Tai Chi Palace.
On both sides of the open space outside Dongnuan Pavilion, there are a row of buildings that don't match the overall style of Taiji Palace at all. These are five tile-roofed houses. If they were placed in other places, they would not look very low, but in the majestic Taiji Palace, these five tile-roofed houses seemed so inconspicuous.
There is a row of houses like this on the left and right outside Dongnuange. Outside the Tai Chi Hall, there is also a row on the left and right.
On the left is the place where the eunuchs and maids rest on duty, and of course there are Ouchi guards. On the right is the place where the courtiers waited for the emperor to hear him, and since Emperor Tianyou came to the throne, the row of tile-roofed houses on the right side of the Taiji Hall became the place where several important court officials worked. The emperor was diligent and often called his courtiers to Dongnuange to discuss matters. And the yamen of the various ministries of the imperial court are all outside the Taiji Palace, and it takes too much time to go back and forth.
The emperor simply asked several important ministers to work in the tile-roofed room outside the Tai Chi Hall. It would be more convenient for him to hear it. Later, these slightly dilapidated houses gradually became a symbol of honor. Because only those who are trusted and reused by the emperor are eligible to sit there.
Later, these unglamorous houses were given a glamorous name.
It is called the front courtyard of the hall, and the officials who have been in these tile-roofed houses for a long time are secretly made court officials by others. Someone once joked that if you can't be a court official in the capital, you might as well go to the local government to be a parent official. But that being said, there are never more than ten people who are qualified to work here for a long time.
These people naturally also know about the comments about the judge, but they don't care about this slightly jealous ridicule. On the contrary, they think it is definitely something to be proud of. There are so many civil and military people in the Manchu Dynasty, how many people can be called court officials
Relatively speaking, in order to distinguish the tile-roofed houses outside the Dongnuan Pavilion, the tile-roofed houses outside the Taichi Hall are called the Outer Court, and the ones outside the Dongnuan Pavilion are called the Inner Court. If being an outer court official is already envied and envied, then being an inner court official is even more enviable.
Ever since Prince Yi rebelled, there have been more than a dozen officials in the outer court for a long time. While handling the official affairs of the Ministry, he was sorting out information about Prince Yi's rebellion. His Majesty would often ask about these matters. As for the inner court, usually there is only one official working there for a long time, no matter before or after Prince Yi's rebellion.
He is qualified to sit in the inner court, waiting for the person summoned by His Majesty all the time. It's not very high in terms of rank, but the authority is beyond imagination.
He is Pei Yan, the servant of the fourth grade Huangmen. In terms of rank, it is not as good as the ministers of the ministries, and is equal to the ministers of the ministries.
Mrs. Tai Sui, with the notebooks sent from all over the country every day, plus the notebooks handed over by all kinds of Beijing officials, it is not an exaggeration to say that two ox carts can be filled every day. With so many memorials, no matter how diligent the emperor was, he could spend twelve hours a day, and it was impossible to read them all, not to mention the fact that every memorial had to be approved.
The matter of sorting out the memorials was handed over to the eunuch Bingbi of the imperial study. But after Tianyou Emperor Yang Yi ascended the throne, this habit was abolished. Yang Yi decreed that people in the harem must never interfere with the government affairs of the previous dynasty. Not only eunuchs are not allowed, but even concubines are not allowed. Even the queen has never interjected a word in the government affairs of the previous dynasty for so many years.
Because of this, it also caused the biggest difference between the current eunuch Bingbi in the imperial study and the eunuch Bingbi before. When the first emperor was in power, what he valued was the eunuch's ability to handle government affairs, but the current emperor values loyalty. The biggest difference between Su Buwei and Wu Peisheng is that he is more self-aware. He never said a word about court affairs unless the Emperor asked him to.
It is precisely because Wu Peisheng has handled government affairs for so many years, and is also used to sorting out courtiers' papers, and then approving unimportant papers according to the emperor's thinking, so he has a somewhat more sense of mission and responsibility than Su Buwei. In other words, his loyalty to the Sui Dynasty was even stronger than his personal loyalty to the emperor. It is precisely because of this that the emperor asked him to take people to inspect the roads in the northwest. It is precisely because of this that Wu Peisheng died unexpectedly.
Because he discovered Li Yuanshan's secret.
The existence of that iron mine was not discovered by Mu Xiaoyao first, but by Wu Peisheng. That's why Li Yuanshan didn't hesitate to design such a big and bloody situation, so that all the people in Fan Gu city would be buried with Wu Sheng. Fang Jie's guess was right, what happened to Fan Gu that night, he was just an insignificant person.
Wu Peisheng found out the clues that Li Yuanshan wanted to rebel, and also discovered the existence of the iron mine. But he was unable to convey the news in time, and his every move was under the surveillance of Li Yuanshan. In order to gain Li Yuanshan's trust, he pretended that he hadn't found anything. He also pretended to be greedy for money and collected a lot of money from Li Yuanshan, and promised to get rid of Fang Jie for Li Xiaozong. In fact, this was nothing more than Wu Peisheng wanted to paralyze Li Yuanshan.
But in fact, Li Yuanshan never believed him.
Fan Gu is a killing game, a killing game specially designed for Wu Peisheng. In order to prove that he is really just a money-grubbing eunuch, Wu Peisheng agreed to Li Yuanshan to go to Fan Gu. But there was a tomb that had been dug for him long ago, and it was also a tomb that had been dug for Fan Gu's 2,000 people and 800 frontier troops a long time ago.
Ever since Li Yuanshan discovered that Wu Peisheng was secretly investigating him, Li Yuanshan had been planning how to kill this big man who was once very popular in front of the former emperor and also played an important role in front of the current emperor. If you want to kill a Bingbi eunuch, it is obviously unrealistic to arrange a hasty robbery and cannot convince others. Besides, although Wu Peisheng is not good at cultivation, he is still a seventh-rank master.
Those who can kill him, the quacks of the eighth rank and above, no one bothers to be a bandit who blocks the way. If you really want to have a cultivation level above the eighth rank, even if you don't serve the imperial court, you will be reused and respected if you just invest in a commercial firm or a wealthy family.
Therefore, if he wanted to kill Wu Peisheng, Li Yuanshan had to find an excuse to convince the court and the emperor.
So, he thought of the Mengyuan people.
…
…
Pei Yan, the servant of Huangmen, sat on a chair, looked at the pile of memorials on the table in front of him, raised his hand and gently rubbed his frowning brows, he had been sitting here sorting out the memorials for more than two hours, but he hadn't finished it yet. a quarter. This is his main job every day, sorting the memorials according to their priorities. Sort out the important memorials and send them to Dongnuange to present to the emperor. If it is not important, he will reply in the tone of the emperor.
He was also responsible for drafting the edict, and the jade seal representing the identity of the Emperor of the Sui Dynasty was placed on the side of the table. Few people would think that most of the jade seals on the imperial decree were not printed by the emperor himself. In fact, anyone who is familiar with the imperial court knows whether the decree is written by the emperor himself, just look at the seal on the imperial decree. If there are eight seal characters printed on it, "Ordered by the heavens, longevity is eternal", then this decree was written by Huangmen Shilang on his behalf. If it is a small seal with four small square characters written by the owner of Dongnuan, it is the imperial edict written by the emperor himself.
Pei Yan leaned back and stretched his arms. Perhaps it was because of sitting for too long every day that his neck became more and more uncomfortable. I suffer from unbearable soreness every day, and sometimes feel nauseous.
After taking a sip of strong tea, Pei Yan suppressed the churning in his stomach. There are too many things going on these days, and he can't even guarantee three hours of sleep every day. Not only have to face the mountainous official duties, but also always try to figure out the emperor's mind, the latter is more tiring than the former.
He rested for a while, and then focused his gaze on the memorial in front of him again.
This memorial was delivered to the capital by a county magistrate in Shandong who risked his life. There are quite a few twists and turns. In order to avoid the interrogation of the northwest rebels, this memorial was first sent to the county magistrate's hometown in Dongping County as a family letter, and then his family secretly handed it over to his friend, and then his friend personally Sent to Chang'an.
So when seeing this memorial, Pei Yan frowned immediately.
Without a doubt, this is the most important memorial today.
This memorial was written on a piece of ordinary parchment, but it was written in a very secret way. Only when water is sprayed on it will the writing in it be revealed. The Ouchi Guard Office is still using this method to deliver secret reports, and very few people can see through it. If the county magistrate's friend hadn't come to Chang'an in person and explained it when he handed in the memorial, Pei Yan would not have been able to see the words hidden in the parchment.
This is a memorial written in teeny small characters, no less than a thousand words. It described in detail the current situation in the Northwest Three Ways, and even the deployment of some rebel troops.
What interested Pei Yan was another story about Wu Peisheng.
That massacre by Fan Gu.
The county magistrate was on good terms with a general in Li Yuanshan's army, and the general told him the truth when he was drinking too much.
It is written in the memorial that after Wu Peisheng arrived in the northwest, he secretly checked whether Li Yuanshan had corrupted ink. This was originally his duty to inspect various provinces in the northwest. But precisely because Wu Peisheng was too serious and rigorous, he actually found out some things that Li Yuanshan was planning to plot against.
But he couldn't hide Li Yuanshan's secret investigation, so there was the Fan Gu tragedy. Those people, those frontier soldiers were all killed by Li Yuanshan. Then put the blame on Meng Yuanren, so that he can cover up the fact that he killed a great eunuch. But Li Yuanshan's purpose is not only that, it is a plan to kill two birds with one stone.
It not only killed Wu Peisheng, but also aroused the emperor's idea of crusade against the Mongols. Li Yuanshan knew that the emperor had always been obsessed with conquering Mengyuan, but he had not made up his mind. He understood the pride of the members of the Yang family, and fabricated the story that Meng Yuan had slaughtered Fan Gucheng. The first was to kill Wu Peisheng, and the second was to urge the emperor to go west as soon as possible.
Only when the emperor goes west, can he have a chance to rebel.
As for Li Yuanshan, it was not the first time that he played this kind of trick of killing two birds with one stone.
As one of the most trusted people around the emperor, Pei Yan naturally knew about Prince Zhong's journey to the west more than ten years ago. And that incident was also a lie fabricated by Li Yuanshan. At that time, there were no masters from the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty sneaking into the Sui Dynasty to try to assassinate the emperor, all of them were fabricated by him out of thin air. Then it was sent to Chang'an with an urgent secret report. When the emperor consulted with Prince Zhong, Prince Zhong immediately decided to go west to kill the bandits.
Then Li Yuanshan asked people to secretly report to the people of Mengyuan, saying that the Sui court had organized a large number of masters of the rivers and lakes to sneak into Mengyuan to assassinate the Great Khan Mengge. Therefore, the people of Meng Yuan hastily assembled their hands to intercept, but because of a slight error in the calculation time, when the people in the rivers and lakes of the Sui Dynasty arrived at Fan Gu, there were not many real masters gathered in Meng Yuan. Therefore, in the first confrontation, the quacks of the Sui Dynasty killed all of Meng Yuan's people.
But later, people from the Buddhist sect arrived one after another. The two sides are truly evenly matched, and the Jianghu players in the Sui Dynasty also began to continue to die in battle.
In that matter, the biggest winner seemed to be Prince Yi Yang Yin, but in fact it was Li Yuanshan. He took this opportunity to make Prince Zhong disappear, and the people of Mengyuan also trusted him. For more than ten years, he has been secretly dealing with the Mengyuan people.
He killed two birds with one stone twice before and after, and Li Yuanshan played very successfully.
For the first time, a large number of powerful people in the Jianghu were buried in the Sui Dynasty, and the whereabouts of Prince Zhong was also unknown.
The second time, the 700,000 elite army of the Sui Dynasty was buried, and the northwest was empty, and no one could stop him from rebelling.
Looking at this memorial, I thought about Prince Zhong again. Pei Yan couldn't help but let out a long sigh... Li Yuanshan, you really deserve to be Li Xiao's descendant, and your schemes are so vicious.
He shook his head and sorted out his complicated emotions. Then he picked up the memorial and put it under his arm, took an oiled paper umbrella and walked out of the inner court door.
It started to rain lightly outside half an hour ago, pattering.
When he went out, he opened the oil-paper umbrella, but was stunned for a moment.
He saw, in the rain, in the open space outside Dongnuange, a young man in a black shirt standing there with his hands behind his back, his body as straight as a javelin. The young man raised his head slightly and looked towards the sky. He didn't seem to care about the raindrops hitting his face at all, unruly and indifferent.
When seeing this scene, Pei Yan suddenly remembered that the first time he saw Prince Zhong many years ago, it was also in the rain. At that time, Prince Zhong led hundreds of slaves to guard the gate of the city. Soldiers of the Forbidden Army rushed up one by one, and then fell down layer by layer. In the rain that day, Prince Zhong was also wearing a black shirt, and he was so unruly and indifferent, as if he didn't pay attention to those forbidden soldiers at all.
so alike.