In the last years of Kangxi, Nalan Mansion suffered heavy losses. The powerful prime minister Mingzhu died of illness, and his son Kuifang also died due to excessive grief. Nalan Kuixu, the only remaining male in the family and the second son of Mingzhu, was still observing filial piety, but unexpectedly received Emperor Kangxi's order to "seize love" and ordered him to be reinstated as censor seven days later.
Kuixu once presented himself as a scholar and elegant, but after this double blow, his temperament changed drastically after his comeback. He gave up all poetry, wine and singing and became a cold and fierce "sharp knife" of the Metropolitan Procuratorate. His impeachment memorial was sharp and sharp, without any twists and turns. It did not avoid the powerful and powerful, regardless of faction. It caused a bloody storm in the court. Everyone said that he was driven mad by grief.
However, the eighth prince Yinhu saw the value of this "crazy knife". He accurately captured Kuexu's only weakness - the two young nephews he raised. Through gentle wooing and cold threats, Yinsu forced Kuixu into the trap step by step.
In order to preserve the family bloodline, Kuexu was forced to surrender. From a "lone minister" who enforced the law impartially, he became the core think tank and mouthpiece of the Baye Party to control public opinion and criticize dissidents. He used his power and the influence of the Hanlin Academy to create a virtuous reputation for Yinhu, and secretly attacked the forces of the princelings and the Fourth Lord Party. The more sinister and cunning he appeared on the outside, the more painful and torn he felt on the inside. This huge contradiction tortured his body and mind day and night, causing him to vomit blood and become ill.
During this period, Prince Yong Yinzhen watched with cold eyes, admiring his early "lonely minister" style, but scorned his later degeneration into a tool of party struggle. Emperor Kangxi used it to crazily rectify the administration of officials.
Kuixu tried to maintain the last bottom line in despair, but in the end he fell deeper and deeper. Finally, at the end of his life, he walked into the court for the last time, abandoned all party positions, spoke out about the current problems in people's livelihood, completed a tragic return to his original intention as a censor, and soon died in office. After his death, Emperor Yongzheng identified him as a "sinister and sycophantic" criminal, and his posthumous title was engraved on a monument. All his achievements and demerits in his life were buried in the dust of political struggle.
PS: 1. The Forty-Eight Party and the Eighth Party Party entered by mistake!
2. This article is not a CP article
Purpose: To tell the tragedy of how an idealist was forced to alienate, struggle and eventually be destroyed under the multiple strangleholds of family responsibilities, political strife and personal conscience. It is intended to profoundly reveal the corrosion of human nature by power and the cruelty of the times.