In the haze, a voice suddenly asked me, “Why did he leave in the end and go to the next stop?”
I groggily opened my eyes and saw the fat guy chewing on a compressed biscuit; it seemed he was the one who had just asked me that.
I asked him, “What did you say?” but I realized I could hear the sound without opening my mouth.
“I asked why your brother left in the end and went to the next stop,” the fat guy replied, surprisingly able to hear me.
A sense of frustration filled my body. It was obvious that the muffled oil bottle had been here for a long time; he left for Changbai Mountain, clearly following a lead from here.
I couldn’t reconstruct the process, but the thing he wanted was definitely not here, which is why he went to the next stop.
And we had seen the entire problem-solving process yet still knew nothing.
Why did the fat guy suddenly ask me this? I was a bit puzzled but couldn’t recall what I had been doing just moments ago.
“Do you know about the Zhang family?” the fat guy asked again. “The Zhang family is so powerful; why do they still work so hard to do these strange things?”
“Powerful?” I found it hard to understand the fat guy’s statement.
“Powerful, they have no enemies, no one can rival them. What are they doing these strange things for?”
Indeed, for such a huge family as the Zhangs, with such immense power, you really have no leverage to confront them.
The internal structure of the Zhang family was already incredibly stable. From what I could see, it was the most terrifying and orderly family, and a system composed of people is hard to achieve such cohesion. I had always thought that a system formed by such uncontrollable entities was fundamentally weak, but the Zhang family truly surprised me.
So everything originates from the Zhang family’s perverse self-discipline, and this self-discipline comes from their extraordinary control.
Such control, unless you deny the entire social system, cannot be changed by killing a few people, seizing some property, or introducing some invaders; it really cannot alter the status quo even a little bit.
I felt dizzy again, and the fat guy asked me, “Feeling dizzy again?”
“I’m trying to think,” I said, suddenly wanting to ponder how this strange organization of the Zhang family actually operates.
For others regarding the Zhang family—of course, this “others” refers to those who truly understand them or have confronted them—the first impression must be that of an invisible yet comfortable control. The Zhang family has designed a social system in which there are rulers, a middle class, aristocrats, the lower populace, and slaves.
These classes continuously struggle, consuming their elite class and time, creating a closed loop. All changes of dynasty occur within this closed loop. Everyone realizes they are restrained, but the reasons for this restraint are very compelling. Whether it’s the emperor or the leader of a peasant uprising, none have noticed that the Zhang family, watching them from outside this loop, controls all the details of society so simply.
My mind was a mess. In fact, when you look at Chinese history, you can completely discover a terrifying regularity: Chinese history is a continuous cycle, repeating the same pattern every few hundred to a thousand years.

How is this achieved? If an emperor has no enemies, will he slowly realize that his empire is actually completely out of his control? People tend to get caught up in immediate problems, and a person who does nothing can be quite terrifying. Inaction means they have plenty of time to observe the problems of others, and it becomes easy to see that these issues are a form of control coming from “outside.”

Therefore, people must not be without problems.

The Zhang family is particularly adept at serving both opposing sides simultaneously. It’s like Fan Zeng and Zhang Liang, who were around Xiang Yu and Liu Bang, actually being part of the same group, rehearsing their lines every day before performing for their respective masters.

“I think it would be better for Liu Bang to take the world in the end; Xiang Yu’s character is not easy to control.”

“I think so too. When do you think we should arrange the decisive battle?”

“Given the current situation, Xiang Yu’s military strength is still quite formidable. If Liu Bang fights Xiang Yu now, he might not achieve a hundred percent victory. So, I think we need to arrange a few small-scale battles in the three months before the decisive battle to reduce Xiang Yu’s strength by about twenty percent. That way, we can be more confident.”

“That’s fine, but I think we need a double insurance. Liu Bang needs a general who can break through.”

“How about this: we transfer someone from the clan leader to replace Han Xin and send a hundred troops from the Zhang family to Han Xin’s army.”

“Okay, then I will suggest that Liu Bang reuse Han Xin.”

“Then it’s settled. After I complete the deployment, I will leave Xiang Yu. Before the new dynasty is established, we need to properly handle several points we need to control. We need to lock down the guards around the emperor, the treasury management system, and the military mobilization system, and then the task will be complete.”

I lit a cigarette, and the thoughts swirling in my mind made me feel amused. I sighed inwardly and suddenly recalled a question my grandfather had asked me once.

This question was something my grandfather suddenly posed to me when I was young. I don’t know why it came to mind at this moment, but once I thought of it, I immediately felt anxious.

It was when my grandfather was resting in the yard, and I asked him to give me a riddle to guess (I loved riddles when I was little; now it feels like my entire life has turned into a big riddle). My grandfather initially told me a few simple riddles, which I guessed easily. I kept asking for something harder, and my grandfather, unable to withstand the pressure, thought for a moment and asked me a question.

“If you have a pile of gold in a cave and you find a guard to watch over it, then I ask you, does this gold belong to you or to the guard?”

“Of course it belongs to me; it’s my gold!” I replied, feeling quite clever at the time.

My grandfather shook his head: “Unless you have the power to defeat this guard and the ability to capture him at any time, otherwise, your gold belongs to the guard.”

I was quite confused. My grandfather then asked me, “If you have an army fighting outside and you send a general to lead them, then is this army yours or the general’s?”

I thought for a moment and, feeling a bit timid, said, “It should still be mine.”

My grandfather shook his head and said, “Unless you can provide these soldiers with the gold they need, this army belongs to no one. But your gold isn’t yours; it’s your guard’s. And those soldiers actually already possess that gold. So can you clearly say who is greater: these soldiers, the guards of the treasury, or the emperor who nominally owns it all?”

I was too young at the time to understand, so I shook my head.

My grandfather continued, “Generally speaking, the more one knows, the more powerful one becomes.”

“The more you know, the more powerful you are?”

“Yes. No one knows where the emperor’s gold is, so those soldiers cannot just go and seize it themselves. They can only fight for the emperor to earn gold. And the guards don’t know where the emperor’s army is, so they can’t just run to the army and say, ‘I can distribute the emperor’s gold to everyone, as long as you listen to me and kill the emperor.’ So the army can only fight, and the guards can only guard the gold.”

“And then? Is the emperor still the most powerful?”

“The emperor is powerful because he knows many, many secrets. However, there are certainly people in this world who know more secrets than the emperor. There might even be one person who knows all the secrets in the world, and that person would undoubtedly be the most powerful.”

“I don’t understand, Grandpa. So if we want to become powerful, we need to know more secrets?”

My grandfather nodded, “I used to think that way. Secrets are the source of all power, but they are also the source of all suffering.”

“Grandpa, this riddle isn’t fun. I want to hear a story.”