The "Midsummer Monarch's Mansion Banquet" ended with the death of the aristocratic party.

The party was killed, and the official murderer was the Hu family, the last head of the family, Jun Jianggong, as one of the "three states" of Western Liang.

But in the minds of Xue Dongchang and Kong Xilin, the real murderer is His Royal Highness the Maharaja.

"It's not me!" The day after the incident, the Maharaja finally resolutely declared his innocence under the eyes of the two "partners": "The nobles have been in a difficult situation, and the attitude of the Hu and Qing people has also been understood by me, they will not compromise no matter what, and transfer the power that should belong to them to the royal family, and lose control of their old ministry. ”

Kong Xilin, who loves to sing against the monarch occasionally during this time, is not gullible, he shook the folding fan in his hand, and the corners of his lips sloped slightly: "Although the world knows that Jun Jianggong is narrow-minded and violent, because of alcoholism, there are more than one or two human lives, and he hates the party deeply. ”

The case has been transferred to the Criminal Department, because there are witnesses and material evidence at the scene, in addition to a servant, there is also a guest, also a nobleman, he witnessed the incident, and pointed out that Jun Jiang Gong killed people, and the murder weapon was the dagger that Jun Jiang Gong carried, so he had to report to the criminal department Shangshu who rushed to the scene and was forced by the king of Xiliang to "be strictly investigated", and immediately carried Jun Jiang Gong, who fell into a coma because he broke his head, back to the Yamen and put him in prison.

This is not the only evil act committed by Duke Junjiang after he was drunk, there are at least seven or eight slaves and maids who were killed by him, and there are even civilians who were killed by Duke Junjiang with a sword because of accidental collision, so although he claimed that he didn't remember anything after he sobered up, he only flatly denied killing the party, which is really unconvincing.

"Although the witness Zheng Xiong is a nobleman, he is a relative of the Qing family, and among the many guests yesterday, he can be regarded as a neutral person." The Maharaja said slowly: "Zheng Xiong also has military merits this time, and he is one of the people who are expected to be feuded, but he is not eager, what does this mean?" It shows that he still cares about the relationship with the Qing family, at least on the surface, he doesn't want to get too stiff with the Qing family, it can be seen that this person has the city government in his heart, so it is not so easy to buy. ”

The Maharaja meant that he could not buy the certificate, so it was impossible for him to kill the party, but he asked Zheng Xiong to voluntarily accuse Junjiang Gong of murder.

"But I also think that the real murderer may not be Junjiang Gong." Dajun chuckled: "Zheng Xiong claimed that he came out of the clean room, saw Jun Jiang Gong chasing the party to the water pavilion, he was worried about what happened, and followed up, who knew that he saw Jun Jiang Gong holding a dagger to kill, a knife into the party to promote the chest, Jun Jiang Gong saw that the crime was exposed, pulled out the murder weapon and rushed directly at Zheng Xiong, only to be counterattacked by Zheng Xiong, hit the wall and fainted, the servants outside were first drunk back by Jun Jiang Gong, and then listened to Zheng Xiong shouting, before he dared to step forward, he saw the situation that Jun Jiang Gong had blood on his forehead and fainted, Zheng Xiong knelt on the ground, helped the party to press the wound, the party urged ignorance, He and Zheng Xiong were both covered in blood. ”

Seeing Kong Xilin frowning and thinking, Xue Dongchang was still ignorant, and the monarch patted Dongchang on the shoulder: "Zheng Xiong is a Qing party, originally he was a sworn enemy with the Hu party, and the party was a close confidant of Junjiang Gong in the past. ”

"Could it be that the real murderer is Zheng Xiong?" Xue Dongchang is like an initiation.

The Maharaja paced two steps and said confidently, "I deduce that the truth should be so. ”

——Although the scene of the crime is in the flower garden, it is a relatively secluded place, the people of Xiliang are open, and the nobles do not shy away from the distance between men and women when they set up banquets, but the clean room for the male guests and female relatives must be "far from the south", Junjiang Gong was helped out of the banquet hall at that time, just to go to the clean room, which also determined that the scene of the crime could not be a place for the female dependents to sit and enjoy the scenery.

The aristocrats go to the banquet, dress extremely exquisitely, which causes a lot of inconvenience when going to the toilet, the stewards of the Maharaja's Mansion will naturally not neglect this detail, so the layout of the clean room is also extraordinarily exquisite, specially prepared for the nobles to untie the wide clothes and wear the place, generally speaking, the ladies are accompanied by their own slaves and maids, but also prepared in case of change of dresses, and even repair the makeup of the fat powder, the male guests are not so troublesome, and because the master originally has a servant to guide the way, of course, there are servant maids in the clean room, and the male guests generally do not bring their own slaves and maids to solve" Three Urgent".

The people of Xiliang are still martial, and the nobles are usually used to wearing long swords and waist knives, but because it is a banquet in the Maharaja's Mansion, most people still do not bring weapons to the banquet, but Junjiang Gong is different, he originally loved to show off, obviously not swordsmanship, and especially like to collect famous sword weapons, and because he is a royal family with three surnames, some privileges, when going to the banquet, the sword can not be regarded as a faux pas, he not only wears a sword, but also carries a dagger that he particularly likes.

The mood of the Duke of Junjiang that day must have been quite bad, and the drinking became more and more rapid than before, and Mrs. Junjiang was probably very disgusted with his bad wine, and knew that she could not be dissuaded, so she left the table early in the morning, out of sight and out of mind.

When Junjiang Gong left the banquet hall and wanted to go to the toilet, he was helped out by the servants of the Dajun's Mansion, which shows that he was already drunk.

When he arrived at the clean room, the rough little guy naturally wouldn't serve Jun Jiang Gong to untie his clothes, and only handed him over to the maidservant.

If it is an ordinary guest, the maidservants will probably not go to the cubicle with them, and after serving the wide clothes and helping to take off the waist ornaments, they should prepare water and hot tea, so that the guests can wash their hands and rinse their mouths before serving and dressing. But Jun Jiang Gong is obviously drunk, and the maid is also worried about accidents, maybe Jun Jiang Gong himself also needs the maid to wait closely, in short, it should be someone to follow him into the compartment.

In addition to the rough servants who cleaned and burned incense in time, there were only two maids on duty outside the clean room, one served Jun Jianggong, and the other had to take care of things, so it was inevitable that they would be distracted.

As a result, a bunch of things taken by Jun Jiang Gong, such as long swords, daggers, jade pendants, belts, etc., may have become unattended.

Coincidentally, Zheng Xiong happened to be about to enter the clean room, or he had just solved the three emergencies, he must have seen Junjiang Gong and knew who that pile of things belonged to.

"Zheng Xiong must be happy to see the new deal passed in his private heart, but he doesn't want to have a stalemate with the Qing family, maybe at the banquet he will think about how to use others to make things bigger, so that the new policy can be implemented, when he saw the dagger that Jun Jiang Gong carried with him, maybe he moved his mind, thought of committing murder and blame, he is a person of the Qing family, and the Hu party has an old grudge, and he has witnessed the Hu clan's henchmen have a lot of dissatisfaction with Jun Jiang Gong, so he subconsciously stole Jun Jiang Gong's dagger in order to trick him." The Maharaja analyzed.

Compared with the long sword, the dagger is more likely to be negligent by Jun Jiang Gong, so that he will not find out that he lost something at that time, and secondly, it is also convenient for Zheng Xiong to hide it privately and not be discovered by others, because at that time, Zheng Xiong did not expect that he would immediately get the opportunity to blame the trouble, he could not go out with Jun Jiang Gong's long sword in a grand manner, and then find an opportunity to assassinate Hu Dang or Qing Dang afterwards, leave the murder weapon at the scene, and blame Jun Jiang Gong.

Maybe Zheng Xiong hadn't planned it at that time, but that thought was enough to prompt him to take the sheep by the hand.

Now that Zheng Xiong has already moved his heart and taken the first step, he will then wander around and observe what Junjiang Gong is doing, at least to make sure that Junjiang Gong has not immediately noticed that he has lost something.

Coincidentally, the party also came to the clean room.

But he didn't enter, his seat was not far from Jun Jiang Gong, and he witnessed Jun Jiang Gong being helped out of the hall by two small servants, at this time, he saw two little guys waiting outside the clean room, and asked Jun Jiang Gong was still inside, so he planned to avoid it.

Dang Xuan was not drunk, he also knew the virtue of Jun Jiang Gong after he was drunk, and he was unwilling to clash with him head-on, so when he saw the water pavilion not far away, he planned to go inside to avoid it for a while, and wait for Jun Jiang Gong to leave.

This is not the Maharaja's conjecture, but has been confirmed in the mouths of his servants.

But the unlucky party urged before he had time to enter the water pavilion, and was discovered when the "finished" Junjiang Gong came out.

Seeing the back of the party in a hurry, Jun Jiang Gong suddenly became angry, raised his voice and shouted "party thief" twice, of course, it was impossible to recall the party urge, but it caused the party to speed up and avoid, and quarrel with the old lord at the banquet in the Maharaja's mansion, it was indeed a faux pas, and it was impossible for the party to accompany Jun Jiang Gong to play drunk.

Junjiang Gong chased after him, and the two little guys were from the Dajun Mansion, so they were afraid that things would get out of control, so they dissuaded them. Where was Junjiang Gong willing to listen, rewarded each of them with a big mouth, and even drew his sword and threatened, so that they would not get in the way. The servants had probably heard about the drunken evil deeds of the Duke of Junjiang, and knew that this was the master who "did what he said", so they were shocked and did not dare to follow.

But of course, they will not stop Zheng Xiong, who suddenly appeared, from stepping forward to persuade them.

And in the water pavilion, there are only the three people of the victim's party, the perpetrator Jun Jiang Gong, and the witness Zheng Xiong, the servants did not witness the truth of the matter, but it is a fact that Jun Jiang Gong took the initiative to entangle and make trouble, and he was full of evil deeds, and everyone believed that under his anger, he would carry out the "heavenly send" instead of the gods, in order to respond to the curse of "not dying well".

"At the scene of the crime, there was a sword that Jun Jiang Gong had unsheathed, indicating that he really wanted to kill the party to urge him to vent his anger, but of course the party urged him not to sit still, he should have snatched Jun Jiang Gong's sword and threw it aside, there was indeed a fight between the two, I guess Zheng Xiong also really had a 'dissuasion' move, maybe it was him, maybe the party pushed Jun Jiang Gong, causing Jun Jiang Gong to faint." Dajun continued to analyze: "And after the Duke of Junjiang fainted, the party urged a little panicked, and it was a felony to hurt the surname Wang. ”

Zheng Xiong realized that this was an excellent opportunity, so he quietly took out the dagger that he had just stolen, and took advantage of the party's unpreparedness to surprise the killer.

"Dang Zhu is also a person who practices martial arts, although he was succeeded by Zheng Xiong, he did not die immediately, but tried his best to pull out the dagger in his chest, wanting to fight back, but he was obviously powerless, but this move caused blood to gush and splash Zheng Xiong's body." The monarch raised his eyebrows slightly: "So Zheng Xiongcai must pretend to be the party to stop the bleeding, and fabricated that Jun Jiang Gong wanted to draw his sword to commit murder, but failed, the party urged but did not prevent the other party from having a murder weapon, and was succeeded by Jun Jiang Gong, when he stepped forward to stop it, Jun Jiang Gong pulled out a dagger to attack, and he was forced to seize the dagger and hurt people in order to protect himself. ”

Zheng Xiong's purpose is to make the Duke of Junjiang kill the nobles on his back, causing a bloody case caused by political disputes, and the Duke of Junjiang kills people to vent his anger! In this way, it will make the nobles boil, and spare no effort to put pressure on the three surnames to promote the smooth implementation of the new policy, which is of course something that everyone is happy to see except for Hu and Qing, so although the monarch has analyzed the truth, if he really wants to investigate, it is not that he can't find evidence - for example, there are few bloodstains on the clothes of the murderer Junjiang, but there are more bloodstains on the clothes of Zheng Xiong.

But of course, the monarch will not "find out the real murderer", and the secretary of the criminal department is not Hu Dang, but a royal cronie, so it is conceivable how he will judge the case.

Zheng Xiong may have thought of this layer before he dared to be so decisive, not worried about being suspected by the authorities.

"In this way, the conflict between the nobles and the council will reach an uncontrollable point, in case the council compromises......" Kong Xilin frowned and said: "Your Highness's purpose is to encourage the nobles to abolish the council, not just to implement the merit fiefdom. ”

"There will be no compromise between the two surnames." The Maharaja is confident: "Because both Lanjiang Gong and Boyang Jun know very well in their hearts that if they really pass the government of fiefdom and imperial examination, the political council will also exist in name only, and the two royal families will lose control over the aristocracy, and it will only be a matter of time before they decline." ”

When the government council vetoes the new policy, the anger of the nobles can no longer be suppressed, and the death of the party will become a sharp weapon to attack the government.

If there is a new conflict of interest between the nobles and the royal family surnamed Wan in the future, it is difficult to guarantee that the two surnames will not be pushed to the front of the battle and persecute the royal family in their name.

It is not the principle of the Maharaja to leave hidden dangers, and he is bound to take this opportunity to wipe out the Hu and Qing clans in order to cut down the grass and eradicate the roots.

The Maharaja was about to sit down and discuss with Kong Xilin carefully, when he heard a report that "Mrs. asks to see", and the person was already waiting outside the study.

This flattered the Maharaja and shouted repeatedly.

Yijing handed the Maharaja a letter.

"The porter brought in two boxes of precious silk as a gift, but I found this letter in the box." Yijing's face was full of melancholy, and he didn't know how to be good.

Because the letter was very simple, but the content was very terrifying—

I implore Princess Chu to see her in Yunshan Tea House after three days.