He fiercely criticized the Manchu scholar clique and the twelve emperors of the Qing Dynasty.

Zhao Shuyao stood in the center of the lecture hall, his voice steady and devoid of any superfluous emotion.

"Since we've come to the topic of Jiangnan," Zhao Shuyao said, holding the microphone with a relaxed tone that suggested an academic discussion, "many students might immediately think of that 'Perfect Old Man' who was keen on getting stamps everywhere."

"But following the historical thread, let's go back a bit and look at the pioneer of this southern tour business, the second official monarch after the Manchus entered the pass, namely Emperor Kangxi, who is hailed as the 'Emperor of the Ages' by various forums and consistently ranks among the top ten emperors in ancient China."

The classroom fell silent instantly. Kangxi's popularity was too high; this was undoubtedly a direct and forceful confrontation with public stereotypes.

Zhao Shuyao's gaze swept over the graduate students in the front row, a smile playing on his lips: "You've all surely seen plenty of those rankings online. Why don't you all ask yourselves this question first: What earth-shattering feats did this wise and mighty monarch, portrayed so powerfully in various films and television dramas, accomplish to sit on his pedestal? Does he truly deserve such high praise?"

Upon hearing this, the atmosphere in the audience became slightly tense, and many students looked doubtful.

"To assess the quality of a feudal emperor, one should not look at whether he can shoot arrows or ride horses, nor should one look at how long he lived." Zhao Shuyao stretched out his finger and pointed it in the air.

"We need to look at his accounts of people's livelihood. Let's take his six trips to the south of the Yangtze River as an example. As you all know, when an ancient emperor went on a long trip, it was not called tourism, but an engineering project. The cost of this project may exceed your imagination."

He paused for a second, allowing everyone to consider the weight of the word "engineering".

"Let's start with the most straightforward calculation: how many people accompanied Emperor Kangxi on each of his southern tours?" Zhao Shuyao looked to the left aisle and answered himself, "Around two thousand five hundred to four thousand people."

A student immediately whispered among himself, "Several thousand people, in the context of a unified dynasty, doesn't seem like a particularly large number, does it?"

Zhao Shuyao keenly caught the sound, but instead of getting angry, he showed a tolerant smile.

"I heard some classmates say that there aren't many people. Indeed, if we put these four thousand people in 2016, it would only be a slightly larger corporate annual meeting tour group. However, we are discussing the feudal society more than three hundred years ago, an era in which everything was powered by human and animal labor."

Zhao Shuyao slowed down his speech to ensure that every word reached the students' ears: "These four thousand-plus people are not going to stay in budget hotels or eat at buffets; they are the most privileged class in the empire."

"The emperor, the accompanying princes and ministers, the imperial concubines, and the imperial guards responsible for security—how many low-ranking officials were needed to serve them during their journey, covering their food, clothing, and daily necessities, and enduring the hardships of travel?"

Looking in the direction from which the voice had just come, his tone was strongly suggestive: "Are the post station servants enough? Are the local government officials enough? Absolutely not. To welcome these four thousand masters, local officials must conscript tens of thousands of laborers months or even half a year in advance to repair roads, dredge waterways, and build palaces."

Yan Chongnian sat upright on the podium, his brows furrowed. He keenly sensed that Zhao Shuyao was using the most common economic models to dismantle his proud narrative of a prosperous era.

Just then, a boy wearing half-rimmed glasses in the third row on the right stood up. He held an open notebook in his hand, and his eyes showed a serious look.

"Senior Zhao, may I interrupt for a moment?" The bespectacled boy's tone was still polite. "Your logic is based on cost, but I have consulted relevant Qing Dynasty documents, which clearly record that when Emperor Kangxi made his southern tour, he specifically issued an edict not to impose levies on the local people and required everything to be kept simple."

"Moreover, the extensive reception work and palace renovations in the Jiangnan region were actually sponsored by local wealthy merchants out of their own pockets, without drawing on the foundation of local finances."

The boy closed his notebook, summarizing with the confidence of someone who had found the truth: "In other words, the emperor made a trip, the wealthy merchant spent money to curry favor with the imperial power, and the local people didn't suffer as much as you said. At that time, this could be considered a relatively positive interaction between politics and business, right?"

This rebuttal was well-reasoned and drew nods of approval from several students around him. This was precisely the standard rhetoric used by the mainstream of the historical community to exonerate the "Southern Tour".

After listening, Zhao Shuyao did not immediately refute. He quickly recalled the rise and fall of the three major textile manufacturing bureaus in Jiangnan during the Qing Dynasty, as well as the embezzlement records left by local prefectures and governments.

He nodded at the boy, his eyes filled with undisguised admiration.

"Junior, the fact that you can cite this document shows that you really did read the books and put in the effort." Zhao Shuyao first gave a positive affirmation, then changed the subject, his tone filled with a strong sense of absurdity and humor, "However, you only see the black and white words on the document, but you have ignored the most core iron law of operation in ancient Chinese feudal society."

Zhao Shuyao raised a finger, smiling broadly at the entire audience: "Ladies and gentlemen, what do merchants do? Merchants do business. They take out their hard-earned money to build palaces for the emperor and to host banquets for thousands of people. Is it because they have so much money they're burning their hands and desperately need to do charity to purify their souls?"

A suppressed chuckle rippled through the classroom, instantly shattering the stereotypes presented in books with the logic of reality.

Zhao Shuyao spread his hands: "Obviously not. Merchants are smarter than anyone else. This is called investment. The first law of investment is that every penny spent must be earned back many times over from other places in the future. If they spend 10,000 taels, and don't squeeze 30,000 or even 100,000 taels out of the land of Jiangnan, then this deal is a huge loss."

Seeing that some students were still pondering, Zhao Shuyao decided to present a piece of evidence that no one could refute.

"Since everyone has doubts about the historical records, let's skip the dry data and talk about a specific person, someone everyone is absolutely familiar with." Zhao Shuyao, holding the microphone, paced back and forth in the aisle. "Cao Xueqin, everyone knows him, right?"

A chorus of responses immediately erupted from below; this was common sense.

"Does everyone know where Cao Xueqin's descriptions of the opulent and luxurious environment in 'Dream of the Red Chamber' came from?" Zhao Shuyao asked the boy with glasses. "That wasn't something he imagined out of thin air while sitting on a heated brick bed in the north. It was the Cao family's most authentic family memory in the south."

Zhao Shuyao paused for a moment to let the students catch up: "Cao Xueqin's great-grandfather, Cao Yin, was Emperor Kangxi's study companion and served as the Imperial Textile Commissioner in Jiangning, Jiangnan. Kangxi made six southern tours, and the Cao family received him four times. How extravagant and lavish that was! To put it bluntly, they took care of everything for the emperor, from food and drink to his personal needs."

Yan Chongnian's expression changed on the podium. He knew what Zhao Shuyao was going to do next—a festering sore in the economic history of the Qing Dynasty that could never be washed away.

"But what is the price of this blazing fire?" Zhao Shuyao's voice began to sink, and his originally lighthearted banter was gradually replaced by the heavy shadow of history.

"The Cao family, a top-tier noble family and confidants of the imperial family, arranged four receptions for Emperor Kangxi. What was the result? When Kangxi settled accounts in his later years, he found that the Cao family had left behind a huge deficit of several million taels of silver, and in the end, they were directly brought down by the confiscation of their property."

Zhao Shuyao turned around and looked directly at the silent historical giant on the podium: "Professor Yan, the junior student just said that merchants provided the money without touching the local treasury. Then I have a question for everyone: Did the Cao family's millions of taels of silver fall from the sky?"

Before anyone could answer, Zhao Shuyao gave his answer directly, his tone sharp as a knife.

"It didn't fall from the sky; it was all embezzled, both openly and secretly, from various local taxes, salt administration, and special funds allocated for textile production!"

Looking at the young faces below the stage lost in thought, Zhao Shuyao began to peel back the layers of the problem, exposing this mess to the light of day.

"To cover the expenses of the emperor's southern tour, these so-called imperial relatives and wealthy merchants not only emptied their own coffers but also extended their reach into the national treasury and the local tax system. And this is only what is recorded in the official accounts!"

He took a deep breath, his tone filled with a profound sorrow: "We historians can't just look at the emperor's daily records, or the romantic tales of the upper class. We have to look through local gazetteers, to see the lives of ordinary people whose names are lost to history!"

Zhao Shuyao pointed his left hand at the sky outside the window, as if piercing through three hundred years of time: "When the emperor goes on his southern tour, merchants spend money to recoup their investment, and local officials try to cover up deficits for political achievements. Who will ultimately foot the bill for this enormous additional financial burden? Without a doubt, it will be the most impoverished people!"

The boy with half-rimmed glasses stood there, stunned. He realized he had fallen into an academic blind spot: he only saw the flow of funds in the upper echelons of power, but completely ignored the ability of the lower classes to bear the burden.

"Local authorities invent various pretexts to increase taxes in order to balance accounts; in order to repair waterways and official roads for the passage of imperial ships, they forcibly increase the number of times ordinary farmers are forced to perform corvée labor, delaying the farming season. Who cares about their lives?" Zhao Shuyao's series of rhetorical questions echoed in the lecture hall, carrying a powerful sense of logical pressure.

"If you don't believe me, check the historical records after the lecture. It wasn't just the Cao family of Jiangning, but also the Sun family of Hangzhou and the Li family of Suzhou. After these three families completed their tasks for the emperor, their total deficit reached tens of millions of taels of silver!"

Zhao Shuyao's voice reached its peak at this point, every word resounding: "Tens of millions of taels of silver! Classmates, Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty begged and pleaded with his ministers to raise millions of taels of silver to resist foreign enemies, and in the end, the country perished!"

"And Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty, merely for the sake of his own inspection tour of the south, casually created a black hole of tens of millions of taels of silver in the wealthy Jiangnan region!"

The entire lecture hall fell silent. No one was discussing it privately; everyone was processing the stark contrast in the numbers. The poverty of the late Ming Dynasty and the extravagance of the prosperous Qing Dynasty created a stark class contrast in that instant.

"Tens of millions of taels of debt weighed on the land of Jiangnan. This kind of crazy overdraft of local wealth from top to bottom, and the collective corruption of local officials fueled by the reception of the emperor, were all covered up by the gorgeous rhetoric of official history."

Zhao Shuyao's lips curled into that signature sneer again. "History books won't write about how many bushels of grain the common people paid; they'll only write about how Emperor Kangxi showed compassion for the people and exempted a certain area in Jiangnan from tens of thousands of taels of tax. Ladies and gentlemen, you empty your left pocket and then stuff two copper coins into your right pocket—is that what you call benevolent governance?"

In the back row of the classroom, Yang Wei unconsciously loosened his clenched fist. He understood that this tangible class oppression and economic exploitation was more penetrating than any political theory.

The girl with the ponytail in the front row, who had previously led the way in agreeing, now lowered her head deeply, her pen moving unconsciously across her notebook, as if she were re-examining her own understanding.

Zhao Shuyao turned around and faced Yan Chongnian on the podium.

The old man's face was as gloomy as the sky before a storm, and his fingers gripping the thermos tightly, his knuckles protruding.

"So, Professor Yan," Zhao Shuyao said in an extremely humble yet extremely provocative tone, "I am truly ignorant and foolish. I have studied this for so long, but I still cannot balance the economic accounts of Jiangnan."

He took a step forward, getting closer to the podium.

"I would particularly like to ask you, from what angle and from what logic does this behavior—which, driven by personal greed, emptied the nation's tax base, burdened centuries-old families in Jiangnan with millions in debt, and forced countless ordinary people to perform double the corvée labor—lead you and a host of renowned historians to conclude that he was a 'sage ruler' and a 'diligent and benevolent ruler'?"

Zhao Shuyao paused for half a second, then added in an academic tone, "Does your evaluation system mean that as long as the promises of civil and military achievements are made big enough, the lives of ordinary people at the bottom of society are no longer considered as evaluation criteria?"

A question that challenges the mind.

This was a precise and devastating blow to the very foundation of the entire academic evaluation system.

Instead of looking at Zhao Shuyao, he raised his head and swept his deep gaze across the entire room. He knew that if he couldn't provide a reasonable countermeasure on this stage today, his idol in the hearts of these students would completely collapse.