Chapter 5: Life and Death (I

At night in the distant Luodu, about a change of weather, the streets in the huge city were already quiet, and it looked particularly gloomy and desolate, like a black mouth-swallowing beast.

At the intersections of important streets, soldiers stood to check the occasional passerby. Red or white paper lanterns hang outside the gates of every house, dimly lit and swaying under the eaves.

In the dim light, you can see large woodblock printed martial law notices on the walls of the street corners. In the narrow and long streets and alleys, there are often groomers carrying small lanterns, beating broken gongs or bangs, and the shadow of the shrunken appears and disappears into the darkness; The slow, listless sound of gongs or bangs faded away in the wind.

Despite the constant clamor of cries and noises on the south bank of Dongcheng and Luoshui, the flow of firelight, the patrolling of soldiers and horses in the city, and the prohibition of night walks, a small number of deep mansions still live a life of spending days and drinking in the courtyard.

No matter what era, even in the last days, there is no shortage of these people who burn houses and drink bitterly, and they can get by with the songs.

Although these prefectures, which were closer to Ouchi, for fear of being heard in the forbidden area, they did not use gongs and drums, or even silk and bamboo, when singing and dancing, but only let the courtesans gently point the board with red sandalwood or ivory clappers, and sing in a low voice, sometimes as thin as a hair, as if there was nothing, constantly curling, hovering on the exquisitely painted roof beams, and then flying towards the mysterious space.

The host and the guests paused their glasses in their hands, their toes lightly tapping on the ground, and they listened so intently that they almost stopped breathing. As soon as the singing stopped, they nodded their heads frequently, happily persuaded the wine and food, and guessed the fists, and few of them paid attention to the movements outside the city, and no one thought about what should be done for this declining court, so as to end this chaos.

On the contrary, the few cranes that had lost their feathers as the last auspicious ones who stayed in the Taimiao Temple and the annex of the Emperor's Heavenly Shrine were disturbed by the sound of the city, and from time to time they flew up in flocks, hovering over the sandwich city between Ouchi and Dongcheng, and making some desolate cries.

But compared to these frightened and miserable wealthy families, the East City and the South City are a different scene.

In the past two days, more than 100,000 people have fled from Heyang and Pishan, and there is nowhere to shelter them, and many people sleep under the eaves on both sides of the street, huddled together for fear of freezing to death.

They shivered in the biting cold wind of winter, groaning, whining, and sighing. The women whispered to the old man, mourning and weeping. The children shrunk together in their mother's arms, crying and crying out for hunger, tearing apart the hearts of adults.

But when the patrol soldiers sent by the envoys of the Luodu Mansion and the Jinwu Street approached, they were patient for the time being, and did not dare to say anything. For fear of causing the displeasure of these tigers and wolves.

Since martial law was imposed on Tongcheng on 24 December, hundreds of refugees have died every day, and the number has reached two or three hundred. Although there are porridge factories in the six cities and eleven gates of Luodu, the mortality rate is getting higher and higher, especially the elderly and children who are not in good health die the most.

The northeast wind with snow began to blow tonight, and it was particularly cold, and who knows how many corpses, large and small, will be carried to the mass grave at the foot of the mountain tomorrow morning?

The snow particles were also sprinkled in the sky above the imperial city with a black hole, and finally a layer of yellowish frost white was spread in a few thin lamps.

As the oldest lieutenant official in the mansion of the Great Inside, Wei Yue, who is often served in the inner house, also swallowed a sip of strong tea that could no longer taste it, and suppressed the itch of coughing.

He looked at the cold wind that leaked through the roof, and wrapped the old fur on his body with mottled hair and mottled again, which was to follow the emperor of a certain generation, reward him for his loyalty, and personally took off his body to reward him with this slave, when he was still a young man with black hair and gratitude.

From the three years of Baoying who wore the crown to the retirement age of his beard and hair

He has served six emperors, including babbling children, rickety middle-aged men who have gray hair early because of transitional sorrow, and even young men who have died early and collapsed from excessive indulgence, and of course, there are also a certain deposed emperor who tried to revive the dynasty but couldn't bear it, and was destroyed by reality and became a madman.

Seeing the weather, the magnificent and spacious Da Nei, a little bit of withering and decaying into a rampant rat and a spider web.

Under the weakening of the imperial power, there are only these rootless people left, who use the last little bit of sincerity to maintain the insignificant dignity and pomp of the Son of Heaven.

Under the power of the foreign courtiers, as the buffer and link of the emperor's communication with the foreign courts, the envoys who were originally commanded and commanded by the emperor and were called noble and respected began to become a high-risk profession.

Either he became the eyes and ears of the regent of the foreign court, or he died in a dark corner without knowing it, or he was found guilty of lawlessness by his colleagues and the imperial historian, and died in prison in humiliation and sorrow.

Of course, these few eunuchs who monitor and coerce the Son of Heaven are also easily used to appease the Son of Heaven's feelings in terms of political compromises, but they are like killing a dog.

Wei Yue's predecessors, naturally, also had those who were unwilling to endure it and fought each other, and then led the troops with raised eyebrows, confiscated the homes and wives and daughters of those in power, and stood on top of the court with high spirits, overlooking the ministers who bowed their heads.

But these are often just short-lived glories, disappearing like bubbles under the scorching sun. meager force and unreliable people's hearts, and then had to bring in foreign aid to repeat the mistakes of the past, and then in the invasion of foreign troops, they were crushed together with the Son of Heaven they supported.

More than ten years ago, he was the last adopted son who died, and the crime was actually to steal the offerings in front of the god card when he was on duty in the Taimiao.

And one of his most promising righteous sons back then, once did the privy council and walked between the two mansions, but in the end he was sentenced for the crime of stealing and selling the artifacts of the Son of Heaven, but he clearly remembered that the so-called jade ring of the Son of Heaven that was stolen by others was actually awarded by the contemporary Majesty Xià himself.

He saw it with his own eyes, but under the pleading gaze of the Son of Heaven, he fiercely disregarded his conscience, and loudly scolded this eunuch scum who was indiscriminately climbing the lord, and then in his wailing confession, he watched as he was tortured into a mess of rotten flesh with a rod.

The old things of the past are like stirred wine, and a little bit of sediment floats on the surface of memory, but he can't shed tears anymore, it is in the painful fluid of being tied up and stuffed with medicine and dying of pain in the days when he didn't know how many heavens he served.

Some of the history called retribution is just a repetition, and sometimes he even has this thought, if it were not for the Yiwei period, the crazy rebel emperor, one by one, to defeat and slaughter the ruling Liang clan and kill all his henchmen, the authority of the Son of Heaven and the dignity of the court would not have been corrupted and swept away.

At least when the Liang family was in power, the autocratic power was returned to the autocratic power, and it was still courteous and respectful enough to the Supreme Son of Heaven, but it was incomparable with these ceremonial and armed people later, under the dictatorship of the Liang family, even if the Son of Heaven was stupid and weak, and the world began to have frequent internal troubles, but on the whole, the state of the Tang Dynasty was still in the Weijia Sea, and the four Yi and nine sides were vying for the first place to pay tribute.

The so-called last glory of the upper and lower and the political and clean up is completely destroyed because they are bent on regaining the great government, and they naively think that they can solve the problem and accumulate evils.

Unfortunately, the era in which Wei Yue was born was just the beginning of this omen of end. And once upon a time, the objects that the Son of Heaven could rely on became fewer and fewer, and in the end, only these five incomplete and weak people remained

Nowadays, the best result of being an internal official and an envoy is to spend money to bribe the foreign court, and then invite himself to go out to envoy the domain, and then use the last bit of the skin of the envoy of the Son of Heaven to curry favor with and rely on the snort of those feudal towns, write some songs praising deeds and making a stand, and obtain corresponding preferential treatment and offerings.

Titles such as the Appearance of the Army, the Observation of the Appearance of the Army, and the like, which were once majestic and formidable, are now reduced to the last function of comforting and pacifying the ministers and, when necessary, acting as a scapegoat.

If you are lucky, you can make a little pension money, or die in office, which can be regarded as God's blessing. Of course, it is not impossible to be killed by a disgruntled feudal town as a target of anger, but it is better than staying in the precarious Luodu.

The sudden movement disturbed his memories of indulging in the past, and he trembled and raised his head full of white hair, only to find that the fire was dazzling and made it impossible to see the other party's face.

I only heard a voice like a male duck from a eunuch,

"Husband Wei, your business is ......"

He squinted at the bright firelight, and realized in his heart that this time he would not be able to grow old and die in the difficulty.

Please slow down, let my old bones die a decent death, he muttered, and without resistance, let these people drag him under the square in front of the silver light gate outside the imperial city, which was already full of kneeling black oppressive crowds.

began to read out his accusations aloud, which was nothing more than castration and rebellion against the country, the internal Gu of the Son of Heaven, the external rebellion of the party, and the bullying of loyal ministers.

Could it be that they can't find a decent scapegoat among the servants beside the Son of Heaven, so they have to drag out their old thing, who has been retired for several years, to make up the number?

He suddenly had some realization, probably when those adopted sons were beheaded and executed, they were in a similar mood. It is said that if you go under the knife fast enough, you will not feel any pain.

However, after a while, the butcher knife did not immediately fall on his head.

Then some young faces were dragged out like dead dogs, and they were said to be the initiators of this upheaval, a group of students from the Privy Council Teaching Team and the Beijing School, all of whom had their eyes and tongues gouged out, and curled up on the ground covered in blood, even if their heads were cut off, they only struggled a little more like dolls, so that the blood sprayed farther.

With the accumulation of these heads, Wei Yue's head full of chaos also seemed to have been revealed, he seemed to have met these young people in Ouchi, as the number of Ouchi's honor guards was insufficient, and the martial arts students who came from the tribe to make up the number looked grateful in front of the Son of Heaven, leaving him with some memories of the palace seniors who pulled out the numbers.

He suddenly coughed and laughed, I see, the miscellaneous family is really unjust, but he looked at the palace city that was shrouded in darkness again, the rickety figure trapped in the palace, everyone, everyone, how long do you have to wait to come down