On November 13, the 61st year of Kangxi reign, Changchun Garden. Mingxuan, the third-class imperial guard, witnessed with his own eyes the transfer of power that changed the fate of the Qing Dynasty - Longkodo read out the edict: "The fourth son of the emperor, Yinzhen, has a noble character. I deeply appreciate him and he will be able to inherit the throne."
However, Mingxuan knew that the edict had been changed.
The original "passion to the fourteenth son" was changed overnight to "passion to the fourth son". What's even more bizarre is that before Kangxi died, he secretly handed Mingxuan a yellow box, which read: "If someone tampered with the imperial edict, don't expose it. Watch this country for me."
Yongzheng ascended the throne. Some people say that he killed his father and forced his mother to do so, while others say that he tampered with the imperial edict. But what Mingxuan saw was another Yongzheng - an emperor who only slept for two hours a day, reviewed tens of thousands of memorials with his own hands, and offended the gentry all over the world in order to promote the "shared households" policy. When Yongzheng admitted personally on his sickbed that "I changed the imperial edict," Mingxuan asked, "Your Majesty, do you regret it?" Yongzheng replied, "If I don't become the emperor, the Qing Dynasty will perish within thirty years."
Mingxuan chose to bury the truth forever.
But this is just the beginning. Over the next two hundred years, Mingxuan's descendants - from salt administration officials in the Qianlong Dynasty, to naval admirals in the Daoguang Dynasty, to the Westernizationists in the Tongguang Dynasty and the revolutionaries in the Revolution of 1911 - each stood at the forefront of the times. Some of them chose to protect, some chose to betray, some shed their last drop of blood for this dynasty, and some overthrew it with their own hands.
