Guo Langzhong immediately motioned for the guards to go and fetch it, and here he heard An Ying say: "How did you ask Secretary Cheng about the Great Qilu?" On what occasion, how you asked, how he answered, you can tell in detail, the more detailed the better. ”

Guo Lang secretly praised in the center that Miss An was smart and sensitive, and her partner just now was seamless.

"Secretary Cheng often comes to my shop to eat tea, after all, he is a person in the government, and I also take more care of him, and we are also familiar with each other. Once he brought a burden, and he carefully put it next to him, and told the man not to stain it, so I asked curiously what it was, and he said it was the Great Enlightenment. He told me that the previous dynasty perished because of the strictness of the law, so when we started the country, Emperor Gaozu issued the Great Enlightenment Law. That year, the Great Revelation Law was revised and promulgated, and he had just obtained the new code and went back to copy it. He copied the law of tea and salt, and I wanted to know how our private tea would be judged, so I asked him if he could copy it and lend it to me to see. ”

Luo Qiaoniang said slowly: "Later, after more than ten days, when he came to eat tea again, he gave me a copied legal book. I asked him while reading it, and I remember it very clearly, he pointed to the book and told me that the main offender of smuggling tea should be punished, and the accomplice should be exiled. He also told me that there is a great evil in the Great Enlightenment Law, and the master of smuggling tea is considered a great evil and must be punished, and if he is coerced, he can reduce the crime by one to two degrees, and if he exposes meritorious people, he will be reduced by one degree. ”

"I also brought these five volumes back to my home that day to read, my husband Zheng Ping saw it that day, and I also told him what Secretary Cheng said, and he also said that now the law is intended to be lenient, even if the great evil sin is few, it is not like the previous dynasty will destroy the three clans and the five clans."

"You believe it like that, and you still do such a big case?" An Ying couldn't help but wonder, from the beginning of Luo Qiaoniang to the present, she was shrewd, cunning and determined, and it was hard to believe that these few words made her dare to take risks.

"Of course not. I heard my father say that this smuggling of tea is a great evil, and if the government finds out, all three of us will be killed. So I'm very strange, if the law has been changed, why should we be blackmailed by He Qing for so many years, after all, the main culprit is He Qing. On the day I returned the law, I specially invited Secretary Cheng to have dinner in the private room of the tea house, during the banquet, Secretary Cheng ate wine and said a few more words, he used to be a small official in Qiantang Mansion and encountered a case of smuggling tea, at that time he received a hundred taels of silver from other people's families, and he relied on this silver to buy a house in Qiantang Mansion on such a precious land. The tea seller was finally sentenced to exile in Zhangzhou. Now that the criminal law is much more lenient, the case at that time may now be a fine. As soon as I heard it, I asked carefully, the tea seller was from Jiangxi, and he had been smuggling tea for five years, and he was at least a few hundred catties. Later, after quitting, he bought a house in Qiantang Mansion and settled down, and whitewashed himself and started a medicinal herb business. Later, he was denounced, and he was found out by the government. ”

"I thought in my heart that this tea seller was in a similar situation to my family, although my family has been smuggling tea for a long time, but my family was blackmailed by He Qing." Luo Qiaoniang continued: "I'm afraid that these things are just Secretary Cheng's drunken words, and secretly sent someone to investigate Secretary Cheng and this case, he does have a small house in Gongchen Bridge in Qiantang City, Secretary Cheng's family is unaffordable, and the tea smuggling case is also very clear, the Jiangxi tea seller's surname is Wang Ming, and a family of 36 paid a fine of 2,000 silver and was exiled to Zhangzhou, which is similar to what Secretary Cheng said. ”

"In this way, you believed Secretary Cheng before you made up your mind to do this poisoning case?" Guo Langzhong asked.

"That's not either. After I found out, I didn't think much about it at the time, but I felt that things were a little more relaxed, and it wasn't as scary as my father said. Later, there were a few things that made me have to think about how to pull He Qing down. ”

"You mean about your sister's mother?"

"Presumably my father has already said that Wan Niang was not sold, but was plundered by He Qing. On the fifth day of the first month of every month, I secretly met her at the back door of He Mansion, and it has been fine for a few years, He Qing has made so much money, at least it will not be short of her eating and drinking. Unexpectedly, when Wan Niang was thirteen years old, she told me that she was taken in by He Qing and became He Qing's concubine, and I went crazy at that time. He Qing is about the same age as my father, and he is simply a brute! I went back and told my father that he would expose He Qing, and it would be a big deal to break the net, but my father said that the daughter of our peasant family can be a concubine in Zhizhou, and it is already the ancestral tomb that is smoking, and if she gives birth to a son and a half daughter in the future, she will also be happy in the future. At that time, my father was full of wanting to have a son, and he didn't care about the few of us. That's when I started thinking about revenge. ”

"Don't your husband Zheng Ping know about these things?"

"He didn't know at all. At the beginning, He Qing fell in love with the Zheng family's industry, and asked my father to marry me to the Zheng family just to let me find a way to take over the Zheng family's tea shop in the future, so that the flow of our private tea can also secretly go from the Zheng family's tea shop, after all, the Zheng family is the largest tea shop in Huzhou. My father originally refused, Zheng Ping is much older than me, he is a prodigal, he is a man who fills houses, and he has a powerful eldest daughter, no matter how you look at it, it is not a good marriage. But I checked Zheng Ping myself, his previous lady was not in good health, so he invited a famous doctor in the capital to come over, and his mother's family did business and discounted the capital, and he secretly helped people settle it. If I listen to He Qing's arrangement, at least I can often inquire about some news, if I really find a suitable person to marry like my father, with the temperament of my father and my uncle, our Luo family will be in He Qing's hands for several lifetimes. So I took it upon myself to tell He Qing that I would marry, and he tried to find a way for me and Zheng Ping to meet in the tofu factory, and then Zheng Ping naturally came to propose. He didn't know any of these things. He Qing asked me to give birth to my son earlier, so that in the future, the Zheng family's tea mountain and workshop can be returned to us, so that the private tea in our Shuanglin Village can slowly get on the right path. ”

"Then how did you ask Zheng Ping about this great enlightenment?"

"I pretended to talk about the case in Qiantang Mansion during the banquet, saying that this smuggled tea cake doesn't need to be beheaded now? My dad said that he used to have his head cut off. I remember very clearly, the husband said that beheading was a matter of Emperor Gaozu's time, and now the law is lenient, and if the punishment for such a crime as smuggling tea cakes can be made up, a sentence of exile will be sent to exile, but this kind of great evil crime, future generations will not be able to take the examination. I asked what if this great evil was coerced, like being coerced into killing someone, robbing money, and so on. He said that such coercion depended on the specific circumstances and usually had a reduced offense. Could it be that my husband is also lying to me? Could it be that the cases in Qiantang Mansion are all fake? No way, I've asked several people about these things, and that's true. I really don't know what's wrong. ”

An Ying said: "We will investigate these things. Let me ask you again, you just found out that the punishment for illicit tea is lower than you imagined, so why don't you just go and expose He Qing? Why do you still poison it, you don't know that this batch of tea cakes is tribute tea, and after you poison it, it is a felony to murder the royal family? ”

"It's not that I didn't want to expose He Qing directly, but the head of this Huzhou Zhizhou is a transfer envoy from the two Zhejiang, how can we see it when we are idle? And I often pay attention to the movement of Huzhou officialdom, Huzhou's Shaoyin and Fu Yin are not in harmony, but He Qing is in front of the two, these two people believe in any Qing, and it is impossible for me to find the two of them. With such a big official, I can't directly expose it. My husband is the manager of the Huzhou Tea Shop, and he often says that if there is a mistake in the tribute tea, even the transfer of the Lord and the Lord Zhizhou will not be able to carry it, it is something that the nobles in the palace drink, and everything must be careful. I just thought about doing it on top of the tribute tea. It is very difficult to poison tribute tea, ordinary poisons have a taste, and once it is contaminated, this tribute tea will inevitably not be taken away. I tried it many times, only to find out later that a poison left behind by my grandfather was colorless and odorless and could be baked into cakes. I deliberately told He Qing that this year, my husband's mold from Mindi is very good, if he enters the palace and the nobles like it, then Xia Guo will definitely sell very well. He Qing really asked my husband to take the mold and distribute it to the tea farmers in Huzhou. ”

"I thought that when the palace found out and tracked it down, He Qing would inevitably be involved, because the proposal to adopt a new mold was what he thought. Then I deliberately said that I framed the Zheng family for revenge, so that my husband and my daughter could get away with it. When I get to prison, I will report He Qing's matter to the officials from the capital, so that He Qing will inevitably die. Our Luo family is only exiled for thousands of miles, and I secretly hid a lot of money, even if I exiled my father, they can start from scratch, but at least they are not coerced by He Qing. I forgot to say just now that after He Qing took my little sister as a concubine, he asked her to accompany those big merchants of the Xia Kingdom, and even conceived a child, because the father was unknown, and was aborted by the eldest lady of the He family. The big merchant of Xia Guo likes my little sister very much, and has asked He Qing for it several times, He Qing didn't plan to send her away before, but this year I don't know why He Qing agreed, and when the merchant of Xia Guo came this time, he took his little sister away. If I don't do it this year, I'm afraid that my little sister will be taken to Xia Kingdom, and our family will never see each other. ”

An Ying thought for a while and asked: "The baggage you secretly brought home was full of items for changing clothes, I thought you were preparing to run away by yourself, but now it seems that you prepared it for Huanniang?" ”

Luo Qiaoniang nodded and said, "When I received the news that day, I knew that you had taken Zheng Ping away, and I knew that I was about to be arrested." I definitely can't go, but I want to take advantage of the last opportunity to take Huanniang away from He's house. But I couldn't contact Wan Niang that day, so I really had no choice but to go back to Luo's house to see what was going on. ”