Xue Panzhi's gossip red mansion

Xun moved the torch closer to Xue Pan's direction, and the two of them saw the letter more clearly. Judging from the fishy smell left on it, although it was already very faint, it was definitely blood, not any red paint. .

Xie picked up the official seal that had fallen, on which the words 'Shaozhou Shouzhong' were engraved.This made Xun Shi’s eyelids twitch. Isn’t it in the northern part of Canton? It connects Hunan and Jiangxi on the top, and Fujian to the east.If he remembers correctly, the magistrate of Shaozhou should be Su Peng, who was second in the list 36 years after his father came to the throne.

"Take it apart—" Xie already had an ominous premonition, and the letter in Xue Pan's hand would start a sinful nightmare.

Xue Pan opened the envelope, and it turned out to be a stack of letter paper dyed red. When he unfolded it, the rust-red blood stain revealed a dark truth, "I don't know whose hands this letter fell into. It belongs to the sky, but my injustice is in the mouth of the donkey brother, and I just wait for the day to look forward to the blue sky. '

This is Su Peng's letter of apology that he wanted to submit to the emperor. Three years ago, he was sent to Shaozhou, Guangdong because of his great favor. This place is not the most prosperous place, but it is a transportation hub. He came here When I arrived here, there were many injuries in Shaozhou, but such deaths did not attract much attention, because they were all treated as natural deaths.

As a transportation transit point in the south, the lives of the people here are pretty good. The financial situation reported by the counties is very good, and there are no natural disasters or the like.However, just when Su Peng thought that Shaozhou's government affairs were being handled more and more easily, only an occasional non-governmental investigation without greeting anyone made Su Peng suspicious. He felt that the people below seemed to be hiding something. He, it was a hunch, and it made the hairs down his spine.Because there was always something wrong with the way he looked at those county magistrates.

Su Peng was born in the Ministry of Household Affairs, so he planned to study every penny and per cent of the money. After half a year of repeated spot checks and comparisons, he finally found something wrong.In the tax revenue of each county, the tax revenue of medicinal materials is much higher than the level of the whole of Canton, but digging down from here, there are always a few accounts that are inexplicably missing a little money, or a little more in the next month. , although these traces are very small, they always happen when their medicinal material tax is too high.

Su Peng didn't know if he was suspicious of a dark ghost, and he couldn't trust the people around him. The only person who came to Shaozhou with him was his master. He asked the master to go to Fujian quietly to find Song Quan, because he knew the whole south of Daqing. In this place, only Song Quan would not betray the imperial court, but the master died in a mountain torrent, but they clearly agreed not to take that road before.

After this incident, Su Peng became more vigilant, but on the face of it, he relaxed even more. He just wanted to wait until the end of the year to report on his work in the capital, and express his doubts. Before that, he could only be patient.It may be that his playful tricks deceived the people around him. He felt as if he was being accepted slowly, until one time he accidentally ran into the medicinal material company recorded in the account book that was transporting goods in Qinan County, and he followed the vendor. As expected, he is very familiar with the county magistrate.Moreover, when the county magistrate saw the appearance of the merchant, it did not resemble the expression of an official seeing a merchant at all.

The more Su Peng thought about it, the more worried he became. Imagine if the whole Shaozhou belonged to them, what would these people do?Before leaving for the capital in the remaining two months, he carefully checked the account books for nearly 20 years, and this time he can confirm that the wrong thing should have started five years ago.

At this time, his heart trembled. It was not that there were no major incidents five years ago, but it was not in the southeast, but in the south of the Yangtze River. The Lianghuai dam case that has shaken people's hearts until now almost killed the prince.This incident caused a major exchange of blood in the official circles of Lianghuai and Jiangnan.

Regarding the incident in the south of the Yangtze River, the people in the capital pinned the blame on Mr. Li more than ten years ago, saying that at that time he embezzled the treasury bank, which caused the very bad impact of the flood in the Huaihe River and swallowed the fields.

But Su Peng is not a fool. He has been with the emperor for a long time, so he has been vaguely aware that the crown prince may have a constant connection with Jiangnan's affairs.For some reason, Su Peng felt that the black hand behind the scenes in Jiangnan did not wave his hands away from then on, but changed to a different place and accumulated money more covertly.

So why choose Shaozhou?Or do they really covet nothing but silver?

Su Peng went to the capital with such doubts. However, once he left Canton and arrived in Hunan, he was going to go upstream along the Xiangjiang River, but he was chased and killed three times. They were deadly with knives and knives. .After several dangerous escapes, Su Peng planned to divert to Jiangxi, enter Fujian to seek asylum from Song Quan, and sail to Beijing by sea.But the sky didn't go his way, and when he fled to the edge of Yanping Mansion, the master he thought was dead appeared again.Su Peng was overjoyed, thankful for the other party's escape.

But who knew that things would take a turn for the worse, he was almost murdered that night by the master who had come back from the dead.Su Peng was stabbed several times in his body. In a hurry, he seized his horse and fled. He strayed into the mountain with the wooden box of evidence, and met a black donkey with human nature.The black donkey brought Su Peng a lot of herbal medicines for external application, as well as food, and he was in a daze. Su Peng survived for half a month, but he couldn't escape the repeated fever. After all, the black donkey is not a doctor. Without his illness, when he was dying, he gritted his teeth and wrote this letter.

When Su Peng was dying and had no one to trust, he had no choice but to express his grievances to this unique black donkey.I can only believe that this black donkey is so wise and close to demons that he will find a trustworthy person.

After reading the distorted letter written by Su Peng with his fingers, Xie and Xue Pan didn't speak for a while.The black donkey had already run out at this time, when they heard it barking again at the entrance of the cave, the two went out, and saw the black donkey turning its head to a big tree not far away, and it stamped its hoof again. stomped the ground.

"Bai Mao, do you mean to say that the body of the man you saved was buried there?" Xue Pan thought about what Su Peng said at the end of the letter. He found a shallow pit by the tree and only hoped After he died, the black donkey could help him bury him, so there was no dead body left in the wild.

The black donkey yoked to express his affirmation, and Xie walked over, and after sweeping away the dead leaves on the ground, he found that the land in that place was slightly different from the surrounding ones, and there were some traces of filling.He nodded towards Xue Pan, "It shouldn't be wrong."

Xue Pan had turned several thoughts about Su Peng in his mind, but he was not sure about any of them. Who would want the life of a fourth-rank official like this? There was no wind either. "Fifth brother, is that official seal real?"

Xun frowned, he also hoped that the thing was fake, but the fake one can't be real, the seal is still real. "The official seal of the land of Canton was recast seven years ago. I remember it very clearly. When I arrived in Shaozhou, there was a crack in the lower right corner. At that time, the father emperor took that seal in front of our brothers. The engraving craftsman gave a severe reprimand. I took a close look once, and I still remember the location of the mark."

"However, this is not impossible to imitate. If you often see the person with this seal, you may be very aware of this structure. Therefore, it is still possible for this person..."

"No, Pan'er, there is one more thing in it. Apart from my father and me, only the craftsman knows." Xie broke Xue Pan's last possibility, "Only Su Peng's seal is as heavy as the average seal. The difference is that it is not solid copper, but a white jade heart hidden in copper. This is specially rewarded by the father to Su Peng, because his calligraphy is Jianyu. And at the beginning of this year, Su Peng was ill and could not return to Beijing. I also specially asked him not to travel too much, just report the things he wants to report in letters."

Xue Pan smiled wryly, now that the two of them were out hunting, they also encountered a big case. "Fifth brother, if all this is true, then who is that person in Shaozhou, Guangdong?"

***

Xie Chang walked out of the imperial study room, and just now he finally came to a conclusion on the poisoning of the tea case. It was done by the opponent of Mingxiangfang in Hangzhou. He originally wanted Mingxiangfang to withdraw from the business scope of exporting to the West, but he did not think of this matter. Under the promotion of several forces, it will become what it is now.

As soon as Fujian's oolong tea came out, the emperor even praised Yiblin tea as dark and firm, as heavy as iron, and could be called "Iron Goddess of Mercy".This made the Jiangnan tea area, which was originally a dominant one, be disrupted by Fujian's oolong.Not only that, the cutting planting method proposed by someone has greatly changed the tea trees that could only be planted with tea seeds in the past. This grafting technique was propagated by Fujian tea farmers, and it was not hidden. It is said that all parts of Daqing can improve the planting of tea trees.

Merchants live for profit. This time Jiangnan suffered a big loss, but Fujian used this trick to heal the wound.Xie Chang was thinking about that rumor, and that Xue Pan from the Xue family seemed to get involved as well, and the south seemed to recognize him as Song Quan's disciple.This is really not good news.

"Third brother, what are you thinking, my younger brother saw you frowning." A voice sounded from the corner, and Huan Chang was even more annoyed when he heard it. This was his sixth younger brother, and he was not of Taiping's temperament.In contrast, he would rather talk to Xun Shi, who has been disrespectful for a long time.

"Sixth brother, brother is thinking that the new year is coming soon, and I hope the Ministry of Punishment will not be too busy."

"Really, everyone wants to have a good year." There is an indescribable strange smell in these words of Huan Yan.