When the emperor heard this, his expression was even more ugly. "Lord Yuan, is what he said true?"

Yuan Zaidao said: "Back to the emperor, the court promulgated the latest law three months ago, and during the trial, the torture extortion of confessions was dismissed and investigated. The minister strictly obeyed the new law, and did not dare to exceed it in the slightest, so how could he punish the Lin medical officer? Commander Ling made something out of nothing and slandered his ministers. Maybe the emperor guessed right, Ling Commander Xu has something more unsightly to hide, so he will confess so easily, and ask the emperor to investigate clearly and return justice to the ministers! ”

Scold! It's really a clever tongue, he thinks he can reverse black and white in three or two sentences?

I just wanted to open my mouth to argue, but the person next to me grabbed the conversation: "Your Majesty, what the minister said just now is true." Five days ago, when the minister saw Xuan'er in the prison of the Criminal Department, Xuan'er had already been tortured by ice, and he couldn't even sit and lie down simply. It is precisely because of this that the minister brought Xuan'er back to the house, and after a few days of careful recuperation, he was able to walk on the ground. ”

But he didn't want Yuan Zaidao to snort coldly. "Commander Ling, you have to talk about evidence in everything, you said that this official inflicted ice punishment on Lin Medical Officer, is there any evidence?"

My heart sank. Among the many punishments, only ice punishment does not leave the slightest trace on the victim's body, and it cannot be examined at all. Presumably, Yuan Zaidao chose to use ice punishment on me because of this, because even if the matter of the torture was revealed in the future, because there was no evidence, he would not be questioned.

"Your Majesty, after the minister brought Xuan'er back to Ling's Mansion, he successively invited two imperial doctors to treat him. The emperor only needs to invite those two adults to ask. Ling Niankong added.

"The emperor must not listen to his slander, maybe those two imperial doctors have been bribed by him." Yuan Zaidao seemed to be empty-hearted, and he was a little unscrupulous when he spoke.

"That's enough." The emperor said coldly. "Whether or not there was torture is not the key to this case. Ling Niankong, since you have admitted to stealing physical evidence, is that physical evidence available to you now? ”

"Yes." Ling Niankong took out an extremely flat folded letterhead from his front placket and raised it high above his head. "The physical evidence is here."

The emperor's eyes flashed, and he sent the eunuch Chenglu to fetch it. Chenglu presented the letterhead to the emperor, and the emperor unfolded the letterhead.

The letterhead seemed to have two or three pages, and the more the emperor looked at it, the tighter his brow wrinkled. In the end, the hand holding the letter paper trembled slightly.

I was uneasy, and when I looked at the prince again, I found that the smug look on his face could no longer be concealed. I secretly said something bad in my heart, and hurriedly looked at the people around me, but saw that Ling Niankong was still calm and relaxed, and there was even a smile on the corner of his mouth.

I wondered in my heart: Isn't what he is hiding is evidence against him?

The emperor finally finished reading the letter, but he crumpled the letter paper into a ball, threw it hard, and smashed it on the military attache next to the crown prince who was the same as Ling Niankong's official uniform. The military attache and the prince's expressions froze suddenly.

"Cheng Feng! You are guilty! The Emperor rebuked.

It turned out that the military attaché's name was Cheng Feng.

Cheng Feng...... I think I've heard it somewhere, but I can't remember it for a while. couldn't help but look at Ling Niankong again, only to see the corners of his mouth slightly hooked. I wondered even more in my heart, what was the content of the physical evidence that made the emperor so angry?

Cheng Feng hurriedly knelt on the ground, picked up the crumpled letterhead on the ground, and only glanced at it, and his face was covered with a gray man like a dead man.

Seeing this, the prince hurriedly snatched the letter from it, and after reading a page or two, his face became extremely ugly.

Cheng Feng suddenly shouted: "Your Majesty, the minister is wronged, wronged!" Don't convict your ministers on the basis of just two or three pages! Since Leng Yihan's death, the position of commander of the army has been vacant, and Ling Niankong has coveted this position for a long time, and he ......"

"Shut up!" The emperor was completely angry, and his voice was a little unstable: "Wronged? This letterhead is stamped with the seal of the Criminal Department, and even the preface is consistent with the blood on the cloth, how can I wronged you? Then he said: "Yuan Zaidao!" ”

"The minister is here!" Yuan Zai said that he was apprehensive because of the torture he had just extorted a confession, and this voice was obviously trembling.

"You are the secretary of the Criminal Department, see if this chapter is true or false." The emperor commanded.

Yuan Zaidao stepped forward in response and carefully distinguished one or two: "This chapter is covered by the big seal of my criminal department. ”

"Really?" The Emperor's words were full of intimidation.

Yuan Zaidao hurriedly knelt down. "It's true! Even if the minister borrowed the courage again, he would not dare to deceive the emperor. ”

I was still wondering what was written on those pages, but the emperor breathed a sigh of relief and said: "Ling Niankong, although the content of this letter is vague, it can be clearly seen that Cheng Feng is also secretly colluding with Beili, such an important evidence, why did you steal it in the first place?" ”

"I don't know if the emperor can remember that when you ordered me to thoroughly investigate Leng Yihan two years ago, the relationship between our dynasty and the Wumeng State was tense, and war could start at any time. At that time, Leng Yihan had been convicted, and our army had no commander, and if we lost the deputy commander again, the consequences would be unimaginable. Moreover, apart from this letter, there was no evidence to prove General Cheng's guilt at that time, so the minister took it upon himself to temporarily withhold this physical evidence and report it to you when more evidence is found. I don't want you to let the Criminal Department take over all the evidence without waiting for the case to be closed. After thinking about it again, he still felt that General Cheng should be concealed from the fact that he was suspected of collaborating with the enemy, so he took the risk of ordering someone to steal the physical evidence. Fortunately, at that time, all the evidence had just been taken over by the Criminal Department, and before the officials could carefully investigate it, the matter of General Cheng's contact with Beili was not spread. But in any case, according to the law of our court, the minister is indeed guilty, please ask the emperor to punish him. ”

Ling Niankong's words were clear and reasonable, but I felt that something was wrong: whether it was the death of Jian Qi or the exposure of the theft of physical evidence, it should be a game done by the prince to deal with Ling Niankong. The ultimate goal of the prince should be to make the content of the stolen physical evidence public, that is to say, the physical evidence should be extremely unfavorable to Ling Niankong. However, this physical evidence revealed Cheng Feng's crime.

Although I don't know what the relationship between the prince and Cheng Feng is, it can be seen from the performance of the two of them that Cheng Feng should be the prince's person. Why, then, would the prince go to great lengths to disclose a piece of physical evidence that was unfavorable to him? Isn't that a shot in the foot?

Don't?! …… My eyes widened. Could it be that the physical evidence that the prince wanted to disclose was not the one that Fang Cai Ling Niankong handed over to the emperor at all?

The more I thought about it, the more I thought about it, and the hairs on my body couldn't help but stand up.

That's right! The prince should have found out that Ling Niankong had secretly hidden a piece of physical evidence back then, and found out the content of the physical evidence, which should be able to completely bring down Ling Niankong, so the prince took great pains to create Jian Qi's death, and arranged for someone to pretend to search out the cloth strips from me, hoping to use the Criminal Department to expose the content of the physical evidence and defeat Ling Niankong. But why was Ling Niankong able to come up with another piece of evidence? This evidence not only did not affect him in any way, but also dealt a fatal blow to the prince who set him up. How did he do it?

After thinking about it, there is only one answer: that is, Ling Niankong should have secretly hidden two pieces of physical evidence back then! One was presented to the emperor by Ling Niankong today. This physical evidence, according to Ling Niankong, was stolen by someone after it was handed over to the Criminal Department, and it was marked with the order and stamped with the seal of the Criminal Department; The other copy should have been detained by Ling Niankong before it was transferred to the Criminal Department, so there was no order, so even if the physical evidence was privately hidden, it would not be easily discovered.

And the crown prince should have been eyeing Ling Niankong since two years ago, and he must have buried a secret stake beside him. The secret pile should have recently learned the contents of the unmarked physical evidence and reported it to the prince. And if the prince wants to expose Ling Niankong's theft of physical evidence, he must first find tangible evidence of the theft of physical evidence. For this reason, he ordered someone to secretly check the records of the physical evidence of the Criminal Department, and according to the order of the physical evidence, it was found that there was indeed a missing piece of physical evidence, so there was today's bureau. But they didn't expect Ling Niankong to withhold two pieces of physical evidence that year.

Although Ling Niankong said that concealing Cheng Feng's collaboratorship was for the sake of national security. But I know that Ling Niankong is not a loyal person, and he will not risk stealing a piece of material evidence that has nothing to do with his own interests for the sake of the so-called righteousness. Therefore, although Ling Niankong secretly hid two pieces of physical evidence, what he really wanted to hide was actually the unmarked piece of physical evidence. The physical evidence he handed over to the emperor was just to hide people's eyes!

Oh, my God! Is Ling Niankong's scheming so deep?! He knew that his every move was under the control of the prince, and if he secretly hid physical evidence, he would definitely not be able to escape the prince's eyes and ears, so he secretly hid two copies and used one of them as a cover. And this physical evidence used as cover is also absolutely chosen, and it is a powerful counterattack to the prince! Moreover, when Ling Niankong was making all these deployments, he had to hide the secret pretense around him, and he couldn't let them know that he actually had two pieces of physical evidence hidden. So, what is the other piece of physical evidence that he has so painstakingly hidden? It is worth his risk and careful deployment, the content of the physical evidence must be extremely important!

With everything figured out, I looked at the people around me again. He still had a faint smile on his face, and that smile seemed so terrible to me. No, it's the person who is even more terrifying. I knew that his city was quite deep, but I didn't expect it to be so deep!

When the emperor heard Ling Niankong's words, his frowning brows stretched slightly. "When you say this, I also remembered that at that time, I was indeed in tension with Wumeng. In this case, I will not hold you accountable for your mistakes when you put the overall situation first. However, since you noticed Cheng Feng's dissenting intentions two years ago, have you continued to track them down? ”

"Go back to the emperor. General Cheng has always been cautious. However......" Ling Niankong paused and said, "After two years of investigation, coupled with the key evidence obtained recently, it has been proved that Cheng Feng has indeed collaborated with the enemy. As soon as Ling Niankong's voice fell, a eunuch entered the palace to report: "Your Majesty, Xue Escort is asking to see you outside the palace."

Xue Rang!? He couldn't have come at a better time!