In the spring of the thirty-fourth year of Qianlong's reign, Empress Xiaoxian's nephew Fukang'an knelt down to receive a blood-stained yellow silk imperial edict.
A nine-year-old child would not have thought that this would be the starting point for him to become the "living seal" of the empire——
He is a knife warmed by the emperor's body temperature
From the blood and fire of Jinchuan to the raging waves of Taiwan, from the Buddha's light in the snow to the miasma of the Miao border, new patterns are embroidered on the dragon robe for every victory. When Si Tuan Long was replenishing his clothes, he felt the dense stitches on the inside of his clothes, which were the names of the fallen soldiers in the past forty years.
He is a secret envelope that can never be opened.
Zhu Pi from the Yangxin Hall carved the word "loyalty" on his spine, but the memorial sealed with fire paint burned his heart day and night. The curse of the Tibetan lama, the guns and cannons of Nanyang merchant ships, and the prophecies in the nursery rhymes of the White Lotus Sect all reminded him: the so-called "minister of the buttocks" is just the worn-out human-shaped pen washer on the dragon throne.
His was an elaborate sacrifice.
On a rainy night in the first year of Jiaqing, the dying Prince Jiayong clutched his peacock feather and heard the sound of the Western self-ringing bell for the last time. In the sound of cracking like broken porcelain, the scene when I was nine years old emerged——
Qianlong held the cold hand of his father Fu Heng and stuffed the imperial brush dipped in cinnabar into his palm: "The territory of the Qing Dynasty must use human blood as ink pads."
This work will take you on a double expedition - both Fukang'an's physical journey across the Eurasian continent in the eighteenth century, and modern man's spiritual breakthrough through historical myths. When you close the last page, the ticking sound of the Western clock in Yangxin Hall will linger in your ears, just like the ghost of imperial power still lingering in the fabric of contemporary society.
