Qi An was stunned for a few seconds before realizing what he had asked:
"Oh, you mean the Great Wall? It's still in good condition. It later played a huge role in military affairs on several occasions, and its value is immeasurable."
It's become a tourist hotspot now; I've even visited it. Everyone who mentions the Great Wall has to admire it immensely.
Ying Zheng breathed a sigh of relief without making it obvious; it seemed his decision was correct.
Qi An gave a thumbs up: "But the most amazing thing has to be the terracotta warriors buried with you in your tomb. They were unearthed more than two thousand years later, which shocked the world and were hailed as the 'Eighth Wonder of the World'."
Ying Zheng's face was grim: "My tomb has been dug up?"
"No, those mercury traps in your tomb are too powerful. With their current level of technology, they can only watch."
Ying Zheng breathed a sigh of relief.
"But how did you come up with the idea of using terracotta figurines as burial goods? What those brats always say is, 'Have you ever seen a tyrant like my brother Zheng, whose burial goods are all dead objects, without a single living person?'"
Ying Zheng smiled, feeling the bittersweet emotions welling up inside him—not overwhelming, but comforting.
He was called a tyrant for so long, but unexpectedly, his true good intentions were understood by children two thousand years later.
I don't seem so angry anymore.
"My life's work has been to unify the six kingdoms, so that the people can live peacefully away from war. Why would I harm them or use living people to be buried alive with them?"
Those terracotta figures are the soldiers who fought alongside me in battles across the land; their companionship is enough for me.
Qi An thought to himself, "The emperors who came after me didn't have your level of understanding."
They considered themselves the chosen ones, as if they couldn't show their nobility without burying some living people with them, and they also worried that no one would take care of them after they died.
Ying Zheng was most curious about the era in which those children who idolized him lived. He frowned:
"From what you're saying, those children don't seem to be doing very well. And how did the child who sent you die?"
Qi An: "...I'm exhausted."
Ying Zheng's eyes widened in disbelief. "Living conditions must have been quite good back then, so why would someone die from overwork?"
None of the people who built the Great Wall, the mausoleum, and the terracotta army for him died from exhaustion.
What kind of miserable environment are these children living in?
Qi An felt exhausted just thinking about it, so she gave Ying Zheng a detailed description of the sorrows of young people in Xu Xiaoxiao's world.
They are well-fed and well-clothed, but their hearts are poorer than those of beggars.
Class distinctions have long been solidified, and insurmountable chasms exist between them.
Some people are born in Rome, while others die without ever leaving their village.
The distribution of social resources is extremely abnormal, with one percent of the population occupying ninety percent of the resources and standing at the top of the pyramid.
Ninety-nine percent of people are exhausted, struggling to survive, in order to compete for the remaining ten percent.
Effort and reward are not proportional; some things are either given or received at birth.
The children missed out on the benefits of the era, but they stepped into every single pitfall left behind by those times.
They caught the wave of the highest housing prices, the most expensive education and healthcare, but encountered the devaluation of academic qualifications and the devilish job market.
The continuous expansion of college enrollment has led to an overabundance of college graduates, while the number of job opportunities is limited, resulting in a supply far exceeding demand.
So, companies started to be selective.
Jobs that can be done with a junior college degree are offered by a bachelor's degree holder, and jobs that can be done with a bachelor's degree holder are offered by a master's degree holder.
They wish they could hire a graduate student to guard the gate and a PhD student to tighten screws.
Don't date someone over 35; don't date unmarried women without children; and definitely don't date married women without children.
Even if you're married and have children, that won't work. Who will take care of your child? Do you plan to have a second child?
After finally finding a job, I discovered that the five social insurances and one housing fund, the 9-to-6 workday, and the weekends off—all clearly stated in the labor law—are just wishful thinking. The relevant departments simply ignore them.
996 and 007 are the norm; companies that offer overtime pay are considered conscientious.
If you don't want to do it, fine, leave. There are plenty of people waiting to do it. That's how brazen we are.
Retire at 65, but become unemployed at 35. How do you survive the 30 years in between? Nobody says.
Under the bright and clear sky, Kong Yiji is everywhere.
The average education level of delivery drivers in this mysterious organization is getting higher and higher.
A random person wearing a yellow vest might be a master's graduate from a top university.
As a result, taking civil service exams has become the most sought-after "iron rice bowl" job. At least this job is secure enough to last a lifetime, and you don't have to worry about going hungry one day.
So the children studied hard for nearly twenty years, leaving the ivory tower with high hopes, only to find themselves unemployed upon graduation.
In the end, they receive a meager salary that doesn't reflect well on them, and every day when they open their eyes, they think about their elderly parents, children, mortgage payments, and car loan payments.
Forget about quitting, I can't even afford to die.
The worst part is that the house might even be left unfinished.
Developers are fine, banks are fine, only homebuyers are affected.
They emptied their family's savings and gambled away decades of their future, spending their entire lives working for something that doesn't even exist.
If everyone were this miserable, that would be one thing.
Unfortunately, this is an era of highly developed information technology, and any news can spread across the entire internet in just a few minutes.
They saw too many things that didn't belong to their social class.
They realized how toxic the motivational platitudes about hard work and perseverance that society had instilled in them were, causing them to have a complete mental breakdown and shatter their values.
If you want something and you can reach it by standing on tiptoe or jumping, you will work hard for it because you have something to strive for.
But if you took off your leg and attached it to your arm, and still couldn't reach it even by stepping on your parents' shoulders, you would just give up.
Especially when you see people who are born with all those things, yet they still eat and waste them.
So the young people who gave up started to give up and lie low, and they never mentioned ideals again.
Unfortunately, the prevailing social environment doesn't let them off the hook, criticizing young people for lacking a sense of responsibility and deeming it shameful to give up.
Hurry up and make the most of your remaining time; you haven't met your child-rearing quota yet, two would be best.
Ten million college students are too many, ten million newborns are too few.
Young people are powerless to change the status quo, but they have their own ways of resisting, namely refusing to get married and have children.
Because they believe that it's better not to enroll a child in the first place than to let them lose at the starting line.
Otherwise, they'll just be repeating the same old mistakes.
They fear that their children will blame and complain about them when they are exhausted from working hard in the future.
They call themselves "Buddhist youths," but the anxiety and inner turmoil they feel are hard to express.
Xu Xiaoxiao is not an isolated case, but a microcosm of countless others like her.
They just couldn't understand it. Society was becoming more and more developed, and the Guo family was becoming more and more powerful.
But why do I feel... increasingly tired as I live?
"Outrageous!" Ying Zheng roared in fury, slamming his hand on the table.
"Don't the ministers know about these problems? Why isn't anyone solving them? Aren't they advocating for human rights?"
Qi An also asked Xu Xiaoxiao this question, but the girl couldn't answer it.
But without Qi An's reply, Ying Zheng quickly understood.
He sneered, "I understand. It's because they are the beneficiaries. How can they speak up for the victims when the knife hasn't cut them themselves?"
Just as Confucian scholars attacked his proposal of "equality between men and women".
He smiled but remained silent, praying for peace.
What are human rights?
For most people, it means that they will advocate for and fight for the rights of their own kind based on which category they belong to.
Opinions are not important; stances are.
Why not do nothing? Because it is not them who suffer, nor their descendants.
So they say life is wonderful, people are happy, and society is full of love.
They lie on the blood and tears of ordinary people, stand on the moral high ground, bury their heads in the sand, and pontificate about the state of affairs.
Keep going, work hard, and everything will come!
No, that means you haven't tried hard enough!
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