Even as Chu Qiguang pondered these things, he did not forget to lead the applause. "Student Baimi put it very well. If we want the whole world to know that cat monster lives matter too, and if we want to ensure A'de's tragedy never happens again, we must move two great mountains. We must make the people of this world stop demonizing monsters, so that all of us can finally breathe.
"Our enemy has never been all the common people under heaven. It is the foolish superstition of the Heavenly Master Sect and the corrupt system of the Great Han Dynasty. They are the true culprits behind your current plight."
Chu Qiguang organized his thoughts, keeping his words as simple and accessible as possible. He drew on common knowledge from this world and grounded his points in everyday reality, ensuring that even uneducated monsters could understand.
Seeing the bewildered, half-comprehending expressions on the cats' faces, Chu Qiguang assumed an air of sorrowful compassion. "I know many of you fled to the county seat from nearby villages."
He looked toward Lulu and asked, "Lulu, you ran to the county seat from Nangou Township, didn't you? Why did you flee here?"
Lulu instinctively wanted to talk back, but after rubbing her rear, she answered meekly, "There was no food left."
"No food left," Chu Qiguang echoed. "And why was there no food left?"
"Even the wild grass on the ground was almost picked clean and eaten by the villagers, let alone mice or sparrows," Lulu said. "Without food, I had no choice but to come to the county seat to scrape together a living."
Chu Qiguang nodded and questioned the other cat monsters who had come to the county seat to survive. Some could no longer catch small prey to eat; some had depended on human families who had hanged themselves, leaving no one to feed them; others had nearly been caught and eaten by starving villagers...
Analyzing their situations one by one, Chu Qiguang said, "Though the details of your arrival in the county seat seem to differ, down at the root, it is because there was nothing left to eat in your original villages, and you could no longer survive. But why was there no food?"
Feeling Chu Qiguang's gaze on him, Baimi reluctantly stood up and answered, "It was... it was just that there was nothing left to catch and eat, and the humans who used to take us in were gone too."
Chu Qiguang nodded. "Precisely. When the cat monster clan lived alongside humans, it was inherently a relationship of mutual aid and dependence. You helped them catch mice and insects, guarding their fields and granaries, while they fed and cared for you. In the villages, you either hunted small animals or ate what humans gave you, but now both of those sources are shrinking away.
"You and the common folk share honor and disgrace alike. You belong to the exact same class.
"If they are well-fed and well-clothed, you can eat your fill every day. If their homes are stripped bare to the walls, your corpses will litter the fields right alongside theirs."
Most of the cat monsters nodded thoughtfully. They felt there was truth to Chu Qiguang's words, and it resonated with what they had experienced in daily life.
As for leaving human society entirely to survive in the true wild, that was something they had never even considered.
After all, food was far harder to come by in the true wilderness than among humans, and one had to contend with a harsh natural environment, with rarely so much as a proper den to shelter from wind and rain.
Only a monster as powerful as Qiao Zhi, capable of subduing wild beasts, could thrive out in the wild.
Chu Qiguang continued, "Why has it come to this? Because the common folk can no longer fill their own bellies. When they cannot even feed themselves, they naturally cannot care for you. They will even compete with you for the small animals you hunt, or even try to eat you. It all comes down to hunger, to the sheer struggle to survive.
"Yet why are the common folk growing poorer and hungrier? Where does the grain they grow every year actually go?"
Seeing that he had captured the cat monsters' rapt attention, Chu Qiguang sighed. "Take our county, for example. The household of Grand Secretary Wu alone controls at least a hundred and fifty thousand mu of land. Add to that the Hao family with at least a hundred thousand mu, followed by powerful clans like the Ding and Sun families—more than half of Qingyang County's arable land has been seized by them."
Chu Qiguang recalled the figures he had learned, speaking as he went over them in his mind.
"And that is to say nothing of the imperial nobility. Prince Hui of Beiyue Prefecture alone draws an annual stipend of sixty thousand dan of rice, thirty thousand taels of silver, forty bolts of brocade, three hundred bolts of ramie silk, five hundred bolts of thin silk, and ten cartloads of assorted medicinal pills. The other expenses for his martial training and Daoist cultivation are simply too numerous to list."
Beiyue Prefecture was the administrative level above Qingyang County; Qingyang was merely one of eight counties under its jurisdiction, and Prince Hui's fief was located right here.
"The imperial clan, officials of every rank... they hoard so much wealth, yet they pay none of the taxes they ought to pay, nor do they ever have to answer the court's annual calls for corvée labor.
"The estates and resources annexed by these powerful elites account for more than half the realm, yet none of it is taxed. The land left for the common people to till is less than half the realm's total, yet they must bear the taxes of the entire realm.
"How could the common folk ever shoulder such a burden? Naturally, the rich grow richer while the poor grow poorer. The rich own fields stretching ridge to ridge, while the poor have not enough ground to plant an awl.
"The poorer the common people become, the harder life gets for you cat monsters. Perhaps a handful of cat monsters can slip into wealthy households, but those wealthy families alone could never feed all the cat monsters in the world.
"What the powerful elites rob by trickery and force is not merely the livelihood of the common folk, but the very sustenance of the world's countless cat monsters. You and the common people are both targets of their exploitation."
Noticing the light of sudden realization in the eyes of several cat monsters, Chu Qiguang nodded in satisfaction.
Lulu, the tuxedo cat, raised a paw and asked, "But whether it's people in the villages or people in the city, they all want to kill monsters."
"An excellent question, Lulu. That is racial conflict."
Chu Qiguang said, "Whether between demons and humans, or dogs and cats, the conflicts between races are merely symptoms on the surface. The class conflict of being exploited by the powerful elites is the true essence of the problem. And the very root that allows them to exploit you at will lies in the foolish superstition of the Heavenly Master Sect and the corrupt system of the Great Han Dynasty.
"If we wish to change all of this, we must carry out reform.
"However, our time is just about up for today. Next time, I will expand on the issue of racial conflict versus class conflict and explain it to you in detail."
Ever since birth, the cat monsters before him had scoured for food and fought simply to survive. They had only felt that life was growing harder with each passing day, never stopping to consider the fundamental cause behind it all. Certainly, no one like Chu Qiguang had ever laid it out for them before.
Hearing Chu Qiguang speak like this for the first time, many of the cat monsters felt as though a veil had been lifted.
Observing their reactions, Chu Qiguang nodded contentedly and thought to himself, 'These cat monsters are blank slates; teaching them is far easier than teaching humans. If I were trying to instruct people in this, it would be much more trouble.'
He continued aloud, "From now on, we will hold a lesson every day. I hope all of you will strive for the rise of the cat race.
"Time to eat."
Once the lesson ended, Chu Qiguang began dishing out the food for the cat monsters himself. As the cats stepped forward one by one carrying wooden platters in their mouths, he ladled portions of the prepared meat and vegetables into their bowls, adding each time, "Study hard."
Baimi, the white cat, nodded. "Thank you, Brother Dog."
Chu Qiguang replied, "Don't copy Chen Gang and throw careless nicknames around. Starting today, you may address me as Mr. Chu."
"Understood, Mr. Chu."
After serving all the cat monsters their meat and vegetables, Chu Qiguang picked up a bowl of the same food and began to eat.
Watching the increasingly obedient cat monsters, a faint smile curved Chu Qiguang's lips. He thought to himself, 'Once I train these cat monsters properly, they will make the finest sparks to help me rapidly expand my monster ranks in the future.'
Chapter 75