Chapter 289: Killing two birds with one stone twice

Tai Chi Palace

On both sides of the open space outside the East Warm Pavilion is a row of buildings that do not seem to match the overall style of the Taiji Palace at all. This is a five-room tiled house, if it is placed elsewhere, it does not look very low, but in the magnificent Taiji Palace, these five tiled houses seem so inconspicuous.

In such a house, there is a row on the left and right outside the East Warm Pavilion. Outside the Taiji Hall, there is also a row on the left and right.

On the left is the place where the eunuchs and palace maids take turns to rest, and of course, there are the Ouchi guards. On the right is the place where the courtiers are waiting for the emperor to meet, and since the Tianyou Emperor ascended the throne, the row of tiled houses on the right side of the Taiji Hall has become the office of several important ministers of the imperial court. The emperor was diligent and often called courtiers to the Dongnuan Pavilion for deliberations. And the yamen of all the ministries and offices of the imperial court are outside the Taiji Palace, and it takes too much time to go back and forth.

The emperor simply let several important ministers work in the tiled room outside the Taiji Palace, and it would be more convenient for him to pass it on. Later, these slightly dilapidated houses gradually became a symbol of honor. Because only those whom the emperor trusts and reuses will be qualified to sit in it.

Later, these unglamorous houses were given glamorous names.

It is called the vestibule of the palace, and the officials who have been in these tiled houses for a long time have been become court officials behind the scenes by others. Someone once joked that if you can't be a court official in the capital, it is better to go to the local government to be a parent official. That being said, there are no more than 10 people who are qualified to work here for a long time.

Naturally, these people were aware of the arguments about the courtiers, but they didn't care about the slightly jealous ridicule, on the contrary, they thought it was definitely something to be proud of. There were so many civil and military people in the Manchu Dynasty, how many of them could be called court officials?

Relatively speaking, the tile house outside the Taiji Palace, in order to distinguish the tile house outside the East Warm Pavilion, is also called the outer court, and the outside of the East Warm Pavilion is called the inner court. If being an outer court official is already envied and jealous, then being an inner court official is even more eye-catching.

Since Prince Yi's rebellion, there have been more than ten officials in the outer court for a long time. While dealing with the official affairs of the ministry and government, while sorting out information about Prince Yi's rebellion, His Majesty often asks about these things. In the inner court, there is usually only one official who works in it for a long time, regardless of whether Prince Yi rebels before or after.

This person who is qualified to sit in the inner court and always wait for His Majesty to summon him. It's not very high in terms of grade, but the power is beyond imagination.

He is Pei Yan, the waiter of the Yellow Gate, who is the fourth grade. In terms of grade, it is not as good as the books of each department, and it is equal to the servants of each department.

The Great Sui is too big, and the excerpts sent from all over the country every day, plus the excerpts handed over by the Beijing officials of all shapes, it is not an exaggeration to say that two ox carts can be filled every day. There are so many twists and turns, even if the emperor is diligent enough to read them for twelve hours a day, it is impossible to read them all, not to mention that every piece of folds has to be approved.

The things that used to be sorted out were handed over to the eunuchs of the imperial study to do. But after Emperor Yang Yi ascended the throne, this custom was abolished. Yang Yi decreed that the people of the harem were never allowed to interfere in the government affairs of the previous dynasty. Not only eunuchs can't, but even concubines can't. Even the queen has not intervened in the government affairs of the previous dynasty for so many years.

Because of this, it has also caused the biggest difference between the current eunuch Bingbi in the imperial study and the former eunuch Bingbi. During the reign of the first emperor, what was valued was the ability of the eunuchs in the imperial study to handle government affairs, while the current emperor valued loyalty. The biggest difference between Su Buxing and Wu Xiangsheng is that he is more self-aware. Unless the emperor asked him to, he would not say a word about the affairs of the imperial court.

It is precisely because Wu Peisheng has handled government affairs for so many years, and he is also used to sorting out the excerpts of the courtiers, and then approving the unimportant folds according to the emperor's thinking, so he has a little more sense of mission and responsibility than Su Buxing. In other words, his loyalty to the Great Sui was even stronger than his personal loyalty to the emperor. It is precisely because of this that the emperor will let him take people to inspect the northwest roads. It is precisely because of this that Wu Xiangsheng died unexpectedly.

Because, he discovered Li Yuanshan's secret.

The existence of that iron mine was not discovered by Mu Xiaoxiao first, but by Wu Xiangsheng. That's why Li Yuanshan didn't hesitate to design such a big and bloody game, so that the people of Fan Gu could accompany Wu to accompany the funeral. Fang Xie guessed correctly, what happened to Fan Gu that night, he was just an insignificant little person.

Wu Xiangsheng found the clues that Li Yuanshan wanted to rebel, and also discovered the existence of the iron mine. But he couldn't pass on the news in time, and his every move was under Li Yuanshan's surveillance. In order to gain Li Yuanshan's trust, he pretended that he had not discovered anything. also pretended to be greedy for money and accepted a lot of money from Li Yuanshan, and promised to get rid of Fang Xie for Li Xiaozong, but in fact, this was just Wu Xiangsheng wanting 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 Xiangsheng. In order to prove that he was really just a eunuch who was greedy for money and profit, Wu Xiangsheng agreed to Li Yuanshan to go to Fangu. But there, it was a tomb that had been dug for him a long time ago, and it was also a tomb that had been dug for Fan Gu's 2,000 people and 800 border troops.

From the moment Li Yuanshan found out that Wu Beisheng was secretly investigating him, Li Yuanshan was planning how to kill this big man who was once a smash hit in front of the previous emperor and was also important in front of the current emperor. If you want to kill a eunuch with a pen, it is obviously unrealistic to hastily arrange a robbery in the rivers and lakes, and it is impossible to convince others. Besides, although Wu Xiangsheng is not good at cultivation, he is also a seven-grade master.

can kill him, the Jianghu guests above the eighth grade, no one disdains to be a bandit who blocks the road and robs the road. If you really have a cultivation of more than eight grades, even if you don't work for the imperial court, you can invest in a business house or a big family, and you will be reused and respected.

So if he wanted to kill Wu Xiangsheng, Li Yuanshan had to find an excuse to make the imperial court believe the emperor.

So, he thought of Mengyuan people.

……

……

Pei Yan, the waiter of the Yellow Gate, sat on the chair, looked at the mountain of folds on the table in front of him, raised his hand and gently rubbed his frowning brows, he had been sitting here combing the folds for more than two hours, but he had not yet completed a quarter. That's what he does every day, prioritizing the folds. Sort out the important folds and send them to the Dongnuan Pavilion 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, which represented the identity of the Great Sui Emperor, was placed on the side of the table. Few people would have thought that most of the jade seals on the original holy decree were not printed by the emperor himself. In fact, those who are familiar with the imperial court know that whether the will was written by the emperor himself can be known by looking at the seal on the holy decree. If it is printed with eight seal characters "Ordered by the Heaven and Longevity Yongchang", then this will was written by the Huangmen Shilang on behalf of him. If it is a small seal with four square characters on it, it is the holy decree written by the emperor himself.

Pei Yan leaned back and stretched his arms. Perhaps it was because he sat for too long every day, and his neck became more and more uncomfortable. I suffer from unbearable soreness every day, and sometimes I feel nauseous and want to vomit.

After taking a sip of the very heavy tea, Pei Yan pressed down a churning in his stomach. There have been so many things going on these days that he can't even get three hours of sleep a day. Not only do you have to face a mountain of official duties, but you also have to always figure out the emperor's thoughts, and the latter is more tired than the former.

He paused for a moment, then focused his gaze on a piece of music in front of him again.

This piece of music was sent to the capital by a county commander of Shandong Province to risk death. In order to avoid the investigation of the northwest thieves, this memo was first sent to the county commander's hometown in Dongping County in the form of a family letter, and then secretly transferred by his family to his friend, and then sent to Chang'an by his friend himself.

So when he saw this twist, Pei Yan's brows immediately furrowed.

Without a doubt, this is the most important piece of the day.

The fold was written on a plain piece of parchment, but in a very secretive way. Only by spraying it with water will the handwriting be revealed. The Ouchi Guards still use this method to transmit secret reports, and very few people can see through it. If it weren't for the friend of the county order who went to Chang'an in person and explained when he handed over the fold, Pei Yan would not have been able to see the hidden words in the parchment.

This is a memo written in small fly-like print, no less than a thousand words. The situation in the three northwestern provinces is described in detail, and even the troop deployment of some rebels.

And what interests Pei Yan is another thing about Wu Xiangsheng's past.

The massacre of Fangu.

This county commander was friendly with a general in Li Yuanshan's army, and the general told him the secret when he drank too much.

It was written in the compromises that after Wu accompanied Sheng to the northwest, he secretly investigated whether Li Yuanshan was greedy for ink, which was his duty to inspect various provinces in the northwest. But precisely because Wu Xiangsheng is too serious and rigorous, he actually found out some things that Li Yuanshan was planning to rebel against.

But he couldn't hide Li Yuanshan's secret investigation, so there was the Fan Gu tragedy. Those people, those border troops, were all killed by Li Yuanshan. Then blame Meng Yuanren, so that he can cover up the fact that he killed a great eunuch. And Li Yuanshan's purpose is by no means just like this, this is simply a plan to kill two birds with one stone.

not only killed Wu Xiangsheng, but also aroused the emperor's idea of crusading against the Mengyuan people. Li Yuanshan knew that the emperor had always been obsessed with the conquest of Meng Yuan, but he had never made up his mind. He understood the pride of the people of the Yang royal family, and fabricated the fact that Meng Yuan slaughtered Fan Gucheng, one of which was to kill Wu Xiangsheng, and the other was to urge the emperor to march west as soon as possible.

Only when the emperor marched westward, he had a chance to rebel.

And Li Yuanshan, it is not the first time to play 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 westward journey more than ten years ago. And that incident was also a lie made up by Li Yuanshan. At that time, there were no Meng Yuan masters who infiltrated the Great Sui to try to assassinate the emperor, all of them were fabricated by him out of thin air. Then sent an urgent secret message to Chang'an, and when the emperor consulted with Prince Zhong, Prince Zhong immediately decided to go west to kill Kou.

Then Li Yuanshan asked people to secretly report to Meng Yuanren, saying that the Great Sui Imperial Court had organized a large number of masters of the rivers and lakes to prepare to infiltrate Meng Yuan to assassinate the Great Khan Meng Ge. So, the Mengyuan people hurriedly gathered people to intercept it, but because of a slight error in the calculation time, when the people in the rivers and lakes of the Great Sui arrived in Fangu, there were not many real masters gathered on Mengyuan's side. Therefore, in the first confrontation, the Jianghu guests of the Great Sui killed Meng Yuan's people cleanly.

But later, people from the Buddhist sect arrived one after another. The two sides are really evenly matched, and the Jianghu guests of the Great Sui have also begun to die continuously.

In that incident, the biggest winner seemed to be Prince Yi Yang Yin, but in fact it was him Li Yuanshan. He took this opportunity to make Prince Zhong disappear, and the people of Meng Yuan also trusted him. In the past ten years, he has secretly been in contact with Mengyuan people.

Killing two birds with one stone before and after, Li Yuanshan played very successfully.

For the first time, a large number of powerful people in the rivers and lakes of the Great Sui were buried, and the whereabouts of Prince Zhong were unknown.

The second time, the elite 700,000 troops of the Great Sui were buried, the northwest was empty, and no one could stop him from rebelling.

Looking at this recital, 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, the conspiracy and calculation are so vicious.

He shook his head, collecting his mixed emotions. Then he picked up the fold and put it under his armpit, took an oil-paper umbrella and walked out of the door of the inner court.

Outside, half an hour ago, it was raining lightly.

When he went out, he opened the oil-paper umbrella, but he was stunned for a moment.

He saw that in the rain, in the open space outside the East Warm Pavilion, there was a young man in a black shirt standing there, standing with his hands in his hands, his body as straight as a javelin. The young man raised his head slightly and looked at the sky. He didn't seem to care at all about the raindrops that hit him in the face, uninhibited and indifferent.

When he saw this scene, Pei Yan suddenly thought of the first time he saw Prince Zhong many years ago, it was also in a rain. At that time, Prince Zhong guarded the city gate with hundreds of slaves, and the soldiers of the forbidden army rushed up one by one, and then fell down one by one. In the rain that day, Prince Zhong was also dressed in a black shirt, and he was so uninhibited and indifferent, as if he didn't look at those forbidden troops at all.

So similar.