(Yesterday, there was a problem with my computer. When I copied and pasted Chapter 62 from the document onto the platform, the last hundred or two hundred characters got duplicated. If you saw the duplicate, just exit and refresh the page.)
"Great families."
Fang Xuan gazed at the wine in his cup and fell into thought.
His study of history was not particularly deep.
But he knew that, whether in his past life or this one, great families had always been a massive force hanging over the history of every feudal dynasty—one that could never be ignored.
The rise and fall of the realm, the changing of imperial power.
Behind far too many events lay the shadows of great families, fanning the flames from behind the scenes.
Even the supreme imperial authority sometimes had to bow its head before the power of great families.
Take that wise sovereign of his past life, for example—the one who won the realm on horseback, rose to power atop mountains of corpses and seas of blood, was once called the Heavenly Strategy General, then governed the realm from horseback, made a hundred nations bow to the Heavenly Khan, and forged the foundation of a golden age. When he had first ascended the throne, even he had to live by the breath of the great families.
Only after more than a decade did he manage to reduce their influence to its lowest point.
Or take that unlucky emperor from his past life, who hanged himself from a crooked-necked tree and whom countless people judged to have lofty ambitions but little talent. He wanted the great families across the land to donate taxes and resist the rebel forces, yet not a single great family paid him any heed.
There were simply too many such examples to