Chapter 55: Growing Up Overnight

One person’s sadness did not bring down the entire Chen Garden, especially since the sadness on Fan Xian’s face always made people feel a bit urged and mocked. Sitting in her wheelchair, Chen Pingping looked at the young man in front of her and couldn’t help but smile.

Five years had passed since Fan Xian first met Chen Pingping, and during these five years he had seen Chen Pingping aging, being silent, and had experienced the fearfulness of this elder, but had never realized that Chen Pingping’s smile would one day look so pure, as pure as a child.

The darkness that habitually shrouded the wheelchair had long since disappeared for unknown reasons, and today Chen Pingping looked like a believer who had been a vegetarian all his life, with a fresh and joyful air all over his body that seemed to be transparent from the inside out.

Fan Xian looked at his face in a daze, knowing that the phase is born from the heart, but do not know what kind of heart journey, so that Chen Pingping has become today’s appearance. The old man’s eyes were a bit pale and indifferent, but not in an unfeeling kind of coldness, just smoothly, faintly looking at Fan Xian, slowly speaking, “What else is there besides that poison?”

“There’s a lot more, we’ve talked about it before.” Fan Xian sighed, stared at Chen Pingping’s eyes, and said, “You told Mr. Fei to pass by Dongyi City and try to do everything he could to keep the Four Gu Swords alive ……”

As this sentence began, Fan Xian no longer used an inquisitive tone, but began to exit word for word as if stating a fact.

“Bitter Lotus is trying to do everything he can to prolong your life because he can see clearly with those eyes of his that as long as you live longer, the greater the likelihood of a flop between you and His Majesty.” Fan Xian lowered his head and continued, “You let the Four Guards Sword live for a long time because you’ve long since thought of having the Sword Lodge side poke holes in the Shadow’s identity, thus forcing His Majesty to make a move against you.”

“Force?” Chen Pingping laughed, as if she had heard a very interesting word.

Fan Xian was not impressed by the old man’s smile, sighed, and said, “Regarding your poisoning three years ago, it certainly seems clear now. You took this opportunity to not enter the capital and let the eldest princess and the empress dowager fool around in Kyoto, nominally following His Majesty’s secret order to let the dogs into the courtyard, but in reality, you were harboring greater thoughts.”

He scoffed to himself, “At that time, my situation was more critical, and I didn’t think deeply for a while, and only later did I figure out that Yuan Hongdao, the chief strategist of the Eldest Princess, and Yan Ruohai, the most trusted spy of the Supervisory Court of the old master of the Qin family, which are your close friends, and even though you are in the four wilds, you have an incomparably clear picture of the situation of the rebellion, and there are two people like this who are helping you in the shadows, so that if you want to control the situation on behalf of His Majesty, it would never be possible to let Kyoto be the place for the rebellion. situation, it would never be so bad that Kyoto would be in chaos like that.”

Chen Pingping laughed, her voice a little sharp: “Then you say, why didn’t I control the situation?”

“You would have wanted the situation to be more chaotic, you hated to let everyone in the palace die clean.” Fan Xian lowered his head and said quietly, “His Majesty set a fire, but you let the fire burn a little …… too strong and burned too many people to death. You had counted on, in the end, the heavens and earth would be white, and in the end, there would be just the two of us, me and the boss, left to clean up the mess.”

“The problem is, there’s still one thing you haven’t understood, why do I have to betray His Majesty? Could it be that I have the ability to make the entire Kyoto, leaving only the two of you and the Prince of Peace behind?”

“You have the ability to do this, I never doubted this, if His Majesty really died in Dadongshan then …… Yuan Hongdao and Yan Ruohai’s two people didn’t even have their roles fully played out, you just threw Yuan Hongdao away.” Fan Xian looked at Chen Pingping and felt a strange taste flooding his mouth, some bitter and some sour, “As for why you betrayed His Majesty, you and I both know it in our hearts.”

Chen Pingping laughed, slapping the armrests of the wheelchair, like slapping a powerful firecracker in the wind, buzzing. After a long silence, he stared dead into Fan Xian’s eyes, as if he were staring at the same young man from many years ago, and said grimly, “Shouldn’t I?”

Fan Xian was silent, he simply didn’t know how to answer this sentence, as a son of man, of course he couldn’t say that he shouldn’t, he had even been shocked by Chen Pingping’s deep and bone-deep nostalgia for Ye Qingmei and that desire for vengeance that was strong enough to burn everything down.

Chen Pingping was the emperor’s closest minister, since childhood also served in the Cheng Wang House, he met with Ye Qingmei very late, the time spent together must not be too long. But it was because of such a woman who was generally a passer-by in his life, the darkest secret service chief in the entire world, hid a dagger in his heart, hiding it for more than twenty years, stabbing his heart, stabbing everyone’s heart.

Chen Pingping suddenly lay back on top of the wheelchair tiredly and said, “You don’t understand back then, you don’t understand.”

As for what happened back then, Fan Xian was not personally involved, so naturally he did not dare to easily say that he understood. He was just silent, calculating, and holding back, not knowing how to deal with it at all. If the relationship between people was just one of hatred, perhaps the world would be much simpler, but the relationship between people was always this complicated.

“The second reason why you took the poison, I also figured it out.” Fan Xian looked at Chen Pingping’s ancient eyes, suddenly the tip of his heart throbbed, feeling that things in the human world are indeed a bit hurtful and hurtful, and said, “You had thought that his majesty would never be able to come back from the Dadong Mountain, and you destroyed his kingdom, and since you were both monarchs and ministers for one life, you went to the Yellow Springs and accompanied him for a while, and you were considered to be a full monarch and minister.”

Chen Pingping closed her eyes and said, “After all, I watched His Majesty grow up from a child to a generation of emperors, I know him too well, he is a person who is very afraid of loneliness, I am worried that he will be scared alone on the path to the netherworld, so I want to go and accompany him.”

“Accompany him?” Fan Xian’s voice etched harshly, “He’s killed enough people, and there won’t be fewer people to accompany him on the road to the Yellow Springs, so do you need to be like this?”

He calmed his emotions and said in a deep voice, “Not to mention that he’s not dead.”

“It’s always hard to ask someone to die.” For the first time in front of Fan Xian, Chen Pingping sighed these words out and looked at him and said leisurely, “I never underestimate His Majesty, so before plotting and in the midst of my actions, I am always incredibly cautious and prepared for all the anticipations of failure, and even if I fail, I won’t leave behind any handles, much less drag you down.”

Fan Xian looked at Chen Pingping, and a very strong feeling of admiration suddenly arose in his heart. He was too familiar with this old cripple, there were many things that the other party did not hide from him, so he knew more about what Chen Pingping had done than that emperor’s old man in the palace.

In this world, the only person who could secretly plan against His Majesty and yet be able to hide it from Him was probably Chen Pingping. This founder of the Procuratorate was simply too strong in terms of intrigue, so strong that she did not even deliberately weave anything, but simply followed the general trend of the world, occasionally smearing a few strokes of thick black color, and then she had once plunged His Majesty and the Kingdom of Qing into a potentially irreversible situation.

It was just that the Emperor himself was too powerful, so powerful that he could easily tear apart all plots and tricks. However, Chen Pingping was also really powerful, even so, he still did not reveal any subtle loopholes, and even arranged a retreat from many years ago.

Chen Pingping didn’t care about life and death, he cared about the way back was the safety of Fan Xian after his own death, so from the beginning of the Hanging Temple after the shadow accidentally stabbed Fan Xian, he began to arrange all these things, including the sniping in the valley, and even also included that thing in the palace, all of them were he was cutting off from Fan Xian.

Even if one day in the future, these things that were hidden in the very depths would become the cut between Chen Pingping and Fan Xian, and in front of those painstakingly investigated evidences, the emperor would naturally believe that Chen Pingping was trying to kill Fan Xian, and that Fan Xian naturally had nothing to do with what happened to Chen Pingping.

As for why Chen Pingping wanted to kill Fan Xian, that was a question for the Emperor to ponder. The two pieces of evidence that Fan Xian had been seriously injured and nearly died in the Hanging Temple incident, and that the valley had been as close as it could get, were too strong.

Fan Xian could feel Chen Pingping’s painstaking efforts, looking at his aged face, experiencing the freshness of the other party floating out from his heart, his heart was touched, but he didn’t know what to say.

Chen Pingping’s face was incredibly calm, and said, “These things should be things that you already figured out three years ago. That day when the Chen Garden was not restored, you had also said similar things. Why do you want to have another go at it today?”

“His Majesty will always be moved to suspicion, especially since you played such a trick again over at Dong Yi City.” Fan Xian said, “I only came to pick these things apart with you.”

“The Dongyi City side was something that was arranged three years ago, and I’ve let it go since I promised you to let it go.” Chen Pingping said with a smile.

“I don’t care, since you want to let go, be thorough.” Fan Xian said, “His Majesty has already made me the President of the Supervisory Academy, so you can retire completely.”

“Retirement? That’s no different from the current life.”

Fan Xian smiled wryly and said, “You’re still saying this in front of me? If you don’t want to, even if I’m the head of the Supervisory Academy for another ten years, this Supervisory Academy will still be yours.”

“Oh no.” Chen Pingping also laughed and said, “The Supervisory Academy is His Majesty’s.”

“Oh no.” Fan Xian learned his tone and sighed, “Twenty percent of the Supervisory Academy is His Majesty’s, thirty percent is mine, but half of it is yours, forever.”

Having been in the Supervisory Yuan for so long, Fan Xian was of course well aware of what a thrilling degree of control the old cripple in front of him had over the Supervisory Yuan, and that the so-called His Majesty’s private secret service had long since become this man’s private organization under Chen Pingping’s pale hand. This is partly because the emperor never suspected the loyal dogs around him, and partly because Chen Pingping’s prestige in the Supervisory Yuan was too high, and there were too many officials who swore allegiance to him.

Fan Xian didn’t even doubt that if the palace issued a decree to deal with Chen Pingping, people like Yan Ruohai and the bald organizers of the Seven Divisions wouldn’t even think about it and would stand behind Chen Pingping.

All for the sake of the Kingdom of Qing? In the hearts of the general officials of the Supervisory Yuan, Qing Guo might be His Majesty the Emperor, but in the hearts of those mid-level officials who could truly wield power, there was nothing else but Chen Pingping.

“Well …… what exactly do you want to do?” Chen Pingping looked at Fan Xian with an admiring expression on her face and asked, which seemed like a very unusual question, and like some sort of alternation between the two Presidents of the Supervisory Academy.

Fan Xian, however, suddenly hung his head a bit and said, “I’ve already met with Yan Bingyun before I came here today, and I’ve asked him to start preparing to gather the eight divisions of the Supervisory Academy, as well as all four branch offices in the counties, and chop off all the possibilities …… that you have of reaching out to the academy, except that it’s clear to me that, if you don’t stop yourself, by virtue of the fact that Yan Bingyun and I, there really isn’t too good a method.”

“Letting Yan Bingyun deal with his old man?” Chen Pingping laughed and said, “That’s not a bad move, although the old man he has to deal with is definitely a lot more than he thought.”

The old men mentioned in this sentence naturally referred to those in the upper echelon of officials in the Supervisory Court who were loyal to Chen Pingping.

Fan Xian sat forward and gently held Chen Pingping’s wrinkled hands and said, “Let go.”

“Let go what are you still holding my hands for?” Chen Pingping smiled and said, “You can try to come and cut off my hands reaching out to the courtyard, but I can assure you that the old men are more powerful than you think.”

Nonsense, those old men were the first nest of eggs laid by the Supervisory Academy at the beginning of the Dragon Flag, and there were an unknown number of disciples and grandchildren in the academy, so of course it would be incredibly difficult to try and sweep these old men clean. Fan Xian cursed in his heart, and said in annoyance, “You said that our masters and sons have gotten along well over the years, and there is no difference between a father and a son, and at this point in time, we still have to fight with me?”

“The key question is, you haven’t convinced me why I should let go.” Chen Pingping’s gaze was extremely interesting.

Fan Xian was silent for a moment before saying, “His Majesty is already looking into that valley sniping incident, as well as the Hanging Temple incident, and one day he will suspect your head. Even if he can’t get any evidence, but this thing is always a little menacing …… And you also know that his majesty, this person, since so many people died in the palace, his temperament has changed a lot, if it is changed into the past years, I’m afraid that the slightest suspicion in his heart, he will start to use the thunderous means, but he hasn’t been able to do so. ”

This is true, the Supervisory Yuan is one of the emperor’s most relied upon forces, his trust in Chen Pingping is also an anomaly in the world, if once he found out that Chen Pingping had some other implications in his heart, in exchange for the emperor of that year, I’m afraid that he would have already been furious.

“We have talked about this topic before.” Chen Pingping nodded and said, “His Majesty always has a few feelings for me, even if he moves some suspicion, he is not willing to directly lay his hands on me, he is more willing …… to wait for me to die of old age.”

“Yes. The problem is that you always don’t die.” Fan Xian laughed and said, “It’s fine if you don’t die, but your heart doesn’t die either. So I have to ask you to leave Kyoto and go back to your hometown to find your first love.”

Chen Pingping laughed and cursed twice, then suddenly opened her mouth and asked, “If I don’t back out, what will you do.”

“I would start doing it.” Fan Xian said after a moment of silence, “Even if I have to make a very bad mess in the Supervisory Court, I’ll still knock you down.”

“With what reason?”

“Of course, it’s because I found out that behind the valley sniping, there was the shadow of Dean Chen, and as a prince and the next Dean of the Supervisory Academy, I took a hateful shot and wanted to put you to death.” Fan Xian bowed his head and said, “No matter if I could win the fight in the end, His Majesty would always think that, as it turned out that I had found out about this matter myself, he watched me fight, and in the end, he sent a decree to drive you out of the capital, on one hand, it fulfilled my wishes and filled my grievances, and on the other hand, it preserved your life, and fully satisfied your love for each other.”

Chen Pingping’s florid white eyebrows picked up and said, “I suppose you also used this matter to convince Yan Bingyun?”

Fan Xian nodded.

“Using a non-existent grudge to cover up the true ferocity within.” Chen Pingping pondered for a long time and nodded, “You’ve improved too much now compared to before.”

Fan Xian smiled and said, “I thought about utilizing this after thinking about it for a month and knowing that the inner court had started to look into the valley.”

Chen Pingping smiled somewhat wearily, he knew what Fan Xian was worried about, why he had to go through so much trouble to force himself to leave Kyoto as well. Just like how Fan Xian had been touched in his heart earlier, this lonely, lifelong head of the secret service suddenly felt that his heart had become much warmer as well.

“I promise you that I will leave Kyoto.” Chen Pingping gently patted Fan Xian’s hand.

Fan Xian was overjoyed and laughed, then said, “There should be no problem with this, once in the Hanging Temple and once in the valley, both times I narrowly escaped death at your hands, and regardless of what the inner court found out, it will only become a footnote to your gloomy departure from Kyoto.”

“It’s also funny to think that at that time, you rushed into the Chen Garden in a wheelchair and yelled at me.” Chen Pingping smiled.

Fan Xian smiled and shook his head, at that time, he really didn’t understand why Chen Pingping wanted to do all these things, it was only later, when he was completely awakened by the Princess that it became clear to him what exactly Chen Pingping wanted to do, and why she had been carefully preparing to cut herself off from herself completely.

“Back then, the bloodshed in Taiping Buyeon, it was Qin Ye who did it, right?” Fan Xian suddenly spoke up.

Chen Pingping glanced at him and said faintly, “Qin Ye is just a dog of His Majesty.”

Fan Xian was silent for a long time, then said, “The Qin family is going to rebel in the end just because of my existence?”

“Of course, you are Ye Qingmei’s son.” Chen Pingping laughed, “That old dog, Qin Ye, has been covered up by His Majesty for so many years, yet he understands His Majesty’s mind too well. If His Majesty intends to reuse you all the time, then it must be impossible for you to know that story …… of that year Qin Ye was the only loophole in that story that survived.”

“If His Majesty wants to help you to the throne and wants to preserve the love between your father and son, he must silence you, and Qin Ye must die.” Chen Pingping said calmly, “So Qin Ye had to rebel.”

In the past, Chen Pingping had always insisted that she refused to make it clear to Fan Xian, but it was just that it had already come to this day, and there was no longer that insistence necessary to make a cover-up, no longer wanting to drag Fan Xian into the sewage of that year.

“Indeed.” Fan Xian took a deep breath, the warm breath of spring entered his lungs, but it burned his chest hot and spicy, although he had guessed these things long ago, but today, hearing Chen Pingping confirm it herself, it was still hard to restrain himself from starting to burn.

“Three years ago you asked why the Qin family rebelled.” Chen Pingping suddenly looked at him with extreme interest and asked, “With your gaze, you shouldn’t be able to see so far-reaching. Who reminded you of this? Fan Jian?”

“Father never says this to me.” Fan Xian gave a bitter smile and said, “It was the eldest princess.”

This name spat out from Fan Xian’s lips, and Chen Pingping became a little quieter, her eyes looking at the green trees outside the window as she said faintly, “This crazy girl is also a marvelous character, she doesn’t even know what happened back then, yet she guessed the past just from these details, it’s really impressive.”

“When Kyoto rebelled, were you in contact with the eldest princess?” Fan Xian asked a question that had been hidden for a long time, because at that time, the reaction of the Supervisory Yuan was really a bit strange, even though His Majesty the Emperor had planned it so that Chen Pingping would lure out the unstable factors in Kyoto, but Chen Pingping’s response was also too odd, especially on the side of the Eldest Princess, who seemed to have not been deliberately paying attention to the movements of the Supervisory Yuan.

“No.” Chen Pingping said with her eyes closed, “There are many things that don’t need to be connected, only need to guess each other’s mind and each other’s purpose. The most marvelous plotting in the world is just a flash of inspiration, all without warning, and each other’s minds hitched to a place …… once it falls on paper.”

“About these things, you have to learn from your dead mother in law.” Chen Pingping opened her eyes and said with a smile.

Fan Xian smiled faintly and nodded.

Chen Pingping then, at this moment, suddenly asked softly, “Now that you know enough, what do you plan to do in the future?”

Fan Xian was silent for a long time, then spoke, “I don’t know.”

Chen Pingping sighed with some slight disappointment.

“Is there any evidence?” Fan Xian’s voice trembled slightly, “Even a little bit of evidence.”

“A lot of things in the world don’t need evidence, only the heart. It was only a few years ago that I confirmed that the person had moved and strengthened his heart.”

Chen Pingping’s words were quite similar to the Four Guards Sword’s Sword Dao, “That day, when the army was marching westward, His Majesty was near Dingzhou, and your father was accompanying the army, while the Northern Qi army suddenly marched southward, and I led the Supervisory Court northward to Yanjing ……”

“Ye Chong was also replaced in the rear ranks of the Western Expedition Army.” Chen Pingping simply stated a fact indifferently, “The most crucial thing is that your mother had just given birth to you not long ago at that time, and it was the time when she was weak after giving birth.”

Fan Xian’s two eyebrows gradually furrowed as he asked, “What about Uncle Wuzhu? I’ve never understood why he left my mother’s side at that time.”

“Someone came from the temple.” Chen Pingping smiled slightly and said, “The messenger appeared on the continent …… Although I have never been clear about where exactly your mother came from, I can guess that she has always had some involvement with the Five Bamboos and the Divine Temple, and that the Five Bamboos have always been very scrupulous about anything related to the Divine Temple. ”

“The Divine Temple has come more than once, at least twice that I know of.” Chen Pingping sighed and said, “Once they came, the Five Bamboos killed them once. At that time in the world, it seemed that the only people who could threaten your mother were the divine temple’s comers, and the Five Bamboos simply wouldn’t allow those divine temple comers to come within a hundred miles of your mother.”

“So the Five Bamboos left.”

“And yet your mother still died.”

“Died at the hands of …… her own people.”

Chen Pingping laughed oddly, the three words “own people” pronounced extraordinarily heavily.

Fan Xian also laughed, smiling with extra heart, then stood up, patted Chen Pingping’s shoulder, and said, “I have long guessed these things, only after I heard it from your mouth did I realize that it felt so real, well, you should not think about these things anymore.”

Chen Pingping smiled and asked, “The box should still be in your hands, right? Where is the Five Bamboos?”

Fan Xian smiled somewhat bitterly and said a moment later, “The box is not there, Uncle Wuzhu left for something.”

Chen Pingping let out a hmm, once again not hiding her faint disappointment in front of Fan Xian.

Fan Xian suddenly asked in a slightly different way, “You know …… that the box is in my hands?”

“That old man of yours knows it too.” Chen Pingping said, “That’s why that old man of yours didn’t know.”

Fan Xian moved slightly, it took a long time for him to digest the shock in his heart, thinking that his father who had already returned to his old age turned out to be in the shadows, and did not know how many things he had done for himself, a trace of nostalgia couldn’t help but arise in his heart, and he patted Chen Pingping’s thin shoulders once again, and said with a smile, “You told me to learn from the dead Elder Princess, but I see that you should learn from my father who is still alive, and that the time to release is when to release, and that the time to retreat is when to retreat. and retreat when it is time to retreat.”

He put both his hands on Chen Pingping’s shoulders, exerted a slight force, and said, “Leave the future matters to me.”

Chen Pingping smiled, did not say anything, only thought in her heart, with this child’s temperament, I am afraid that he will have to continue to see and simmer down, but I do not know when he will have to see and simmer down to. The world is full of bitter people, and Fan Xian’s life is undoubtedly the most bitter of all.

At the thought of this, Chen Pingping suddenly felt that she and Fan Jian’s painstaking efforts over the past twenty years had not been in vain, at least Fan Xian grew up healthily, and grew up so fast …… that it seemed to have taken only a night’s time.