"Water... water..."
Zhou Yi let out an unconscious groan. His lips felt moist, and he swallowed instinctively several times.
The medicinal soup slid down his throat and into his stomach.
A warmth spread through his organs and limbs, restoring a little strength to his originally frail body.
When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was a bronze lamp on the ceiling. An elderly man with a pale, beardless face stood before him.
A sharp pain surged from his lower body, snapping Zhou Yi's muddled consciousness back into place. At last, he understood where he was.
The Eunuch Bureau!
The institution the common folk called the place that managed eunuchs.
Zhou Yi had been born in a rural village in Wannian County. Last year's great drought had left the fields barren. After his younger sister starved to death, his parents sold him into the palace as a eunuch in order to keep his older brother alive.
During the castration in daylight, he had fainted from fright and pain.
"You're awake?"
The old man's voice was shrill. "Tomorrow, follow those few to the eastern duty quarters to learn your letters. Don't you dare slack off. Learn too slowly, and you won't get food!"
With that, he picked up his medicine chest and left.
In his ten years of life, Zhou Yi had never left his village. Alone in such an unfamiliar place, fear rose in his heart.
Curled up beneath the quilt, he quietly surveyed the room.
The room was two zhang square, larger than both the main hall and inner room of his home combined. Its blue bricks were laid neatly, far finer-looking than the yellow mud-brick house back home, not to mention the red-painted window frames and rafters.
Looking at it this way, being a eunuch was