The Stepmother is Unkind

Jingzhong did receive Xie Qin's secret letter.

However, the old Emperor Zhao sat upright on the main hall, and was silent for a long time in front of an open book of secret books.

In the evening, the empty hall gradually became dark, and the old **** came in lightly, lit a few lamps, and then exited again.

The candles were dimly lit, and Emperor Zhao sat alone until late at night.

The old **** came in again and asked for instructions: "Your Majesty, it's late at night, do you want to go to bed?"

Emperor Zhao's drooping eyes were always watching the secret folds on the imperial case. After a long time, he slowly raised his hand and waved it, signaling him to go down.

The old **** had no choice but to withdraw with a worried look on his face.

When only the shadow of Emperor Zhao was left on the dragon chair in the hall, Emperor Zhao finally let out a sigh of relief.

If he sends troops into Lingnan, I am afraid that King Ping's affairs will no longer be able to be contained, and it may even inspire King Ping to take risks, and the relationship between father and son will be broken...

Even if you know, some things must be decided as soon as possible to reduce the damage, but the emperor is also a human being and cannot make decisions easily.

"Cough, cough, cough..."

Emperor Zhao raised his handkerchief, covered his mouth and coughed violently.

The old **** came in with a bowl of medicine. Seeing that Emperor Zhao was coughing more and more, he quickly put down the medicine bowl and poured a glass of warm water for him, and then persuaded worriedly: "Your Majesty, the dragon's body is the most important..."

Emperor Zhao removed the handkerchief and closed the folded folds smoothly. He took the cup just now, and then raised his hand.

The old **** hurriedly brought the medicine bowl.

Emperor Zhao picked up the medicine bowl and drank it all at once. When the medicine was exhausted, Yourou also put it away and said, "I will call Xie Qing to see you tomorrow."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

The next day, after 90 hours, the Xie family head waited outside the Taiji Hall, waiting for His Majesty to summon him.

Emperor Zhao was in poor health. After returning to the palace last night, he tossed and turned, and slept very late. Today, he did not wake up late, and he was summoned for an interview only half an hour later.

Patriarch Xie stepped into the hall and bowed to meet him.

After the old **** and other attendants led Xie Patriarch in, they all withdrew.

"Xie Qing doesn't need to be too polite, get up."

Emperor Zhao looked even worse today, even though he was majestic, he couldn't hide his weakness.

Patriarch Xie looked worried and greeted: "Please take care of your dragon body..."

Emperor Zhao was noncommittal, he directly picked up the secret fold and motioned to the right to look at it.

The Xie family head respectfully stepped forward, took the secret book, and recognized the handwriting of his son Xie Qin as soon as he opened it.

But the matter in Lingnan is unusual. Even though the head of the Xie family was angry, he did not directly say "severe punishment". He only scolded the Lingnan clan a few words with anger, and then asked for instructions: "How does Your Majesty want to deal with the matter of Lingnan?"

Emperor Zhao was speechless for a long time.

The head of the Xie family could only hold the secret fold and stand with his head down.

"You may as well ask me how I plan to deal with King Ping who has colluded with Lingnan." Emperor Zhao glanced at this huge, empty hall, "I am both an emperor and a father..."

Xie Patriarch was silent.

"I had only these three sons, and I wanted to imitate the previous emperor..."

Emperor Zhao's ascension to the throne was the result of the previous emperor's personal upbringing and support. He established the crown prince early, and ascended the throne logically. Although he was extremely estranged from his half-brothers, there was no such thing as the royal family brothers.

"But these three sons, none of the three sons have the heart of an emperor. They have ambitions, but they are not successful. King Ding can hold his breath, but he is full of calculations and can easily go astray. King Ping..."

King Ping acts like this, I am afraid he has rebellion and is even more reckless.

"Who can I choose?"

The emperor said that his son was not good, and he should not listen to it. The ministers must not agree. Otherwise, if the emperor remembers it in the future and becomes dissatisfied, it will be a sin.

But when Emperor Zhao summoned him and said something like this, he would definitely not just want to talk to others.

Therefore, Patriarch Xie was silent for a moment, and did not say much about the matter of the three kings. He only suggested: "Your Majesty is worried about the foundation of Da Ye, and this minister, as His Majesty's minister, should share his worries for His Majesty."

"I have some shallow opinions on the things that your Majesty is worried about..."

Emperor Zhao said, "Xie Qing said it bluntly."

The Xie family head avoided the three kings and said, "Since Your Majesty can't make a choice, why don't you look at the grandson again, maybe you can make a decision."

Emperor Zhao heard the words and pondered.

However, the matter of Lingnan must also have a choice. Emperor Zhao decided to first issue a secret order to quietly transfer troops to settle the matter of Lingnan.

On the same day, two secret edicts were sent out of Beijing, one was sent to the Jiedushi envoy in central Guizhou, and the other was sent to Xie Qin in South Vietnam, teaching them to cooperate with each other and act cheaply.

South Vietnam, Butterfly Valley Mine—

People who are kidnapped enter the mine, but in the eyes of people in Butterfly Valley, they are not human at all, and they are no different from oxen that cultivate the land and donkeys that pull the mill.

There are people guarding the mine all the time. These people only have about two hours of rest time every day, and they work almost non-stop during the rest of the time. They can only roughly tell the time from the guards who change shifts.

They eat very poorly, only two meals a day. The dry food is coarse grains, but sometimes they are bad. The porridge is a cloudy soup. There is almost no rice in sight.

Every moment is an endless torment of body and mind.

Some people are unwilling and want to resist, but Butterfly Valley is already very experienced in training new laborers, and they will beat them at every turn, and if they catch a person who makes a lot of trouble, they will beat them to death, in order to kill the chickens and warn the monkeys.

Cowardly people are so frightened that they have no other thoughts.

The guards are hidden among the crowd, working very honestly, not conspicuous at all, the guards' attention is all on those thorns, and slowly they let go of their "obedient" vigilance.

The guards have observed for a long time, and as the newcomers become more honest, the guards will gradually become less guarded and guarded, but they have not completely relaxed. Will attract the guards to get a beating.

Therefore, there is only a little time to eat, and can talk quietly.

They first secretly joined with the thorns, so that the thorns seemed to be subdued, and they all stopped. When the guards relaxed their vigilance, the guards began to make some small movements quietly.

At first, it was easier to distinguish the two groups of people. After all, one group of people was already emaciated, while the other group was relatively strong, especially the guards. Even if they were blacked out, they looked quite strong.

When everyone was digging and digging stones every day, all of them were disheveled and ragged, and the guards learned to hunched their backs like other miners, so they were no longer conspicuous.

They were not in a hurry to approach Yanxia, ​​and slowly tested the vigilance of the guards, and with the miners they attracted, they took turns at each meal and sat in the early group of miners, and then slowly became two people, three people...

Until this day, several guards, together with the miners they had drawn, surrounded Yanxia in the middle.

A group of people deliberately made the sound of eating loudly, snoring and eating.

When the guards saw their movements, they glanced at them and laughed: "Hahaha... They eat like livestock."

The crowd endured the anger of being humiliated and continued to make a noise to eat. Under their cover, a guard asked in a low voice, "Yanxia, ​​what did you find?"

Yanxia waited for a long time, from time to time watching Madam Prefect's guards getting closer and farther away from him, getting restless, when he finally heard someone call his name, he couldn't help but burst into tears.

He held the bowl, afraid of being discovered, so he could only bury his head tightly, tears rolled down his face, and two very obvious tears appeared on his dark face.

Even the guards who have been strictly trained can't stand this dark place. He is emotionally broken, but the guards can understand, but the current situation has no time to comfort him.

"Time is tight, it's not the time to cry, if you find out, hurry up and say, we can avoid the danger of blind investigation."

Yanxia tried his best to control his emotions, wiped his face, and his face was like mud.

"I, I came before, those, those guards deliberately tossed me, asked me to carry, carry the bucket, I remembered the way to the thatched hut." Yanxia said more and more smoothly, and gave him a detailed description of how to get to the thatched hut.

When one of the guards heard the hut, his eyes lit up. The last time he sneaked in, he touched the hut. Now that he knew the location from the mine to the hut, he could find a way out.

"do you have anything else?"

Yanxia said: "The third mine entrance on the right, go south, continue down, there is groundwater, I don't know if there is another exit, but there is a stone bridge there."

When the guard heard it, he remembered the location, looked at him again, and asked if there was any other news.

Yanxia clenched the broken bowl tightly and said with a trembling voice, "There was a sick man who was dying before. They asked me to drag him and throw him into an abandoned mine to bury him. I saw white bones, and he was definitely not alone..."

As he spoke, his eyes became more and more frightened, as if recalling the scene would scare away his nerves.

The guards were all stunned and asked him, "Will everyone who can't work be thrown there?"

"Yes…"

And Yanxia also knew this, and the guards were urging them again, so everyone dispersed and continued to work.

The guards quietly gathered together, and one guard hid some dry food for one guard and prepared it. The guard used the muddy porridge and dry food to make an emergency appearance, foaming at the mouth, rolling his eyes and falling to the ground, his body twisted strangely. twitch.

The way he looked was extremely frightening, and some unidentified miners immediately scattered in fright. Only their accomplices were not far or near by his side when they scattered.

The guard came over to check, and when he saw that he was hesitating, he passed out with crooked eyes and almost lost his breath.

The guards do not carry people themselves, but always watch them carry people, in case they have any intentions.

The two miners pretended to be cowardly and carried the man all the way to the abandoned mine that Yanxia said. Smelling the stench, they were afraid of throwing him and hurting him, so they put him down next to the pit.

"What's the dawdling? Hurry up and go back to work!"

The guard urged behind them, and the two quickly let go of their hands. When they got up, through the light of the torches, they could vaguely see what seemed to be a white thing under the pit.

They didn't dare to look any further, and felt a little sympathy for the brother below, and hurriedly followed the guards away.

And the selected guard didn't dare to slide down to the bottom. In fact, under the cover of his accomplice, he held the edge tightly, and when they left, he quickly climbed up.

The **** saved dry food, hid and searched carefully like a mouse in the mine, and also touched the stone bridge that Yanxia said.

There was someone walking on the stone bridge, and it was very likely that there was another exit. The guards crossed the stone bridge, endured hunger, and squatted nearby for a long time, and figured out the law of their walking back and forth. Taking advantage of the gap, they finally found it. hole.

The moment he stepped out of the hole, even if he covered his eyes, his eyes could not see clearly due to light stimulation, and tears flowed.

The guards did not dare to delay, remember the entrance of the cave, leave quickly, and return to their lives.

In the prefecture, Xie Qin continued to advance his decree while waiting for a reply.

Yin Mingyu's Cuju competition was also held in an orderly manner.

At this time, there were only three Cuju matches, but in the new house, the little ladies put together, these three Cuju matches were over, and they made a lot of money without spending money.

The amount of money counted in the ledger and the silver money in the money box were quite a lot for the little ladies who usually only took a few months' money, and all the little ladies were amazed.

After these days of organizing the Cuju competition, they all improved a lot, and their temperaments also changed a bit, but they didn't know how to deal with it before they practiced, so they brought the account book and the money box to Mrs. Prefect and asked her to deal with it.

Yin Mingyu has shown full trust in employing people, and has never seen the ledger and money box.

These little ladies had never approached her for money, so she guessed that they had some extra money, but she was amazed by the amount of money in the money box when she saw that there was a lot of money in the money box.

In a Cuju match, there are a lot of places to spend money. The number of sponsorships they get is fixed. It has to be how they can save so much.

Yin Mingyu has never been stingy with praise. He raised his brows and praised with surprise: "How did you do it? It's really amazing."

The little ladies had embarrassment and joy on their faces, and each of them had different responsibilities, so they said in turn—

"We thought that if the teahouse can sponsor money, it should be able to sponsor it elsewhere."

"The first lion dancer, we asked people to talk to them. They dance lions on the Cuju arena before every Cuju match. The people know their home, and there will be more people who will invite them in the future."

Yin Mingyu raised his eyebrows, "So?"

The little lady smiled shyly, "No money."

Another little lady said: "You said again, you can't catch a sheep, and you can't let any one family dominate, disturb the order, and make people unable to make a living, so we found different teams such as musicians and dancers. Negotiate, and don’t need money.”

"Also, some of the work, the beggars in the prefecture city don't need to pay wages, they can do it with food..."

So money is saved.

Yin Mingyu smiled wider and wider, and praised: "Excellent job."

The little ladies were even more excited when they heard it, and they were all excited.

At this time, Mrs. Liu asked: "Mrs. Prefect, after the last Cuju match, we found that someone quietly made a bet on the Cuju match. It's been a long time, and I don't know if there will be a problem..."

Yin Mingyu looked at them admiringly, a long-term vision is a rare quality.

But on the other hand, it also shows that Xie Qin taught people to spread the laws of Da Ye among the common people, which is somewhat effective, at least even these little ladies know some laws.

Since it involves the law of prohibiting gambling in Daye, it is Xie Qin's business, Yin Mingyu doesn't worry about it, and it is not the Cuju competition itself that is at fault, but the Cuju competition has allowed some people to find a new way of making a living.

Yin Mingyu said with a smile: "I will explain this to the governor, and you can pay attention to what decree the state government has at that time."

After hearing this, all the little ladies complied.

"As for the money..."

Yin Mingyu and other little ladies all looked over and said, "You have been busy together for a few games, so you must have a division of labor. You can discuss together and take part of it as your reward."

When the little ladies heard it, they quickly refused: "Mrs. Prefect, we play with you all day, we can't take it, you can take it back."

"I'm Mrs. Prefect. How can I take this money? Wouldn't it be a slap in the face. What if I make Lord Prefect be criticized?"

The little ladies didn't expect this place, and they were shocked again, and they all denied: "We have absolutely no intention of harming you and the prefect."

"I'm just saying that there is a possibility." Yin Mingyu reassured them, "The reward you deserve is what you deserve, it's justified, and there's no need to refuse."

"For the remaining part of the money, keep one part for backup, and then take out part to do good deeds."

The little ladies looked at each other and responded, "Yes, Mrs. Prefect."

As for what kind of good deeds to do, Yin Mingyu didn't say much, and let them discuss it, but also reminded them: "The accounts must be clear, and no evil thoughts are allowed, otherwise, you will not be used again, and I can find someone else to do it."

There are not sure how many people behind them are counting the money they earn. Without the support of a powerful person, they are a bunch of little ladies, and they definitely can't control this matter.

Yin Mingyu likes to say ugly words in the front, as a reminder, lest one day, they don't know what wrong they have made.

The little ladies were all pure at this time, and they agreed.

In the afternoon, Yin Mingyu took Xie Ce back to the prefecture, and told Xie Qin about some bad things caused by the cuju competition and asked him to deal with it.

Xie Qin was very accustomed to Yin Mingyu's behavior of tossing and throwing his hands. He didn't say anything, and directly nodded to express his attitude.

When Yin Mingyu saw it, he immediately put it aside, eating and drinking carefree.

Two days later, the guards who came out of the Butterfly Valley mine returned to the prefecture, reported to Xie Qin what they had seen in the mine, and handed him a simple map of the mine.

When Xie Qin heard what the guards reported, his expression was extremely cold.

If it drags on for a day, there may be one more victim in the mine, but they can't act rashly before the will of the capital arrives.

Fortunately, Emperor Zhao also paid attention to this matter, and finally, more than ten days after Xie Qin sent the letter, he quickly sent a secret decree, and he could start preparing to arrange the Qianzhong army to enter Lingnan.

Yin Mingyu and Chu He were also on the side, and Chu He asked him, "How do you plan to quietly install the Qianzhong Army in?"

Xie Qin said: "Build the road."

Since the people of Nanyue are afraid of building roads and bridges, they can only recruit workers from outside, and everything is logical.

Yin Mingyu asked, "When are you going to start?"

Xie Qin said: "The Nanmeng clan and the barbarian clan marry and hold a grand wedding in the prefecture city. Presumably famous people in the whole Lingnan, including the patriarch of the Yi clan and others, will come to participate."

Yin Mingyu asked again: "The evil deeds committed by the two clans are naturally worthless, but Nanke is considered an innocent person. If the ritual is accomplished, is it considered a crime among the barbarians?"

The court doesn't know how to care, but if the two clans are punished, what about the married Nan Ke and some innocent Nanmeng girls?

Xie Qin understood what she meant, and said: "Your Majesty has a secret order, and after I am done, I will go to Beijing to report my duties as soon as possible, and I will definitely handle this matter properly."

Only then did Yin Mingyu know that in His Majesty's secret decree, Xie Qin was asked to go back to report in person.

Chu He was also quite surprised.

Xie Qin asked Yin Mingyu: "Second Niang, it should be by water, will you come back to Beijing with me, or stay in Lingnan and wait for me to come back?"

If nothing happens, Yin Mingyu definitely doesn't like to toss, but if he returns to Beijing in March, Xu will be able to attend his cousin Bai Zhixu's wedding and meet his sisters, so she immediately said, "I'll go back to Beijing with you. "

However, she has only been in South Vietnam for three months, is she going to go back again?

Yin Mingyu couldn't help looking forward to the possible reaction of Mrs. Xie, who was far away in Yangzhou.

Xie Qin was silent for a moment when she wanted to return to the capital with her so smoothly, and then put it aside without hesitation. Their husband and wife were going to join hands to the end. If they were concerned about these details, it would be mediocre.

After Xie Qin and Chu He made a detailed negotiation on the specific introduction of troops into South Vietnam, they began to make arrangements while sending someone to communicate with the Jiedushi envoy in central Guizhou.

At the same time, there is one more thing they must do, and that is to let Qi Jiedu secretly sneak into Nanyue to open the door of convenience for the soldiers in central Guizhou.

It is indeed possible that the Lingnan army would be infiltrated by the forces here, but Qi Jiedu has been in business for many years, and it is impossible without his own cronies and manpower.

Because of His Majesty's secret decree, Xie Qin was very sure that the envoy Qi Jiedu would agree, but in the end, he was going to go over the envoy Qi Jiedu, and he still planned to explain and persuade the envoy to Qi Jiedu in person, so as not to leave any bitterness among his colleagues in the future.

Moreover, on the day they started, some things also needed the help of Qi Jiedushi and Jiedushi's wife. If they were willing, it would be a big help, and they would be sure to be safe.

Yin Mingyu and Xie Qin went with Xie Ce to persuade and persuade Shuang, and Mrs. Qi was able to get it through. Then, when they helped to persuade Qi Jiedu, the envoy Qi Jiedu became more fluent.

They seriously handed over the invitation to meet the couple.

When Qi Jiedu saw the invitation, he knew that Xie Qin would definitely go to the Three Treasures Hall without incident. Sure enough, as soon as the two were alone in the study, Xie Qin threw him a thunderbolt.

"Why do you want to join the army for no reason?!"

Xie Qin talked about the evil deeds done by the barbarians and the rogues in the Butterfly Valley, and said seriously: "Master Qi, you and I are officials, and the original intention must be to ask for orders for the people and to benefit the people. Now the people are suffering, how can you? Turn a blind eye?"

In the backyard, Yin Mingyu also told Mrs. Qi about the Butterfly Valley, "Auntie, although a woman is weak, she knows good and evil. How can you turn a blind eye when you see this injustice?"

Before they came, they never communicated how to persuade the Qi family husband and wife, but after getting along for a long time, they had a tacit understanding.

In the study room in the front yard, Xie Qin said, "Master Qi, an official is not benevolent, why should you be an official?"

In the hall in the backyard, Yin Mingyu said, "Auntie, if people are insensitive, how can they be human?"

Mrs. Qi is the daughter of a general, and she is a bit jealous of hatred and hatred. She has long been angry. In addition, she has been patient in Lingnan all these years. When she patted the table, she simply said: "I didn't know before, but I can still pretend to be deaf. Dumb, if I turn a blind eye now, I will live in vain!"

In the study, Qi Jiedushi was silent for a long time, sighed, and agreed.