Cao Mao arrived at Zhaoyang Hall with a cheerful smile.
Eunuch Guo hurried to bow in greeting.
Cao Mao treated him very warmly. By rights, since the man had volunteered confidential information, Cao Mao ought to have rewarded him with money or something else.
But Cao Mao did no such thing.
He knew that Eunuch Guo was different from the other eunuchs. Strictly speaking, this man's eunuch body housed a scholar's soul.
Born into a great clan, or sympathetic to the Great Clans, such men had been forced to become eunuchs through punishment or other circumstances. Their bodies were maimed, but their hearts held contempt for other eunuchs. Trying to buy such a man with money, as one might other eunuchs, would be taken as a kind of insult.
During the Late Han, eunuchs of this sort had not been rare. Many had been close to the Great Clans and deeply respected by scholar-officials.
Yes, Cao Mao's ancestor, Emperor Gao of our Great Wei, Cao Teng, Central Regular Attendant of the Former Han, had been one of them.
Cao Mao did not despise these people in the Imperial Palace. Put another way, their existence was a tragedy wrought by feudal imperial power. Castration had inflicted immense damage on both their bodies and their minds, yet in this age, even if they merely performed their duties, they would be resented and blamed without cause.
The scholars laid all the faults of the Late Han at the eunuchs' feet.
The benighted rulers who ought to have borne full responsibility were, in the scholar-officials' telling, merely bewitched by eunuchs. Even their wrongdoing amounted only to keeping these eunuchs close.
As appendages of imperial power, what eunuchs did depended entirely on the ruler's ability. Under a strong ruler, they could open sea routes and