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

Everyone was still pondering the content of Shen Moyan's previous lesson.

The sky had already brightened again, and Shen Moyan picked up the chalk once more.

"In the last lesson, we talked about the common root of ancient Greek tragedy and Thunderstorm, which is the feeling of powerlessness that people feel when faced with an overwhelming force."

Now we need to ask a further question: Are these two feelings of powerlessness really the same?

She wrote two words side by side on the blackboard: the fate of ancient Greece vs. the order of the Zhou family.

"It's different." She put down the chalk, her tone firm. "This 'difference' is precisely the most unique value of Cao Yu's 'Thunderstorm' as a modern Chinese drama."

She pointed to the word on the left.

"The fate faced by the ancient Greeks was the personification of natural forces: storms at sea, barren land, and the spread of plagues. These things had no will, no purpose, and no morality."

Poseidon created a giant wave that drowned an entire ship of people, not because he hated anyone on board, but simply because he had a fight with a god, or was just in a bad mood.

Ancient Greece's fate was blind; it lacked focus.

She paused for a moment.

"Because it is blind, it is fair; it crushes everyone indiscriminately, no matter what you have done or what kind of person you are."

Oedipus did everything right, yet fate still struck. But conversely, fate doesn't specifically target a particular type of person to crush.

In ancient Greek tragedies, there was no moral distinction between those who survived and those who were crushed.

You live not because you were right, and you die not because you were wrong; fate doesn't choose.

She turned around, pointed to the word on the right, and her tone became serious.

"But the order in Zhoupuyuan was artificial."

It is not a blind, natural force; it is a conscious, purposeful, and biased system.

It is established by specific people, serves specific people, and protects specific people.

She picked up the chalk and drew a horizontal line under the word "order".

"The cruelest part of this system is precisely this: it doesn't indiscriminately crush people; it selects them."

Under the sky, Liu Che's knuckles stopped at the edge of the wine cup, and he did not strike it again.

The words "crushing and picking and choosing" were more alarming to him than anything else he had heard before, because he knew that anything that could be manipulated could be used for his own purposes. Fate could not be bought, but order could.

Li Shimin was also thinking about the same thing, but he was thinking about it from a different perspective. He was the one who established the order and made the rules. The laws, the imperial examinations, and the military system of the Tang Dynasty were all part of the order. And the order must select people, otherwise it cannot be controlled.

He gazed at Shen Moyan's calm, unwavering eyes in the sky and suddenly realized that what she was about to say was likely an interrogation of all those who established order.

The old farmer hadn't thought that far ahead. His life experience told him that the yamen gates faced south, and if you had reason but no money, you shouldn't come in. There was always a bias. He was just waiting for Master Shen to say which specific bias.

Shen Moyan drew a table on the blackboard.

The table has seven rows and two columns. The left column contains names: Sifeng, Zhou Chong, Zhou Ping, Shiping, Fanyi, Lu Gui, and Zhou Puyuan. The right column is left blank.

"Let's do something," she said, picking up a piece of chalk and pointing to the first name, "and match the ending of 'Thunderstorm' with what each person represents."

She moved the chalk over Sifeng's name.

"What does Sifeng represent?" She pointed to the first name, "Instinct. She fell in love with Zhou Ping, which is the instinct of youth. She got pregnant, which is the instinct to continue life."

She had no schemes or plots; she only wanted to be with the one she loved. But her instincts violated the taboos of the order: a maid and a young master cannot fall in love, and the boundaries of class are more insurmountable than human instincts.

So she was eliminated.

She pointed to the second name.

What does Zhou Chong represent? Ideals.

He is the only person in the entire play who has no secrets, no scheming, and no corruption.

He wanted to take Sifeng to see the sea, he wanted to support Sifeng's schooling, and he truly believed that people could transcend class and break free from constraints.

His ideal was pure and selfless, but the order did not allow for the existence of pure ideals, because ideals themselves are a negation of reality.

If you believe that people can be equal, you are saying that the existing inequalities are wrong.

So he was eliminated.

She pointed to the third name.

What does Zhou Ping represent? Struggle.

He is the most conflicted character in the entire film because he is neither a complete victim nor a complete perpetrator; he is caught in the middle.

His relationship with Fanyi made him feel guilty, and his feelings for Sifeng made him yearn for a new life. He wanted to escape, to take Sifeng away, and to start over.

But his struggle was weak and incomplete; he lacked the courage to defy his father face to face and the courage to tell Fanyi the truth.

He wanted to be a good person, but he couldn't. It wasn't that he lacked conscience; his conscience was crushed by the established order.

So he was eliminated.

She pointed to the last two names.

"Shi Ping represents forbearance. She has endured for thirty years, ever since the day she was driven out of the Zhou family."

She didn't make a fuss, beg, or seek revenge; she raised her daughter on her own.

She is a quintessential traditional Chinese woman: kind, resilient, and submissive, believing that enduring hardship will eventually lead to a better future.

But what did her forbearance bring her? It resulted in her two sons attacking each other and her daughter repeating the same mistakes.

The string she had held back for thirty years snapped, and that's why she went mad.

"Fanyi represents resistance, the most powerful resistance. She is not silent, she does not endure, she does not accept her fate. She chases after the Lu family and tears Zhou Ping's face apart."

She pushed Zhou Chong in front of everyone, trying to stop their elopement. She called Zhou Puyuan, wanting to use him to break up Zhou Ping and Sifeng. She did everything she could.

But her resistance was a resistance within a cage; all her weapons came from the order she hated. She used her status as the wife to suppress Sifeng, her status as the father to suppress Zhou Ping, and her status as the legal mother to summon Zhou Chong.

The more fiercely she resisted, the more a cruel truth was revealed: she had nothing but this cage.

Resistance within the cage was doomed to failure, so she went mad.

She put down the chalk and turned to the whole class.

"Now you see, instincts have been erased, ideals have been erased, struggles have been erased, forbearance has failed, resistance has failed, so who is left to survive?"

Her finger landed on the last name, and instead of answering herself, she gestured for the whole class to say it together.

"Zhou Puyuan." Several voices rang out at the same time.

"Anything else?"

"Lu Gui," someone added.

"Yes." Shen Moyan wrote in the column to the right of the two people: "Maintainers of order and parasites."