The war in Western Xinjiang was about to begin, and the imperial court issued edicts in succession, ordering Shandong, Huainan, and eastern Zhejiang to conscript troops and send them to Chang'an in case of emergency.

Summer and autumn are the most abundant seasons for fruits and vegetables, and prices are the most stable. This year, however, because both the north and the south have to use troops to raise grain, resulting in a shortage of rice millet, and the giant businessmen in the two cities of Chang'an have hoarded goods and are intent on raising grain prices, and when the Mid-Autumn Festival is approaching in August, the price of rice in Chang'an has risen to the level of a thousand dollars with one stone.

The high price of grain has caused tremendous pressure on the lives of a large number of ordinary people in Chang'an City, and has also made some small people have the idea of returning to their old business and taking advantage of the chaos to rob.

In just a few days, there were hundreds of riots in Chang'an City, which robbed grain shops and fruit and vegetable stores, and the noble eunuch settlements east of Suzaku Street also had bandits from time to time, climbing over the wall and entering the hospital to steal gold and silver treasures.

In the face of such a grim public security situation, Li Jinzhong, who temporarily assumed the post of Jing Zhaoyin, has always held a wait-and-see attitude, and has not adopted unusually severe high-pressure measures like the Jing Palace he presided over not long ago, but has allowed the relatives and high-ranking officials who have stolen from their homes to appeal one after another in the court and complain about the ineffective rectification of public order in the capital, so that bandits are rampant, and it has reached the point where it is tolerable and unbearable.

The reason why Li Jinzhong was so slack was because on the third day after he stayed in Fuzhong on an errand that night, news came out of the palace that the emperor intended to appoint Shang Jing as the provincial supervisor and appointed Wu Bi as Jing Zhaoyin.

Okay, the emperor is really going to do it to himself! Li Jinzhong gritted his teeth and secretly scolded the emperor for being ungrateful, but he couldn't help but feel a little lonely and vicissitudes in his heart.

He detained Lai Xing'er in the mansion, but did not send someone to inform Wu Bi as he said, but just waited for Wu Bi to personally go to the mansion to ask him for someone, so as to question him face to face, relieve the anger in his heart, and unmistakably tell Wu Bi that he didn't care about the eyeliner around him, because he was the emperor and the indispensable Dingding Father the day before.

However, to his surprise, Wu Bi seemed to have completely forgotten that there was such a person as Lai Xing'er, and he did not react to Lai Xing'er's disappearance at all, so Li Jinzhong waited for two days in vain, and in the early morning of the third day, he received a report from the palace eyeliner about the emperor's reuse of Shang Jing and Wu Bi, how not to make Li Jinzhong both angry and disappointed.

With such a mood, where did Li Jinzhong still have the heart to vigorously rectify the security of the capital, and sometimes he even gloated: These thieves who appear now are at best just small thieves who steal chickens and dogs, when will a giant thief like Bo Hu appear in Chang'an City again and commit a few big cases, so that Wu Bi's old man can drink a pot! As a "Shang Father" and a Chinese book order, he should not take responsibility for these trivial things, so he simply let the emperor's maternal uncle taste the taste of burnt clothes.

As for the emperor behind Wu Bi, Li Jinzhong even held a willful and competitive attitude: Don't you want to encroach on the power in my hands step by step, I'm sorry, the old man wants to govern others in the way of others this time, and only pretend to be deaf and dumb and turn a blind eye to your various behaviors, see what you can do to the old man?

On the contrary, at the palace banquet on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival on 15 August, the emperor toasted and congratulated him, and at the same time, he also asked him a few cases of theft and robbery that had recently occurred in Chang'an City.

This made Li Jinzhong feel a little confused, just when he was hesitant and in a dilemma, the situation in the north suddenly took a shocking reversal, so that Li Jinzhong had no time to calm down and carefully ponder what the emperor wanted to do to him.

Just after August 15, Lu Huaixian, the first fierce general under Jing Yuncong's former command and the envoy of Shuofang Jiedu, reported to the imperial court with a great news that the great leader of the rebel army, the "emperor" of the Great Yan State, was injured by the rebels in a civil strife in Yunzhou and died.

When the emperor received the news that Li Jinzhong personally sent to Yanying Palace, he couldn't help beating his chest, and shouted three times on his back: "Heaven bless me, heaven bless me, heaven bless me!" ”

On the same day, the emperor held a court meeting in the Hanyuan Palace, and officially canonized the emperor's eldest son, King Li Qi, as the generalissimo of the world's soldiers and horses in front of hundreds of civil and military officials. canonized Deputy Marshal Jing Yuncong concurrently served as the Marshal's Mansion Governor Shi, sat in the Chinese army, and assisted Li Qi in deploying troops; ordered Shuo Fang Jiedu to make Lu Huaixian not give the rebels a chance to breathe, and to capture the rebels' nest Yunzhou as soon as possible; ordered Fu Yi, deputy chief of the Hebei and Hedong marching armies, to launch a general attack on the rebels in Hezhong, with a deadline of half a month, and must recover the important towns in Hezhong in one fell swoop; Ordered Shaanxi to observe Liu Yi and Zeng Qing, the assassin of Yuzhou, to reorganize their troops and wait for an opportunity to launch a counterattack against the Puzhou rebels.

At the same time, at the Great Dynasty Conference, the emperor also appointed more than 20 officials such as Tang Kuan to serve as the assassins of Hexi, Longyou, and Jingyuan prefectures, and concurrently served as the imperial envoy of the regimental training and guarding of each state, uniformly obeying the command and dispatch of the Generalissimo's Office.

Li Jinzhong twisted the Buddha beads in his hand, standing at the forefront of the civil and military officials, closest to the emperor, he was listening carefully to every appointment made by the emperor himself from beginning to end, but until the end of the dynasty, he had never heard about the appointment of Shang Jing and Wu Bi. For some reason, he suddenly felt a sense of relief: the news that came out of the palace a few days ago seemed to be just a false rumor, and it was not enough to be believed.

When the emperor announced the dissolution of the dynasty, he walked slowly with the flow of people to the outside of the Hanyuan Palace, and a familiar voice came from beside him: "Enxiang is in the middle of the book, has the skill of assisting yin and yang, and is also in the military department, and has the labor of guaranteeing help, why is he depressed today?" ”

Li Jinzhong turned his head when he heard the sound, and saw Wei Chang, who was dressed in a new purple robe, looking at him with unpredictable eyes, he had already had a respectful attitude towards this villain, and at this time, in front of a group of courtiers, he was even more reluctant to entangle with him, so he casually arched his hand at him, and said perfunctorily: "Wei Shilang misunderstood, the old man is thinking about how to catch thieves and thieves in Chang'an City, and relieve His Majesty's worries, where will he be depressed?" ”

After that, he didn't wait for Wei Chang to say anything more, so he strode towards the outside of Daming Palace.

Wei Chang stood in place, squinting his eyes at Li Jinzhong's back as he gradually moved away, and shook his head with a wry smile. (To be continued.) )