Facts have proved that Li Xi and Li Xiuming's judgment is basically accurate.

The big mess caused by the imperial physician Xin Zhongshu was planned by Queen Cheng Wen behind the scenes.

As the phoenix lord of the world, Cheng Wen enjoys a lofty status, and in the world, except for the emperor Li Bing, her identity is the most noble.

However, status and political power cannot be completely equated.

The ancestral system of the Holy Tang Dynasty, the harem is not allowed to interfere in politics. This iron law firmly blocked Cheng Wen's path to touch the court. Although before this, she had been favored and recognized by Li Bing with her beauty and mind, and the Zhenguo Mansion had become a representative of the traditional noble forces, and many courtiers secretly attached themselves to the descendants and became Cheng Wen's henchmen.

However, this speed is still too slow. In comparison, Princess Li Xi's people, as well as the Holy Tang military, as well as a large number of neutral officials, still occupy the majority of the Holy Tang court, especially many important powers and key positions, and the queen has not yet intervened.

Cheng Wen originally thought that the affairs of the government should be carried out step by step, steadily and steadily, and it is best that she can give birth to a son to Li Bing first, and become the prince, and then the mother will rely on the son, and then calmly arrange, and constantly cultivate the Cheng family brothers and official henchmen, and compete with Li Jiangyao and others.

But the rapid changes in the situation in the world suddenly caught Cheng Wen a little off guard.

The first change, of course, is the counterinsurgency process.

The Zhenjiang army defeated the rebel naval division, and then crossed the Jiangnan expedition, successively recovering Xuancheng, Jinling, Danyang and other important towns, and recently came the good news of the victory in Changzhou, seeing that the army was about to hit Hangzhou, completely eliminate the anti-thief Li Zhi.

Once Li Jiangyao is allowed to join the army in triumph, the political situation of the imperial court is bound to change dramatically. Not to mention that the entry of the Zhenjiang system into the court will threaten the development of the descendants of the clan, just let Li Jiangyao return to the ghost desert of Western Xinjiang safely, Cheng Wen will find it difficult to accept.

The second change came from Emperor Li Bing.

She finally came up with a plan to reward Jiuxi, originally hoping to directly provoke her husband and make him ruthless against his enemy Li Jiangyaotong. But unexpectedly, Li Bing was too weak, and he only deepened his fear of the capital protection of the Zhenjiang army, but he had no intention of taking further action.

Although Li Bing explained that the reason why he chose to hold back was purely out of consideration for the overall situation: first put down the rebellion in the south, reunite the Shengtang, and then slowly deal with Li Jiangyao's problem. However, Cheng Wen was very dissatisfied with this. She thinks that Li Bing's indecisiveness will eventually harm him, and even bring herself unlucky.

The third change occurs in the harem.

Some time ago, Concubine Hui Murong Ling gave birth to another prince. Li Bing was very happy about this, not only rewarded her personally, but also gave the Murong family many honors. At the same time, Ma Yunfang, a concubine with a lively personality and proficient in military affairs, was also deeply favored by the emperor. There was a time before, Li Bing stayed in Shangyang Palace every night to discuss the front-line war and the method of governing the army with Ma Yunfang, and these days, I heard that Ma Shufei was also pregnant.

This situation made Cheng Wen feel anxious.

Throughout the ages, the inner court of the harem has been inextricably linked with the political situation of the outer courts. Relatives can be promoted by virtue of the favor of concubines, and similarly, harem concubines can also rely on their families to make great contributions to the country and win the favor of the monarch.

Ma Hongjie and Murong Xue's counterinsurgency exploits far surpass the performance of their brothers and brothers, and in the long run, although her posterior position may not be shaken, the choice of the crown prince may change fundamentally.

In case the Ma family and the Murong family gain power, and the courtiers instigate the emperor to appoint the son of Concubine Shu or Concubine Hui as the crown prince, then the Cheng family will never have a bright future.

In view of this, Queen Cheng Wen began to think crookedly: If her husband suddenly became seriously ill and could not manage the government normally, how good it would be.

The emperor can't manage the government, or her physical strength is not enough, as the queen, she has the opportunity to take care of and serve by the side, give advice, and even write for her husband and approve official documents. Over time, a lot of power will naturally fall into her hands.

In this way, whether it is to grasp the cultivation of their own forces, or to interfere with and drag Li Jiangyao, Murong Xue, Ma Hongjie and others to fight, it will be much more convenient and easy.

So, how to make the emperor sick?

Although Li Bing's body is not strong, after all, he is young and can't easily get any serious illness. The only chance is to poison.

And this poison must be well measured, and it can't really kill Li Bing. Otherwise, as soon as the emperor dies, as the queen who has not yet been successfully laid out and has not given birth to a crown prince, she will immediately become worthless in the eyes of the courtiers.

After careful consideration, Cheng Wen finally made up her mind to use the old lady doctor Xin Zhongshu, an unlucky ghost, to put down Li Bing by means of medicine, and then secretly control the right to review the chapter, and in the name of the emperor, she quickly cultivated her own power before Li Jiangyao and his class returned to the court.

As a result, there was the incident that shocked the government and the opposition a few days ago.

Up to now, Li Bing is sick in bed and has not improved for a long time, and Cheng Wen is pretending to accompany him, serving tea and medicine, and serving him meticulously. In addition, she also used the excuse that the emperor needed to recuperate, and issued a decree as the queen, which cut off the opportunity for others to contact the emperor, and only allowed the imperial family to visit occasionally, which was equivalent to semi-house arrest of Li Bing. He took the time to read the fold to Li Bing by the couch and asked the other party how to deal with it.

Li Bing's poor health caused him unbearable pain and dizziness in his abdomen, and he was unable to concentrate on government affairs. Except for matters related to the front-line counterinsurgency, he gritted his teeth to listen to the report and made corresponding opinions, all other official affairs, big and small, were just a few hasty chats with Cheng Wen, and then let the other party draft his own approval according to his general meaning.

So, Cheng Wen seized this rare opportunity, went up and down, and wantonly used the name of Li Bing to secretly influence the layout of the government.

And the most important of them is the four pieces that Cheng Wen reviewed yesterday, which can be said to have directly affected the political situation of the Holy Tang Dynasty.

These four pieces of music are from the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Rites, the Ministry of Industry and the Dali Temple.

Dong Tianxing, the secretary of the Ministry of War, asked the emperor for approval, urging the Ministry of Household to allocate 3 million yuan of military resources and salaries to the three regiments of Qinglong, Suzaku and Xuanwu for the needs of front-line operations. Li Bing replied that in view of the drought in the north at the beginning of the year, the failure of the various prefectures to harvest, and the construction of warships took up a lot of funds, he agreed to allocate 2 million guan first, and make up the rest later.

Cheng Wen drafted the holy decree according to this meaning, but at the same time added some other content in the reply: the Vermilion Bird Legion had been unfavorable in the previous battles, and it was due to the negligence and slackness of the commander Ma Hongjie, so he promoted Gong Chengze to the military affairs inspection of the Southern Expedition and made Gong Chengze the governor of the Governor's Mansion, and concurrently led the deputy commander of the Vermilion Bird Legion, and commanded the third and fourth banners of the army to cross the Jiangxi expedition and recover Bashu and other places.

Since ancient times, the Bashu region is rich in products, has a large population, and has the risk of mountains and rivers, and is an extremely important strategic place. Previously, the imperial court avoided the Turkic invasion and specially chose Yizhou as the temporary capital, which shows the importance of Bashu.

Cheng Wen carried private goods and asked Gong Chengze to lead the troops to attack Bashu, firstly, to divide Ma Hongjie's troops, and secondly, to occupy the southwest and expand the strength of his camp in terms of human and financial resources.

The Ministry of Rites is about rewarding Li Jiangyao's honor of Jiuxi. Under the operation of Cheng Dong and others, the Ministry of Rites once again went up and suggested that the emperor consider the people's feelings and public opinions, and reward the meritorious ministers with special honors. In this regard, Li Bing did not directly refuse, but used the excuse that he should wait until the southern rebels were completely destroyed, and then reward meritorious deeds as appropriate.

Cheng Wen was unwilling, and secretly added another article after Li Bing's opinion: For the reward of Jiuxi, I also asked Li Jiangyao, the governor of the Central Capital and the commander of the Phoenix Legion, to personally present a note to show his attitude towards this reward.

To put it bluntly, it is to ask Li Jiangyao himself, whether he wants Jiuxi himself.

This is pure harboring evil intentions. Because no matter how Li Jiangyao replied, Cheng Wen's henchmen could find fault and play right and wrong in front of the emperor.

The Ministry of Industry submitted a request for the construction of water conservancy projects in the northern state capitals. This year's drought has caused huge losses to the people, and at the same time, it has also indirectly affected the tax income of the imperial court. The national treasury, which was already somewhat stretched, not only failed to collect enough money and grain, but also had to pay for disaster relief, which caused the household department and the Taifu to be worried.

In view of this, the Ministry of Industry has proposed to carry out large-scale water conservancy transformation, build dams to store water in various parts of the north, and dig a network of diversion canals to improve the irrigation capacity of farmland to withstand the possibility of another drought next year.

This has nothing to do with counterinsurgency, Li Bing didn't ask too much, and only asked Cheng Wen to write a simple reply, which was clearly forwarded to Shangshu Province, and the national strength was considered to discuss and advance on his own.

However, Cheng Wen refused to let go of such a good opportunity. She did not transfer it to the Shangshu Provincial Council Office as Li Bing wanted, but wrote a bunch of specific wills: let the household department take a large amount of money from the military budget and allocate it to the Ministry of Industry to build water conservancy. In addition, Su Chenfeng, the elder brother of Mrs. Cheng Dong and the son of the Earl of Yanping, was appointed as a member of the Ministry of Works, specifically responsible for this large-scale project involving 31 counties in six northern states.

Just like when Xie Guang forcibly promoted the governance of Jinhe, in the blink of an eye, the forces of the descendants of the clan successfully mastered a large number of people, funds and local resources, and could even directly affect the performance evaluation and promotion of state officials.

The last key chapter is the Dali Temple's request to investigate the emperor's poisoning case. Although nominally it was Dali Siqing who came forward, in fact, it was still the Beiya Reverse Scale Division operating behind the scenes.

Cheng Wen was secretly happy: This can be described as an extremely sharp sword, sweeping the court, invincible, all ministers who dare to oppose her on weekdays have to peel off a layer of skin!

According to Cheng Wen's intentions, Ouyang Lin and Tian Mu are jointly responsible for a thorough investigation of the case. In order to prevent these two people from discovering that she was assassinating Li Bing behind the scenes, Cheng Wen pretended to be in the name of the emperor, specially set the direction of the investigation, and aimed all the spearheads at the ministers in the hostile camp who had a good relationship with Xin Zhongshu.

At the same time, she also hinted to the two: it is better to catch mistakes than to let go, and to be ruthless and never tolerate.

The mountain rain is coming, and the wind is full of buildings. A political storm that is about to sweep the entire court is hovering and condensing in the sky above the Imperial Capital of the Holy Tang Dynasty.