Chapter 289 Killing two birds with one stone twice
Tai Chi Palace
On both sides of the open space outside Dongnuan Pavilion, there are a row of buildings that do not seem to match the overall style of Taiji Palace at all. These are five tile-roofed houses. If they were placed in other places, they would not look very low. But in the majestic Tai Chi Palace, these five tile-roofed houses would seem so inconspicuous.
There are rows of houses like this on the left and right outside Dongnuan Pavilion. Outside the Taiji Hall, there are also rows on the left and right.
On the left is the place where the eunuchs and maids rest on duty, and of course the Ouchi guards. On the right is the place where the courtiers wait for the emperor to be summoned. Since Emperor Tianyou ascended the throne, the row of tile-roofed houses on the right side of the Taiji Hall has become the place where several important officials of the imperial court work. The emperor was diligent and often called his courtiers to Dongnuang Pavilion to discuss matters. All the government offices and offices of the imperial court were outside Taiji Palace, so it took too much time to go back and forth.
The emperor simply asked several important ministers to work in the tile-roofed room outside Taiji Hall. It would be more convenient if he was summoned. Later, these slightly dilapidated houses gradually became a symbol of honor. Because only those who are trusted and valued by the emperor are qualified to sit there.
Later, these unglamorous houses were given glamorous names.
It is called the front court of the palace, and the officials who have been in these tile-roofed houses for a long time have been secretly made court officials by others. Someone once joked that if you can't be a court official as an official in the capital, you might as well be a parent official in the local area. But having said that, there are no more than ten people who are qualified to work here for a long time.
These people naturally know the discussion about the court officials, but they don¡¯t care about this slightly jealous teasing. On the contrary, they think it is definitely something to be proud of. There were so many civil and military people in the Manchu Dynasty, how many of them could be called court officials?
Relatively speaking, the tile-roofed houses outside the Taiji Hall are also called the outer court to distinguish them from the tile-roofed houses outside the Dongnuan Pavilion, while the ones outside the Dongnuan Pavilion are called the inner court. If being an outer court official is already envied by others, then being an inner court official is even more enviable.
Since Prince Yi rebelled, there have been more than ten officials in the outer court for a long time. While handling the official affairs of the ministry, he was also sorting out information about Prince Yi's rebellion. His Majesty would often ask about these matters. In the inner court, there is usually only one official working there for a long time, no matter before or after Prince Yi's rebellion.
¡°This person is qualified to sit in the inner court, always waiting for His Majesty to summon him. It's not very high in terms of rank, but the power is beyond imagination.
He is Pei Yan, the fourth-rank Huangmen servant. In terms of rank, he is not as good as the minister of each ministry and equal to the minister of each ministry.
The Sui Dynasty was so big that with the zhezi sent from all over the country every day, plus the zhezi handed over by all kinds of officials in the capital, it would not be an exaggeration to say that two oxcarts could be filled every day. There were so many memorials, and no matter how diligent the emperor was, he only had twelve hours a day, and it was impossible to read them all, not to mention that every memorial had to be approved.
The task of sorting out the memorials was left to the imperial study eunuch Bingbi. But after God Bless Emperor Yang Yi ascended the throne, he abolished this habit. Yang Yi decreed that no one in the harem should interfere with the government affairs of the previous dynasty. Not only eunuchs can't do it, but even concubines can't do it. Even the queen has not had a say in the previous government affairs for so many years.
Because of this, the biggest difference between the current eunuch Bingbi of the imperial study and the previous eunuch Bingbi. When the late emperor was in power, what he valued was the ability of the eunuch Bingbi in the royal study to handle government affairs, but what the current emperor valued was loyalty. The biggest difference between Su Buwei and Wu Peisheng is that he is more self-aware. He would not say a word about court affairs unless the emperor asked him to.
Precisely because Wu Peisheng has handled government affairs for so many years and is accustomed to sorting out the courtiers' memorials and then approving unimportant memorials according to the emperor's thinking, he has a greater sense of mission and responsibility than Su Buwei. In other words, his loyalty to the Sui Dynasty was even stronger than his personal loyalty to the emperor. It was precisely because of this that the emperor asked him to lead people to patrol the northwest roads. It was precisely because of this that Wu Peisheng died unexpectedly.
Because he discovered Li Yuanshan¡¯s secret.
The existence of that iron mine was not discovered first by Mu Xiaoyao, but by Wu Peisheng. That's why Li Yuanshan did not hesitate to design such a big and bloody game, so that the people of Fangu City could be buried with Wu Peisheng. Fang Jie's guess was correct. What happened to Fan Gu that night was that he was just an insignificant person.
Wu Peisheng found clues that Li Yuanshan wanted to rebel, and also discovered the existence of the iron mine. But he was unable to deliver the news in time, and his every move was under Li Yuanshan's surveillance. In order to gain Li Yuanshan's trust, he pretended that he had discovered nothing. He also pretended to be greedy for money and accepted Li Yuanshan.Shao Yinzi also promised to get rid of Fang Jie for Li Xiaozong. In fact, this was just Wu Peisheng's attempt to paralyze Li Yuanshan.
But in fact, Li Yuanshan never believed him.
Fan Gu is a killing game, a killing game specially designed for Wu Peisheng. In order to prove that he was really just a money-grubbing eunuch, Wu Peisheng agreed to Li Yuanshan's trip to Fan Gu. But there was a grave that had been dug for him a long time ago, and it was also a grave that had been dug for Fan Gu's two thousand people and eight hundred frontier troops.
Since Li Yuanshan discovered that Wu Peisheng was secretly investigating him, Li Yuanshan had been planning how to kill this big shot who was once very popular in front of the late emperor and also played a decisive role in front of the current emperor. If you want to kill an eunuch with a pen, arranging a hasty robbery is obviously unrealistic and cannot convince others. Besides, although Wu Peisheng is not good at cultivation, he is still a seventh-level master.
Those who can kill him, no one from the eighth grade or above, would bother to be a bandit who blocks the road. If you really have a cultivation level of eight or above, even if you don't work for the imperial court, you will be reused and respected if you join a business or a wealthy family.
So if he wanted to kill Wu Peisheng, Li Yuanshan had to find an excuse to convince the court and the emperor.
So, he thought of the Meng Yuan people.
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Pei Yan, the servant of Huangmen, sat on a chair and looked at the pile of memorials on the table in front of him. He raised his hand and gently rubbed his frowning brow. He had been sitting here combing the memorials for more than two hours, but he had not finished it yet. Quarter. This is his main job every day, classifying memorials according to priority. The important memorials were sorted out and sent to Dongnuan Pavilion to present to the emperor. If it was not important, he would reply in an emperor's tone.
He was also responsible for drafting the imperial edict. The jade seal representing the identity of the Sui emperor was placed on the side of the table. Few people would have thought that most of the jade seals in the imperial edict were not printed by the emperor himself. In fact, anyone familiar with the imperial court knows that whether the decree was written by the emperor himself can be determined by looking at the seal on the imperial decree. If the eight seal characters printed on it are "Ordered by Heaven to live long and prosperous", then this decree was written by Huangmen Shilang on his behalf. If the seal is a small seal with four square characters of "Dong Nuan Master" on it, then it is an imperial edict written by the emperor himself.
Pei Yan leaned back and stretched his arms. Perhaps it was because he sat for too long every day that his neck became more and more uncomfortable. I suffer from unbearable pain every day, and sometimes feel nauseous.
After taking a sip of the strong tea, Pei Yan suppressed the turmoil in his stomach. There have been too many things going on these days, and he can't even get three hours of sleep every day. Not only did he have to face a mountain of official duties, but he also had to figure out the emperor's thoughts at all times. The latter was more tiring than the former.
He rested for a moment, and then focused his eyes on a memorial in front of him again.
This memorial was delivered to the capital by a county magistrate in Shandong Province who risked his life. There were many twists and turns. In order to avoid the interrogation of the northwest rebels, the memorial was first sent to the county magistrate¡¯s hometown in Dongping County in the form of a family letter, and then secretly handed over by his family to his friends, who then personally handed it over to him. Sent to Chang'an.
So when he saw this memorial, Pei Yan immediately frowned.
There is no doubt that this is the most important memorial today.
This memorial was written on an ordinary piece of parchment, but it was written in an extremely secretive way. Only when water is sprayed on it will the writing be revealed. The Ouchi Guards still use this method to deliver secret reports, and very few people can see through it. If the county magistrate's friend hadn't come to Chang'an in person and explained it when submitting the memorial, Pei Yan wouldn't have been able to read the words hidden in the parchment.
This is a memorial written in tiny handwriting, no less than a thousand words. Detailed description of the current situation in the Northwest Third Road, and even the deployment of some rebel forces.
And what interests Pei Yan is another past incident about Wu Peisheng.
The massacre of Fan Gu.
The county magistrate had a good relationship with a general in Li Yuanshan's army, and the general told him the secret when he drank too much.
The memorial stated that after Wu Peisheng arrived in the northwest, he secretly investigated whether Li Yuanshan had committed corruption. This was his duty to inspect various roads in the northwest. But just because Wu Peisheng was too serious and rigorous, he actually found out something about Li Yuanshan's plan to rebel.
¡°But he couldn¡¯t hide his secret investigation from Li Yuanshan, so the Fan Gu tragedy happened. Those common people and those border troops were all killed by Li Yuanshan. Then he put the blame on the Meng Yuan people, so that he could cover up the fact that he killed an eunuch. And Li Yuanshan's purpose is not just that, it is simply a plan to kill two birds with one stone.
Not only did he kill Wu Peisheng, but he also provoked the emperor to launch a crusade against the Mongolians.Thoughts. Li Yuanshan knew that the emperor had always been obsessed with conquering Meng Yuan, but he had never made up his mind. He understood the pride of the Yang royal family, and fabricated the story of Meng Yuan's massacre of Fan Gucheng, firstly to kill Wu Peisheng, and secondly, to urge the emperor to march westward as soon as possible.
Only when the emperor marched westward could he have a chance to rebel.
¡°As for Li Yuanshan, this is not the first time he has played this trick of killing two birds with one stone.
Pei Yan, as one of the most trusted people around the emperor, naturally knew about Prince Zhong¡¯s journey to the west more than ten years ago. And that incident was also a lie fabricated by Li Yuanshan. At that time, there were no Mongol and Yuan masters who sneaked into the Sui Dynasty to try to assassinate the emperor. They were all fabricated by him out of thin air. Then an urgent secret report was sent to Chang'an. When the emperor consulted with Prince Zhong, Prince Zhong immediately decided to go west to kill the bandits.
Then Li Yuanshan sent someone to secretly report to the Meng Yuan people, saying that the Sui Dynasty had organized a large number of martial arts masters to sneak into the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty to assassinate the Great Khan Meng Ge. Therefore, the Meng Yuan people hurriedly gathered manpower to intercept, but due to a slight error in the calculation time, when the Sui people arrived at Fan Gu, there were not many real masters gathered at the Meng Yuan side. Therefore, in the first confrontation, the Sui Jianghu Ke killed all the Meng Yuan people.
But later, people from the Buddhist sect arrived one after another. The two sides were truly evenly matched in the fight, and Jianghu guests from the Great Sui Dynasty also began to die in constant battle.
In that case, the biggest winner seemed to be Prince Yi Yang Yin, but in fact it was Li Yuanshan. He took this opportunity to make Prince Zhong disappear, and the Meng Yuan people also gained trust in him. For more than ten years, he has been secretly communicating with the Meng Yuan people.
" Killing two birds with one stone twice before and after, Li Yuanshan was very successful.
For the first time, a large number of powerful people in the Sui Dynasty were ruined, and the whereabouts of Prince Zhong was also unknown.
The second time, the 700,000 elite troops of the Sui Dynasty were destroyed. The northwest was empty, and no one could stop him from rebelling.
Looking at this memorial, I thought about Prince Zhong again. Pei Yan couldn't help but let out a long sigh Li Yuanshan, you are indeed a descendant of Li Xiao, and you are so vicious in your conspiracy.
He shook his head and sorted out his complicated emotions. Then he picked up the memorial and tucked it under his arm, took an oil-paper umbrella and walked out of the inner door.
It started to rain lightly half an hour ago, and it was drizzling.
When he went out, he opened the oil-paper umbrella, but was stunned for a moment.
He saw, in the rain, a young man in black shirt standing in the open space outside Dongnuan Pavilion, with his hands behind his back, his body as straight as a javelin. The young man raised his head slightly and looked towards the sky. He didn't seem to care at all about the raindrops hitting his body and face, uninhibited and indifferent.
When he saw this scene, Pei Yan suddenly thought of the first time he saw Prince Zhong many years ago, which was also in the rain. At that time, Prince Zhong guarded the city gate with hundreds of slaves. The soldiers of the Forbidden Army rushed up one after another, and then fell down layer by layer. In the rain that day, Prince Zhong was also wearing a black shirt. He was also so uninhibited and indifferent, as if he didn't even notice the forbidden troops.