All the heavens begin with the love in the courtyard.

Many young people have gradually developed their own insights and understanding of their character within this year, and the training over these two years will change their lives.

If an adult heard Bai Jingqi talking about some strange and unusual knowledge, their first reaction would be doubt. But these teenagers, who had never been to school and had never learned to read, had lived their lives in a daze, never even having enough to eat, and had no thoughts or ideas of their own.

Suddenly one day, a child of their age appeared and, right in front of them, killed eight vicious men. Moreover, this boy said he would teach them skills and give them enough to eat.

Under such circumstances, the group of teenagers were so shocked that they did not question a single word Bai Jingqi had said. They only felt that Bai Jingqi was a god-like figure, and that Black Seven Master was a god who suddenly appeared out of the sky.

They believed everything that Master Hei said and taught them, and even remembered it deeply. Years later, they would recall these scenes because they were so profound!

In fact, the best age for humans to learn knowledge is during their childhood. After a year of training, these teenagers are no longer the same as before. If they were to encounter the same group of fourteen beggars from last year again, their side would not suffer any casualties and could easily turn the tables.

However, in the past year, almost no one in the surrounding area has dared to attack the City God Temple anymore. Apart from the occasional lone beggar who wants to stay overnight, no other gangs from all walks of life dare to mess with the City God Temple.

Bai Jingqi also had beggars who wanted to stay overnight driven away. He didn't plan to expand the scale yet, because there was no need.

Over the past year, he has been constantly summarizing the gains and losses of training. Many projects are completely unnecessary for teenagers of this era. Training teenagers and training adults are two completely different training methods. He is also compiling his own training manual. In the future, this training manual will be standardized and can be used to train special forces soldiers adapted to this era in batches.

Of course, Bai Jingqi doesn't intend to pass on some truly deadly skills indiscriminately. He has already planned to establish an organization called the Black Family Army. Those who can enter the Black Family Army are all elites carefully selected by him. He will implement a policy of elite troops and will develop a series of training courses based on each person's characteristics.

After a year of training, it is estimated that five to seven of these twenty people will receive personal instruction from Bai Jingqi in the future. As for the others, Bai Jingqi will make other arrangements for them. He will send them to the beggars in the capital to seize a territory. These people will form a core group and develop into a gang in the future.

Bai Jingqi will support the group's growth in the early stages, but he will not interfere too much in how these people develop in the future.

In short, these people will not know how many people the Black Family Army actually has, nor will they obey Bai Jingqi. They only know Hei Qiye. In the future, these people will exist as the outer force of the Black Family Army, and will cooperate with the Black Family Army to complete some operations when the Black Family Army needs them.

Time flies, and it is now the end of 1886. The old man passed away at the end of September, and more than three months have passed since then. On the surface, the Bai family has returned to peace, but in reality, various conflicts are constantly arising. This is naturally because the Third Master Bai has started to cause trouble again.

Currently, the eldest son of the Bai family is in charge, but his personality is not suitable for being the head of the family. After the old man passed away, the third son of the Bai family started to tamper with the accounts of Bai Cao Tang. In just over three months, he has already embezzled another three to five thousand taels of silver from the accounts. When the accounts are checked at the end of the year, some discrepancies are found.

The matter eventually reached Bai Laoda again. Bai Laoda originally wanted to smooth things over, but this time Bai Jingqi's mother, Bai Wenshi, stood up and said that this matter could not be left like this, and Bai Laosan had to return the money.

Finally, Bai Wenshi made it clear that from now on, Jingqi would be in charge of the Bai family. If the third son continued like this, how much of the family's assets would be left when Jingqi took over? Therefore, as Bai Jingqi's mother, she had to make the eldest son explain things clearly.

Bai Wenshi's words made sense, but they were somewhat unpleasant to hear. In the end, Bai Laoda had no choice but to call Bai Sanye over for a confrontation.

Faced with irrefutable evidence, Master Bai showed no intention of admitting his mistake. He first claimed that he was only taking what he was entitled to, and then, seeing that he was becoming increasingly unreasonable, he shouted that they should just split up the family property.

When faced with Bai Laosan's demand to divide the family property, Bai Laoda was so angry that his blood pressure rose. Bai Laoda always valued his family and kinship very much, but he also lost his temper when faced with Bai Laosan's outrageous words. This was the first time he had ever lost his temper with Bai Laosan.

Seeing his elder brother so angry, Bai Laosan could only reluctantly retract his words about dividing the family property. However, as for him to take out the money he had already pocketed, that was out of the question.

When Bai Jingqi heard about this when he got home, he smiled and told his mother not to be angry. He also told his eldest uncle not to give his third uncle any more opportunities to make money from the accounts. When Bai Wenshi heard her son's arrangement, she could only give up. They were all family, so what could she do to Bai Laosan?

The Bai family couldn't do anything about Bai Laosan, but Bai Jingqi naturally had his own way. He knew that his third uncle had a mistress outside the family, and he often hid the money he had embezzled from the accounts in that mistress's house.

Bai Jingqi finally understood that in this day and age, if you wanted to make money, you had to get it from these wealthy families, or even from the eunuchs in the palace.

Bai Family's Baicao Hall was a royal medicine shop, contracting some of the medicines used by the Imperial Hospital. Every year, this alone brought in tens of thousands of taels of silver. However, in order to maintain this position, the Bai family spent a lot of money bribing those corrupt eunuchs to speak well of them.

In recent years, Bai Jingqi has witnessed firsthand the various ways these Qing Dynasty eunuchs have made money. He has already made arrangements for this, planning to turn these eunuchs into fat sheep raised by his Black Seventh Master's Black Family Army, and then slaughter them one by one for their meat.

No rush, the best is yet to come.

In 1886, Beijing was relatively peaceful. The Qing Dynasty's main themes were still corrupt officials who made money and starving refugees outside the city. Another church was built in the western suburbs of Beijing. Nearby, white-skinned, long-nosed foreign priests could often be seen carrying small notebooks, spreading their message of caring for the world in the nearby villages.

In that year, the Chongqing Missionary Incident occurred in Chongqing, in southwestern China. It was caused by British and American missionaries forcibly building churches in Chongqing to spread their faith, which led to conflicts with locals. In the end, local youths destroyed the church and fought with Qing soldiers who were protecting the church. In the ensuing fight, one Qing soldier was killed. This incident triggered a series of anti-foreign missionary movements in the area. Naturally, the opposition to foreign missionaries aroused the dissatisfaction of Britain, the United States and other countries, who demanded that the Qing government severely punish the parties involved and compensate the church for its losses.

In the end, the matter was settled by executing the ringleader and paying 335,000 taels of silver in compensation.

Churches sprang up everywhere in the late Qing Dynasty, and the Qing government's indulgence made these missionaries a privileged group, which in turn created huge conflicts with the local forces.

These contradictions were slowly accumulating, eventually leading to the Boxer Rebellion more than a decade later. With the Qing government's tacit approval, the Boxers began to challenge the foreign powers, ultimately triggering the Eight-Nation Alliance invasion of China, which led to the complete demise of the Qing Dynasty!

As the Qing Dynasty gradually declined, the land of China became a playground for foreign adventurers. The great powers also set their sights on this once mighty dragon of the East and began to devour its flesh and blood.

These Boxers are quite interesting. When they were founded, it was because they saw foreign religions everywhere, and these religions grew rapidly with the Qing government's indulgence. So their slogan, "Overthrow the Qing and restore the Ming," was met with fierce suppression by the Qing government.

Later, they changed their slogan to "Sweep away the foreigners and support the Qing Dynasty," which immediately gained the support of the Qing government. The old witch even thought that with such a large number of patriotic and court-loving folk organizations, sweeping across Europe and America would be a piece of cake.

So they declared war on eleven nations without hesitation. However, these patriotic and imperialist Boxers were no match for the foreigners. Bare-chested, they faced off against the foreigners' guns and cannons, and the outcome was naturally too tragic.

So the old witch was so frightened that she ran away. On her way, in order to negotiate with the foreigners, she turned around and suppressed the Boxers who loved the Qing Dynasty. Thus, a vigorous movement to promote the prestige of our country came to an abrupt end. Those young people who shed their blood for the Qing Dynasty became caught in the middle and most of them met a tragic end.

However, this event also made the Chinese people see the true face of the Qing Dynasty. For the first time, something called revolution was born on this land. Countless people's blood was reignited, and countless ambitious people rose up, leading this land into an even more brutal battlefield.

Chapter Thirteen: The Black Family Army is Established

On the Spring Festival and Lantern Festival of 1887, the Bai family, as usual, invited an opera troupe to perform at their private gathering.

This time, Master Bai invited a priest from the neighborhood. He was a white man in his forties, with a fat head and big ears, smoking a cigar, and a little maid who looked like a pageboy behind him, which caught Bai Jingqi's eye.

This was the first time he had met Huang Chun, who, in the original novel, would become his first wife.

Upon seeing the young girl again, Bai Jingqi became interested. He took the opportunity backstage to pull the girl aside and ask her name, confirming that she was indeed Huang Chunhou.

Bai Jingqi smiled and stepped forward, patting the little girl's hair. The little girl was puzzled, snorted, ignored Bai Jingqi, and ran away in a flash.

Bai Jingqi laughed heartily, finding it quite amusing. Standing backstage, he glanced at the priest in the audience, watching him smoke a cigar, cross his legs, and chat happily with Bai Sanye. This piqued Bai Jingqi's interest in the priest.

I will definitely investigate this priest's background in the future, mainly because my future wife is being raised there, so I need to know if this priest has any particular hobbies.

In the late Qing Dynasty, with the defeat in the Opium War, China was almost reduced to a semi-colonial state. Some small countries were wantonly seizing and plundering China. To this end, they first sent a large number of missionaries to preach in various parts of China, attempting to assimilate the people with faith. At the same time, these missionaries were the best spies to spy on the situation in China.

Although these powers ultimately failed, the wealth they plundered from China over the next hundred years, starting in 1800, amounted to an astronomical sum that was almost incalculable.

The vast amount of silver accumulated in China over thousands of years flowed out of the country in the short span of a hundred years at the end of the Qing Dynasty, causing a shortage of silver in the country during those decades. There were even extraordinary cases where one tael of silver could be exchanged for 1,400 to 1,600 cash.

Although Bai Jingqi was fully aware of all this, he was powerless to do anything about it. He could only do what he could within his own capabilities, hoping that in the future, these great powers would experience the brutal beatings of future elite special forces.

In the future, Bai Jingqi's Black Army will implement an elite force policy, and these elites will be trained in a subject that has never been seen before in this era: firearms.

Of course, he is still accumulating strength for all of this, and he is experimenting with what kind of existence the Black Family Army will become in the future.

In 1887, the Bai family's life was as usual, with almost no changes. They still paid their respects to their parents every year. Apart from the occasional trouble caused by the Third Master Bai, the third branch of the Bai family was relatively peaceful. Bai Wenshi, who was in charge of the family in the original novel, was still just a middle-aged woman with a strong personality in this world.

Perhaps it was because the pressure was gone and there was hope for life, but Bai Wenshi became pregnant again in the early summer of that year. When Bai Jingqi learned that his mother was pregnant, he breathed a sigh of relief. In the future, with a second child, his mother would not always be focusing her attention on him.

The Guangxu Emperor in the palace is also sixteen years old this year. This young emperor is much more pitiful than Bai Jingqi. At least Bai Jingqi could resist his own mother, but this Guangxu Emperor was suppressed by his aunt Cixi for his whole life and eventually became a puppet.

Bai Jingqi resumed his daily life, studying with Mr. Ji during the day and sneaking out at night to train the twenty teenagers. After nearly two years of training, these teenagers now all possess extraordinary skills.

One night, Bai Jingqi led a group of kids on a ten-kilometer round trip swim. Everyone was panting and their faces were pale from being soaked in the river, but not a single person fell behind. Bai Jingqi often led everyone in this kind of training to build willpower.

Two years have finally come. This day is also the day Bai Jingqi selects the final members of the Black Family Army. Bai Jingqi does not directly tell them about the farewell today, and continues training as usual.

That night, Bai Jingqi gave everyone a mission: ten people per group to infiltrate Niujiao Hutong in the south of the city and assassinate the notorious Erhuazi beggar gang in the east of the city from two nearby houses. This Erhuazi beggar gang controlled more than a hundred beggars of all ages in the south of the city and was a notorious beggar gang in the area.

In this era, the capital city of Yanjing was divided into four categories: the east was rich, the west was noble, the north was poor, and the south was cheap. The south city, in particular, was a bustling place with "wine flags, opera drums, and Tianqiao Market, where many tourists forgot their homes." Everywhere there were "people from all walks of life, all kinds of entertainment, and all kinds of food."

This place also became a gathering place for beggars. Bai Jingqi naturally wouldn't let this place go, so his graduation mission for these twenty young men today was to assassinate the leader and manager of this beggar gang and replace them. From now on, this place will be the first peripheral organization of the Black Family Army.

This mission was a surprise attack. Although Bai Jingqi had been tracking this gang for a period of time, he only learned about their general situation. The leader was a man in his early thirties, about 1.75 meters tall, who was skilled in using short knives. The other leaders were mostly young and strong men who also had some martial arts skills. There were about ten of them.

Twenty men against ten strong and capable beggars, and it was a surprise attack, which is why this was chosen as their graduation mission.

Two years of training have turned many of these teenagers into adults, especially the second-in-command, Wang Er, who is almost 1.8 meters tall. His head is still covered in scabies, which is still quite frightening. It hasn't healed in two years. Bai Jingqi has carefully examined Wang Er's body. The boy contracted a serious skin disease when he was young, and it will probably stay that way for the rest of his life. Even if it gets better in the future, it will still affect his body.

Therefore, Bai Jingqi had to give up Wang Er when selecting the Black Family Army this time. Before the operation, Bai Jingqi had already talked to Wang Er about this topic. Wang Er readily agreed, promising that he would lead the remaining teenagers to settle down in Nancheng and carve out a territory for Master Hei Qi.

Wang Er is seventeen years old this year and will soon be an adult. Moreover, his hard training over the past two years has made him capable of taking on ten opponents at once. In the past two years, he has managed the entire City God Temple, and he has managed it quite well. Despite having such a talented general, Bai Jingqi ultimately chose to give up on him.

Besides his physical condition, Bai Jingqi also saw ambition in Wang Er's eyes, a word he disliked the most. He didn't like seeing ambitious people among his subordinates, but in this chaotic world, such ambitious people were exactly needed. Therefore, Bai Jingqi was willing to let Wang Er go. He wouldn't care what kind of person Wang Er would become in the future; it was up to fate.

Following Bai Jingqi's order, the twenty teenagers sped through the night, splitting into two groups and quickly reaching their target location.

Wang Er led ten men to quietly approach a two-story house. The others quickly scattered. After confirming it was safe, Wang Er led five of them into the house, where soon shouts of killing erupted.

After a while, Wang Er, covered in blood, walked out of the house carrying a blood-soaked long knife. Behind him were five other people, also covered in blood. They all appeared to be unharmed, but two of them had their arms hanging down, clearly indicating knife wounds.

Bai Jingqi stood on the opposite side of the road, frowning as he watched Wang Er's actions. It seemed that two years of training hadn't been as effective as he had imagined. They were still just a group of ordinary teenagers who had undergone physical enhancements. Their infiltration and assassination skills were so inexperienced that Bai Jingqi was speechless.

Another group of ten people quickly launched their operation on another street, employing almost the same tactics as Wang Er. After infiltrating, they dispersed to scout the situation. If anyone was watching, they were quickly eliminated. Once it was confirmed to be safe, a few people stayed behind to provide cover and cover the rear, just in case, while the others sneaked into the rooms and began targeted eliminations.

This group performed much better than Wang Er's group. The leader of this group was a fourteen-year-old boy named Zhang Li. This boy's older brother was one of the two who were killed by those eight big men when they appeared, a beggar leader named Zhang Tao.

Zhang Li was only twelve years old back then, and he was very thin. After two years of training, he is now 1.7 meters tall and ranks among the top in various training aspects. This boy is one of the future members of the Black Family Army that Bai Jingqi has his eye on. Bai Jingqi sees his own reflection in this boy. He is extremely self-disciplined and learns very quickly.

In this graduation exam, Bai Jingqi actually intended to arrange the people who were going to be eliminated into Wang Er's group, and the remaining candidates were all assigned to Zhang Li's group.

In reality, Wang Er's group only had four enemies, while Zhang Li's group had nine enemies, and the beggar leader named Erhuazi was also in that building.

The result is now clear: a top student is still a top student. Wang Er obviously relied on sheer ruthlessness to fight the enemy head-on, while Zhang Li used the assassination skills he learned to kill the enemy. This is the elite Black Family Army that Bai Jingqi needs.

The Black Family Army needs all-around champions, not ace soldiers who rely on sheer ruthlessness on the battlefield. If he needs soldiers, he can recruit them at any time, but an elite member of the Black Family Army is something that can be obtained but not sought after!

After the graduation exam, Bai Jingqi took six of them with him, leaving the remaining fourteen to Wang Er, along with a thousand taels of silver. Whether they could settle down here in the future depended on Wang Er's leadership skills.

Wang Er looked at the six people Bai Jingqi took away without any lingering feelings. Instead, his eyes were shining. If Bai Jingqi looked back, he would find that Wang Er was extremely excited, like a wild horse that had broken free of its reins. Without Bai Jingqi's restraint, certain emotions in this young man's heart had already begun to grow wildly.

However, Bai Jingqi no longer cared about the fate of Wang Er and the remaining fourteen people, because in Bai Jingqi's eyes they were already discarded pawns, and their future was up to them to decide.

Bai Jingqi led Zhang Li and five others to a small estate nestled against a hill in the eastern part of the city. This estate cost Bai Jingqi a thousand taels of silver, making it several times more expensive than the property in the western part of the city.

As for the reason, it is because Dongcheng was the richest area in Yanjing. Not only did it contain seven of the thirteen large warehouses of the Qing Dynasty, but it also contained most of the Qing Dynasty's wealth.

In addition, Dongcheng District is home to many famous money shops, including the "Four Great Heng" money shops in Beijing: Hengxing, Hengli, Henghe, and Hengyuan, all of which are located in Dongcheng District.

Even foreigners would open banks of all sizes here in the future. Some of the most famous foreign banks in later generations established branches here, including HSBC and Mercantile Bank of the United Kingdom, Citibank of the United States, Banque de l'Indochine and Sino-French Bank of France, Yokohama Specie Bank of Japan, Deutsche Bank of Germany, and Banco de la Belgian Bank of Belgium, all of which were located in Dongcheng.

Therefore, this place will be a future basement for the Black Family Army. At the same time, there is a small basement under this manor where some valuable hard currency will be stored, including the 20,000 taels of silver that have already been withdrawn. Of course, only 16,000 taels remain now.

Bai Jingqi arranged for Lao Xu to live in this manor and bought two maids to serve him. Lao Xu's apparent identity was that of a wealthy businessman from Tianjin, and he was also a pawn of the Black Family Army. Some matters that needed to be handled openly were temporarily handled through Lao Xu.

Bai Jingqi also investigated Lao Xu's identity and finally confirmed that he was just an ordinary farmer in the suburbs of Beijing. His family had sold all their land and had no food left in the winter. The three of them fled to Beijing to beg for food to survive the winter, but his wife and daughter froze to death, leaving only Lao Xu.

So Lao Xu is already very satisfied with his current life. Moreover, the old man has one advantage: he never inquires about what Bai Jingqi does. Every time he talks to others or Bai Jingqi, he pretends to be deaf. Whether he is really deaf or pretending, Bai Jingqi needs this kind of deafness as a cover.

Zhang Li and the others will temporarily settle here, and Bai Jingqi will decide on arrangements for them after he has chosen a suitable place outside the capital.

From that day on, Bai Jingqi officially announced the establishment of the Black Family Army organization and officially assigned code names to the six of them. Zhang Li was Black One, while the code names of the others were Black Two to Black Six. Bai Jingqi also gave himself the nickname Black Seven. From now on, any new members of the Black Family Army will start from Black Eight.

During the day, they are the grandsons and servants of the Xu family. At night, they transform into the Black Family Army and head to the training grounds that Bai Jingqi left for them in Beijing.

These training sites were mostly selected by Bai Jingqi in the past two years, and they are mostly remote locations. Their training will become more brutal and unique in the future.

If the training of the past two years was at the elementary school level, then what Bai Jingqi will teach them next will be from the high school level.

That autumn, Bai Jingqi finally found a base more than 20 miles east of Beijing. The place was called Liujia Village. The land within a two-mile radius was owned by a landlord surnamed Liu. The place was short of water, and there was only one well within two kilometers. It was not suitable for growing crops at all. It was surrounded by mountains on two sides and was barren. The nearest village was five miles away by mountain road.

The year before last, this place suffered a drought in the summer and a snow disaster in the winter. All the tenants ran away, and the landlord Liu also moved to the western district of the capital. Only two households of servants were left to look after the land. The dilapidated houses in the village had long been abandoned. After hearing about this place, Bai Jingqi investigated it and thought it was a good place.

Without any hesitation, they bought the land from Landlord Liu at a very fair price of only six hundred taels of silver. Landlord Liu was so happy that he immediately dismissed his two servants, leaving behind only the barren Liu Family Village.

Bai Jingqi immediately decided that this place would become the first base of the Black Family Army, and sent Zhang Li and a few others to inspect and confirm the location.

That winter, Bai Jingqi's reserve Black Family Army had a plethora of recruits. In just one week, he selected nearly fifty boys and girls aged ten to thirteen or fourteen, including forty boys and ten girls.