In 2010, I was sad alone and sent away two very important people in my life, the woman I loved most in my life, Yanzi, and my respected master, Mr. Zang. Mr. Zang left me a lot of things, including many books. Some of these books are bamboo slips and some are paper, but the common feature is that no matter what the carrier is, these materials are packed in glass jars and soaked in some green liquid.

The most important thing may be that after taking out these materials, I found that in addition to some inconvenient techniques such as searching for ghosts, yin and yang, most of them are some gods and ghosts, which are just more detailed than books such as "The Classic of Mountains and Seas". I looked at the materials bored, and I didn't feel anything other than wonder why the liquid didn't soak the paper, and it was so troublesome to read, so I gradually gave up reading them, and I didn't read at least half of the materials in the large wooden box with these glass bottles.

2011 has had a good start at work, and I am no longer so busy, looking at my empty and lonely room, I can't help but feel a sense of loneliness in my heart. So I went to the study, and for a year after my lover Swallow left, I kept my vow to wake for her, and I didn't have a new girlfriend, and these books became my best companions, and I hid in the study late at night until I was tired and spread all over my body. I glanced at the books on several bookcases, I had read them more than once, and I really didn't want to open them again tonight. Bored, I sighed, but saw a large wooden box in the corner of the study, which was filled with bottles and cans of materials left to me by my master, Mr. Zang.

I found the sheepskin gloves, I thought that the only thing I could rely on to pass the time in a boring night, I picked up a glass jar, put on the sheepskin gloves, opened the lid of the jar, and took out a book hidden inside, the green liquid rolled down from the book, the book was very dry, as if it was not it when I had just fished out of the liquid, there was nothing left on the page, and the handwriting was not broken, just like the books I had read before that were soaked in liquid.

I opened the paper and read by the gentle but bright light of the lamp. But reading it made my eyes widen because it was completely different from the history I knew. Maybe that's what I want to feel tonight, and I'm going to write down the history I see, and of course because the book is in Chinese, I'm going to relay it in the vernacular for my friends. It is mixed with my own feelings and some real historical materials, which are not mentioned in the book, but after reading it, one picture after another appeared in my mind, and I want to tell it, whether you believe it or not, I will tell it.

In the first year of orthodoxy in 1436, in the Cining Palace of the Forbidden City in Beijing, there was a middle-aged woman with kind eyebrows and kind eyes, and she was the Empress Dowager Zhang. A year earlier, her son, the former Emperor Zhu Zhanji, had left her, and her grandson had succeeded her, and she had become the Empress Dowager. The years had left no mark on this woman's face, and the successive deaths of her husband and son in eleven years had not made her look grief-stricken and haggard. She just sat there looking at a man sitting on her left hand side on a wooden chair with his eyes closed, why was there a man in the palace of the Empress Dowager late at night?

On this day, there was more than one man in the Cining Palace, there were five men lined up a little further away from the Empress Dowager's right hand, they were all men who had passed the age of not being confused, the older ones had already had white beards, they stood motionless and bowed their heads and waited for the Empress Dowager to speak again. These five people with prominent identities are all famous people in the government and the opposition, they are Yang Shiqi, Yang Rong, Yang Pu, and Zhang Fu and Hu Hu, who are known as the three Yangs.

It was cold in Beijing in February, and it was snowing heavily, and several ministers came in the snow, and the snow was baked into snow water by the warm stove in the house at the moment of entering the house, and the water soaked the official uniforms of the five ministers, and a large water mark appeared on their shoulders and chests, which looked a little embarrassed. But none of them showed impatient expressions, they just stood there as if they were five clay sculptures.

"Mr. Shi, you still think that Zhu Qizhen is suitable for this throne, right?" Empress Dowager Zhang asked the man who closed his eyes and recuperated urgently. This man is about forty years old, the three strands of beard are extraordinarily good-looking, and his hair is already a little gray, naturally and smoothly draped behind his back, with a little bit of a grandmaster of the fairy wind and bones. The man's eyes widened slightly when he heard the Empress Dowager's question, and he breathed a long sigh of relief and then muttered, "Hmm." He continued to close his eyes, as if all this had nothing to do with him.

The Empress Dowager looked at the man she called Mr. Shi, and then turned to the five ministers who were still like stone clay sculptures and said, "Five Aiqing, the former emperor was appointed to take care of the five ministers, and today you have also heard Mr. Shi's reply. In the future, the five must do their best to assist the emperor, and the mourning family will thank you. ”

The five ministers hurriedly knelt on the ground, kowtowed and praised: "The ministers don't dare, the ministers must bow and die as hard as they can, and they will not be favored by the first emperor and the empress dowager." The Empress Dowager nodded with satisfaction, and then said to the door: "Emperor Xuan entered Cining Palace, passed Wang Zhen, and ordered him to wait outside the palace." ”

Not long after a while, a young man wearing four dragon robes walked in, and when he saw the Empress Dowager, he immediately bowed and said: "The emperor and grandson greet the Empress Dowager, and wish the Empress Dowager happiness such as Donghai Shou and Tianqi." The Empress Dowager's double phoenix and dragon crown moved slightly, as if she shook her head, it seems that the Empress Dowager doesn't like the little emperor who has just ascended the throne and sat in the palace. The Empress Dowager ordered the emperor to calm down, ordered someone to sit down, and then ordered Wang Zhen outside the door to enter the palace.

Outside the door walked a thin, slightly hunched man, dressed in the clothes of a eunuch. He wasn't good-looking, he wasn't ugly, but one eye was a little bigger and the other was smaller. His face trembled violently, and an irrepressible smile was about to bloom on his pretended calm face, but he still tried to endure this forbearance, and he winked at the little emperor who was sitting next to the Queen Mother, and he thought that maybe no one saw it, but in fact everyone saw it. Yang Shiqi, who was already over seventy years old, didn't even look like a clay sculpture anymore, and he couldn't help but snort coldly when he saw Wang Zhen walking into the palace.

Wang Zhen walked in front of the Empress Dowager and saluted in fear, then stood in place and stopped moving, and the Empress Dowager said with a pleasant face: "Wang Zhen, you study with the emperor and grow up with the emperor, you can be said to have contributed to the emperor's ascension to the throne so smoothly, what should I reward you?" ”

Wang Zhen bowed his head and said: "This is what a slave should do, and the slave can accompany the emperor to accumulate virtue for the ancestors for three lives, where do you dare to ask for any reward." Wang Zhen kept his head down to answer the Empress Dowager's questions, and never dared to look up at the Empress Dowager, at this time he was still a smart minion, and he did not forget the essence of being a eunuch because of excessive excitement. The five ministers looked at this eunuch who was as flattering as a dog with disdain.

The man known as Mr. Shi opened his eyes and looked at Wang Zhen, then turned his head to look at the Empress Dowager with a subtle sneer. At this time, Wang Zhen, who lowered his head and frowned, was boiling like boiling water. He wanted the Empress Dowager to be summoned in person, and there were also five ministers who had been appointed by the emperor to take care of their lives, and the day of his own soaring prosperity had come, and the Empress Dowager would be entrusted with a heavy task today.

After seeing Mr. Shi nodding, Empress Dowager Zhang took the hand of the nine-year-old emperor and said: "Emperor, these five ministers are all pillars of the country, and they will do their best to assist you in the future, you have to listen to them, you know?" The little emperor replied, "Remember the teachings of the Empress Dowager." The Empress Dowager nodded, and suddenly said in a correct tone: "In the future, what they say is equivalent to what I said, you must obey, and you must not insist on going your own way if you discuss more with the five Aiqing, otherwise the mourning family will never spare you." The little emperor was taken aback by the sudden change in the empress dowager's tone, and he didn't dare to answer but just nodded incessantly, while the five ministers under the seat bowed deeply to the ground, Hu Hu even cried bitterly, and said in unison: "The ministers will live up to the great grace of the empress dowager." To get such support and affirmation, there is indeed a reason for Hu Hu to cry bitterly.

"Wang Zhen." The Empress Dowager said with a pleasant face. At this time, Wang Zhen was simply overjoyed, the five ministers who took care of his life were responsible for guiding the emperor to govern, and he put it in the end to let himself supervise the country, such a heavy responsibility was put on himself, and he could be regarded as a bad breath of being a eunuch. Thinking that he was just an ordinary and even failed teacher in the past, but now he can play the role of supervising the country, it is really a green smoke on the ancestral tomb, thinking of this, Wang Zhen's voice couldn't help but tremble a little: "The slave is here." The Empress Dowager still said gently: "Stand up and speak." Wang Zhen stood up tremblingly, although he had been studying with the little emperor for a year, but it was the first time he had seen the empress dowager so closely, in the past, he was lying on the ground or with his head down.