Just when all the members of the cabinet were about to jointly report the incident to the Queen Mother and the Little Emperor, Feng Bao, the eunuch in charge of the seal, did not accompany him.

There are three reasons, and the cabinet members feel very reasonable, so they collectively agree with Feng Bao to do this. Reason 1, Feng Bao is the highest official of the celebrant eunuch, and the eunuch is in charge of the seal, and one of the important tasks is that the imperial family, especially the empress dowager and the little emperor, monitor the cabinet.

The little emperor and other royal families or outsiders couldn't feel that Feng Bao and the cabinet were too close, so Feng Bao couldn't appear with the cabinet members.

At least outsiders, the Empress Dowager and the Little Emperor could not be let know that Feng Bao had participated in the secret meeting. Reason 2, Feng Bao needs to go back and hurry up to prepare.

There are three main points of so-called preparation. First, contact Huang Jin and arrange for Huang Jin to go to Qin Tai immediately.

Second, seize the time to investigate the relevant information that is already available. Lest the Queen Mother and the Little Emperor ask, Feng Bao didn't know when he asked.

Now, the celebrant and the cabinet, not only must they not be chaotic, but they must secretly form an alliance to deal with this crisis.

Third, Feng Bao lived inside the palace and could not leave the palace at night. Once it is known that Feng Bao met with Zhang Juzheng and others in the middle of the night, it means that the lock of the palace is useless.

This was not good for Feng Bao, the supreme chief of ceremonies and supervisors who managed the security of the palace, and the empress dowager and the little emperor might regain control once they knew.

For the sake of convenience in the future, in order to maintain the face of the celebrant and supervisor, and in order to maintain the current pattern, Feng Bao could not let people know these secrets.

Zhang Juzheng and the others also needed someone in the palace to secretly send information out, so they had to agree to keep it secret for Feng Bao.

When Feng Bao left Zhang Juzheng's house alone, Zhang Juzheng was worried about Feng Bao's safety, so he specially assigned a few cronies to escort Feng Bao back.

At this time, it was not dawn, the palace gate was still closed, and Feng Bao could not go back, so Feng Bao had to go back to his own house outside the palace to rest.

Although Feng Bao's family is relatively secret, some people with intentions have long paid attention to it, so if Feng Bao appears in his own house alone, he may be assassinated.

Feng Bao's cronies usually don't leave him, and even if there are no cronies, he will call a group of forbidden soldiers to protect him. There were almost no cases like this where a person appeared outside, and he didn't feel safe, so he accepted Zhang Juzheng's arrangement.

However, he did not go back to his home, but went to Duzhong Hutong. Outsiders may not be familiar with this inconspicuous Zhongzhong Hutong, but Feng Bao, as the head of the eunuchs, is simply too familiar.

Duzhong Hutong was a home for the eunuchs, a home other than the imperial palace. Since the eunuch became a servant of the royal family, he is actually no longer an ordinary person.

Each little eunuch will sign two contracts before purification, the first one is a voluntary purification contract, which means that he has come from an innocent and authentic way.

The second is the marriage contract, which means that he voluntarily marries into the palace and becomes a royal person. Because they are no longer men, they have lost the ability to have children, and they can only marry others like women.

Every eunuch marries into the palace like a woman, and dedicates their body and mind to the emperor, especially the emperor, so they are especially loyal to the emperor.

"Men who marry into the palace" has become a special term for eunuchs, which also means that everything they belong to the royal family and belongs to the emperor, and the emperor can dispose of them at will or even kill them directly for no reason.

The eunuch lost his dignity and freedom and sold himself to the royal family as a domestic slave. Eunuchs are also human beings, and not only need to rest, but also need to have their own space.

In the palace, the eunuch is just the lowliest servant, not to mention the status, not even the dignity, besides, there are too many rules in the palace that they are not allowed to come nonsense.

In order to be able to relax temporarily, there were secret places of eunuchs as early as the previous dynasty. They can relax and eat and drink freely, and they can also exchange information with each other.

However, at that time, due to the special status of eunuchs, they could not appear outside the palace in public, so they had to hold regular and secret gatherings.

After arriving in the Ming Dynasty, the eunuchs became more powerful and allowed them to move freely outside the palace, and the meeting was not only more numerous but also fixed.

This place is Duzhong Hutong, and to put it bluntly, this is the gathering place of eunuchs outside the palace. There are eunuchs living in the Duzhong Hutong, including old eunuchs who have been kicked out of the palace, eunuchs who have been arranged to live temporarily because of illness, and young eunuchs who are preparing to enter the palace.

Even the people who serve these eunuchs are eunuchs, and there is no normal person here. The so-called eunuch is a general term, which used to be called temple people, eunuchs, eunuchs, internal officials, internal servants, eunuchs, young eunuchs, etc., and were collectively called eunuchs after arriving in the Ming Dynasty.

Even the eunuchs are divided into three, six, nine and so on, which not only refers to the scene when they were in the scenery later, but also from the moment they entered the palace.

The sources of the little eunuchs who entered the palace can be roughly divided into four categories. The first category is the descendants of criminals or prisoners of war.

In ancient times, the method of joint sitting was very popular, and the so-called joint sitting method was when a person sinned a crime and brought harm to his family, especially his children.

When a person commits a crime, he will be severely punished, and most painfully, his family will also be implicated.

The families involved are divided into three types: exile, confiscation, and confiscation, depending on the severity of the offender's crime. Exile refers to the distribution of the whole family to the frontier, which is a relatively light punishment; Confiscation is to auction the criminal's family for public auction and sell it to commoners or nobles, or it may be sold into a brothel as a **.

However, they still have a chance to come out, and they will have the opportunity to redeem themselves as a flat-headed common man in the future; If the lack of justice is the most serious, only the family members of the convicts will be confiscated.

Most of the criminals who commit such crimes are those who have committed such serious crimes as treason, bullying and rebellion, and their families need to be punished with the most severe punishment.

Generally speaking, all the men in the family were killed or sent to the front to die, and the women of the family became official prostitutes or military prostitutes for the rest of their lives, and the children were even more miserable.

The boy was castrated as a eunuch and stayed in the palace for the rest of his life to serve the royal family and the rich and powerful eunuchs.

Because of their bad background, they can only be miscellaneous eunuchs for the rest of their lives, and it is impossible for them to become promising eunuchs.

The girls were sent to the school to be trained as official prostitutes for the pleasure of officials. The children they gave birth to were sent to the palace as eunuchs, and the women were further trained to become official prostitutes and were never allowed to leave the brothel.

The second category is the children of poor families who are forced to live. They were sold to the royal family by their parents, and a child was only exchanged for a few taels of silver.

But these ruthless parents still did it, so these children hate their families from the bottom of their hearts, and even if they grow up, they will not be close to their relatives.

The third category is the children who have been deceived. Some traffickers specialize in abducting children or women for a living. The deceived women could enjoy it for themselves and then resell it to local brothels.

It is explained that Zhang Keer, one of the top ten famous prostitutes in the late Qin Huai, was abducted and trafficked to a brothel after he became a good man.

The kidnapped boys were sent to the palace as eunuchs, and the deceived girls were either sold to rich families as maids or sold to brothels to be trained to make a lot of money in the future.

Because this kind of kidnapped child has no identity, this kind of little eunuch is called again

"White body". Because there is no foundation, there is no concern outside the palace, so he is more loyal to the royal family. The fourth category is some teenagers whose emotions or families have been changed.

Confused about their future, they volunteered to become eunuchs. For example, the famous eunuch Yuan Rang in the middle of the Ming Dynasty is said to have been the young master of a wealthy family.

Because his favorite lover left him, he felt that life was no fun and voluntarily entered the palace as a eunuch. and Yuan Hui during the same period, because of a disaster in her family, a descendant of a well-landed family was reduced to a poor boy.

In order to survive, in order to become a big family again, he chose to enter the palace as a eunuch. When these eunuchs entered the palace, they brought in relevant materials with them.

Depending on the origin of each one, they are placed in each place and cultivated from scratch. The eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty were the most imposing, so there was a strict hierarchy from the beginning.

The descendants of criminals or prisoners of war were not entitled to approach the royal family, and feared that they would retaliate against the royal family, so they had to stay outside the palace to serve the old eunuchs, or do heavy work in the outermost part of the palace.

The children of poor families and white bodies can be focused on cultivating because of their innocence of family background. The children who voluntarily enter the palace are relatively old, so they are arranged to work in the inner study, or to be in charge of work that requires culture.

However, the celebrant has rules, and these people have already understood ****, so they can't serve the emperor or concubine closely.

In this way, they lose the opportunity to get ahead. However, it is not impossible, Yuan Rang and Yuan Hui are the representatives of the future, which means that eunuchs like them can get ahead as long as they grasp the opportunity.

There are not only guest rooms and restaurants, but also bathhouses. Eunuchs are very taboo about outsiders, don't say that they see it, and they don't allow outsiders to say it.

They also know that they have low self-esteem, so they will not take a shower and change clothes in public. They will come to the Zhongzhong Hutong to bathe on holidays in turn, and they will be served either by small eunuchs or eunuchs who are not qualified to enter the palace.

Who is not qualified to enter the palace? It's some people who have become adults and accidentally become eunuchs. Because they couldn't pass the selection to enter the palace, they had to stay in Duzhong Hutong and become the subordinates who served the eunuchs.

Everyone has to ask, who is not even as good as the family of criminals, and is not qualified to enter the palace as a miscellaneous eunuch?

Yes, really. During the orthodox period of the Ming Dynasty, after the failure of the orthodox emperor's personal expedition, the Mongol Walla army captured a large number of Ming soldiers.

Emperors, ministers, and generals with status and status could be sold to the Ming Dynasty, and the sergeants couldn't buy them at a good price, so they had to deal with them casually.

I don't know which perverted officer came up with the idea of a desperate son, saying that it was to castrate these captured sergeants en masse.

The first is to prevent them from resisting, the second is to distribute it to the nobles of Warat, and the third is to humiliate the face of the Ming Dynasty.

In this way, tens of thousands of sergeants were castrated, and in less than half a month, no less than 1,000 sergeants died due to painful death and complications.

The surviving sergeants became eunuchs and were sent to the homes of the Warat nobles in batches to be called for. When the orthodox emperor returned home, after learning of the tragic results of the sergeants, he asked to bring back some sergeants.

Some of the sergeants went back without a face and volunteered to stay in Warat, some of the sergeants had already committed suicide, and more sergeants were willing to go back with them.

Since then, there has been a group of eunuchs in the capital, and their families do not recognize them when they go home, and they are not qualified to enter the palace, so they have to stay in the Duzhong Hutong to serve the eunuchs.

After that, all foreign prisoners of war captured in the Battle of the Border Pass would be secretly castrated. They were not qualified to enter the palace, and they were even more worried that they would arm themselves to retaliate against the royal family after entering the palace, so they were arranged to serve the eunuchs in the alley of loyalty.