She fell out after crying at the wrong grave

When the fourth letter reached Hengzhi, spring had already arrived in Pingchuan.

The willows were turning slightly green, and the water of Pingjiang River was flowing gently, no longer turbulent.

At that time, he took advantage of the gambling game on the big ship to counterattack, Chen Lan escaped by chance, and captured Chen Xu, which was considered a small victory.

Li Shu was standing under the porch with a smile on his face as usual. The magpies on the eaves were calling softly and flying around on the slender branches.

He stretched his neck and looked from afar, and finally waited for Hengzhi, who had interrogated Chen Xu all night, to come back from the court prison.

Hengzhi was still wearing his armor, with a long cape fluttering in the wind behind him, looking very heroic.

Li Shu sighed, no wonder this Marquis Zhao was able to marry the princess, she was really quite pretty.

Speaking of this Princess Xuancheng, in Li Shu's cognition, she is the only heir to the royal family. With this identity as a confidence, whether she is a princess or a prince, she has the ability to do whatever she wants.

Even if she is going to marry Youbei in two months, it will not affect the princess's ability to find a lover and indulge herself for a while.

She is a princess, and she is extremely beautiful. I heard that she was taught by the master painter Huai Chengbai. Now she can single-handedly command the General Construction Department and the Ministry of Works to rebuild the Chong'an Hall, which is the greatest achievement in the world.

For any handsome man in the world, no matter how talented or good-looking he is, it would be a great honor for him to be noticed by her.

Li Shu slowly watched Hengzhi, with a frosty face, step over the threshold and walk around the corridor. He seemed as cold as the river water that had just broken the ice.

But then he thought again, although the princess was found in Kezhou, it was not clear that the two had any past. Even if there was, the relationship would be over now.

Therefore, it is reasonable to communicate more frequently.

After sorting out the thoughts, Li Shu suddenly felt that it was understandable that he had been tired from traveling back and forth between the capital and Pingchuan several times.

He was so immersed in the so-called logical facts he had made up that he didn't even hear Heng Zhi passing by him and asking him to come in and talk.

So Hengzhi took off his helmet and armor and lingered in the house for a quarter of an hour, changing his clothes and washing his face. When the water in the pot was almost boiling, Li Shu suddenly came to his senses and ran into the house.

"General Heng, please forgive me... I was distracted just now." Li Shu stopped at the door quickly, supporting himself with the pillar beside him, gasping for breath.

He took out the well-preserved letter from his arms, hurried forward a few steps, and placed it on the desk in front of Hengzhi.

"This is His Highness's reply to you."

Hengzhi hummed, leaned forward in his chair, and took the letter in his hand.

During the ten days, A'ao was busy painting the pillars in Chong'an Hall, and Hengqi was busy patiently catching Chen Lan's tail and then letting him go, so they really had no time to take care of each other.

Fortunately, considering the thickness of the letter, nothing will happen and it will be a peaceful ten days.

"Has anything happened in the capital recently?"

I opened the wax seal and unfolded the old, wrinkled paper. The fresh, heavy ink on it was indeed the same: the word "An" (safe) was returned.

Including the previous one, I have asked the same question four times over and over again, and got four same answers.

"The general is indeed as good as a god." Li Shuhe laughed twice. He had been waiting for Hengzhi to come back today because he had something to convey in person.

Otherwise, he could just treat it as any other letter from home. He could put the letter down and go back to the inn, then come back to pick it up after receiving a reply. There would be no need to waste so much time and effort.

Li Shu cupped his hands and said seriously, "In the capital, there is only one person from Yuanzhou who stayed in the palace. Because your majesty recruited people and land to build the palace, many people were displaced. In the winter, the Ministry of Revenue counted the population and found that hundreds of people had died. In addition, since your majesty moved to the temporary palace, he has not attended court to govern. It was all negotiated by several people led by the Secretary Yan Tongjun. The people around are also crying and the people have lost a lot of their hearts."

It was a matter of time.

Shen Zhuo was able to stop after killing only a few dozen people because of the fire, and he naturally went to the new palace to enjoy himself. Whether it was organized by the Ministry of Rites or Shen Zhuo's willful forced marriage, it was a common occurrence these days.

Every household in the capital, if they had a daughter of marriageable age, would either send her to a Taoist temple or hastily marry her off, and they would not dare to publicize it at all.

Not long ago, a ridiculous incident occurred. Two officials from the Ministry of Personnel disagreed on political views, and one of them wrote directly to the new emperor, saying that the other party had a beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter waiting to be married.

Shen Zhuo was furious at this time and ordered his men to bring the young lady to the palace and demoted her father's official position.

As soon as this incident happened, the Censorate, headed by the two officials Kong Jiu and Cao Jun, immediately submitted an impeachment memorial, believing that this move was absurd and requested Shen Zhuo to revoke his decision. The incident caused a stir for several days.

Yan Tongjun took advantage of the spring rain to avoid this trouble and invited his beloved disciple Lu Zhongting to his home to enjoy the rain.

Even though Lu Zhongting usually looked timid, now that he was away from people, he couldn't help but complain to his mentor.

"Your Majesty is acting more and more unorthodox now. He demoted Lord Zhou just because he did not submit his own daughter to the selection. Isn't this telling everyone in the court that he condones this kind of infighting among colleagues?" Lu Zhongting sighed, "If this continues, the court will be in chaos sooner or later."

Yan Tongjun looked at the rain slowly.

He is about to retire, and for Da Chong who has worked hard all his life, it is not right to let go, nor is it right not to let go.

But the one who ruled the country was still the emperor. If His Majesty was determined not to work hard to govern the country, then even if the ministers worked hard until death, it would still be useless. For this reason, he was so worried that he fell ill several times, and he never received a word of comfort from the new emperor.

After all, when he was young, he was the poetry teacher of the late emperor's two brothers. Now, we can't expect His Majesty to respect teachers and honor morality.

"Zhongting, you have always been gentle and kind. If even you can't stand this, then there will be more people complaining under this stagnant water." Yan Tongjun put down the teacup and thought for a long time before hesitantly speaking, "If so, now I teach you to choose a wise ruler. Do you have anyone in mind?"

When Lu Zhongting heard this, he was horrified and his lips and teeth trembled, "Teacher, how can you say such disrespectful words!"

If other people heard this, at best they would be exiled, and at worst their entire family would be implicated.

Yan Tongjun looked normal, and even rolled his eyes at him, "What are you afraid of? Today, I am just chatting with you, leaving the officialdom behind. Who doesn't have a heart in the government? Just tell me straight."

in this way.

Lu Zhongting gradually calmed down and thought carefully about the questions his mentor had just asked.

If Dachong is still relatively stable in the world today, it must be because Shuzhong, Yuanzhou and Kezhou are each guarding one side. These guards, whether they are loyal to the court in their hearts or not, are just pretending to be loyal, and they are all doing their duty, so the country is stable.

But this could not stop the emperor from committing excessive debauchery every day.

I won't talk about the distant past, just the recent past. The Youbei region has been eyeing us covetously since last year. Even if we forcefully agree to a marriage, it is still a neighbor as close as a tiger or a wolf.

It would have been fine if the Marquis of Zhao, who was guarding Kezhou, was summoned to the capital by an imperial edict, but when Pingzhou broke out in rebellion, even if there was no one else available, Your Majesty actually transferred such an important general from the north to quell the rebellion.

It would be fine if Youbei kept his promise, but if he did not, he could break through Louguan and enter the south of Kezhou as easily as walking on flat ground.

It can be seen that their Majesty does not understand military tactics or imperial skills at all.

If we want to save Da Chong and change the monarch, the Shen family has no collateral branches. Those who are more distant have long had nothing to do with the throne, let alone the talent of a monarch.

If a new dynasty is established, there will be some people who can follow it.

"Although I can't answer the teacher's question right now." Lu Zhongting thought for a while and felt that it would be better to kick the ball back, "but I guess the teacher is completely disappointed with Your Majesty after saying this."

Yan Tongjun was silent for a long while, but in the end he didn't say a word.

The candidate he had in mind was currently sitting behind a desk in Pingzhou Prefecture, opening another letter from the capital.

Ah'ao explained in detail in the letter that everything developed just as he expected.

It took a lot of twists and turns to smuggle the fragments scraped off the wall of Chong'an Hall out of the palace and finally find a doctor who knew nothing about the matter but understood medical knowledge to investigate.

In the capital, it seemed like a secret that all doctors kept silent about at this time, and no one could find out the reason.

Secondly, he was afraid that investigating the matter in the capital would alert the enemy, so he went to several places and finally took the case to Pingzhou for thorough investigation.

The strange smell that A'ao smelled for the first time contained some herbs such as Albizzia julibrissin, Tripterygium wilfordii and Cnidium monnieri. These herbs have an impact on fertility and have been mixed in the paint on the walls for a long time. I am afraid that this is the reason why the royal family has difficulty in having offspring.

In this connection, A'an was born before Shen Cong ascended the throne, and Shen Zhuo had divorced his wife since he was the Prince of Yong, and had no children. Even if he favored some concubines and some of them became pregnant, they soon became jealous and fought with each other, leaving no children.

After Shen Zhuo ascended the throne, there were no more pregnant concubines in the palace.

The precision and cruelty of the medication were aimed directly at making the Shen family extinct.

In addition, the fishy smell comes from the processed animal carcasses, which is suppressed by stronger spices.

But over time, perhaps because of the evil spirit, or perhaps because the smell was really disturbing, Shen Cong and Shen Zhuo both became extremely irritable and angry.

The red walls of Chong'an Hall did not start to be built when Shen Cong ascended the throne, so how come Emperor Wu'an had little influence on them?

However, since the matter has been traced to Pingzhou, it is natural that we have to check where the three herbs including Albizzia julibrissin were sold in the past ten years in Pingzhou, where the flowers and herbs are most widely circulated.

Upon checking, it happened that there was some connection with Chen Lan's ancestors.

Therefore, Hengzhi deliberately let Chen Lan go at Pingjiang for this reason and spread the news, preparing to retaliate and set up a trap to reveal the truth.

Hengzhi kept the letter, moistened his pen, added new greetings to the old letter, sealed it, and handed it to Li Shu.

Yun Cheng hurried in from outside, glanced at Li Shu next to him, and respectfully reported, "Master, Chen Xu's confession has been written."

The thing was handed over to him, and Hengzhi pinched the two corners that were not stained with blood and looked at them carefully.

Yun Cheng took a deep breath, but the nausea in his throat still hadn't dissipated.

With this kind of interrogation method, which had a mixture of the unfamiliar and the familiar, only Hengzhi could come out of it without changing his expression.

(End of this chapter)