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

Lin Jing's brain was rapidly recalling her high school history textbooks and her database of news knowledge accumulated over the years.

"To protect their throne?" Lin Jing shook her head repeatedly, her tone uncertain. "They signed those treaties, agreeing to pay reparations and cede territory, because if they didn't, the foreigners would invade the Forbidden City, and then the throne would be gone. They were afraid of being purged, right?"

After hearing this answer, Zhao Shuyao nodded, then gently shook his head.

"Editor-in-Chief Lin, you're half right." Zhao Shuyao interlaced his fingers and rested them on his knees. "The rulers of the Qing Dynasty were indeed afraid of losing the throne; this was a common problem among feudal emperors."

"But this answer only stays at the surface level of logic. If you follow this logic further, you will find an extremely absurd military paradox."

Lin Jing put down her pen, her body leaning forward unconsciously: "Did I answer wrong? Or is there some other inside story we're completely unaware of?"

"Of course there's more to it than meets the eye." Zhao Shuyao's lips curled into a knowing smile, the kind of knowing smile that comes naturally to a history major. "Everyone is familiar with modern history. Textbooks say that the great powers used their powerful ships and cannons to force open our doors, but has anyone ever taken the time to do the math?"

Zhao Shuyao raised a finger, his gaze sweeping between the camera and Lin Jing: "Back then, the Qing Dynasty had a total regular army strength of over a million! Aren't you all curious why, in the more than half a century of modern history of being beaten, this army of over a million people almost never engaged in any large-scale, nationwide battles with foreigners?"

Lin Jing's brows furrowed instantly as she quickly pieced together fragmented historical pieces in her mind.

"Is there?" Lin Jing tried hard to find a counterexample. "In the Battle of Baliqiao, didn't the Manchu cavalry launch a charge, only to be wiped out in one fell swoop when faced with the foreigners' firearms and cannons? Many historians say that they were the last elite force of the Qing Dynasty."

"The Battle of Baliqiao was indeed fierce." Zhao Shuyao did not shy away from the truth. "But Editor-in-Chief Lin, don't forget the military structure of the Qing Dynasty. The troops that participated in the Battle of Baliqiao were the Mongol Eight Banners. The military power of the Qing Dynasty was composed of the Manchu Eight Banners, the Mongol Eight Banners, the Han Eight Banners, and the Green Standard Army, which had the largest number of troops."

Zhao Shuyao spread his hands: "The Mongol Eight Banners were wiped out, so what about the remaining hundreds of thousands, nearly a million troops? The foreigners have come to our doorstep, what are those Eight Banners and Green Standard Army troops stationed all over the country doing?"

This question hit the nail on the head. Even the assistant in charge of recording stopped what he was doing and looked up at Zhao Shuyao.

After a brief moment of surprise, Lin Jing immediately drew upon the most mainstream opinions online. "I've read a lot of information about this too. Didn't they say that the Qing army at that time was already incapable of fighting?"

Lin Jing picked up her pen again, her tone becoming more natural: "During the late Qing Dynasty, opium was rampant, and many soldiers became addicted, turning into 'double-gun generals.' Holding opium pipes and old-fashioned rifles, they couldn't even hold the guns steady. How could such an army go to the battlefield and fight against the well-equipped foreign powers?"

Upon hearing this, Zhao Shuyao did not immediately refute. Leaning back in the dark gray sofa, he suddenly smiled. It was a smile of profound understanding and a touch of helplessness, as if he had seen through all the brainwashing tactics in the world. Everything was exactly as expected.

Lin Jing felt a little uneasy at Zhao Shuyao's laughter. She re-examined her point of view: "Zhao, am I wrong? Whether it's movies, TV shows, or popular science articles online, everyone says the same thing. It's common knowledge, isn't it?"

Zhao Shuyao stopped smiling, sat up straight, and his expression became extremely serious.

"If everyone thinks this way, then it means that many people have been successfully fooled by this rhetoric." Zhao Shuyao's tone was steady and powerful as he began to use logic to overwhelm the argument layer by layer. "Editor-in-Chief Lin, let's not memorize the text; let's use the simplest common sense to deduce the truth."

Zhao Shuyao raised his right hand and pointed it in mid-air: "If the million-strong army of the Qing Dynasty were really all opium addicts who couldn't even hold a gun steady and would fall over with a gust of wind."

Zhao Shuyao looked directly into Lin Jing's eyes and posed a question that could be described as a complete reversal of expectations: "Then Mr. Sun organized more than a dozen armed uprisings to overthrow the Qing Dynasty, and the seventy-two martyrs of Huanghuagang shed their blood on the streets!"

"Those revolutionary predecessors shed their blood and sacrificed their lives, only to be brutally suppressed time and time again. Tell me, if the Qing army on the other side were all useless cowards who couldn't even hold a gun steady, would Mr. Sun and the revolutionaries have experienced so many painful defeats?"

The suite fell silent instantly.

Lin Jing's pupils contracted sharply. Her brain underwent a violent logical storm in that instant. Yes! The revolutionaries were facing the Manchu army.

If the Manchu army was truly incapable of fighting, how could the dozen or so uprisings before the Xinhai Revolution have been so difficult?

"That doesn't make sense, does it?" Zhao Shuyao looked at Lin Jing's shocked expression and slowed down his speech. "When they were fighting the foreigners, they told the people that we smoke opium and they couldn't beat us."

"But when they turned around to suppress the revolutionaries in the south and massacre their own people who were revolting, these 'double-gun generals' suddenly became incredibly energetic, holding their guns steadily and firing their cannons accurately. Does that make sense?"

"This..." Lin Jing opened her mouth, only to find that she was unable to refute this inference based on the iron-blooded historical facts.

"Where did that million-strong army go?" Lin Jing asked impatiently, knowing that a door to a history that had been hidden for a century was slowly being pushed open in front of her.

"From north to south of the Yangtze River, they're all there." Zhao Shuyao's tone turned completely cold, a culmination of the anger that had been building up as a student of Ming and Qing history after reviewing countless top-secret files.

"They stationed their most elite troops and the vast majority of their forces firmly on their vast territory, guarding against their own people as if they were thieves!"

Zhao Shuyao clenched his right fist and placed it on his knee.

"Editor-in-Chief Lin, you must stand in the position of that small circle of the Manchu ruling group at that time and understand their fears." Zhao Shuyao conducted an extremely incisive political analysis.

"In their eyes, what are foreigners? Foreigners have crossed oceans to come here, all they want is a treaty port, all they want is silver and ceded territory."

"If the foreigners come, at most we'll make them pay reparations. The Qing Dynasty is vast and rich; we can afford it," Zhao Shuyao sneered. "But what if we deploy millions of troops to fight the foreigners, leaving our territory vulnerable? What if the Han Chinese on this land take the opportunity to revolt?"

Zhao Shuyao drew a heavy line in the air with his finger: "Foreigners want money, but if the people rebel, they want their lives! They want to be completely overthrown from that dragon throne!"

"When faced with two evils, choose the lesser. For the Manchu rulers, money and land could be given to foreigners, but the country absolutely could not be taken back by the Han people!"

Lin Jing felt a chill run down her spine, a coldness rushing straight to her head. As a journalist, she had heard of all sorts of power struggles, but she had never seen a feudal dynasty's ruling group so wary and malicious towards its own people.

"This is the famous saying—'Better to give to a friendly nation than to a domestic slave.'" Zhao Shuyao uttered these eight words slowly and deliberately. "They can accept being subservient to foreign powers and being treated as second-class citizens, but they absolutely cannot accept being overthrown by their own people. In their eyes, Han Chinese will always be 'domestic slaves' to be guarded against."

"This is something that doesn't exist in our thousands of years of Chinese history." Zhao Shuyao straightened his back and looked stern. "Would the Han Dynasty guard against its own people trying to appease the Xiongnu? Would the Ming Dynasty cede territory to the Mongols just to suppress internal strife? No. This is a genetic defect and extreme inferiority complex that the Manchu Qing Dynasty, a regime that was conquered by an external tribe, brought from the very core of its being."

Zhao Shuyao spread his hands, delivering the fatal blow.

"Even in the last few years of the late Qing Dynasty, they spent a lot of money to train the New Army. Everyone thought it was to resist the foreign powers?" Zhao Shuyao shook his head mockingly. "The archives clearly state that the New Army's main garrison was in the south, and the purpose was very clear: to counter the increasingly active opposition forces and revolutionaries in the south."

Lin Jing drew a deep line on the interview outline, almost tearing the paper with the tip of her pen. She took two deep breaths, trying to calm the suffocating feeling after being shocked by the truth.

"Zhao, your viewpoint is really... too revolutionary." Lin Jing steadied her voice. "But thinking about it carefully, the historical timeline does indeed fit so perfectly. What about opium? Since you've refuted the argument that the entire army's opium use led to the defeat, the harm opium caused to the late Qing Dynasty is undeniable. This can be considered an important beginning of the suffering history of modern times, right?"

"The harm was indeed enormous, that much is undeniable." Zhao Shuyao picked up the water glass on the coffee table, but didn't drink it; he just held it in his hand and played with it. "But Editor-in-Chief Lin, since we're talking about opium, let me share with you a historical blind spot that most people don't know."

Zhao Shuyao placed the water glass back on the coffee table, making a crisp sound.

"Everyone always thinks that opium was forcibly sold in by foreigners, and that ordinary people were innocent victims." Zhao Shuyao crossed his hands under his chin, his eyes becoming incredibly sharp.

"But if you look through the county annals and accounts of the Imperial Clan Court from the late Qing Dynasty, who exactly was involved in the opium trade and even the large-scale forced cultivation of poppies to make huge profits?"

Lin Jing was stunned, and an ominous premonition welled up in her heart.

"They are their own people from the Manchu Qing dynasty!" Zhao Shuyao's voice was not loud, but it was firm and resolute. "The governors-general, governors, and even members of the imperial family all engaged in the cultivation of so-called 'local medicine' (domestic opium) throughout the country in order to amass wealth."

"They colluded with foreign businessmen, monopolized transportation channels, and were the biggest protectors and profiteers of this vast drug network!"

Zhao Shuyao's gaze swept across the camera, as if he were judging that decadent era.

"They don't care whether ordinary people will be ruined or destroyed by opium addiction; they only care about whether their own treasuries are full. Editor-in-Chief Lin, do you understand now?"

Zhao Shuyao leaned back on the sofa and delivered the final verdict in this century-long standoff.

"This is the Qing Dynasty, a regime that had the fear of its own people ingrained in its very bones, a regime that would sell out the country's interests without any bottom line for the sake of the throne, and a regime that led the way in exploiting the lower classes with drugs."

Zhao Shuyao straightened the collar of his faded shirt, displaying the unique pride and clarity of a scholar.

"Such a corrupt feudal dynasty, devoid of any creativity and maintained entirely by the enslavement of the entire population, reporter Lin, you dare to say something outrageous." Zhao Shuyao sneered.

"Even if the great powers hadn't invaded with their powerful ships and cannons, and even without any interference from external forces, such a regime would have long since reached the point of extinction and been swept into the dustbin of history!"

The suite's constant-temperature air conditioning blew out a gentle breeze, but it couldn't dispel the heavy atmosphere.

Lin Jing put down her pen and let out a long sigh. She looked at Zhao Shuyao in front of her. This was not some troublemaker trying to attract attention online.

This is a pioneer who, with the conscience of a historian, would use truth to stand up to the entire interest group in this era of entertainment to the death and the prevalence of historical nihilism.

[Dear readers, thank you all for following the updates and for your support. I read all the comments on yesterday's chapter, and they touched me deeply. I didn't expect so many people to like it. Actually, what I wrote came from my heart, because my father used to say the same things to me. Thank you for your understanding and support. If you like it, could you please send some free gifts, or other gifts? Thank you all, I love you all.]