"A passenger ship capsized in the Yangtze River at night due to water inflow. The captain and the boatman took the lead in grabbing a small boat to escape, and all of them were rescued. Another 27 passengers escaped in another small boat, and a newlywed couple unloaded a door panel and two oars and also successfully escaped.
The remaining 15 passengers were missing, 10 of whom were in a boat that capsized due to panic and lack of boating experience. The bodies of eight of the missing people have been found.
The newly retired Consort Fan, who had just left the palace to recuperate, was not found and is still missing. However, she is weak and cannot swim, so it is estimated that there is no possibility of her survival..."
Thousands of miles away in Kunming, Mu Chun was awakened in the middle of the night by an emergency report. After reading it, he immediately woke up and woke up his wife Hu Shanwei as well.
When Hu Shanwei read the contents of the urgent report, he felt a chill in his heart despite the hottest days of summer.
Hu Shanwei instantly went back to three years ago, when she resigned from the palace and recommended Fan Gongzheng as the imperial concubine. At that time, Fan Gongzheng's words seemed to be ringing in her ears:
"When you go out, you will find that the outside world is actually no different from the harem, or even uglier. You are still young. At the age of 35, you are already an old woman outside the palace and can only wait for death. But in the harem, you are in your prime. You want to go out, and the emperor agrees. I have nothing to say. However, if you go out for a walk and feel that it is nothing special, I will return your position to you at any time. Just like ministers who have to resign during mourning, they still have to come back after a few years and continue to serve as officials."
"... I will be a Shang Gong for a few years, and when the new emperor ascends the throne in the future... a new emperor appoints new ministers, and who will be the Shang Gong will be decided by the new emperor and the new empress. By then, I won't stay in the palace and make people dislike me. All of us old people in the palace will go to Shang Gong Cao, eat and drink for free, and play cards to see who will live longer."
But only three years later, she and Lady Fan passed away.
The ship sailed to Yangzhou. Hu Shanwei knew what Lady Fan was going to do. She wanted to fulfill her wish and live out her old age with her retired colleagues. Having been female officials in the palace for most of their lives, they made plans and served in the most powerful place in the Ming Dynasty, enjoying wealth and glory, supporting themselves, fighting for their own social status, and living out their lives in peace. Their living habits and ways of thinking had long been different from those of traditional women from large families. When they returned to their hometown, no one understood them, not even someone they could talk to.
What's more, they know a lot of palace secrets. Instead of taking them into the coffin or bringing them back to the family to cause hidden dangers, it is better for them to huddle together for warmth and become each other's comfort.
After Hu Shanwei completed the handover, he bowed to Lady Fan and said, "Thank you for your kindness in meeting me."
Without the promotion of Lady Fan, there would be no Hu Shanwei today. Even though Lady Fan's original intention was just to promote a good helper who could handle things and take the blame, in order to avoid the center of the conflict and use her as a gun. However, Lady Fan gave her dangers and opportunities, and whenever challenges came, Lady Fan did not back down, and helped as much as she could, which was a great help to Hu Shanwei in the palace.
Concubine Fan can be said to be Hu Shanwei's enlightenment teacher in the Ming Dynasty court.
Hu Shanwei read it three times, memorizing every word, and said, "Mrs. Fan has been very kind to me. I cannot sit back and watch her die in obscurity. I am going to Yangzhou. You stay at home and take good care of little A'lei."
Mu Chun couldn't bear to leave his wife. "Once Chen Xuan finds something, he will tell us."
Hu Shanwei said: "Chen Xuan is an official of the imperial court. He is only in charge of maritime defense. If he exceeds his authority and pays too much attention to the death of Concubine Fan, his position may be exposed. Now that the new emperor has ascended the throne, it is good for Chen Xuan, an old official, to keep his position as the admiral of the navy. Don't let others catch him and lose his job or even his life."
Mu Chun took his wife's arm and said, "Let's go together. Little A'lei will be temporarily entrusted to Shi Qianhu to take home and raise. He already has eight children, so one more won't make much difference."
Hu Shanwei paused and sighed, "Mu Chun, to outsiders, you are a dead man who has been gone for three years, and I am a wanderer with an erratic whereabouts. When Emperor Gaozu died, he killed so many people to bury him with him, but he let you and me go. You and I retired to the mountains and lived here in seclusion for three years. But what we read most are the court newspapers. There have been heavy rains recently, and you have been paying attention to the water level changes in the upstream Tangchi Canal every day, reminding Mu Sheng to open the gates to release floodwaters in time. It can be seen that there are some things that are on our minds and cannot be let go."
Mu Chun said, "If it was an accident that caused such a disaster to Lady Fan, it would be fine. You should go to the Yangtze River to hold a few rituals for her, pray for her soul to be reborn, and send her off. This is human nature. However, if Lady Fan died an unnatural death, someone deliberately killed her, and then broke the boat and sank it to destroy the evidence, what would you do? With your temper, you will definitely find the real murderer and avenge her. Lady Fan has been in the palace all her life, and the person who killed her must also be in the palace, but you have finally escaped from the palace, are you going to be dragged into it again? Can you bear to leave Little A Lei and me?"
"Of course I can't bear to leave." Hu Shanwei grabbed his daughter's chubby feet and kissed them. "I would rather sacrifice myself than leave you and my precious daughter, but if I don't go to see her, I will have a guilty conscience for the rest of my life. Mu Chun, I won't act on impulse. If it's just an accident, I will send her off with Cao Shanggong, Cui Shangyi and others, and build a cenotaph for her. Fan Shanggong has no children, and the Fan family is now in decline. We can't let her become a lonely ghost. If it's not an accident... There are still Shen Qionglian and others in the palace, and Fan Shanggong also has her own confidants, and they will not let the real murderer go. I will look for some clues by the Yangtze River, and I will not enter the palace again."
Hu Shanwei was sincere in what he said. It was reasonable and emotional for him to go to Yangzhou to take a look. A Lei was still young and Mu Chun had "died" a long time ago. The father and daughter could not appear around Hu Shanwei, otherwise the secret marriage and Mu Chun's fake death would fail, which would lead to endless troubles.
Mu Chun agreed, hugged her tightly, and sniffed her neck like a puppy, where there was a pleasant milky scent. "Go quickly and come back soon. Little A Lei and I will be waiting for you at home."
Hu Shanwei hugged him back, "I know. Anyway, A Lei is the one who sticks to you the most. If she wasn't hungry and wanted to feed, she would ignore me."
Mu Chun raises his daughter as his father. A Lei knows who dotes on her the most and who can make her happiest, so she likes her biological father the most, and Hu Shanwei, the biological mother, has to retreat to the back of his mind.
In order to protect Hu Shanwei's safety without exposing the fact that she was secretly married and to maintain her image of a wandering person, Mu Chun ordered the secret guards to follow her from a distance.
Mu Chun rummaged through boxes and cabinets to pack her luggage in the middle of the night, and even wanted to bring the toilet. Hu Shanwei didn't know whether to laugh or cry, "You said you were traveling all over the world, and you even went all over the country to get your salary. The luggage should be as simple as possible, otherwise it won't look like a real bag."
Mu Chun gave her a stack of silver notes and said, "You need to find someone in the Yangtze River. Hiring a water ghost is very expensive."
Hu Shanwei refused, "My salary is limited, and I spend a lot when I'm away from home. I have to keep half for my father's retirement. If I suddenly get so much money, it will arouse suspicion."
Mu Chun said: "This won't work, and that won't work either. Are you going to use love to find someone? When are you going to find them?"
Hu Shanwei took out a small seal and said, "Money makes the world go round. I don't have money, but the Shen family does."
This is the object that Shen Qionglian gave to Hu Shanwei for emergency use. With this seal, he can take away the family wealth left to Shen Qionglian by the Shen family. The Shen family was once the richest family in the Yuan Dynasty. The ancestor Shen Xiu, also known as Shen Wanshan, was truly rich enough to rival a country. Although the family gradually declined after the Hu Weiyong and Lan Yu rebellion cases, the Shen family had already split up. As the saying goes, a centipede is still alive even after death, and Shen Qionglian's father's branch is still doing well.
In the Lan Yu case, the Shen family was spared from being implicated because Shen Qionglian worked as a court lady in the palace. The family wanted to keep their daughter as a sacrifice. Although they knew that their daughter would never leave the palace, they still wanted to leave her a share of the family property in case of emergency.
Three years ago when Hu Shanwei left the palace, Shen Qionglian gave her a seal for withdrawing money on the grounds that "a penny can make a hero fall". Hu Shanwei thought she would never need it in her life, but she didn't expect it to come in handy so soon.
Hu Shanwei hugged A'lei, and Mu Chun hugged the mother and daughter. The couple did not sleep or speak in the second half of the night, and waited quietly until dawn.
At dawn, Hu Shanwei reluctantly kissed his daughter's chubby hand countless times, wishing he could swallow it. Mu Chun said, "Don't kiss her anymore. If you kiss her again, she will wake up. If she is woken up before she has enough sleep, she will cry and lose her temper. She will also scratch her face and pull my hair."
Especially when the daughter forgets about the wife. Hu Shanwei was a little jealous, and Mu Chun leaned forward, "Kiss me if you want, I kiss you casually, I won't be angry."
When Hu Shanwei left, his lips and eyes were slightly swollen. Even though he was reluctant, he had to do what he had to do.
Let's talk about the Yangtze River. The Yangtze River waters are under the jurisdiction of Admiral Chen Xuan. A murder occurred on a passenger ship, and the Yangtze River Navy sent troops to salvage along the river. No one knows the situation better than Chen Xuan. Originally, he didn't know that there was such a heavyweight figure as Fan Shanggong here. He thought that Fan Shanggong resigned from office to recuperate, and at least she would charter a big official ship to travel comfortably. Unexpectedly, Fan Shanggong was so low-key and mixed with ordinary people.
In fact, Fan Shanggong did it on purpose. She felt that if she chartered a large ship alone, she would be a big target and it would be easy for something to happen. She might as well hide herself from the world and blend in with a group of ordinary people. It would be safer there because there were more people around and more eyes.
Unfortunately, Lady Fan was a smooth and worldly-wise woman, good at passing the buck. She was really "too clever to have calculated everything, but ended up calculating her beloved's life, wasting half her life in vain, just like a long dream in the middle of the night". The mastermind behind the scenes wanted her dead, no matter what means she chose to leave the capital, she would die.
When Cao Shanggong and Cui Shangyi, who were welcoming Fan Shanggong at the Guazhou Wharf in Yangzhou, heard the news that a passenger ship from Nanjing capsized at night, they immediately thought that something had happened to Fan Shanggong.
In order to keep it secret, Lady Fan only said in the letter that she was coming to Yangzhou to recuperate, but did not say when she would arrive or what ship she would take. However, the two female officials in Yangzhou had seen all kinds of ups and downs, and their intuition told them that Lady Fan must be on this ship.
Although we don't know why Lady Fan suddenly fell seriously ill and resigned from the palace, she had lived such a delicate life all her life, even putting on light evening makeup when meeting someone at night. She actually came to Yangzhou on an ordinary merchant ship infested with fleas and bedbugs. There must be something she couldn't tell.
The two female officials personally went to Chen Xuan's house and revealed their identities. Chen Xuan dared not neglect them and ordered the navy to search along the river. Every time a female corpse was fished out, the two female officials were asked to identify whether it was Concubine Fan. In addition, they immediately sent a pigeon to Mu Chun in Yunnan.
Chen Xuan comforted them: "Maybe Lady Fan is not on this ship, she took another ship to Yangzhou." The owner of the merchant ship only knew to collect money and pick up passengers, and did not ask the passengers' identities and names, so no one could be sure that Lady Fan was on this ship.
In fact, Lady Cao and Lady Cui also hoped that they were overthinking it, but the people at the Guazhou Port in Yangzhou never picked up Lady Fan, which gradually turned hope into despair.
Just as the two were falling into despair, there was a sudden commotion outside the inn. Looking out of the window, people were running towards the pier like crazy.
"Have you found the sunken ship?" The two hurriedly asked the maid to go out and inquire. After a while, the maid came back excitedly, panting and said, "Silver... Silver! Silver piled up like a mountain! It's so white. I finally opened my eyes and saw what a silver mountain looks like!"
"Someone... a woman, who was pretty, took silver directly from the silver vault of the Shen family bank, filling up ten carts, and piled them at the dock like firewood. She said that a relative was missing on the sunken merchant ship, and the silver was a reward for those who salvaged the shipwreck or the bodies. The water ghosts or the sailors of the Nanjing Navy who had salvaged the bodies of other passengers shoveled out silver ingots on the spot with iron shovels—"
The maid waved her hands and made a shovel-wielding motion. "Everyone got a shovel of silver, enough to last three lifetimes. Oh, by the way, this woman is also here to see Lady Fan."
Cao Shang Gong and Cui Shang Yi looked at each other. Having worked together for many years, they understood each other very well. They said in unison, "Hu Shanwei is here."
This is Hu Shanwei's style of doing things. He doesn't do anything shady, but always faces things head on. Once he decides to do something, he doesn't even know how to use the word "low-key". He does it openly and aboveboard. He is so aggressive that he will kill any Buddha he meets, and any God he meets. He is unstoppable.
Cao Shang Gong and Cui Shang Yi went to the dock together to watch. The dock was already crowded with people. In the middle of the dock, there was a high platform like that for an opera. The ground on the platform was covered with a red carpet, and a mountain of silver was piled up, emitting the unique holy glow of silver.
Next to the silver mountain is a black shovel with rust on the handle, which forms a sharp contrast with the snowflake silver, making the snowflake silver look more seductive like a slutty bitch.
There are about fifty reward notices around the platform. Those who salvage the boat, salvage the bodies, or even provide clues all have corresponding rewards - silver, and only silver.
It was already dusk at this time, and someone had lit giant sea lanterns as big as buckets on all sides of the platform. One can imagine how tempting this silver mountain would be when the sea lanterns were lit at night.
Those who are good at water and specialize in salvaging are called water ghosts. The outstanding water ghosts are called river gods. Money can make ghosts work, even gods can be made to work. For a time, all kinds of experts on the dock were ready to take a risk.
It is summer now, the river water has risen sharply and the current is fast. If you want to fish something out, you have to ask these experts who specialize in eating underwater.
In addition, Hu Shanwei also asked the naval commander Chen Xuan to send out a battalion of 1,000 soldiers to help guard the silver mountain and maintain order.
There were so many people watching that the two old ladies, Cao Shanggong and Cui Shangyi, couldn't squeeze in at all. They had to reveal their identities to the naval soldiers, and were then brought to Hu Shanwei by the soldiers.
When old friends met again, neither of them looked happy, and they saw sadness and confusion in each other's eyes.
On his way back, Hu Shanwei deliberately tanned himself and only brought half-worn clothes, looking tired and exhausted, as if he had traveled all over the world.
The three of them were talking on a boat. There was no one around, so it was much easier for them to talk. Concubine Cao took out the recent correspondence between Concubine Fan and her and showed it to Hu Shanwei.
Previously, letters were basically routine greetings, because all letters in and out of the palace had to be reviewed by the Shangyi Bureau and could not reveal any palace secrets, and even on a daily basis could not be told to outsiders.
Since Emperor Gaozu passed away, Concubine Fan wrote three letters to Concubine Cao. The first letter described how sad she was after Emperor Gaozu passed away. The second letter said that she was old and her energy was declining year by year. She was unable to handle Emperor Gaozu's funeral and fell ill. The third letter said that her illness was getting better and worse, and she always asked for leave. She felt embarrassed to be a vain in the palace, so she asked to leave the palace to recuperate and would come to Yangzhou soon. She asked Concubine Cao to send someone to the Guazhou Wharf in Yangzhou to wait for her at any time.
Having worked together for fifteen years, Hu Shanwei knew that for Lady Fan, a new emperor was just a change of boss, and she would not be so upset that she would fall ill. Therefore, there must be something else hidden in the letter.
Hu Shanwei read it carefully again and found that the last letter seemed to have something to say but was hesitant. Fan Shanggong said that she had been ill for a long time and was afraid that she would not have much time left. She once dreamed that she died of the illness and someone was digging a grave for her. While digging the grave, they sang the poem "Grave Digging Song" by her grandfather Fan Qie, one of the four great poets and writers of the Yuan Dynasty. She was frightened and woke up from the nightmare.
Grave-digging song? The name was familiar, but Hu Shanwei could not remember the content. In recent years, apart from the Du'an Collection written by the Zen Master Daoyan, whom she had always admired, she had not liked any other poet whose poems she could recite by heart.
Seeing Hu Shanwei's puzzled look, Cui Shangyi understood and handed her a copy of Fan Deji's Poems. "I have read these over and over again. There is a bookmark on the page of "Grave Digger Song."
Fan Qie, whose courtesy name is Deji.
Hu Shanwei opened it and saw the words written on it: "Yesterday the old tomb was dug, today the new one was built. Two statues in front of the tomb bid farewell to the old and usher in the new. The old soul has not yet left and the new soul has entered, and the old soul is still crying to the new soul. The old soul earnestly said to the new soul, a good land does not need many descendants. If the descendants are endless, the great-grandson will not dig and the great-great-grandson will do. I am digging now, which is really sad, I wonder when you will dig?"
The author has something to say: Fan Shanggong: Crazy hinting
I will send 100 red envelopes tonight. I wish you all a happy weekend~
This "Grave Digging Song" actually appeared when Lady Fan was fighting against Concubine Hu in the first battle of Hu Shanwei, which hinted at the end of Lady Fan. It is very similar to the line in "Flower Burying Song" "You are burying flowers now and people laugh at you, but who will bury you next year?"