The Manchu Dynasty's civil and military nobles did succeed in dissuading Emperor Lin De from agreeing to Concubine Shen's request, and promised to hold a concubine selection for the two royal palaces of the county, and selected two princesses and four concubines from the ladies of the family.

Concubine Yingchuan saw that Emperor Lin De rejected her invitation, so she wrote again to ask for the place to choose a concubine in the Yingchuan Palace. This time, none of the courtiers raised any objections to her request, but agreed one after another, and suggested that in addition to the Empress Dowager Sun and Concubine Yingchuan, the people who chose the concubine should add a few noble and virtuous ladies to help with the selection.

These courtiers are also afraid that this selection of concubines will really be carried out in the palace, and most of their daughters will not be selected, so they will support it in the Yingchuan Palace, and add a few more people who are the main candidates, it can be more fair.

Emperor Lin De thought that the more people who were chosen by the main order, it was better than his mother and the concubine of Yingchuan, so he immediately approved the invitation of the ministers, and ordered the palace people to test the body of the show girls in the roster of show girls, and so on the first day of the fourth month, he was in the Yingchuan palace for the two county kings to select a concubine, in addition to the Empress Dowager Sun, the concubine of Yingchuan, and the princess of Weiguo, Mrs. Dingxi Houtai, Mrs. Zuo Xiang and other three fateful ladies.

Because the noble families in the capital have many relatives, except for Mrs. Dingxi Houtai, it is really difficult to elect a lady who has no girl in the family to participate in the election, so although the family members and relatives of the rest of the ladies also have girls to participate in the election, they have to still let them be the main election, and it is not good to mention the matter of avoiding suspicion. Besides, if you really want to care about this suspicion, then the Empress Dowager Sun will not be the first choice.

Everyone has a tacit understanding, no one mentioned the biological mother of the king of Linchuan, Concubine Jin, the reputation of the concubine is too bad, anyway, if you talk about it in detail, the concubine Yingchuan is the mother of the king of Linchuan, and the decision to choose a concubine for him is also justified in name.

At the end of March, all the ladies of the family to be selected had passed the first layer of inspection, and each was given a jade plate, ordering them to take it with them to the Yingchuan Palace on the first day of April to participate in the official concubine selection ceremony.

Cai Wei was naturally among the candidates, but what she didn't expect was that Yifei, who was in the fifth room, also got a jade medal to participate in the selection of concubines.

Yifei has been very low-key for a while since she was divorced by Dingxi Houfu and her biological mother had another incident, and this time she saw that her godmother, Mrs. Zuo Xiang, helped her get the jade card for running for the princess, and she suddenly became proud again. also deliberately ran to Cai Wei to show off once, and said something weird, "I originally wanted you to be my sister-in-law, who thought that we are already cousins, and maybe we will have to be sisters again in the future, but I don't know who is big and who is small, haha!" ”

She only got carried away, and forgot Mrs. Zuo Xiang's advice to her for a while, and actually leaked out Mrs. Zuo Xiang's help to her, which made Cai Wei vigilant, it seems that Mrs. Zuo Xiang wants to use Yifei's chess piece again, and she has to be a little more careful with her.

Fortunately, Concubine Shen had already sent a person to take care of her living in this mansion, and on the first day of the fourth month, she specially sent a Zhu Yingcui Jiuhua car to pick her up.

Yifei saw that the car was beautiful and it was sent by the Yingchuan Palace, so she came over and wanted to take this Jiuhua car with Cai Wei, but she was picked up by Mama Wen and said, "The concubine only ordered us to pick up Miss Zhou, but not to pick up Miss Zhao!" I went back, touched my nose, and had to go to the Cui Hu car prepared for her by Uncle Anyuan's mansion in a huff, and cursed Zhou Caiwei seventy or eighty times in my heart.

When the two of them arrived at the Yingchuan Palace, after checking the jade plate, two maids with combs and beards stepped forward and said: "The ceremony of choosing a concubine is held in the Ying'an Hall of the palace, and the two young ladies are invited to go here." ”

The last time Cai Wei came to this palace, she went directly to the backyard, and never came to the front yard, but she also knew that this Yingchuan palace was not very big, and she only walked a cup of tea from the gate of the palace to the largest main hall in the palace, Ying'an Palace.

As soon as the two of them entered, they saw several eyes shooting towards them, and it turned out that there were already one or twenty daughters of the family on top of this hall, some gathered together, and some stood alone.

When I saw that one of these two girls was born with a beautiful face, extremely beautiful, some of them cast a trace of jealousy in their eyes.

But after a closer look, I found that the other girl standing with the beauty, although the appearance alone was not as gorgeous as the beauty, but her eyes were as bright as a meteor, and the eye waves were charming.

Among the girls, the one who knew Yifei before, stepped forward with a smile and said, "Yo, isn't this the fifth girl from Uncle Anyuan's mansion?" I just don't know, who is this girl, and is she also from your house? ”

Yi Fei saw that everyone's eyes were looking at her first, and she knew that they must be amazed by her beauty, but before she could be proud enough, she saw that all the eyes fell on Cai Wei, and she was uncomfortable, and when she saw Xu Si girl from Yunyang Bo Mansion asking her, she deliberately said: "This is my cousin, although she also lives in our mansion, she is the young lady of the Zhou family." ”

The girl covered her lips with one hand, made a surprised look, and asked, "Isn't it the girl of the Zhou family who has already made a family relationship with King Yingchuan?" ”

As soon as she said this, the ladies in the palace immediately whispered in their ears, and their eyes frequently shot towards Cai Wei.

Cai Wei didn't realize it, and no longer paid attention to Yi Fei, and a maid led her to a seat on the left side of the main hall and sat down. She saw that there were five seats on the Danqi in the middle of the hall, and there was a desk on both sides of the hall under the steps, and there was a pair of four treasures of the study room on the case, and a brocade cushion was set up next to it, one person and one seat, and most of the daughters of the families who arrived first sat in it.

Cai Wei counted the seats on both sides, there were a total of thirty seats, and she didn't feel a little funny, she had been arguing for many months before saying that she wanted to choose a good family for the two princesses to choose concubines, but she was selected and chosen, and after so long, there were only these thirty people who passed the first layer of the primary election? When she looked at the name tags with the family name of each daughter written on those cases, she was even more speechless.

Previously, the emperors of Yan and Qin, in order to be afraid of the power of their relatives and the chaos of the government, did not choose the daughters of the noble ministers after the election or the selection of concubines, most of them were selected among the civilian women, and at most they selected the daughters of scholarly families with inconspicuous family backgrounds and thin people, such as Concubine Yingchuan, although her father was a princess, but the population of the He clan was scattered, and there were no outstanding talents, and only she was the only daughter who was selected as the crown princess by Emperor Guangzong as the prince of Xianyide.

At that time, the concubines of several other princes were all from the people, and it was also to make the vassal king have less help from his wife. But these women sitting on the top of this hall today are all from famous families, Cai Wei swept around without a trace, and did not find a woman from the people.

It seems that this so-called selection of concubines is not so much a group of young ladies competing for beauty, compared to De Rong's speech, but rather a competition for the family power behind each person, to see who can have the upper hand in these games.

After a while, a few more young ladies were introduced into the hall, and Cai Wei saw that the thirty seats were full, and the omissions on the main hall were about to point to the right, so she knew that the five main candidates such as the Empress Dowager Sun should go to the palace and take their seats.

Sure enough, I heard a eunuch sing with a long voice: "The Queen Mother has arrived, and everyone kneels to welcome the Niangniang Feng!" ”

The women hurriedly got up and left the table, and walked to the middle of the hall under the guidance of the maids, five people in a row, six people in a line, and saw that a pair of Titian female officials had turned out of the back of the palace, so they knelt down and said: "The people welcome the queen mother, the mother is a thousand years old, a thousand years old!" ”

Empress Dowager Sun wore a twelve-winged golden jade phoenix crown inlaid with gems, walked up to the Danqi with her head held high, sat on a phoenix chair in the middle of the head, and placed four chairs on both sides and lower heads in order, and the Empress Yingchuan sat in the closest seat to the Empress Dowager Sun, Mrs. Dingxi Hou sat at her head, and on the other side was Mrs. Weiguo and Mrs. Zuoxiang.

Empress Dowager Sun waited for the daughters and said to Concubine Yingchuan and the other three ladies after greeting them: "No courtesy, let's all be flat!" ”

She looked at the thirty young ladies standing in the hall and said, "Since all the young ladies have passed the primary election, they are all extraordinary, and they are all born with flowers and moon appearances. And you are all from famous families, and you want to come to this De Jong and your skills are also excellent. It's a pity that my Great Qin Dynasty clan is not rich, if there are more than a dozen or twenty princes of the county, this palace really can't wait to marry you all back as princesses. ”

"But now there are only two county kings who choose princesses, even if they add the quota of four secondary concubines*, a total of six ladies can only be selected to be my granddaughter-in-law. Alas, to select only six of your outstanding ladies, and to select the six best ladies in an impartial and fair manner, this is really difficult for the old woman of this palace! ”

"Yes, this palace and Concubine Yingchuan, as well as Mrs. Weiguo, Mrs. Dingxi Hou, and Mrs. Zuo Xiang discussed for several days before they came up with such a fair and just method for choosing a concubine. Concubine Yingchuan, read it to them! ”

Empress Dowager Sun directly ordered Concubine Yingchuan so stably, and she might as well show more respect to the demeanor and tone of this former crown princess, as well as the two ladies of Duchess Weiguo and Mrs. Dingxi Hou.

Concubine Yingchuan has long been accustomed to this kind of thing, and responded respectfully, and said: "This time for the two royal highnesses of Yingchuan King and Linchuan King to choose a concubine, although the ladies have passed the primary election, but still need to pass five levels, our five main candidates will each for each pass a question, according to your answers and then each person will give 'upper, middle, lower' these three evaluations, and so on the five levels of the questions you have all answered, and then your five levels of evaluation will be summarized together, selected out' The top six ladies with the most comments are here, and then the two county kings are invited to choose their respective princesses and wives from these six people. ”

There are those who are attentive and can hear the difference between the names of the two county princesses and concubines between the Empress Dowager Sun and the concubine Yingchuan, and the Empress Dowager Yingchuan is just like not hearing the "second concubine" of the Empress Dowager Sun before, but she uses the word "madam".

In fact, Concubine Yingchuan only wants to choose a princess for her son, and Yan Qin's "Yongjia Huidian" also has a rule: the king of the county can only accept two concubines if he reaches the age of twenty-five after marriage, and if he still does not have a son and a half daughter at the age of thirty, he can accept two more, which is a total of four concubines.

But because King Yingchuan and King Linchuan are both the eldest and not small, they were already twenty-one years old when they got married, and now the royal family is too short of imperial heirs, so the ministers have suggested that they not only marry the concubines to the two county kings, but also simply accept two concubines together, so as to open up branches and spread the leaves for the royal family as soon as possible and spread the heirs.

As for the grades of these two concubines, the holy decree did not make it clear, and Concubine Yingchuan didn't care about the intention of Empress Dowager Sun deliberately saying the word "second concubine", and still called her "madam" according to common sense.

After Concubine Shen briefly explained the process of choosing a concubine, she asked Empress Dowager Sun if she would invite all the ladies to return to their seats so that she could start the first level of the examination.

Empress Dowager Sun glanced at her and said with a smile: "The other ladies should go back and sit first, only the girl named Zhou Caiwei will stand in front and let the palace take a good look at you!" ”