Taichang Ming Dynasty

Chapter 660 The Old Boy and the Great Manhunt

"Li Erzhan!" Li Hui's expression was gloomy, his tone laced with smugness, his eyes icy cold. "How dare you, you old bastard, drag the Crown Prince into this!"

"It's not that I want to drag the Crown Prince into this; it's those rebels who want to drag him into it. I was forced into it!" Li Erzhan quickly defended himself. "If I hadn't written that, I'm afraid my head would have already been cut off by them, and Your Highness wouldn't be seeing me right now!"

"Ha!" Li Hui sneered. "They say that when the ruler is distressed, the minister is disgraced; when the ruler is disgraced, the minister dies. How dare you write such a thing just to save your own life?"

Li Erzhan, as expected of a learned scholar of his time, even when suddenly faced with such a death-defying question, immediately thought of a response: "Your Highness is absolutely right! It is precisely because of the admonition that 'when the ruler is distressed, the subject is disgraced; when the ruler is disgraced, the subject dies,' that I dare to go against my conscience and agree, in order to save my life!"

"What nonsense are you spouting, you dog?" Li Hui, enraged, started cursing indiscriminately with swear words he had unintentionally learned in his younger days.

Li Erzhan felt no offense whatsoever, nor did he feel flustered. He had anticipated Li Hui's reaction, and following up, he began to ramble on with his erudition: "The saying 'When the ruler is distressed, the minister is disgraced; when the ruler is disgraced, the minister dies' actually comes from Emperor Taizong's words in the Book of Tang. The text reads: 'I have heard that when the ruler is distressed, the minister is disgraced; when the ruler is disgraced, the minister dies. In the past, when the country was newly established, the retired emperor, for the sake of the people, submitted to the Turks. I was never without heartache and grief, determined to destroy the Xiongnu. I could not sit still or eat with relish. Now, I have temporarily dispatched a small force, and every time we are victorious, the Chanyu has submitted, and the shame of our defeat has been avenged.'"

"In fact, Emperor Taizong was heartbroken that Emperor Gaozu had submitted to the Turks. Therefore, he was determined to destroy the Turks and encouraged himself with the saying 'When the ruler is worried, the subject is ashamed; when the ruler is ashamed, the subject dies.' In the end, he made the Chanyu (Xiongnu ruler) submit and wiped away the shame of Emperor Gaozu."

"Your Highness, I am but a humble and incompetent subject, yet I have been repeatedly favored and promoted by Your Highness, which has brought me to this position. How could I not think of what Your Highness thinks, and feel what Your Highness feels? Now, the wicked rebels, due to Your Highness's mistakes, are being punished by the Celestial Court and are stirring with restless ambitions. I have unfortunately been captured; death is easy, but protecting Your Highness is not! Therefore, I take history as my mirror and Emperor Taizong as my teacher, enduring pain and humiliation, and maneuvering against my conscience to preserve my life for the time being. My only aim is to eliminate the rebels, protect Your Highness, and wipe away their shame!"

Li Hui was stunned by Li Erzhan's words, and it took him a while to understand what this long, convoluted string of nonsense was all about: "You mean, you're dragging the Crown Prince into this, prolonging your own life, in order to expose the traitor?"

"Your Highness is wise!" Li Erzhan responded, then continued, "Although what I wrote against my will involved the Crown Prince, as long as Jiang Hongli and Jin Jingrui survive, the rebels' plot will fall apart. Now that Jiang and Jin have been transferred to the rear garden and are being guarded by the Imperial Guards, the hidden danger has been eliminated, and there is absolutely no chance of anything going wrong."

"The back garden!" Li Hui interrupted Li Erzhan, his eyes bloodshot. "How did you know Jiang Hongli and the others were in the back garden! Who told you!"

“It was the Crown Prince who told me,” Li Erzhan said, not frightened by Li Hui’s reaction, but feeling somewhat bewildered. “I just came out of Shimin Hall.”

"Hehehe! I know, I know everything! You can't hide anything from me!" Li Hui laughed sinisterly: "You just want to capture Jiang Hongli and Jin Jingrui first, and then work with those treacherous rebels to curry favor with the imperial envoy and frame my son! That way you can establish a new king and gain merit for supporting the emperor, right!"

Li Erzhan opened his mouth, about to defend himself, but Li Hui wasn't asking a question at all. Before the echo in the hall had even faded, he immediately continued his attack: "Unfortunately, the devil is one foot tall, but the righteous are ten feet tall! I saw through your conspiracy and brought Jiang Hongli and Jin Jingrui to the palace before you could take them away! When you saw that your conspiracy had failed and your rebellion had thwarted, you risked coming back, thinking of another plan, waiting for an opportunity to act, didn't you!"

Li Erzhan tried to explain again, but Li Hui interrupted him with his incessant chatter: "I've seen through you! How could you, this power-hungry old codger, easily give up your position? And you even managed to concoct such a high-sounding excuse. I understand, I understand everything!" Li Hui's words became increasingly absurd:

"It was you! That damned imperial envoy named Yuan Keli was definitely recruited by you! You're a judge in the Ministry of Rites, so you must have planted your own people in those envoys' delegations. While I openly demanded that the delegation refute the accusations, you secretly sent your people to sabotage me in the capital!"

Li Erzhan felt that he probably still couldn't get a word in edgewise, so he simply lay down on the ground and stopped talking.

"Yes, yes! That's it, that must be it!" Li Hui sat up abruptly, pointing repeatedly at Li Erzhan's back. "First, you used your authority to plant your own people in the Imperial Envoy's entourage to sabotage me and arouse the Emperor's suspicion. After the Imperial Envoy arrived at the capital, you colluded with the Ministry of War and Zhang Wan to suppress all military reports from Ping'an and Huanghai provinces. Now that the Imperial Envoy has arrived in the capital, you want to intercept Jiang Hongli and Jin Jingrui, intending to use them to falsely accuse my son!"

"You seized the opportunity presented by the late emperor's passing and the crown prince's ascension to the throne to devise this elaborate scheme! Li Erzhan, Li Erzhan. I was foolish enough to be deceived by someone as eloquent and cunning as you, a man who appears loyal but is actually treacherous!"

Li Erzhan remained silent. At first, Li Erzhan was somewhat apprehensive, but as Li Hui's emotions grew more agitated, his own calm deepened. In the end, Li Erzhan couldn't help but laugh inwardly—after all these years, the king before him, now over fifty, was still the boy who would be frightened to tears and cursed until he vomited blood by his father.

The only difference is that the father who terrified the old boy to the point of crying and cursing until he vomited blood has changed from his biological father to his sovereign father.

"Speak! Speak!" Li Hui bent down, staring intently at Li Erzhan's white hair. "Your conspiracy has been exposed! Name your accomplices, hand over the person you've installed, and I might spare your life!"

"Hoo," Li Erzhan let out a long breath, slowly straightened his body, and met Li Hui's gaze without flinching: "Your Highness. If I really wanted to rebel, I wouldn't be back in the palace today to prove my innocence."

"Are you still going to argue?!" Li Hui stared intently into Li Erzhan's eyes, seemingly trying to force him back.

“Your Highness.” Even the feigned fear in Li Erzhan’s eyes had vanished. “Think about it carefully and you’ll understand. If I had truly devised a scheme, as Your Highness suspects, to connect with the imperial court and collude with treacherous officials, why would I have allowed Your Highness to take Jiang Hongli and Jin Jingrui away from the Uigeumbu at the final stage?”

"You!" Li Hui was about to retort immediately, but this time, he was interrupted by Li Erzhan.

"Your Highness!" Li Erzhan straightened his back even more. "If it were really as you think, I wouldn't have even gone to the palace yesterday; I would have gone directly to the Uigeumbu to take him away. And have you forgotten? Yesterday you even ordered me to lead the training of the supervisory troops to protect Changdeok Palace. If I really had any disloyal intentions, why didn't I legitimately lead troops into the capital and then use that power to force the emperor to abdicate?"

"How dare you speak to me like that!" Li Hui's eyes wavered, but he remained defiant.

"That's reality, we can only accept it." Li Erzhan's lips curled up, whether in mockery or self-mockery, it was hard to tell.

"..." Li Hui was taken aback at first, then inexplicably roared, "Li Erzhan, are you trying to rebel?!"

"Your Highness is the knife you use to kill, a loyal subject of Your Highness." Li Erzhan met Li Hui's gaze, his eyes filled with sorrow. "This loyal subject has no way out, he cannot rebel."

Li Hui suddenly stiffened, and his cloudy, bloodshot old eyes quickly cleared. He understood Li Erzhan's words—it wasn't that he didn't want to, but that he couldn't.

Li Hui was devastated, utterly devastated. He lowered his head and after a long while, he murmured to himself, "Go investigate, go find those people."

Li Erzhan stood up and respectfully bowed one last time to his king: "Your subject obeys the decree."

--------

After leaving Changdeok Palace, Yi Erzhan went directly to the Ministry of War.

As the sedan chair came to a stop, Li Erzhan bowed and stepped out, but before he could take a step, he was stopped by the guards on duty. "Halt! What are you doing!"

"I am Li Erzhan." Li Erzhan didn't even look at him. "Get out of the way!"

"You...you are the Prince of Guangchang?" The guard looked at Li Erzhan's attire with surprise, unable to believe that the man who was second only to the emperor would be wearing a gray-black linen robe.

"If you can read, get out of my way!" Li Erzhan had no interest in explaining to him. He pulled out his waist token, waved it casually, and stormed into the yamen. "Yes, sir!" The guard was illiterate, but he was still intimidated by Li Erzhan's imposing manner.

Hearing the commotion, the foreman came out of the gatehouse, but immediately shrank back when he saw Li Erzhan's cold, stern face.

Li Erzhan strode into the Ministry of War's office and soon arrived at the main hall of the Ministry of War amidst the strange looks of the crowd.

"Li Erzhan!" Liu Xifen, the sergeant in charge, suddenly jumped up from the chair behind his desk. "Where have you been? Yesterday?"

"Zhang Wan has been taken into custody by you?" Li Erzhan glanced at the empty second seat and immediately understood what was going on.

"It's all because of you." Liu Xifen raised an eyebrow, looking somewhat guilty. "Where have you been? And why are you dressed like that? Where's the training supervisor?"

"The training supervisor is still outside the city. I was kidnapped, but luckily I managed to escape. I just came out of the palace," Li Erzhan said.

"Kidnapping?" Liu Xifen's eyes held obvious suspicion. The others in the hall all showed expressions of surprise.

“Don’t look at me like that. If you don’t believe me, you can ask him,” Li Erzhan pointed to the eunuch who had followed him in. “Or go ask in the palace.”

The eunuch who was called knew nothing; he was just following along as a human token. But since Li Erzhan had said so, he shrank his neck and shook his head up and down.

"What are you doing at the Military Academy?" Liu Xifen withdrew his gaze and looked at Li Erzhan again.

“Of course, it’s to arrest him.” Li Erzhan walked up to Liu Xifen and handed him a jade token and a letter. “This is the Crown Prince’s warrant and waist token. From now on, the Military Officer is under my command!”

Liu Xifen recognized the jade token at a glance, but still took the warrant and looked at it. "Why are you arresting people and bringing them to the Ministry of War? Shouldn't you be going to the Ministry of Justice, or your Ministry of Justice?"

“That was originally the case,” Li Erzhan said, “but the situation is urgent and we don’t have enough manpower. We need the assistance of the Five Guards.”

The so-called Five Guards refer to the five traditional defensive forces protecting Hanyang: the Yixing Guard, the Longxiang Guard, the Huben Guard, the Zhongzuo Guard, and the Zhongwu Guard. These five armies were stationed in and around Hanyang, under the unified command of the "Five Guards General Headquarters," and ultimately subordinate to the Ministry of War. Although the weight of the Five Guards in the defense of Hanyang greatly decreased after the establishment of the Training Commissioner, they still enforce many control measures such as martial law and curfews to this day.

"Not enough manpower?" Liu Xifen handed the warrant back to Li Erzhan. "Who exactly are you going to arrest?"

"Lord Inseong, Lord Uichang, Lord Gyeongchang, Lord Heungan, Lord Gyeongpyeong, Lord Haepyeong, Lord Ayyang, Lord Ayarwan," Li Erzhan carefully put away his waist token and letter, and then began to list the titles of the royal relatives as if reciting a menu.

"What! Your Highness, you're going to arrest them all?" Liu Xifen exclaimed in shock. The other military officers in the hall also showed expressions of horror.

"It can't be called an arrest. It's just that we sent troops to search house by house," Li Erzhan said.

"Search for what?" Liu Xifen's expression softened slightly.

“Of course it’s a search,” Li Erzhan explained. “The person who kidnapped me is still outside the city and hasn’t returned yet. So whoever isn’t home right now is the traitor!”

"Are you sure it was a member of the clan who did it?" Liu Xifen asked.

“At a time like this, who else but members of the royal family would want to abduct Jiang and Jin from the Uijinfu and use them to curry favor with the imperial envoy and frame the crown prince?” Li Erzhan said.

"That makes sense." Liu Xifen nodded emphatically. "And what about me? What should I do right now?"

“The Crown Prince didn’t say, you can go to the palace and ask.” Li Erzhan asked, “Where is Zhang Wan, and what did you do to him?”

“Nothing’s wrong. He’s still resting peacefully in the tea room in the backyard.” Liu Xifen pointed towards the backyard, then pointed to himself: “Can I stay here?”

"Suit yourself, there's nothing to be ashamed of anyway." Li Erzhan shrugged and turned to a yamen runner. "Go and call Zhang Wan over."

The constable glanced at Liu Xifen, and only replied, "Yes," when he saw that Liu Xifen did not object.

"I might as well give you this seat." Liu Xifen moved aside, making room for him.

“Alright.” Li Erzhan didn’t stand on ceremony with Liu Xifen and went straight over to sit down.

"Come," Li Erzhan opened his mouth, about to give the order, when Liu Xifen's voice rang in his ears again: "Li Deyu."

"Does Liu Guojiu have any further instructions?" Li Erzhan turned his head.

"Why don't you change your clothes first?" Liu Xifen stretched out two fingers and gently tugged at Li Erzhan's collar. "It really feels really strange sitting here in these clothes."

Li Erzhan thought for a moment and then shouted, "Someone come here!"

"Your Excellency!" A yamen runner, responsible for relaying orders, strode up to the desk.

"Take this to my residence and have someone send over a clean set of official robes." Li Erzhan took off his waist token and threw it to the yamen runner.

"Yes!" The constable caught the waist token with quick eyes and hands, then turned and ran out of the yamen.

(End of this chapter)