruel well where no matter how much the people inside cry out, they cannot escape the darkness.

On the right is "Looking at the Waves of Rice and Beans," which tells the story of a man who bent over in a paddy field to find ears of rice starting in 1974, and how he fed hundreds of millions of people.

"From Zhou Puyuan everywhere, to the emergence of Yuan Longping." Li Shimin's voice was filled with doubt and excitement. "From an old China that pushed people to their deaths, to a new China that allows young people to conduct scientific research in paddy fields."

There must have been a complete transformation during this period.

He stood up and paced around the hall.

"Master Shen said that China in the 1960s was not rich, and people even had not enough to eat. But the fact that a country that had not enough to eat gave money to a scholar to study how to make rice produce more grain is something worth pondering."

Fang Xuanling replied softly, "Does Your Majesty mean that in that era, the people at the bottom of the social ladder were no longer like people at the bottom of a well?"

"It's not that they're no longer," Li Shimin shook his head. "Someone pulled them out of the well, or at least, someone has started to pull them out."

He sat down again, his gaze sweeping back and forth between the three volumes of records.

"Both 'The New Year's Sacrifice' and 'Kong Yiji' were written in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China, when the old order had not yet completely collapsed and people at the bottom were squeezed from both sides."

Thunderstorm was written in 1933. The old order was collapsing, but it was collapsing too slowly. Zhou Puyuan was still sitting in the living room, and the well was still there.

"Looking at the Waves of Rice and Millet" is a story from 1974, about a person who was conducting scientific research in the fields and was recognized as a national hero.

He raised his head, his gaze passing over the palace gate and looking into the distance.

"What exactly happened in those short forty years, from 1933 to 1974? I have a vague feeling that Lu Dahai did not really disappear into the darkness."

After he left Zhou's residence, he must have gone somewhere, met some people, and done something.

Li Shimin looked up at the sky, where the images continued to play, showing Shen Moyan explaining exercises to his students.

"And look, when Master Shen was standing on the platform, the students sitting below had already eaten their fill."

When they were discussing "Thunderstorm," no one was worried about where their next meal would come from.

Their concern wasn't how to survive, but how to live more like a human being.

He turned to several senior officials, his gaze deep and thoughtful.

"From an old China where Xianglin's wives and Kong Yiji were everywhere, to a new China where students can sit in bright classrooms and discuss 'Thunderstorm,' it took less than a hundred years."

He picked up the vermilion pen again, but did not put it down.

"What happened in between? I don't know, but there must be a path, a path that is not the path I took, nor the path Zhou Puyuan took, but a path that pulls people out of the well."

I don't know which way to go, but at least I know one thing...

When he put pen to paper, his strokes were sharp as knives.

"The era of Xianglin's Wife and Kong Yiji was not an eternal iron house; it was broken down, and someone broke it down in less than a hundred years."