“You’re close to Huaiyu, you’re close to him!” Zhigao said with a grin.
Huaiyu wasn't good at teasing, and whenever he tried to joke around with her, she would get extremely anxious. First, her cheeks would turn red, then her ears would flush, and finally, she couldn't control herself and her whole face would turn red, lingering for a long time.
Huaiyu swung his fists and kicked, wanting to teach Zhigao a lesson. The two chased and fled, and began to fight. This concealed the secrets of both of them.
The thoughts of a teenager. When he was twelve, when he was also twelve.
Dandan clapped her hands and hugged the black cat, teasing it, "I'll only kiss you." As she spoke, she kept tugging at the candied hawthorn to its mouth.
Huaiyu stopped her actions once her complexion returned to normal, and then stopped Dandan, saying, "This cat doesn't eat sweets."
Whose cat is this?
"Who else's?" Zhigao dusted himself off: "Wang's."
"Wang Laogong?"
"Wu, those three husbands, just seeing them and their bunch of manhood makes my liver tremble." Zhi Gao curled his lips: "He always acts like a child, petting a cat, meowing and whining, ugh, what a sissy!"
“Give the cat back,” Huaiyu said.
Zhigao glanced at him out of the corner of his eye: "What cat? Don't you practice calligraphy? Your father told you to practice calligraphy, but you hid away to practice martial arts. Now you're not practicing martial arts either, but instead you're giving the cat back to Wang Laoren."
"Master Zhuan left long ago," Huaiyu said smugly. "He told me to go back before the lamps are lit, and only after I've finished watching 'Fighting Ghosts' can I practice calligraphy. I'll be busy tonight."
"Alright, alright, give it back to him. Maybe he'll be looking for this stinky black poop and then cry his eyes out."
"Hey, who is Mr. Wang?" Dandan grabbed Zhigao, insisting on asking, "Who is he?"
"I won't tell you," Zhigao mimicked Dandan's voice.
Huaiyu didn't quite understand either. He only said, "Father said that he has a very important background and used to serve the Empress Dowager."
Who is the Empress Dowager?
None of these three children would know who the Empress Dowager was. After all, it was something from twenty or thirty years ago.
Let alone ordinary people, even the lowest-ranking eunuchs in the Forbidden City, who were castrated by Xiao Dao Liu in Fangzhuan Hutong inside Di'anmen when they were seven years old and sent to the palace, toiled and bowed their heads for the rest of their lives. Even when they left the palace in their old age, they never saw the Empress Dowager.
Wang Laogong came from Hejian Prefecture in Hebei Province. His family had been poor fortune tellers for three generations. He was born with a gift for wisdom, but he could not make enough to eat. So his parents made a difficult decision and sent him to the palace.
"Skinning" was the most agonizing torture he ever endured, and he never spoke of it to anyone. Similarly, he never mentioned his misjudgment.
He was most afraid of his abilities being exposed, so he always pretended to be stupid to avoid being rejected in the palace. Of course, he couldn't be too stupid.
Why?
On that occasion, he unintentionally cast a divination, only to say that the Qing Dynasty would perish within three years.
Somehow it got out...
When the Empress Dowager heard about it, she ordered a thorough investigation into the source of the "disorder." The cruelty of her punishments was appalling.
No one knew that Wang Laogong, the eunuch who served the Empress Dowager's meals, was a fortune teller. He only cared about designing dinners and buried himself in the study of bird's nest preparation methods: bird's nest with the character "万" (wan, meaning ten thousand) and gold and silver duck, bird's nest with the character "寿" (shou, meaning longevity) and five-willow chicken shreds, bird's nest with the character "无" (wu, meaning nothing) and white pigeon shreds, bird's nest with the character "疆" (jiang, meaning border) and mushroom and fatty chicken soup... In the summer, he sent Cixi 350 watermelons a day to help her cool off. This man was inconspicuous.
Unable to find anything amiss, the Empress Dowager had thirty-six shrewd and seemingly clever eunuchs "enraged" to death. She then used seven layers of wet white cotton paper to completely cover the mouth, nose, and ears of the tortured individuals, sealing them off, before subjecting them to caning…
From then on, Mr. Wang became even more foolish and silent.
—They endured until the Qing dynasty finally fell.
Sure enough, two years and ten months later, the Qing dynasty could not be preserved; he had predicted it correctly.
With the fall of the dynasty, all the eunuchs, high and low, lost their support. Some had never stepped outside the palace gates and knew nothing of the outside world. The year Wang Laogong left the Forbidden City, he donated some valuable jewelry given to him by nobles, thus allowing him to live out his days in the Yonghe Temple. The high lamas in the temple, having been designated as "stand-ins" for the emperor, taking his place whenever he fell ill or suffered misfortune, held a prestigious position. The high lama wanted to take him in, and Wang Laogong stayed for twenty years.
Huaiyu knocked on the door first.
"Who is it?" a slow, sarcastic voice asked, like that of a resentful woman.
"I am Huaiyu." Huaiyu gestured for Dandan to bring the cat over: "My husband, your manhood has gone out into the wild."
The door opened, revealing a face. Fair-skinned with a hint of pink, not a single stubble, but covered in wrinkles, its shape resembling a dried-out pig's belly. A pair of pink hands took the cat, its little finger raised like a dehydrated flower.
In his hands, the cat was like a thick tuft of black hair, sinking into white, withered bones, never to be reborn. The cat meowed "Wei hua—" and then fell silent, resigned to its fate. It was unusually docile, never daring to be wild again. It was as if its escape from death had been a dream.
Zhigao gestured with his chin, and Dandan peered inside. Whoosh! The room was full of cats, big and small, their eyes menacing in the dim light.
Dandan was startled to see the room filled with the shadows and scent of cats. She also heard her husband, Wang, scolding her like an old woman: "You can't just wander around like that! What will I do if I'm unhappy? You're not allowed to go out anymore!"
The black cat struggled for a moment, then leaped into his palm.
Mr. Wang, still savoring the moment, patted the bed and said:
"Come, come, come."
It resigned itself to its fate and had no choice but to jump onto the bed. Mr. Wang held the cat tightly with one hand and lifted the covers with the other. Inside were two more cats, both white and elegant, there to warm his bed.
He used to spend his life warming the bed for the chief eunuch, emptying his chamber pot, washing his socks… that's how he lived his life. Now, cats come to keep him company, first warming the bed, then he lies down leisurely and recounts his life story, his unknown past. How safe, they definitely won't reveal anything.
Mr. Wang is lonely.
"Huaiyu, why don't you come to listen to stories often?" As she spoke, she secretly scolded, "Zhigao, you little rascal, what are you trying to fool Kun'er with?"
"Husband Wang, something seems off about this cat."
"Don't move it, it's sleepy."
Dandan said, "It's crying."