Li Pingtong, director of the palace secretariat, who is nicknamed the 'internal minister' and 'the prime minister of the palace' by the outside world, can be seen from the description of him by the outside world, and this person's powerful position is definitely not simple.

According to the existing institutional system of the empire, the empire has the Supreme High Command, the Cabinet, the Inspectorate, and the Grand Court, and in addition to this, there are also palace institutions, namely the Imperial Intelligence Department, the Imperial Secretariat, the Imperial Asset Management Office, and the Palace Affairs Department.

Among these palace institutions, the actual power of the palace affairs department is not large, and it basically does the work of serving people, although the intelligence department is powerful, but this kind of spy agency is destined to not be on the table, whether it is Lin Zhe or the intelligence department itself, they have been committed to keeping the intelligence department low-key, and the asset management department is an institution that manages private property for the royal family, and it has little to do with politics.

The only institution that really had great influence in the imperial political arena was the Imperial Secretariat.

Although the secretariat only said to assist Lin Zhe in handling affairs, over the years, the power of this secretariat has become greater and greater, and it is impossible for Lin Zhe to have so much time to deal with so many military and political affairs across the country, even if he does not rest 24 hours a day, it will not be completed.

Therefore, Lin Zhe will personally handle some important affairs, but in most cases, some daily government affairs are handled by the secretariat, and they will only report to Lin Zhe if they cannot be solved.

Of course, this kind of power to deal with affairs is limited, and the way they handle affairs is not to decide directly, but to give opinions and plans to solve affairs, and then report to Lin Zhe, who feels that they can directly approve it.

They only have the right to suggest, not to decide.

But even this power is enough to make the power of the Secretariat above the ministries below the Cabinet, and even have the momentum to keep pace with the Cabinet.

Due to the special nature of the Secretariat, the internal officials are also relatively special.

For example. In particular, the empire did not have a Hanlin Academy, an institution dedicated to accumulating experience and prestige for young officials, as in the Ming and Qing dynasties, so the secretariat assumed this intelligence to a certain extent.

Most of the ordinary secretaries of the Secretariat, for the most part, were newcomers to the imperial political scene, and only those who had the highest ranking in the examination for the central employees of the State were admitted to these institutions, and the Secretariat officials above the rank of deputy head of each section were admitted to these institutions. It was also selected from among the outstanding middle-level officials nationwide.

As for the head of the Secretariat, two deputy directors and a number of accompanying secretaries, they were really high-ranking officials in the imperial political arena.

In this case, the position of the head of the Secretariat is more political than that of ordinary cabinet ministers.

However, the Secretariat is usually relatively low-key and does not appear in the public eye, but this does not mean that the Director of the Secretariat is less powerful.

In addition to Li Pingtong, several other people in this private meeting were also high-ranking officials in the empire, such as Zhao Lixiang was the director of the Beijing Division Patrol Police Department, and Sun Beilu was the co-organizer of the Ministry of Finance.

Therefore, Li Pingtong, director of the Secretariat, privately met with other executives. Naturally, it will attract the attention of the intelligence department in the palace, especially when the intelligence department has just been reprimanded by Lin Zhe because of Guo Longyun's secret impeachment, and the people in the intelligence department are now thinking about how to find out the situation behind this matter.

Now Li Pingtong's behavior has naturally attracted the close attention of the Intelligence Department at this time.

Since the beginning of the day, several departments of the intelligence department have joined forces and mobilized a large number of hidden agents to investigate Li Pingtong and others.

Most of the results of the investigation are naturally irrelevant, such as bribery and corruption of the law. The Intelligence Department doesn't care much about this, they care about what these people are doing in the past few days.

But. One of the pieces of information has attracted the attention of the intelligence department, and the intelligence shows that in the past half month, Zhao Lixiang has frequently sent his family to Nanchang, Jiangxi Province to send telegrams, although after investigation, the contents of these telegrams seem to be ordinary. But after the investigation of the intelligence department, this Zhao Lixiang did not have any family or friends in Nanchang, but he sent telegrams so frequently.

And these telegrams are still some inconspicuous little things of the time, which is unusual.

In the first few years, it was very expensive, and the money was calculated by the number of words. Ordinary people only use the telegraph when it is urgent, and ordinary affairs are mainly written letters.

As one of the three major intelligence agencies in China, the intelligence department is still quite good in its business ability, and soon even if it found a person in Nanchang to accept these telegrams, and this person was ostensibly just a boss in Nanchang City, but the intelligence department dug up this person and Zhu Nan, the political envoy of Jiangxi.

So, a line is connected.

Li Pingtong, Zhao Lixiang, Jiangxi political envoy Zhu Nan.

After learning of this information, the intelligence department immediately submitted the relevant information to Lin Zhe's hands.

Is Li Pingtong standing behind this Zhu Nan?

Lin Zhe was angry at this moment, in his impression, Li Pingtong has always been a relatively low-key person, and there is no obvious conflict with Guo Longyun, but he didn't expect his hand to stretch out so long, and he also joined forces with many high-ranking officials, and even made Zhu Nan willing to report Guo Longyun for the chess piece.

The matter is serious, Lin Zhe naturally will not deal with it easily, and immediately instructed the Intelligence Department: Investigate, investigate fiercely, he must know what happened before and after, at least why Li Pingtong wanted to attack Guo Longyun!

The struggle of these bigwigs in the cabinet is never gratuitous, and private hatred and the like will not set off such a big storm.

There must be a secret here that no one else knows.

And these secrets are what Lin Zhe wants to know.

When a secret task force was set up within the intelligence department to conduct a secret investigation of Li Pingtong, Zhao Lixiang, Zhu Nan and others.

On September 20, a large-scale corruption case broke out in Jiangxi Province, and the Integrity Bureau of the Patrol Police Department received a report that Ning Yaoan, a member of Hangjiahu Road in Zhejiang Province, forcibly demanded bribes from a number of enterprises in various names, and the amount involved was as high as more than 100,000 yuan.

Moreover, this report is still a public real-name report, those many companies are joint real-name reports, directly stabbed the matter to the Patrol Police Department Integrity Bureau, and took the initiative to disclose it to all sectors of society, when the report letter has not been sent to the Integrity Bureau, the news has been published in major newspapers.

Immediately, it triggered a strong public opinion!

Under such strong pressure of public opinion, no matter how the executives in the court plan to plan, the Bureau of Integrity must file a case as soon as possible, and then publicly set up a special team to rush to Zhejiang to investigate.

However, after this incident broke out, it attracted Lin Zhe's great attention, because Ning Yaoan was Guo Longyun's right-hand man and had a close relationship with Guo Longyun.

All this shows that a political storm against Guo Longyun has risen! (To be continued.) )