Chapter 38 – The Clearing After the Autumn Rain

Fan Xian walked down the street somewhat senselessly, the rain soaked into his clothes, icy wet piece, but his heart was still on fire. At this moment, he looked at the streets of this Kyoto of Qing, the four-wheeled carriages walking on the streets, the glass windows of the homes of the rich and powerful along the streets, and the kaleidoscopes that he had seen in the past, those slippery soaps …… all of these things, in this instant, connected with him.

It seemed as if the breath of his mother was imprinted in all these things! This street, this house, this world, everywhere smelled of that woman.

That letter ended with the words, “Old Mother is lonely.”

Before today, Fan Xian was also lonely, but from today, he was no longer lonely. He laughed loudly in the rainy street, and his laughter traveled so far that it woke up some pedestrians who had already taken advantage of the rainy night to go to sleep early.

Some cursed him.

He still smiled.

Ye Qingmei was definitely not the schoolgirl lookalike shown in the letter, this was something Fan Xian was very convinced of, that his own old lady possessed an incomparably strong heart, so that she could have such a brilliant life in this completely strange world, by means of strange sunlight.

This familiar yet unfamiliar country of Qing, you are sorry for that woman called Ye Qingmei.

The rain hit Fan Xian’s face forcefully, he was like a monster, gradually blending in with the dark night, perhaps this box was not fundamentally helpful to his life, but a feeling of not being alone, let him walk in this world, this rainy night, will become more and more comfortable.

Fan Xian walked alone in the wind and rain, but laughed, since it is to swing round to live, we have to live a bit more elegant, just like the sister said, when we look back, don’t always feel that their face is written with the word “suffocation”.

Autumn winds and rains are sad and murderous.

Night into the palace of things naturally can not be so forgettable, has not been formally on the stage of the Kyoto guard Ye major people, after receiving the imperial order, began to start investigating this matter. Although his official position for the Kyoto guard, but in recent years has been aimed at leading the west of the Dingzhou remote protection of Kyoto, rushed back to Kyoto, things have been over three days.

The palace of the discerning person naturally clear, why his majesty will choose him, one is because of the Ye family lineage by the imperial grace, loyalty, by his majesty’s degree of trust, only in Chen Pingping below. And Lord Chen Pingping, naturally, it is impossible to drag the crippled body to investigate this in his view very sesame big thing. Secondly, it was because the top three figures in the Palace’s forbidden guard system all seemed to be under the gaze of suspicion.

Ye Chong also knows that this matter is very complicated, the great inner guards commander Yan Xiaoyi was many years ago by the eldest princess discovery, a martial arts to say the first in the palace, vice commander Gong Dian but his own teacher brother, and that always unobtrusive and unobtrusive Eunuch Hong …… exempted, even Ye Chong does not want to go to mess with.

Moreover, Ye Chong would not even try to suspect these three people, he was just curious about what kind of purpose the second person who sneaked into the palace had, and why he would kill the Eldest Princess’s personal palace maid outside Guangxin Palace.

The investigation was carried out in the dark, the Supervisory Yuan due to the leakage of the head of the secret spy of Northern Qi, angered His Majesty the Emperor, cooperation is also a bit wan and weak, so it is simply difficult to have substantial progress.

Until one day, Ye Chong came to the Hall of Containing Light after carefully checking several palaces. Then he smelled a trace of a very faint foreign fragrance, and immediately thought of the old poisonous creature that followed His Majesty in the middle army tent during the Northern Expedition back then. Then recalling the guards’ words that that night when the assassins came, that Northern Qi great Zhuang Mo Han was also in Guangxin Palace, Ye Chong, who understood the cruelty of the palace struggle, guessed things off to the side, off to the side of abnormality.

So he immediately entered the palace to His Majesty the Emperor to ask for forgiveness and resignation, crouching on the ground, full of shame.

“Is it impossible to find out, or do you not dare to investigate?” His Majesty’s face always had that smile that seemed to see everything, and the real close ministers would occasionally wonder if this was a royal tactic, but Ye Chong knew clearly what kind of wisdom his loyal Majesty possessed, so he answered honestly, “I can’t find out, and I don’t dare to find out, and it is really inconvenient for foreign ministers to embark on royal matters.”

“Secretary Ye, are you not afraid that I will reprimand you for serving your master disloyally, not separating public and private affairs, and not sparing your life?”

Ye Chong fear not dare to get up, should say: “I do not dare to guess your majesty’s heart, just stupid do not know where to start investigating.”

“There is no need to investigate this matter, I have my own judgment.” His Majesty’s smile has some coldness in it, Ye Chong kneeling but did not see clearly.

And say the other side, the real suspect Fan Xian these days is still hiding in the mansion, mainly after his poetry fame, in the Taichang Temple to go to the point of drinking tea, or to Honglu Temple cold eyes, have become very extravagant imagination.

Temperance judgment of their own, the Northern Qi mission has left Kyoto, but the city of Dongyi is still delayed for some time.

Waiting for the wind really faded, Dongyi City delegation left many silver, but also some of the taste to leave Kyoto. They didn’t realize that the fact that the Qing Empire didn’t imprison all of them after the nightly visit to the palace was already the result of His Majesty’s magnanimity.

Nowadays, Fan Xian was truly famous in Kyoto, and no longer did anyone only bet their eyes on the forces behind him, but instead focused on him in person. After all, he was the only one in the world who was able to provoke a generation of great masters, Zhuang Mohan, to the point of vomiting blood on the spot, not to mention that he was still so young.

As if by mutual agreement, the Crown Prince and the Second Prince simultaneously increased their efforts to draw him in, Li Hongcheng brought Roujia to the mansion from time to time for tea, and Xin Shaoqing also came to visit on the pretext that he had not seen him for many days.

But Fan Xian still had a lot of things to do at this time, so he temporarily pushed both sides away. In the midst of the night banquet plan, he had only accomplished two parts, one being the successful finding of the key, and the other being the near-successful framing of Yun Zhilan of Dongyi City, which had caused the imperial court to increase its surveillance efforts, leaving this ninth ranked expert so burnt out that until he left Kyoto, he was simply unable to entertain the idea of finding himself in a duel to secure his own life.

Discovering that the Eldest Princess had colluded with Northern Qi this material, but he had been waiting for the right time to sprinkle it into the pot.

When the Dongyi City mission left Kyoto two days later, Fan Xian knew the time had come.

There was no way for Fan Xian to capitalize on the hidden agreement between the Princess and the young Emperor of Northern Qi to beat people up, as there was no documentary evidence or witnesses for such things. Fan Xian also didn’t dare to go and meet the saint, although with his fame in the capital nowadays, it wasn’t a difficult thing to meet the saint, but his heart had a very complicated presumption about that emperor, and he couldn’t guarantee that the emperor, in order to preserve the face of the royal family, would not kill himself to silence him after learning about the scandal of the eldest princess.

If it was an ordinary citizen of Qing, after encountering such a situation, he could only hide this secret in his heart forever, not daring to talk to others for the rest of his life, suffocating until he vomited blood and died.

But Fan Xian would not, he was a person with two lives of memories and two lives of knowledge, he knew the importance of public opinion propaganda, the lethality, and he also knew that he should use crazier means to deal with a crazy Rapunzel.

After the night banquet, the Xishan Paper Workshop, which monopolized the paper in Kyoto, and the related industries of the inner treasury were still touching the business of the Tanya Bookstore from time to time, only that the Rapunzel’s side didn’t have the means to instruct the eight divisions of the Supervisory Yuan, and so it was just some small knocks and small strikes. Fan Xian understood that this was just the calm on the eve of a storm.

And he decided to strike before the storm came.

That night, Five Bamboo stood in the corner and listened to him, since opening the chest, Five Bamboo came to Fan’s house significantly more often, seemingly more worried about Fan Xian’s safety. Fan Xian pondered as he said, “If you want to leave no traces, then use robbery for everything.”

Five Bamboo sidled up to show that he understood what he meant.

Fan Xian continued, “The ones who are suppressing the business of the Tanyu Bookstore these days are the Xishan Paper Workshop of the Inner Treasury and the Wan Song Tang, so we’ll have to rob the Inner Treasury’s paper and then use the Wan Song Tang’s ink. Just …… Uncle, the words you wrote, has anyone in this world read them?”

Five Bamboos said coldly, “Don’t worry.”

Knowing that his seemingly useless and absurd plan would work, Fan Xian smiled and said, “Things like flyers don’t have to be too big.” He used both hands to gesture the size, “The key is to have many copies, to post them everywhere, to sprinkle them, especially in places like the Imperial College, and the College of Teaching that was changed back to the Wen Yuan Pavilion, you have to post a few more copies, the students are young and hot-blooded, and are most likely to be stirred up, and those bachelors in the Wen Yuan Pavilion, who like to play with their bones as well, are expected to be furious and pull out their beards when they see the flyers. ”

Five Bamboo said coldly, “Content.”

Fan Xian raised his eyebrows and sighed, “You really are like an underground party member yourself.”

He began to recapitulate in detail how the flyer should be provocative, making sure to tell details that seemed to be true, such as how the eldest princess conversed with Zhuang Mohan, how Yan Bingyun had suffered from lurking in Beiqi, how she had been mercilessly abandoned by the nobles of the palace, what kind of benefits the eldest princess had gained by harming the court’s interests and seeking her own, how many bogus eunuchs she had kept in the palace, and how many of her old lovers were out there ……

Five Bamboos calmly analyzed, “No one would believe that the Eldest Princess would sacrifice such a great deal of interest just to seek some monetary benefits.”

Fan Xian raised his eyebrows again and said, “There aren’t many smart people like you in the world, as long as the people believe it. As for the emperor, we’re sort of giving him a heads up.”

Five Bamboo said coldly, “The emperor doesn’t need you to remind him.”