In the wax moon of the year of Gengzi, leaving Bailuyuan, Qin Customs took the child who had no mother at birth and embarked on a thousand miles home.

He used a few stonemason tools to exchange for a female goat, and milked the goat every day to feed the child. did not take the old road of the Empress Dowager Cixi, but went east out of Tongguan, along the Yellow River to Luoyang, went to the village to repair farm tools to earn some entanglement, and bought winter clothes and cotton jackets for children. The warm blood jade brought out of the Tang Dynasty Necropolis Palace was always hidden in the depths of the swaddling clothes, providing a faint amount of heat. Pass Kaifeng Mansion to the north, through Zhili Daimyo Mansion, Zhengding Mansion, Baoding Mansion...... The war in the Great Plain of North China had just subsided, and bandits were rampant, but fortunately he was a poor stonemason, and no one could look down on robbing him, except for the she-goat.

When I arrived in Jingshi Shuntianfu, it was close to the Lunar New Year, and the western calendar was 1901. The imperial capital was devastated. The Eight-Nation Coalition stood guard throughout the capital, and the most serious abuses against Chinese were Japan, Russia, and Germany. Qin Customs carried the child around the checkpoint, and in the middle of the night, he climbed over the gap in the wall of Chongwenmen. At dawn, back at the root of the imperial city, the craftsman village had already turned into rubble. Qin Customs found his house from memory and dug out several large pottery urns in the bricks and charcoal, all of which were urgently buried before fleeing. There is a large urn stuffed with thread-bound books, among which there is a hand-copied "Qin's Tomb Craftsman's Jian", which is a family heirloom.

Qin Customs was packing up his things when he heard a scream next door. He went out with his child on his back and saw several German soldiers wearing pointed iron helmets, raping Chinese girls passing by. The Gengzi Incident intensified, and it had to start with the killing of the German minister Klinder. The Kaiser spoke in Berlin, inciting revenge against China. After the Eight-Nation Coalition captured Beijing, German Army General Wadsey ordered a three-day robbery. As long as you see Chinese urinating everywhere, the German army follows the sound of urine is a shot.

Beside this group of German soldiers, there was an interpreter who dissuaded them to no avail. Qin Customs put the child and the goat on the side of the road, wanting to come up and reason. The German soldiers saw that he was burly, thinking that he was a Boxer who had come to seek revenge, and shot him in the chest. The M98 Mauser rifle fired bullets through the diaphragm between his heart and the lobes of his lungs. He was only two millimeters away from death, and he was unconscious on the spot.

When Qin Customs woke up, blood flowed all over the ground, fortunately it was a stonemason, and he was strong and strong, otherwise he would have died.

However, the child is gone.

Qin Customs saw two female corpses, both of which were shot dead after being destroyed by German soldiers. His female goat, who had traveled thousands of miles from Guanzhong to act as a nurse for the child, was also shot and killed. Thinking of the birth of the child, the death of the daughter-in-law, and the difficulties along the way, Qin Customs cried bitterly...... Why don't you stay in Xi'an, stay in Bailuyuan, and run back to the capital occupied by the Eight-Nation Alliance? Is what our ancestors left behind so important?

If it weren't for an Italian doctor passing by, Qin Customs would have died of his injuries that night. He lay in Zhengyangmen Hospital for two months. In the spring of the new year, he searched everywhere for his lost son. He also went to look for the German occupation forces, but as soon as he got closer, they pulled the bolt of his gun, and finally failed to find his son.

In this year, Li Hongzhang signed the "Xinchou Treaty" with the foreign powers on behalf of the Qing court, and paid 450 million taels of silver. Empress Dowager Cixi and Emperor Guangxu left Xi'an and returned to Beijing. They took the last leg of the train and returned to the Forbidden City with a "swagger" under the bayonets of the Eight-Nation Alliance and the escort of Yuan Shikai's Beiyang Army.

Qin Customs also returned to the craftsman village, and he married two more daughters-in-law, who died of illness one after another, leaving no son and half a daughter. The Empress Dowager Cixi rebuilt the mausoleum, and the old craftsmen used by the ancestors were irreplaceable, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs instructed Lao Qin to enter the underground palace to work.

In the thirty-fourth year of Guangxu, in the winter of 1908 in the Western calendar, Emperor Guangxu died in the Hanyuan Hall of Yingtai, Zhongnanhai, and was Chinese New Year's Eve eight years old, and the temple name was Dezong. The next day, the Empress Dowager Cixi died in the Yiluan Hall of Zhongnanhai at the age of seventy-four. Isn't this an afterthought?

At the funeral of Galeries Lafayette in the hazy winter, a Dutch journalist took a set of strange photos of thousands of barmen carrying huge coffins to Tanglin. There were countless eunuchs and paper men in the funeral procession, and the cavalrymen wearing European military uniforms and braids were also paper men and paper horses, and the queue was neat, as if they were controlled by corpse chasers. There is even a papier-mâché fleet, armed with the most advanced dreadnoughts. In a trance, the Qing Dynasty was already a military power in the world, and it could compete with Britain, Germany, France, Russia, the United States, and Japan for hegemony, and finally burned down......

At the same time as the unprecedented funeral was being carried out, hundreds of kilometers away in Xiling, the Chongling Tomb of Emperor Guangxu was also stepping up. Chinese emperors built mausoleums when they were young, and Emperor Wanli built mausoleums in his early twenties. However, Emperor Guangxu failed to build a mausoleum during his lifetime. At the age of three, Pu Yi had inherited the throne and changed his name to Xuantong. The regent Zaifeng is Guangxu's younger brother, he laments his brother's unfortunate life, wants to create a decent mausoleum, and the tomb beast that guards the underground palace for thousands of years.

The Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs played that in the entire Qing Dynasty, only one craftsman was left in the Qin Customs who could create the tomb beast of the Imperial Tomb Town.

As a hereditary royal craftsman, he must obey orders unconditionally, but Qin Customs offered to meet the regent in person. The minister said, "What are you that deserve to see the regent?" Lao Qin said horizontally: "Either you kill me, no one in the whole world can make a tomb beast." ”

"The duck in the tiger's food bowl that dares to stick out its neck - you dare to have a hard mouth?"

Having said that, the Minister of the Interior relented. If the town grave beast fails to make it, or if it makes an impostor, the regent will condemn him.

That year, the regent Zaifeng was only twenty-seven years old, and it was only because he was the father of the three-year-old emperor that he became the dictator of the empire. The first responsible cabinet of the Great Qing State was being prepared, and the regent was troubled by the list of ministers for various ministries, and as a result, it became the notorious imperial cabinet, which is not mentioned later.

On a spring afternoon, the catkins fluttered over the capital, and Zaifeng sat in the West Flower Hall of the private residence of Prince Alcohol, and there was an illusion of snowfall in April.

"What? Or two? Sun Wen and Huang Xing were captured? ”

"No, Lord Wang, it's from Taibai Mountain."

The eunuch's sharp voice made Zaifeng feel disgusted, but when he heard the words "Taibai Mountain", he sat upright and beat his spirit.

In a short time, the two court prisoners were escorted to the bottom of the steps of the West Flower Hall, and they were all six or seven-year-old children, a boy and a woman, with delicate faces and similar appearances, most of them were twin brothers and sisters, and at first glance they looked like boys and girls sacrificed by the people.

"Just two children? Also the court prisoners? ”

The regent walked up to the two children and lifted the little girl's chin with a fan. The kid had big black eyes, and he was not afraid of the dictator of the Qing Empire, but looked at him like a ghost.

Zaifeng hurriedly opened the fan to block the girl's gaze, as if her face was about to be pierced by her gaze.

The old eunuch knelt beside him and said, "Lord Wang, these two children are indeed prisoners of the imperial court. But don't let them fool you. No matter how small a wolf cub is, it is also a wolf species! In order to capture the twin siblings, an unknown amount of silver taels and men and horses have been lost. ”

"I know, Taibai Mountain, it's been so many years, no need to remind!" The regent was under the board, and the fan knocked on the smooth head of the eunuch, "However, the real purpose of this operation, the person that the court is looking for at all costs, is still missing?" ”

"Lord Wang, do you mean Mr. Li's youngest son? Oops, I heard that I went down the mountain before the operation, so I ......"

"Wine bag rice bag!" The regent was furious, and really wanted to drag this eunuch out and cut him down! He forcibly suppressed his anger, looked at the twin children on the ground and said, "What should they do?" ”

"Kill according to the law!"

"Six-year-olds killed? Ridiculous! ”

"You can also be imprisoned first, and when the child reaches the age of fifteen, then the death penalty will be imposed." The old eunuch hesitated twice and said, "However, in order to cut off future troubles, it is better to cut the grass and eradicate the roots as soon as possible, so as not to have many dreams at night and cause greater right and wrong." ”

"Could it be that you can still shake the country of the Qing Dynasty?" The regent Zaifeng looked at the two children and said, "This king wants to implement various reforms in the Qing Dynasty and prepare for the constitution, and then imitate the legislation of Western countries, especially the criminal law." If even a six-year-old child is killed, and it reaches the ears of foreigners in Dongjiaomin Lane, it will be said that the Chinese are barbaric and uncivilized! ”

"Lord Wang, you don't necessarily have to let people go, right?"

The regent paced a few steps and patted the boy on the shoulder with a fan: "The man enters the palace and castrates to be a eunuch, and the woman sends the Bada Hutong to be a prostitute, so it's decided!" ”

Both children understood what he was saying, but remained silent and were escorted down by the old eunuch.

Zaifeng was lying on the couch in the West Flower Hall, teasing the thrush in the bird's cage, and just wanted to close his eyes and take a nap, when someone reported that the Minister of the Interior had visited.

Accompanying the minister to meet the regent was also a royal craftsman named Qin Customs. The man was tall and strong, good-looking, and about fifty years old. He first knocked his head on the ground three times, and the blue bricks in the West Flower Hall of Prince Alcohol's Mansion thumped.

Zaifeng was frightened by this momentum and ordered him to be flattened. Qin Customs couldn't kneel for a long time, and the old tears were full of tears: "Lord Regent, the slave Qin Customs, has built mausoleums for the Qing Dynasty royal family for generations." The slave has nothing else to ask for, just to find his only son, Qin Beiyang, who has been separated for nine years. ”

If it was put in the era of the Queen Mother Lafayette, he would have cut off his head a long time ago, and he would dare to bargain with the royal family? Fortunately, Lao Qin met the young regent.

"Licking the calf deeply!" Zaifeng thought of his three-year-old son, who was carried into the Forbidden City and became the emperor, and couldn't help but feel sentimental, "In the world of the Qing Dynasty, how can father and son be separated!" ”

The regent immediately revised a letter and ordered that the lost son of Qin Customs must be found. Lao Qin believed that the young man had not lied to him, so he packed his bags and went to the construction site in Xiling.