Beijing's imperial palace, sacred and solemn, reflects the dazzling sunlight in the slightly chilly morning breeze of spring.

Ding Yuntong, the supreme decision-maker of the empire and the supreme emperor, was sitting in the depths of the palace at the moment, quietly reviewing the secret telegrams sent from all over the country.

The surroundings of the palace are tightly covered by curtains, and the silence seems to have begun since ancient times. But here, Ding Yuntong can completely grasp all the events in the empire through the eyeline that is densely spread throughout the empire, and through several systems that are not subordinate to each other, such as the Military Justice Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Propaganda Department. The entire intelligence network is like a huge spider web, and Ding Yuntong is located in the center of the network.

He commands the Empire, he holds the lifeblood, and every command he issues is like a mathematical formula, simple, blunt, absolute, and unquestionable.

At this time he gave a new order: cut the braids.

It was a long-held dream, but it wasn't really realized until now.

In this chaotic, complex and confused torrent of times, cutting braids is just a small stone, which can't stir up much waves, everyone has been tossed exhausted or refreshed, either the clouds are soaring, or there is no place to die, and not many people are willing to fight for a pig's tail.

In the northwest of the empire, in the snowflakes in the sky, under the "exhortation" of whips and sticks, tens of thousands of people were working frantically, and in the sky above their heads, large slogans fluttered "The laborer is the most glorious!" ＂。

Some of these people were rich peasants, some were middle peasants, some were landlords, some were intellectuals, and some were family members of officials who had lost power, but here they had a common name "laborers" and they were being "educated" in their labor.

They are just a microcosm, they represent the millions of builders.

In the Central Plains of the empire, there were construction sites everywhere, red flags everywhere, gongs and drums everywhere, and crowds of people everywhere. Millions of workers are working non-stop.

Ding Yuntong has clearly told the Propaganda Department:

"We must occupy the ideological position, if we do not occupy it, the enemy will occupy it. ＂

"Anyway, happiness will come sooner or later, this is already a historical necessity. ＂

"There is no longer a need for the people to think, they only live for the sake of - the necessity of history. ＂

"It is necessary to use the radio, the loudspeaker, the gongs and drums, the slogans, all the voices to occupy the workers' spare time, so that they can truly understand the meaning of life, and eliminate all superfluous boredom, irritability, depression, and anxiety. ＂

In the blizzard, in the drifting rain, in the wind, in the scorching sun, in the lightning and thunder, the workers are working frantically. The sound of gongs and drums, shouts, and shouts filled their eardrums and completely deprived them of their thinking.

They don't think, they can't think, like herds of animals, in unison, working collectively, eating collectively. Non-stop work, crazy work, as if to get eternal salvation in this vast wasteland, in the factories that have risen from the ground.

Again, they are just a microcosm, and they represent hundreds of millions of people throughout the empire.

The people, too, are unable to think, and they have to rely on others to point out the meaning of their own lives, to get rid of the hesitation and confusion in the face of the tide of the times.

On April 19, 1883, late at night, on the horse road in front of Daba Mountain on the Sichuan-Shaanxi border, Tan Sitong, the once ambitious and enthusiastic young man, was half-leaning on an ox cart at this time, looking tired and gloomy, looking at Shijie beside him with blank eyes.

Although it was early spring, the whole field was still lifeless, and it was eerily silent, as if it had not yet woken up from hibernation. The sunflowers on the side of the road were wilted by the cold wind and fell to the ground weakly, and they were lifeless like zombies. The moonlight is cold, reflecting this blue-gray shijie, as if time and space are frozen for a while.

Tan Si's passion for the heart has receded, and the blood in his whole body has cooled. In the past six months or so, he seems to have spent in a nightmare, all his ideals, all his beliefs, and all his beautiful expectations have been shattered by the cruel reality.

Hunger, hunger everywhere.

Death, death everywhere.

He saw with his own eyes countless people who had been starved to death, and before they died, their faces swollen like large pumpkins, and their upper and lower eye bubbles like huge pus, with a bag of water inside. The living, walking aimlessly, shaking their bodies, pausing for a few seconds with each step. Their mouths were swollen and grinning, and their hair stood on end. The noise changed, and when he spoke, he made a high-pitched sound like a puppy barking.

The famine, in fact, began in the month of Layue. All the people, whether they were once rich peasants or poor peasants, on both sides of the struggle against each other, zuihou were suffering from hunger, because all the grain, even the seeds, was taken away.

People go to the grass beach to dig wild vegetables, pick grass seeds, boil and eat them. When they saw a lizard, they caught it and burned it or boiled it, and some people died of poisoning. Some people eat too much grass seeds, can't defecate, their stomachs bulge like a leather ball, and zuihou is swollen to death.

The bodies of the deceased were even pulled out of the ground by people who were mad with hunger, who cut open their stomachs and cut off their internal organs, and cut off the flesh on their thighs and buttocks. Some people hide behind the sand piles and burn the hay to eat, while others quietly dry and store them to eat slowly.

Tan Sitong had read the "cannibalism" and "eating by changing children" mentioned in the history books, but he never imagined that he would see it with his own eyes in this magnificent era.

And it is not a natural disaster that causes all this, but a man-made disaster, a worker of iniquity, and the perpetrator of iniquity includes himself.

On the one hand, there is extreme hunger, and on the other hand, extreme cruelty.

With the deepening of policy implementation, the contradictions and antagonisms between the government and the people have become more and more acute. The students and activists in the working group, with the support of the government's armed forces, frequently took tough measures against those "nail households" who failed to sell grain as they demanded, and "went door-to-door to coerce and clean up the tails." They shouted the slogan: "If you don't sell grain, you will rebel!" "No one will believe the farmers' claims that there is no surplus of food, and every family is being dug three feet into the ground

After a large number of deaths, the food was eventually swept away.

On March 19, Tan Sitong wrote a letter addressed to Yan Fu, a famous scholar whom he admired. In the letter he wrote: "Here I have seen people dying of starvation. I saw women and children with swollen bellies and blue skin, and they had not yet breathed despite the loss of their eyes. Everywhere there were corpses, corpses, corpses wrapped in torn sheepskins, corpses covered with torn blankets, corpses in the fields, corpses lying in the snow....... And the people who are still alive, both adults and children, have edema, and they eat whatever they catch, such as animal carcasses, oak bark, and roots of swamp plants, and other things that should not be eaten. ＂

Describing the peasants who had been expelled from their homes and sent to work as coolies, the letter said: "It was the middle of winter, and among them were nursing babies and pregnant women, who were stuffed into carts and stacked with people, and where the women gave birth to their children...... Lice are rampant, freezing and starving, and thousands of people are abandoned like dogs, at the mercy of fate, and no one wants to pay attention to them...... Dozens or more children die every day. ”

Tan Sitong issued an angry question in the letter, as if he was asking Yan Fu, like asking himself, like asking the sky, like asking the land of Mangyuan:

"If ordinary individuals can't feel the happiness brought by a strong country, then what's the point of a strong country?

If all the poor people have lost hope for the future, then what hope is there for this country? ＂

Little did he know that the entire region was censored for letters, and the day after the letter was sent, he was arrested by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. During the interrogation that night, he broke one rib and was blind in one eye. Subsequently, the Ministry of Internal Affairs ruled him a dangerous element and sent him to a concentration camp.

In the dark dungeon, Tan Sitong swore that I would go to Beijing! I'm going to see the emperor! Only a great emperor can save a people in suffering! Only the holy bixia can change everything in this darkness!

On the way to escort, Tan Sitong took advantage of the guards' inattention and escaped under the cover of several prisoners. He climbed over swamps, over cliffs, swam through rushing rivers, and through dark forests.

The sacred belief of seeing the emperor and saving the people sustained his soul and made him hold on painfully. Outside a steamer on the Wujiang River, he saw a portrait of the emperor, and he knelt by the river, praying with tears in his eyes: "Let me see him!" Let me meet the Great Monarch! Because he is the most just, he loves the people the most, he will listen to me, only he can change all this, and he should do the same. ＂

At the port of Wujiang, a kind fisherman stopped him from proceeding. The fisherman told him that there were spies in front of him, searching for fugitives like him, and that there was only one way to die.

The fisherman also told him that there was once a fugitive like him who had also been here. The man was even an official of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and because of the torture of conscience, he refused to kill. Later, he had to become a criminal himself, and escaped from prison so that he could see his family.

According to the official, all this was "the will of our great saint himself."

Tan Sitong asked about the fate of the official, and the fisherman replied: "Who knows, maybe he is dead, who can be spared?" Look at the poor guys by the river! ＂

There are some corpses piled up on the tidal flats along the river, which were washed down from the upstream during the high tide of the spring flood, and most of them are mutilated, and it is not known whether they are eaten by people, fish, birds, and beasts.

All this made Tan Sitong doubt his beliefs, and he muttered to himself: "Isn't there justice and fairness in this shijie?" ＂

The fisherman said sadly: "I have seen enough justice here, I have seen enough justice, and if I go forward, there is no way out!" ＂

Eventually, at the fisherman's suggestion, Tan gave up Jihua, which was heading along the Wujiang River to Wuhan, and turned north, over Daba Mountain, and finally climbed into an ox cart that delivered grass.

He didn't know where he was going or what he was going to live for.

The whole land was dead silent, the whimper of wild dogs could be faintly heard in the distance, the sky seemed to be frozen by the cold moonlight, and three or two crows circled in the air, letting out a gloomy howl

On earth, or in hell.