Hu Xiaotian said, "I'm doing well. I'm serving in the Palace Gardens Bureau now. Eunuch Ji thinks very highly of me, and the people around me treat me well too."
Hu Buwei nodded. Hearing the word "eunuch" cut through his heart like a knife. This was his only son. That bastard Long Yelin had actually made him enter the palace to atone for their crimes, severing the Hu Family's ancestral line. What a bitter, blood-deep grievance this was.
Hu Xiaotian asked, "How are things at the Ministry of Revenue?"
Hu Buwei said, "They're merely squeezing out the last bit of value I have left." He saw his future clearly and knew that even if he scraped by for now, he would never escape death in the end.
"You shouldn't have come here." What weighed most heavily on Hu Buwei's mind was still his son's situation. There was no telling what consequences this visit might bring him. The court's eyes were everywhere around Water Well Alley, and someone might well discover that he had come tonight.
Hu Xiaotian said, "It's all right. Since Eunuch Ji was willing to bring me here, he can take care of it."
Hu Buwei slowly shook his head and said in a low voice, "The only person you can trust is yourself." There was so much he wanted to tell his son, but he could not say it now. Of course he knew what sort of man Ji Feihua was. His son associating with someone like that was no different from bargaining with a tiger for its skin.
Ever since entering the room, Hu Xiaotian had kept watching and listening for any movement around them, wary of eavesdroppers. Their circumstances forced him to be cautious. He took a piece of charcoal from the brazier and wrote