Time flies, time flies.

Two years have passed in a blink of an eye, and the time has come to the late autumn of the ninth year of Qianfu.

The north wind was bleak, the leaves of Yanping City were full of streets and alleys, in front of the magistrate's courtyard, Chen Anzhi looked up at the sunset in the west, and the haze in his heart was like the coming sunset, lingering.

In the past two years in the Magistrate's Court, Chen Anzhi's hands have been bloody, and there are many officials who have suffered in his hands, although Tang Xing is presiding over the arrest and interrogation, and it is Zhou Junchen who handles the case, but Chen Anzhi, as one of the real officials of the Magistrate's Court, has not been involved in various cases.

He walked on the street, whether it was a child of a family or an official from a poor family, he avoided it, for fear of suffering a catastrophe. At first, it was just these people with official status, but later, when the common people saw him and the people in the magistrate's house, they all cowered and avoided snakes and scorpions.

Nowadays, as long as the officials of the Magistrate's House appear on the street, the people gathered will immediately disperse, but whenever the Magistrate's House people appear in the restaurant, the sound of loud conversation and laughter inside will be suppressed or even disappear in an instant.

All of this is due to the murderous reputation achieved by the Magistrate's Court in the past two years with power that cannot be countered by hundreds of officials, and bloody and cruel means. For more than 700 days and nights, thousands of officials and officials were killed or wounded in the magistrate's house, and countless people died because of the destruction of their homes.

The perverse actions of the Magistrate's House have yielded remarkable results.

The power of the family has suffered an unprecedented blow, and the current pattern of the court is no longer the third foot of the cold door, the general gate, and the door, but the combination of the door and the door, in order to barely maintain an advantage over the cold door.

This is true in the court, and it is no exception in the local area.

Under the conscription system, the army composed of displaced people has been recruited by regimental training in various places, and there are nearly 200,000 of them, and a considerable part of them have been invested in the battlefield of the Western Regions.

In this case, many families have begun to decline, although they will not fall into the middle of the family for the time being, but their situation is already very bad.

In a word, in the past two years, the pattern of Daqi has changed greatly.

Chen Anzhi, as an official of the Magistrate's Yuan, worked for the tiger, and now he has fallen into a situation where he has no friends in Yanping. Not only that, but when he went in and out of the restaurant to meet the prominent children of the family, the other party often spoke disrespectfully to him, and even troubled him.

Wei Wuxian, who couldn't get away from the battlefield in the Western Regions, once wrote to him and asked him to help dredge the joints, but in front of the powerful Tang Xing, he couldn't do it.

In the end, those Wei clansmen were all degraded because of different degrees of crimes, and those who were demoted to their posts, those who took their posts, and even two exiled Lingnan people. Although Wei Wuxian did not write to him to be angry afterwards, Chen Anzhi had already clearly felt that there was an irreparable rift in the friendship between the two.

Sighing secretly, Chen Anzhi heard the footsteps, retracted his gaze, and saw a ruffian with an obscene description who was lightly stuffing things into the Wanmin box. Seeing Chen Anzhi looking over, this ruffian's face was suddenly full of flattering smiles, revealing his dark yellow teeth sticking to the vegetable leaves.

The ruffians nodded and walked away, but the annoyance in Chen An's heart lasted for a long time, in the past two years, the magistrate's court has used these ruffians' complaints in black and white as a reason, regardless of right and wrong.

The number of ruffians under Tang Xing is too large to be counted in Chen An's capital.

Now as long as Tang Xing's name is mentioned, the people of the entire Yanping City will call out the Living Hades.

If it weren't for Prime Minister Xu Minglang on it, Tang Xing would have died ten times or eight times.

Leaving the magistrate's house with heavy steps, Chen Anzhi did not enter the carriage - he used to travel on horseback, but since he came to the magistrate's house, he was no longer willing to show his face, and he took the carriage up and down, and only when he hid in the carriage and did not see anyone, he would not feel too hateful.

If he were left with no face to the sky, he would be as shameless as a mouse in the sun.

But today, Chen Anzhi just wants to go wherever he goes, and he doesn't want to go back to the Chen Mansion.

In the past ten years, in his eyes, the relatives and friends of the clansmen were all honest and well-educated people, talking about poetry, calligraphy, etiquette, and the discipline of the world, but now, every time I go back, I hear the clansmen talking about how to fight for power and profit, and they seem to have become vicious dogs.

He hated the atmosphere.

In fact, he also knew that the reason why the Chen family became like this was because of necessity. Because of the division caused within the door, it was inevitable that he would be incompatible with the Xu family, and Xu Minglang never relaxed to find trouble with them. Once the Chen family relaxes, it is possible that Xu Minglang will eat even the dregs left.

The emperor divided the sect internally, creating a situation where the Xu family and the Chen family were fighting, which not only made the Chen family have to rely on the imperial power, but also made Xu Minglang dare not oppose the emperor, and both of them needed to win the emperor's support to suppress the other. Therefore, the ultimate initiative is still firmly in the hands of the emperor.

And the trump card in the hands of the emperor is now undoubtedly the Magistrate's House. Letting Chen Anzhi enter the magistrate's court, where Xu Minglang received a false title, is itself a means to contain both sides.

Chen Anzhi walked on the street, because he deliberately avoided the eyes of pedestrians along the way, and did not look at the street scene, and when he suddenly raised his head, he found that he had arrived at Yanlai Tower.

Looking at the bright signboard, Chen Anzhi's mind was in a trance, once upon a time, the three brothers came in and out of here almost every day, drinking and singing, talking about great ambitions, and full of spirit.

And now, he is the only one still in Yanping City.

And he also turned his back on his former perseverance and ambition, and became a demon in the Magistrate's House that everyone spurned.

Things are people, Chen An's heart was stunned, he only felt that his mouth was full of bitterness, and he spontaneously had an urge to leave this dark world, ride the wind and return to the sky.

He glanced deeply at Yanlailou, but he didn't mean to step over the threshold to enter, for him, this place is sad now, and staying here for a while longer will make him sad and ashamed. So he turned around and went to a restaurant, where he would get himself drunk, and then let the groom take him back.

But at this moment, someone called him behind him: "Chen Gongzi, please stay." ”

It was an unfamiliar voice, but Chen Anzhi could feel that he had heard it. What made his heart flutter was the title of "Childe". After he came out, he was rarely called like this, especially as an official of the Magistrate's Yuan, and others either called him "Lord Chen" in awe or called him by his name with resentment.

Turning around, Chen Anzhi saw a gorgeous and mature beauty, he recognized the other party at a glance, and couldn't help but be stunned on the spot. He hadn't seen each other in two years, and as far as he knew, they had followed someone south.

Hu Honglian saluted, smiled slightly, and said, "My son-in-law is waiting, Mr. Chen, please come with me." ”

Chen Anzhi was surprised and delighted, and suddenly remembered what happened to those clansmen of the Wei family, he was inevitably uneasy in his heart, ashamed to see people, and for a while he only felt that he had mixed tastes, and he didn't know what to say, so he opened his mouth, and could only follow Hu Hong into the door.

"Lord Chen. ”

Unexpectedly, when going upstairs, Chen Anzhi saw Tang Xing walking down in regular clothes. The other party obviously had just met a friend, and there was a faint smell of alcohol on his body. But the other party looked as usual, obviously didn't drink much, and his expression was not very pleasant, although he was not displeased, but it still made Chen Anzhi feel that the other party's mood was different.

"Lord Tang. ”

The two just said hello briefly, and Tang Xing left Yanlai Building.

Chen Anzhi looked at Hu Honglian with an inquiring gaze, and the latter did not hide it, "Gongzi was indeed seeing Lord Tang just now. ”

Chen Anzhi didn't know what happened to Zhao Ning seeing Tang Xing, but Zhao Ning had traveled south for two years, and now he suddenly returned to Yanping, and before he got the news, he met Tang Xing first, which obviously would not be an ordinary meeting.

It stands to reason that even if Zhao Ning had a good relationship with Tang Xing before, he should be in the opposite camp now, not to mention that Tang Xing has killed many family officials, even the Zhao family itself has also had people from the clan who have entered the Magistrate's House.

When she arrived at the door of the private room, Hu Honglian stopped and motioned for Chen Anzhi to go in by herself, and after Chen Anzhi entered the door, she immediately closed the door.

Bypassing the screen, Chen Anzhi saw Zhao Ning, the other party was radiant, and he still had that high-eyed appearance, as if even if the sky fell, the other party could raise his hand to support it, and he wouldn't take it to heart at all.

This is very different from Chen Anzhi, who is depressed and full of sorrow.

"I was going to find you to have a good drink for another day when you were resting tomorrow, but I didn't expect you to come to Yanlai Tower now, since this is the case, you and I will not get drunk tonight. ”

Zhao Ning's gesture of greeting with a smile as usual made Chen Anzhi feel as if time had never passed, and the situation had not changed, and they were still young men who were rampant in Yanping in the early years.

This made Chen Anzhi's disordered heart relax a little.

"Didn't you go to Yangzhou? Why did you suddenly go back to Yanping? I thought you were going to take advantage of this time to spend five years outside. ”

Chen Anzhi sat down and said, at this point, he suddenly paused, his eyes sharpened by two points, "I just came to Yanlai Tower, and I didn't stay long, you know that I am here, and I sent someone out to greet me?"

Zhao Ning smiled: "It seems that you have grown a lot in the past two years, and you didn't pay attention to these details before." ”

He didn't explain the question, because it didn't need to be explained, and the answer was obvious. Now the power of Yipinlou is so big that he can gain insight into all the winds and grasses in Yanping City. And as long as he travels, he will follow many elite cultivators openly and secretly.

Chen Anzhi's expression darkened, he poured himself a glass of wine, and after drinking it all, he looked at the empty wine glass and said in a low voice: "Time has passed, and many things have changed. People are up and down in the Huan Sea, and they are always involuntarily unable to go with the flow. Looking back after all these years, who hasn't been unrecognizable?"

Zhao Ning took Chen Anzhi's expression in his eyes and could understand the other party's feelings.

In the past two years, he has never stopped paying attention to his old friends, and the cultivators of Yipinlou have been going back and forth between Yanping and Longyou day and night, and he can know what happened in these two places, and what happened to Chen Anzhi and Wei Wuxian, he can know in time.

It's just that Zhao Ning only paid attention to it secretly, and did not choose to interfere with the growth of the two. After all, the road of life has to be walked by itself, everyone is always alone, and good friends cannot always be in the same boat through thick and thin.

"Let's not talk about that yet, let's just drink and have fun tonight. Zhao Ning raised his glass.

After drinking, Chen Anzhi shook his head:

"Drinking and having fun requires a state of mind, and now I don't have that mood anymore. Brother Ning, you and I are no longer stupid teenagers, and we can't be stupid. There is no going back to the past, and everyone has to struggle to look forward and move forward in the quagmire of reality. Those simple and happy days are destined to be gone forever, and they will never be recovered. ”

Speaking of this, Chen Anzhi looked at Zhao Ning and asked solemnly: "You suddenly returned to Yanping, are you going to make a big deal?"

Zhao Ning put down his wine glass, "What is a big deal?"

"What you are planning is a great thing. ”

That's true.

But when it came out of Chen Anzhi's mouth, Zhao Ning had to sigh secretly.

He knew that it was impossible to talk to Chen Anzhi's heartless drinking nonsense now.

"After tomorrow's recess, you ask the head of the Chen family to come forward and transfer you out of the magistrate's house. Zhao Ning cut to the chase, "If you can't be transferred in a short time, then simply resign." ”

At present, the internal situation of the Great Qi Dynasty has entered a critical point, and Zhao Ning has returned to Yanping to help Chen Anzhi overcome a real difficulty that the other party may not have discovered.

"The Magistrate's House is going to suffer a catastrophe?" Chen Anzhi is now very keen.

Zhao Ning said four murderous words as usual: "Annihilation." ”

"The Magistrate's Court is now in full swing, rampant in Yanping, how could it suffer such a disaster?" Chen Anzhi couldn't understand.

Zhao Ning picked up the wine glass, rubbed it around, and said lightly: "Not only the Magistrate's Court, but the end of Xu Minglang has also arrived." ”