Three days ago, three and a half days ago, to be exact.

Zhang Tao came out of the imperial city and went directly into the inner study, he sent his son out, closed the door of the study, and sat alone on the Taishi chair with his eyes closed.

A light like a bean, shining on Zhang Tao's tired face, he rubbed his frowning eyebrows with his fingers, as if he wanted to stretch his depressed heart.

Until midnight, there was a gentle knock on the back window, and Zhang Tao said tiredly: "Come in, the window is not closed." ”

The window that had just been put on tung oil opened silently, and a black shadow in a nighttime suit jumped neatly into the house, turned over and fell at Zhang Tao's feet.

"Eun Gong, please forgive your sins!"

Zhang Tao didn't have the heart to entangle with him in terms of title, and said lightly: "Don't ask me for forgiveness, you just need to give me an explanation!" Let me ask you, Su Qing is your person? The tragedy of Wang Ergou's family, but you are behind it? ”

Xie Dacheng's upper body that had just straightened up was so frightened that he immediately fell down: "Xie Dacheng will never dare to do such a hurtful thing!" Su Qingna and the others are not something that Xie Dacheng can buy or manipulate! ”

"Do you know who is behind Su Qing?"

Although Zhang Tao was a question, it was an affirmative tone.

"Yes, Dacheng does know the mastermind behind Su Qing!"

Xie Dacheng immediately said a person, which surprised Zhang Tao.

"King Pu? How can it be? ”

The Pu Dynasty is the most powerful clan in the Song Dynasty, and Zhu Yu, a native of Wucheng, Huzhou, recorded that "this dynasty is the most intimate in the main temple of the Great Sect, the Pu Di is the most dear, the heir is the most noble, the most respected in the genus, and the world knows the great sect's business." ”

Now this King Pu's name is Zhao Shizhang, and he inherited the title of King Pu from his brother Zhao Shihou last year. The Puwang line has always followed the tradition of "brother to brother". The most famous King of Pu in the Great Song Dynasty was Zhao Yunrang, and his thirteenth son Zhao Zongshi succeeded to his cousin Renzong Zhao Zhen as his son, and after Renzong's death, Zhao Zongshi changed his name to Zhao Shu and succeeded to the throne as Yingzong.

In order to respect his biological father Zhao Yunrang as the "imperial father", Emperor Yingzong set off a three-year-long "Pu Yi Dispute", almost allowing Pu King Zhao Yunrang to be posthumously named the emperor, although the matter was finally terminated because of Yingzong's sudden death, but since then the descendants of the Pu Wang family have sat on the throne, and Zhao Gou is also a descendant of the Pu Wang family.

Zhao Shizhang's father Zhao Zhongxiang is the only one who is worshipped as the king of Pu with "virtue and prestige", Zhao Zhongxiang is the son of Zhao Zongfu, the brother of Emperor Yingzong, the king of Churong, and the emperor's uncle of the current emperor Zhao Gou.

When Jingkang changed, Bianjing was lost, the two generations of emperors of the Great Song Dynasty were captured, and the dragons were leaderless, and the six armies wanted to elect Zhao Zhongxiang as emperor, but Zhao Zhongxiang insisted on resigning on the grounds of "having his own Allah".

The Sixth Army wanted to learn from the Chenqiao Mutiny of the year, and also gave Zhao Zhongxiang a "yellow robe", but Zhao Zhongxiang actually had a phobia of enthronement, he saw that it didn't make sense, so he simply put a sword on his neck and threatened the generals who supported him to commit suicide! The generals had no choice, and finally made a covenant with Zhao Zhongxiang for a month, and if after a month, Zhao Zhongxiang's "Allah" had not yet appeared, "then Zhongxiang should take the throne." (Note 1)

Fortunately, God did not embarrass Zhao Zhongxiang, and in less than a month, Zhao Gou ascended the throne in Nanjing, and Zhao Zhongxiang was led by the Han Dynasty to pay homage. It happened that Zhao Zhongli, the king of Pu at that time, was exiled to the north, so Zhao Gong issued an edict to Zhao Zhongxiang, who was "virtuous and prosperous", to attack the king of Pu.

Although Zhao Zhongxiang rejected the opportunity to ascend the throne as emperor, Zhao Gou's suspicion of him did not disappear.

After the death of Prince Yuan Yi, the question of the heir of the Great Song Dynasty was put on the agenda. In order to block the ambition of the Pu Wang family to support his descendants to ascend to the throne, Zhao Gou claimed through the mouth of the Empress Dowager Meng that Taizu Zhao Kuangyin asked Zhao Gou to "return the government to the descendants of Taizu." ”

After hearing this, Zhao Gou was enlightened, and immediately met with the right servant Fan Zongyin, and the two had a secret talk, Gaozong said: "Taizu sets the world with divine martial arts, and his descendants cannot enjoy it. If I am not a lawless benevolent sect, for the sake of the world, how can I comfort the spirit of the sky! So after the edict was elected. (Note 2)

The emperor and the queen mother teamed up to play this play in fact, just to block the road to heaven for the descendants of the "Pu Wang family", it is really too capable of Pu kings in the past dynasties, Zhao Yunrang had twenty-two sons and a daughter, and now this Pu Wang Zhao Zhongxiang also has eight sons, one of which is Zhao Shicheng is very famous in later generations, because he married Lu You's ex-wife and cousin Tang Wan as his wife, Lu You and Tang Wan inscribed the two "hairpin head phoenix" on the wall of the willow garden to this dedicated prince smeared with sadness.

In addition, as a descendant of the "Pu Wang line", Zhao Gou knows the urine nature of the Pu Wang line, and once he ascends the throne, it is difficult not to repeat the "Pu Yi Dispute", and then his adoptive father may end up in nothing.

After removing the unstable factor of the Puwang lineage, which is the strongest, the most stable and the most threatening, Zhao Gou aimed at the Anding Junwang line.

The king of Anding County is the descendant of Zhao Dezhao, the eldest son of Taizu, and it stands to reason that Zhao Gou wants to return to the descendants of Taizu, and it is most suitable to find an heir in the line of the king of Anding County, but he first demoted Zhao Zisong, the king of Anding County at that time, to Lingnan, and then handed over the important task of selecting the emperor's adopted son to Zhao Lingkuang.

After Zhao Lingkuang received the task, he really felt the heart of heaven, and for the sake of fairness, he gave up the huge Anding Junwang family, and selected two children from the descendants of Zhao Defang, the king of Qin, who had long been in decline, to succeed as Zhao Go's adopted sons.

One of them is Zhao Bocong, who is now Zhao Wei, the king of Pu'an County, whose biological father Zhao Ziyan, served as an official missionary, but he was just a civil official from the eighth grade.

The other is Zhao Bojiu, that is, the current Zhao Xuan, the king of Enping County, whose biological father Zhao Ziyan, was appointed as an official Bingyilang, and he was a military attache from the eighth grade.

The two adopted sons came from humble backgrounds and did not have the protection of strong family forces, so they could only hug the thighs of their adoptive father Zhao Gou tightly, cutting off the possibility of the "Pu Yi Dispute" from the root, and they could not rely on the family power to threaten the imperial power in adulthood.

Zhao Lingkuang did things beautifully, and it was logical that he was crowned the king of Anding County.

Although Zhao Gou asked Concubine Pan Xian and Concubine Zhang Xian to come forward to adopt Zhao Xuan and Zhao Wei respectively, more than 20 years have passed, but Zhao Gou has never officially recognized the identity of the heirs of the two adopted sons, let alone set one of them as the prince.

In the past two years, as Zhao Gou has grown old and the crown prince has not been established for a long time, some people in the Pu Wang family have begun to liven up, and they have been blowing the wind inside and outside the court, so that the emperor can pass the throne to the descendants of King Pu, "How can there be a reason that the brothers and nephews of the relatives are still there, but the family business is passed on to outsiders?" ”

Zhang Tao naturally heard about the small actions of the Pu Wang system, but he just didn't expect the Pu Wang system to make such a big move!

He stared at him and said, "How did you get on the line with the Pu Wang family?" ”

Xie Dacheng smiled bitterly: "How can the villain have the ability to catch up with King Pu, it is the villain who King Pu took the initiative to find!" ”

Note 1, Note 2: According to the History of the Song Dynasty