The younger brother of the First Emperor

Chapter 154: Female Shen Does Not Harm Ji Yaoyao

Han Wangran nodded upon hearing this and said:
"Tianyou, please explain it more clearly."

Zhang Ping's heart sank, something was not right.

He and the current King of Han, Ran, have worked together for more than ten years and have a mature way of getting along with each other. They usually get to the point when talking.

When Zhang Ping mentioned the word Zheng State, King Han Ran should have understood and should not have continued asking questions.

If he asked further, if this plan was successful, it would be the credit of him alone as the prime minister.

If the plan is successful, you should be rewarded.

He was rewarded from above and his power as prime minister was expanded.

This was a scene that King Han Ran did not like to see, and it was also a scene that the previous king did not like to see.

His Zhang family had served as prime ministers of Han for five generations, and his eldest son Zhang Liang was known as the Young Prime Minister before he even reached adulthood.

As a minister, his Zhang family has reached the peak of power in Korea.

If you don't want to go further and become king, you should protect yourself and reduce the king's suspicion.

Zhang Ping smiled bitterly and said:
"I am stupid and can't remember what happened next.

"Your Majesty, you may summon all the ministers and clan members to discuss this matter.

"Young Master Fei and Young Lady Yaoyao are both a hundred times more capable than I am. They will definitely give the king a satisfactory answer."

Han Wangran shook his head, as if the prime minister could see it.

He held Zhang Ping's hand tightly, his eyes flashing with sharpness, and his voice was sincere and heartfelt:
“How can the two of them compare to Tianyou?

“Only God’s advice can bring blessing to Korea.

"Tianyou has been talking to me all my life, and now he's suddenly silent. How can I feel at ease?"

Han Wangran's eyes flashed with cruelty. He would drag Xiangbang to death today! He would drag Xiangbang to death and he would never be able to say a word again!

Zhang Ping's heart trembled, and he was filled with sorrow. He held the king's hand and said:

"Your Majesty, Ping is about to die, and just wants to say a few words to his family.

"Your Majesty, please give me a chance to leave my last words, considering that I have devoted my whole life to serving the Kingdom of Korea."

Han Wangran leaned down, almost sticking to the old prime minister.

Han Wangran smelled the smell of old people, the odor of an unclean body, and... the smell of death. It was all very unpleasant.

But he didn't mind, he had been waiting for this day for a long time.

"My dear Prime Minister, you pretended to be sick and bedridden, forcing me to come and invite you personally. Did you expect that you would actually be sick later?"

Zhang Ping's body was shaking, he was filled with shock and anger, and was about to shout.

Han Wangran put his big hand on his mouth to prevent him from making too much noise.

Although it was the old prime minister's last moments of life, he felt that it was the best time he had had in the years he had been bedridden.

But no matter how much energy he had in his exhausted body, how could he resist Han Wangran who was in his prime?

Although he struggled with all his might, he couldn't break free, and the "wuwu" sound was so soft that only ghosts could hear it.

Han Wangran felt very happy feeling the weak resistance.

He had been unhappy all his life, and finally he could make the prime minister who made him unhappy unhappy.

With a smile on his face, he said:
"When you asked the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Grain and the Minister of Internal Affairs to praise Zifang's intelligence and call a ten-year-old boy "young prime minister", did you take me seriously?
"The throne belongs to my Han family, but the prime ministership belongs to your Zhang family?

"You were in charge of Ji Yaoyao's marriage, and you were in charge of Han Fei's studies. Don't you think you're interfering a little too much?

"You are asking for a princess to marry for your second son. Is it because you have been sitting on the throne for too long and want to sit on the throne for a while?

"Do you want to emulate the Three Families dividing Jin, or do you want Tian Chen to usurp Qi?"

The old man whimpered and tried to speak in defense, his dry skin twisted in anxiety.

Han Wangran really wanted to know what the old man wanted to say. He wanted to see whether the words spoken by a dying person were kind and true.

He clasped his hands tightly and sighed:

"Tianyou, I want to hear you speak, but I dare not let go.

"As soon as I let go and you yell, the affection between us as king and subject will be completely severed.

"If your Zhang clan becomes alert and strongly resists, Korea will be in turmoil, which is not good.

"You should just die like this. This is the best way."

More than an hour later.

Han Wangran walked out of the house with a look of despair on his face, and said to the Zhang clan members called by Zhang Liang:
"God bless him, he has left me..."

In less than half an hour, King Han Ran returned to the Han Palace in Zhang's carriage.

Donghai Palace is a newly built palace of the King of Han in recent years.

The person living there was Han Fei, a member of the Korean royal family who had returned from studying at the Jixia Academy. He was also known as Prince Fei and was respectfully called Han Feizi by the world.

The Donghai Palace is located in a corner of the royal palace. In addition to the main palace, there are four side halls, covering a large area.

Han Fei personally took care of all the flowers and plants planted in the courtyard and never asked anyone else to do it for him.

The grass is green and the birds are singing. The weather is just right.

Han Fei, who was tall and thin with a ruddy complexion, fiddled with a bright red flower and brought it in front of him.

Take a sniff and smell a faint fragrance.

He was refreshed, felt relaxed and happy, and smiled slightly.

[Today, Han Feizi might be worth half a bamboo slip.]
According to the Korean calendar, he is thirty-one years old this year, but he looks like he is twenty-five or twenty-six, probably because of his proper self-cultivation.

His appearance is not outstanding, but very ordinary.

But he has an air of elegance, which makes him stand out at a glance even if he is standing in a crowd.

King Han Ran, who had hurried out of the Han Palace and hurried back, walked into the Donghai Palace and saw Han Fei stretching towards the sun.

The haze in his heart dissipated a little, and he waved his hand to ask the eunuchs around him to wait outside.

He walked to Han Fei and said in a dissatisfied tone:
"I, as a king, have to worry about things all the time, but you have nothing to do."

When Han Fei saw Han Wangran's expression, he smiled and bowed, saying:

"Congratulations, Han, Han, Han"

Han Wangran became anxious when he heard this.

No matter how anxious he was in front of the old prime minister, he did not show it, but he had no patience in front of his cousin Han Fei.

Without waiting to hear the end, he took Han Fei's hand and walked quickly towards the main palace, interrupting:
"Alright, alright, I know you want to congratulate me.

"It's inconvenient for you to talk, so just write."

"Good." Han Fei, who was being dragged away, nodded repeatedly with a look of agreement.

He has suffered from oral disease since childhood and has difficulty speaking.

After entering the main palace, Han Fei pointed to the inkstone on the table, and the eunuch standing beside the table in the palace understood what he meant.

The eunuch replied with a "yes" and began to grind the ink with the ink stick and water.

There are eighteen eunuchs in the Donghai Palace, and he and another eunuch on duty have the easiest job, which is to grind ink every day.

Han Wangran and Han Fei found chairs and sat down.

Han Wangran, who had already reached a tacit understanding with his cousin Han Fei, drank a sip of water on the table, cleared his throat and coughed, then said with a bit of ease:

"Zhang Ping is dead. I watched him breathe his last with my own eyes."

Han Fei raised his eyebrows and was about to speak.

Han Wangran, who knew his cousin very well, raised his palm to stop him and said jokingly:
"Don't talk. If you talk, I will be anxious."

Han Fei sighed helplessly and glanced at the work in the eunuch's hands.

The eunuch took the ink block and ground it vigorously in the inkstone which had been added with clean water.

The water was only slightly turbid, far from being black enough to meet Han Fei's writing requirements.

The eunuch who was grinding the ink was startled and apologized. He increased the speed while ensuring that the water would not be ground to the edge of the inkstone.

Han Wangran, who was anxious to communicate with Han Fei, also glanced at the eunuch, adding pressure to him, and then smiled at Han Fei:

"Don't worry, there's no trouble." When Zhang Ping died, I was the only one in front of him.

"I didn't give him a chance to talk to his family.

"He wanted to shout, but I covered his mouth, just like that."

Han Wangran made a hollow bowl shape with his right hand and said in a deep voice:
“I was afraid that he would not die today, so I wanted to strangle him to death.

"But strangling him to death would leave traces, which made Zhang wary, so she didn't do it.

"After he died, I sat by his body for a while, until the marks left by me covering his mouth faded away, and then I returned to the palace. There should be no hidden dangers left.

"If there is any surprise... it is that this old man left his last words early."

Han Fei thought about it and shook his head:
"Nothing, nothing, nothing, no hindrance."

As long as Zhang has no intention of rebelling, Zhang Ping's last words will have no impact.

As for the rebellious heart...it is possible while Zhang Ping is still alive.

After Zhang Ping's death, his eldest son Zhang Liang was the one who took over the Zhang family.

But Zhang Liang was only fifteen years old, too young.

She looked like a woman, very pretty and without any dignity.

How could this calm down those ministers who were most capable of changing their stance according to the situation? Was it just relying on the title of Young Prime Minister that he had been calling for many years?

When Zhang Ping was alive, Zhang Liang was in his youth.

The palace fell into a brief silence.

Han Wangran disliked Han Fei's stuttering and slow communication, so he drank some water and rested, waiting for the eunuch to grind ink.

After a while, the eunuch, whose forehead was sweating from grinding ink, carefully handed over the inkstone half filled with ink and placed it on Han Fei's right hand.

He then handed over the brush and said carefully:

"Your Majesty, Master, Mo is ready."

"Yeah." Han Fei closed his mouth and spoke with his throat.

He took the brush in his right hand, took a blank bamboo slip in his left hand, and started writing quickly.

The eunuch breathed a sigh of relief and continued grinding the ink, this time with much greater ease.

Han Fei wrote very quickly and finished the letter in a short time. Practice makes perfect:

[Yaoyao's son is coming soon. Your Majesty, would you like to go and greet him in person to show your importance? He is an extremely important part of the plan.]

Han Wangran looked at it carefully, grabbed his hair, and said in distress:

"Yaoyao wouldn't let me go. She said she wanted to see her son first and she didn't want me to disturb them."

Han Fei's mouth twitched and he continued writing:

[Is this the reason? When did Yaoyao take feelings so seriously? I really don’t believe it.]

After reading it, Han Wangran was stunned for a while, and said with some doubt:
“No, I suspect Yaoyao’s heart has changed.

"This time when she came back, she didn't seem to love Korea anymore."

Han Fei frowned, looking unhappy, and quickly wrote:

[The Battle of Changping broke out. In order to ensure the convenience of material transportation to the front line, the Qin State used a small army to attack our Great Han. ]

[The two countries at war were Qin and Zhao, and before the outcome was decided, our country, Korea, had already lost all the important towns and roads on both sides of the Yellow River. It was a heavy loss.]

[When Bai Qi buried 450,000 Zhao soldiers alive and Qin won a great victory in the Battle of Changping, he wanted to settle accounts with Han.]

[It was Yaoyao who stepped forward and married Qin Zichu, forming an alliance with the Qin State and resolving the crisis.]

[Although Yaoyao is a girl, her love for Korea is the same as the king's. How can the king doubt Yaoyao? ]

This time, there were a lot of words written, so Han Wangran walked behind Han Fei.

Han Fei wrote while the King of Han read.

Otherwise, wait until Han Fei finishes writing it, in today's Korea where there is no punctuation.

There are hundreds of characters connected together on the bamboo slips, and it takes a lot of time to break the sentences and understand the meaning.

After reading it all, Han Wangran sighed and said:
"Alas, perhaps I am just being overly suspicious.

“I just can’t understand why Qin Zichu became king, but Yaoyao came back.

"She refused to help her son fight for the throne, and refused to be the Queen of Qin.

"She even watched her son leave Qin and travel around the world, and she herself did not even become a Qin lady, but returned home to continue being a lady.

"She did this, and I have no idea where the benefit of my country is.

"No matter how famous Prince Chengjiao is, he is not as useful to our Great Han as King Qin Chengjiao.

"Fei, what do you think?"

Han Fei pondered for a while, then changed to a blank bamboo slip and wrote:

[Have you forgotten the attitude of Yaoyao when the Yan State imprisoned Prince Chengjiao and the envoys asked the King to send troops to attack Qin? ]

[Yaoyao agreed with the decision not to rescue Prince Chengjiao, reply to the letter to agree to Yan's request, keep the country's troops on standby, and wait and see the situation of other countries. ]

[If the other countries unite to attack Qin, Qin will be doomed to fail.]

[We will attack the interior of Qin as the letter says and disrupt the rear of Qin. If Qin is really defeated, we will be the first to achieve the credit.]

[If the other countries do not send troops, this letter can make Yan State accept our favor without offending Qin State.]

[We agreed on this plan together, and Yaoyao contributed a lot to it. Doesn't this prove that Yaoyao's heart is with Korea?]

Han Wangran secretly said that it was true, and said self-deprecatingly:
"Perhaps Zhang Ping is about to die, and I have been too nervous these days.

"Hey? Why didn't Yaoyao let me go pick up his son?

"Yaoyao said that his son had long wanted to mobilize the entire Qin State to dig ditches. I went to pick up his son, led Zheng Guo in front of him, and introduced him as the most famous water engineer in the world.

"From the fact that the King of Qin was so foolish as to attack Yan for this son, it is clear that he loved this son very much.

"When these two meet, they are both happy. Isn't the plan successful?"

Han Fei rested his pen on his chin, and he realized the reason, and wrote:
[Yaoyao is the mother of Master Chengjiao, and she must know Master Chengjiao better than the rest of us.]

[Judging from the incidents his son caused while traveling around the world, he definitely deserves the title of a child prodigy, and he is a genuine child.]

【The king went up and said this, perhaps it would make his son suspicious.】

[If Yaoyao goes in person and introduces Zheng Guo to her son in the name of motherly love, there will be no such worries.]

Han Wangran nodded, with his hands behind his back, but still felt something was wrong.

He and Han Fei stayed at Donghai Palace every day to write books, unlike Ji Yaoyao who had limited contact with him.

Whether it was a grand court meeting or a private gathering, he could see Ji Yaoyao.

Compared with those Han ministers of different surnames and clans, King Han Ran trusted his cousin Ji Yaoyao more, who was from the same Han clan as Ji, had shown extraordinary talent since childhood and was known as Nu Shen Buhai.

He sincerely felt that the cousin who returned from Qin this time was a little different from before she got married.

But it’s too late to say these things now. This girl knows almost everything about South Korea’s national conditions and policies.

So Han Wangran sighed slightly dejectedly:
"I hope so."

Outside the palace that belongs exclusively to Ji Yaoyao.

The hydraulic engineer Zheng Guo was standing outside the palace gate waiting with an iron rod in his hand.

A palace maid just went out of the palace, and asked him to wait with her chin held high.

In the palace, Ji Yaoyao, who had asked the maid to let Zheng Guo wait, looked at her son with a smile on her face:

“If you want to build a canal, your mother will choose someone for you.

“The terrain in Guanzhong is complex.

"The only country in the world that is capable of hydraulic engineering is Zheng.

“But there is one thing you need to resolve.

“It is true that Zheng Guo is a master of hydraulic engineering, but he is also a spy from my country.

"Repairing the canal and exhausting Qin is the great plan of our country, South Korea."

(End of this chapter)