The thirteenth year of Chongzhen is a year of the dragon. Legend has it that the Year of the Dragon is a special year, either auspicious or catastrophic. In short, this year, there will never be calm waves, and there will be earth-shattering events.

On the nineteenth day of the lunar month, early in the morning, the fourth day of the city was carved by thieves. The center of the CD Mansion of the Three Divisions of Sichuan (Note 1), the west gate of the Shu Palace, the Zunyi Gate Tower.

The chief steward of the Shu Shizi Mansion, the eunuch Cao Sanbao lightly stomped his toes in his boots.

The lead cloud hung low, and fine snow needles faintly fell. The snow needles in the near distance are blocked by the cornices of the castle towers, and the farther ones fall on the top of the city, burrowing into the cracks of the green bricks in the blink of an eye, becoming a little wet, accumulating in patches of moss or a tuft of weeds in the root system. The thousand-year-old city was hidden in a gray-white cold, and the palaces of several county kings were hazy. Except for a few chickens and dogs in the distance, there was silence around the tower.

A trace of cold wind quietly burrowed into his body, causing Cao Sanbao to tremble uncontrollably. But Cao Sanbao's forbearance skills cultivated by waiting for nobles for many years played a role, and in the cold and cold morning, his body could still maintain a natural forward bend for a long time, with a smile on his face, and a respectful look. Cao Sanbao knew that there were two little eunuchs behind him, one was named Wang Sizhong, the other was named Li Sixian, and several palace maids were listening at any time from a distance. Although these two younger ones are more filial than their own sons in front of themselves, Cao Sanbao knows that the rules in the palace are to compete for favor all the time. If you are a little negligent, you will be stabbed next to the bad guy, and you will fall in the eyes of your master, and if you lose your favor, you will be an abyss from which you will never recover. Guarding the king's tomb and brushing the toilet are considered to accumulate virtue, and it is common to pull them out and kill them directly, and throw them in the mass graves for wild dogs to eat. Thinking of this, Cao Sanbao's body remained calm, and his ears carefully searched for the trembling sound behind him. He was secretly proud in his heart: "Two pups, it's really tender." ”

"Cao Banban!" There was a voice ahead, not loud, no fire.

Cao Sanbao instantly retracted his attention, fast-forwarded three or four steps, and walked to the back of the master's side.

"Lord Shizi!" Cao Sanbao's waist bent lower, and his smile became thicker.

"Is there any news about the thieves today?"

Cao Sanbao knew that the meaning of the prince's question was whether there would be any trace of the thief in the city today. Four days ago, on the night of the fifteenth day of the lunar month, the front team of thieves took advantage of the rain to dig the city in the northwest corner of the city and almost pierced the city wall. The walls of CD House are surrounded by the broad Geumgang River and the Nam River (both the Geumgang River and the Nam River are tributaries of the Minjiang River) on three sides, and the base of the wall is piled up with strips of stones, and the top is rammed earth and bricks. Only outside the west city wall there is a river in the western suburbs that is not wide or deep, and it is all rammed earth and bricks, and it is this section that is used to sacrifice thieves to dig the city. As soon as the next day dawned, the thief brigade appeared outside the southern city. Soon after, the thief brigade went from south to north, bypassing the eastern city. The team stretched intermittently for dozens of miles, and walked for a whole day. Officials of all sizes in Sichuan, on the one hand, closed the four gates, and on the other hand, they dispatched officials and troops to recruit people to go to the city to defend the thieves, and made a fuss for several days, but the thieves did not come to attack the city again. On the seventeenth and eighteenth days, there was no movement of thieves outside the city. This morning, the palace has sent people to inquire clearly, and before the time has passed, the governor yamen has sent a few groups of fine workers out of the city to inquire around, and all of them have returned by the time of the morning. In detail, within ten miles of the four gates of the provincial capital, no trace of the thief was found. Now no one in the yamen knows where the thief has gone, and I don't know if the thief will have a head cramp and return to the CD.

Cao Sanbao hurriedly replied to what he knew, one by one. At the end, Cao Sanbao carefully looked at the master's demeanor from behind, only to see that the prince was still holding his hands behind his back, the corners of his mouth did not move at all, and his eyes were looking straight outside the palace, but he didn't know where to focus, only his right finger occasionally tapped on the back of his left hand. Cao Sanbao didn't know if he should speak now, saying that the weather was too cold and asking the prince to go home. After all, as the great eunuch in the prince's mansion, he has a great responsibility for the prince's health. He is also accompanied by a young man, and there is nothing wrong with saying that he is loyal. It's just that Cao Sanbao has strongly felt that since the sacrifice of the thief Bocheng, the prince's mind seems to have tied a knot, and all he is tied is worry and depression.

"In this world, the sky has changed, will people's hearts also change?" Cao Sanbao thought to himself, "I'd better be more careful." Those thieves who have received a thousand swords! ”

After standing for a while, Cao Sanbao, who was almost frozen on half of his body, finally spoke: "Lord Shizi, it's cold ...... this day."

As soon as Cao Sanbao's words came out, he saw the young man's son Yang turn around: "Let's go, go home." ”

Zhu Pingjin's Shizifu is in the northwest corner of the Shu Wangfu, so it is also called the West Mansion by the palace people. As the official canonized prince of the Shu domain by the imperial court, Xifu also has a main hall, and the specifications are roughly the same as those of the county king. The top of the palace of the heavy eaves rest mountain, five rooms and seven frames. The interior of the palace is Danbi, and there is also a throne in the center, but it is much smaller than the throne in the Fengtian Hall of the Forbidden City (changed to the Taihe Hall in the Manchu Dynasty) and the Carrier Hall of the Shu Palace, and the treasure platform in the main hall is also omitted into a step. The east and west sides of the main hall are separated from the main hall to form two pavilions, east and west, which are connected to the main hall by two wide hanging flower gates. The East Pavilion is where Zhu Pingjin usually lives, and the West Pavilion is Zhu Pingjin's study and office.

The west pavilion is very warm, and there is a charcoal-burning fire dragon under the main hall. The sky outside is dim, and the window paper covers a lot, and the pavilion is naturally dark. In the middle of the window is a large lacquered desk in nanmu, inlaid with jade and luodian. Because it was repainted and polished not long ago, the paint surface is very bright and smooth. Behind the desks against the west gable, there are long rows of bookshelves, stacked with large stacks of books. There are also shelves in the house, on which there are several jade ornaments, highlighting the owner's taste and hobbies.

The two palace maids approached quietly, one picked up a hot tea from the lacquer plate and gently rested it on the table; The other drew a fire from the palace lamp, lit the candles on the lampstands at the four corners of the room one by one, and re-covered the lanterns. The palace maid's movements were very light, but the change in light still woke up Zhu Pingjian, who was deep in thought in front of the desk.

Seeing the palace maid carefully withdraw, Zhu Pingjin glanced at Cao Sanbao, who was waiting with his head down, and did not speak. Zhu Pingjin checked himself after traveling through time and space, and his body should have belonged to the previous owner, and his consciousness also had the remnants of the previous owner. This body is about one meter five or six long, not tall, not short, neither fat nor thin. The Sichuan people are not tall, and for a teenager with a registration age of fourteen, he is not short, and he will grow with age in the future. At first, he was cautious, for fear that he would miss something and be treated as an impostor. Since he went to the palace the day before yesterday to bow to his father Zhu Zhishu and accepted the visit of a group of Sichuan officials as the son of Shu, Zhu Pingjin is no longer too worried about his identity. This world is a hierarchical society, except for the parents who are qualified to doubt themselves, who dares to have a superfluous mind in front of these slaves?

The time and space travel of the whole three hundred and seventy years is not the crossing of the body, but the crossing of the soul. Guo Dongfeng's "Jiashen Three Hundred Years Sacrifice" has been studied by almost all party members and cadres, and Zhu Pingjin is no exception. Extrapolating forward from the beginning of the Jiashen Tianchang, the almanac says that this year is the year of Gengchen, and there are still a few days to celebrate the New Year. Then next year will be the year of Xinsi, and then it will be the year of Renwu, the end of the year of Gui, and the year of Jiashen. Li Zicheng entered Beijing, and Zhang Xianzhong slaughtered Sichuan, which was at the beginning of Jiashen. Zhu Pingjin counted a few times with his fingers, and finally determined the era he was currently in—the thirteenth year of Chongzhen was 1640 AD. As for the day of the month of the Western calendar, there is no comparison point for the conversion standard of the Chinese and Western calendars, Zhu Pingjin sighs that he can't do anything. However, this did not bother Zhu Pingjin at all, because he had quickly adapted to the new time standard system, and consciously and voluntarily switched to the lunar calendar, which is popular with the grassroots people, to calculate the number of days.

I still have more than three years to change my fate.

Zhu Pingjin picked up the saucer, slowly brushed off the floating leaves with the lid of the cup, and inhaled the fragrance of tea collected by the lid in his nose before taking a sip. It should be autumn tea, Zhu Pingjin used his perennial work experience in the agency to make a judgment.

"Tea from Mengding Mountain?" Cao Sanbao came over to pick up the teacup, and Zhu Pingjin asked casually.

"Shizi Ye is really a good memory!" Cao Sanbao praised sincerely, "This is the autumn tea on the top of the mountain." The texture of the tea in spring, especially before the Ming Dynasty, is the best, but it is heavy in this season, and it is easy to run out of flavor. Drink autumn tea in winter to nourish your stomach with freshness. The nectar produced in our own village was sent to the palace for the gentlemen to taste. The princess arranged it, Fushun, Taiping, Shiquan, Neijiang, Qingfu, Deyang, they have several county palaces, and they picked up the good ones and sent them a few hundred catties. I heard from the little ones that this year's tea mountain was in a great drought and there was a lack of rain, and even the ancient well on the mountain that never dried up (Note 2) has bottomed out. The steward of the village urged the village to carry water from the bottom of the mountain to water the trees, so that it was easy to save this year's harvest. The small ones also said that this year's tea in CD, Qiongzhou, Yazhou and Jiazhou is fine, and the tea in Xufu and Luzhou was first drought, and then thieves, and most of the year's harvest was lost. When the harvest is less, the market price is expensive, and now the tea and horse markets in Songpan and Dajian Furnace (Note 3) are doing very well. The little ones said that if the gentlemen all said yes, they would ask Zhuang Shang to send some more next year......"

Oh, Zhu Pingjin thought, don't forget that he is the young owner of China's largest dozens of landlords' families, this is family love. Figuring out one's own family situation is equivalent to figuring out a fraction of the provincial situation, and only then can there be a basis and starting point for formulating all current and future policies and measures.

"The prince of Mengdingshan hasn't been there yet, has he? The princess sent a slave maid to go there once in the early years, and there was a temple of the tea god Lu Yu on the mountain. This temple is said to be perennially incense, and the surrounding tea farmers believe in it. On this day, tea making started from Mengding Mountain. The tea of Shu is the first in the world; The tea of Mengding Mountain is the first in Shudi. It is said that during the Song Dynasty, this Mengding Mountain could collect one or two million stone of tea every year...... "Cao Sanbao felt that the master was in a better mood, and he had the obligation to continue to maintain it, so he let go of the conversation box and volunteered to introduce the famous places and benefits around Mengding Mountain to Zhu Pingjin."

Zhu Pingjin nodded from time to time very cooperatively, which made Cao Sanbao a little relaxed, so Zhu Pingjin inadvertently interjected a question, "There should be a lot of good places in Yazhou, right?" Is the road from Mengding Mountain to Yazhou easy to walk? ”

The sudden question made Cao Sanbao stunned for a moment. But then he replied that he had inspected Wangzhuang at the behest of the prince, and that Zhuangzi, who had gone farthest, was still twenty or thirty miles away from Yazhou, and had never been to Yazhou City. The road is still easy to walk, but he remembers that after Qiongzhou, the road has become wide and narrow, and it is difficult for the two cars to make mistakes in the narrow place, and the road surface is uneven and potholes. There are occasional rolling rocks on the mountain......

"It's not lying, it's trustworthy." When Cao Sanbao answered the question, Zhu Pingjin paid attention to his tone and demeanor, "Everything is attentive, the memory is good, and the narrative is clear." The disadvantage is that the aura is insufficient. Suitable to be the deputy director of the office, in charge of housekeeping. Zhu Pingjin made a preliminary conclusion based on his past work experience in organs.

It is necessary to send someone to survey this road accurately. Zhu Pingjin dimly remembered that when he was a child, he had seen a pirated book at a small roadside stall, which was quite thin. The tattered cover, the yellowed pages, the name is "Zhang Xianzhong Tu Shu Ji". In the book, it seems to say that Butcher Zhang hit Ya'an at most (Note 4). There are two roads behind Ya'an, one road to Tianquan, and the other road to Lushan, and the connection point is Feixian Pass. There are many passes nearby, and it seems that the Sichuan army led by Fan Ha'er blocked Zhang Guotao here, forcing the four front armies to cross the grassland. It can be seen that the terrain around Ya'an is very good, and it can withstand the formation. There are Tianquan, Lushan, Baoxing, and heavy mountains behind Ya'an, and it should be possible to hide a few people. From Ya'an to the west is Luding, and the Dadu Bridge is cold and ...... From Ya'an to the south, it began to enter the Yi district. Zhang Xianzhong, the Yi people welcome you, hum......

Everything has to be laid out quickly. The layout is completed, at least one or two years before it takes effect, I don't know how much the effect is, whether I can save my life. However, no matter how many things Zhu Pingjin had in his head, he still couldn't suppress that fierce shadow.

First of all, this matter had to be done, Zhu Pingjin suppressed the impetuousness and boredom in his heart and made up his mind.

Note 1: In the Ming Dynasty, there were three yamen: the Provincial Envoy Division, the Prosecution Division, and the Command Envoy Division.

Note 2: This well is still on Mengding Mountain.

Note 3: It is the old name of Kangding.

Note 4: In fact, Zhang Xianzhong hit as far as Lushan County.