Chapter 12 – New Wind Pavilion

The sky was overcast, and the entire Kyoto was shrouded in this gloomy and austere atmosphere; the autumn highs were already gone, and those cold rains that stretched on for three or four days not only washed away the dust in the tiled eaves above the private houses and rinsed the green slate paths on the ground, but at the same time brought with them the first chills of the autumn of the fifth year of the Qingli calendar.

Fan Xian rubbed his hands together and sat on the second floor of the New Wind Pavilion, gazing through the layers of rain curtains outside the window at a government office across the street. Then look over there, is the Da Lisi yamen, two yamen compared, a this side to appear quiet a lot, but in and out of the Supervisory Yuan officials face calm, no longer like the original kind of appearance.

The rationalization has been going on for some days now. Of course, Fan Xian didn’t think that just by shouting a few slogans and reiterating the regulations once again, he could gather the minds of all the officials, so the secret self-corrections and investigations had been going on all the time. After mercilessly dismissing some people from their posts and sending some officials to the seven departments for trial in an even more ferocious manner, the entire atmosphere of one place was finally reversed vigorously, and the government offices, which were as precise as instruments, finally began to function effectively.

Fan Xian was not accustomed to sitting in one place, so he rejected Mu Tie’s idea of vacating his room, and instead directly across the street from one place, on the second floor of the famous New Wind Pavilion in the capital, chartered a quiet room on the street, where he would sit every day to eat some snacks and pass the time, and at the same time make sure that if something happened in one place, he would be able to react to it right away.

On the table in front of him was a grid of steam drawers. About the size of two palms in the steam drawer, put a single bun, so you can know that this bun full of skin large filling eighteen folds, the head is not small, the white surface through the stock of the desire to overflow out of the fresh oil, let a person look at some of the eye greedy. He blew gently on the buns, and used chopsticks to spread out the eye of the dragon that the buns’ folds had gathered into, revealing the new oil broth inside.

Fan Xian took a tube of wheat straw, inclined his head and asked, “Drinking the soup or not?”

“Hot.”

Fan Xian smiled, used chopsticks to poke the eye open, picking the meat inside that had been soaked in the soup for a long time and had already been flavored, using a small plate to catch it and put it into the bowl of the person beside him, coaxing, “Dabao is the most obedient, this soup is hot, but the meat isn’t, but you still need to blow on it more often.”

Dabao obeyed, puffing out his cheeks and blowing desperately at the meat in the bowl – Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!

Ever since Lord In-Law had resigned and returned home, the Lin Mansion had become cold, and Dabao had spent most of his time in the Fan Mansion while Fan Xian was in Northern Qi. When he came back, he didn’t find Dabao for some days, and he couldn’t help but feel a bit puzzled. When he asked Wan’er, he realized that he had sent Dabao back to the Lin Mansion, thinking that he had just returned to China. Fan Xian heard this after some unhappy, although it is said that on the face of their own, to the forest house certainly do not dare to make things difficult, but those underlings of the house is the most difficult to make bad characters, today’s forest house is only Wan Er’s a few distant brothers in the care, how can you rest assured?

After he took over a place, he was busy for many days, and did not have time to manage this matter. Taking advantage of today’s rain, Kyoto has nothing to do, he shouted Teng Zi Yue will be Dabao from the Lin House to pick up the out, with him to sit together in the new wind pavilion, taste this food hall most famous to receive the tang baozi, stay all the way back to the house.

“Stop blowing it off, it’s ready to eat.” Fan Xian laughed and looked at his great-uncle.

For some reason, Dabao, whose IQ was like a small child, especially listened to Fan Xian’s words and hurriedly lowered his head, swallowing the meat filling in one mouthful, and looking at his monkey-like appearance, he didn’t know if he tasted the flavor or not.

Fan Xian looked at this scene, and couldn’t help but think of Piggy’s appearance of eating ginseng fruit, and couldn’t help but laugh again.

Deng Ziyue sat at the other table and watched this scene with a strange feeling in his heart. Fan Xian’s Qinian group had a total of thirty or so people, divided into four shifts to protect him closely, and after Deng Ziyue took over Wang Qinian’s position, he was even more protective of Fan Xian, so he was the most aware of what Fan Xian had done in the past few days. He thought to himself, this Lord Tiji that he was following was really a character that people couldn’t see clearly, after rectifying the morale of a place, he didn’t even give any specific instructions for a long time, but just ate good food and listened to small songs in this New Wind Pavilion every day – with Fan Tiji’s status, he was able to be so attentive to his own demented great-uncle, and this also made him feel a little bit unexpected, some admiration.

Downstairs stomping sounded a footsteps, Deng Ziyue immediately woke up from idle thoughts, palms tightly gripped the waist side of the park sword, eyes like eagles, staring at the stairs.

The person who came was Mu Tie, these days he was in charge of the work of corrective investigation in the office every day, to review those who have suspicions of subordinates, and at the same time to comfort and maintain the morale of everyone, but also to deal with Fan Xian secretly handed down the task, even so busy that even the time to stroll around the building have not been, eyes deep concave, black face is now a trace of an unhealthy grayness.

Mu Tie lifted the rain hat off his head, untied his raincoat, and casually threw it in the corner beside the door of the room, and carefully took out a cylinder from his bosom; the cylinder was made of an unknown material, but it was evidently waterproof, for the roll of paper which he drew out of it was not wetted a bit.

Fan Xian took it and scrutinized it carefully, line by line, but his eyebrows gradually furrowed and his face became gloomy. At the beginning of his return to the capital, he had asked Deng Ziyue to find out whether the ministers related to His Highness had any relationship with the Cui family, but when he took over, the task was handed over directly to Mu Tie, which was also considered to be a test for him.

Paper scroll seems to have no evidence of what is powerful, this is also his expectation, the other side of the hand and foot will do extremely clean, just seems a little too clean, is the Cui family as a large family, these years, even will not be on the Ministry of the Ministry of the Ministry of Justice, the Chintian Supervisor on some of the offerings? Things that are abnormal must be evil, Fan Xian sighed in his heart and asked, “All of them are here?”

Mu Tie nodded.

Fan Xian asked again, “Did the Second Division ask anything over there?”

Mu Tie glanced at him and shook his head, “The second office is being very cooperative right now, and only thought it was an order from the courtyard, not realizing that it was Lord Tiji’s intention. Please don’t worry, Your Excellency, you can be assured that no one knows.”

“There’s no information from the Second Branch either?” Fan Xian realized at this point that he was still clutching chopsticks in his hand, and knowing that he was really a bit nervous about this matter in his heart, he smiled to himself and rested the chopsticks on the edge of the steam drawer. His biggest enemy nowadays was the Eldest Princess who was far away in Xinyang, and no one knew which day the Eldest Princess would return to Kyoto, so he had to make sure that after the Crown Prince and the Eldest Princess had drifted away from each other, who exactly were these several princes of the court that were all the way with the Eldest Princess!

Mu Tie’s tone was still respectful, but with a hint of confidence, “For the monitoring of the capital, although the Second Division is responsible for intelligence work, the source is not as good as one of our divisions, so don’t worry, Your Excellency.”

Fan Xian nodded, signaling that he could leave.

After Mu Tie left, Fan Xian looked at the small, densely-packed words on the case file and fell into deep thought. What was recorded on it were all of Cui’s bribe recipients over the years, the time, the reason, most of these Beijing officials in the court were involved, but there were no traces of the Second Prince’s faction, which made him feel like he was having a headache, obviously his heart’s intuition was telling him that there was something wrong, but he couldn’t find anything truly useful from all of this tedious information.

Fan Xian actually knew very well that his strengths lay in assassination, holding power, and building momentum – in the end, underneath the superficial gentleness, he only had the heart of an assassin and general, but was not an emperor who was good at ruling and kneading people’s hearts, or a strategist who was good at analyzing intelligence and judging strategies – knowing his shortcomings and using them to his advantage, he could not find anything truly useful in all this information. -Knowing his shortcomings and using his strengths, Fan Xian used people in this way and analyzed himself in this way.

Thinking of the meticulous plan in the capital city of Northern Qi, he couldn’t help but sigh, and began to miss Wang Qinian, who seemed to be comical, but actually helped himself with a lot of ideas. Of course, the real manipulator of that plan was Yan Bingyun, and Fan Xian had intended to keep him tied to his belt after he returned to the capital, who knew that the courtyard had let Yan Bingyun go to four places, while letting himself take charge of one place on the side, and it had become an uncomfortable task to try to squeeze the intellectual machinations of the little Yan Gongzi from the official side.

He glanced at Dabao and found that his elder brother-in-law was launching a final onslaught on a bowl of mixed sauce noodles, and couldn’t help but smile, picking up the skin of the white-flour bun in the steam drawer that was devoid of its meat filling, and reaching into his bowl to haphazardly smear some of the meat sauce on it, and then extremely quickly stuffed it into his mouth, chewing it up in a big gulp.

Dabao froze, realizing that a hand had passed through his bowl in a slapdash manner, and only half a day later did he react, slowly raising his head to look at the smug Fan Xian, shaking his head somewhat grudgingly, and lowering his head again to begin eating the noodles.

Outside the New Wind Pavilion, the rain was still falling, and it was so heavy that it blossomed into countless clusters of rain mist after it landed on the ground, gradually disorienting people’s eyes and making the buildings around the street hazy. A coldness landed in Kyoto along with the rain, scraping against the group of people in front of the New Wind Pavilion, trying to burrow in through their necks, borrowing people for warmth.

Fan Xian draped a windbreaker over Dabao’s body, very carefully tying the fastenings around his neck to make sure that the cold wind wouldn’t pour in, and only then did he pat his shoulder with confidence, saying, “Idle is going to do something, so Dabao will go back to the house first to play with Wan’er, okay?”

Dabao was chewing on an apple, nodded his head vaguely and said, “Sister is too fierce …… for me …… Fan …… Little Fatty to play. ”

Fan Xian understood what he meant and laughed, thinking in his heart, if all the officials and courtiers in this world, the line traders, the prostitutes and the poets, could have such a simple and calm heart as Dabao’s, perhaps their own lives would be much simpler and easier, wouldn’t they?

After carefully giving a few words of advice to Tou Zi Jing, Fan’s carriage took the young master back to his residence. Deng Ziyue glanced at Fan Xian and asked in a deep voice, “My lord, where are you going at this hour?”

“To the Yan Mansion.”