Chapter 87: I Want That Old Dog Alive

Mischievous light spots from the Taiji Hall of the bright tiles under the cool smoke ran through the heavy wooden doors of the harem, ran into the Hall of light, drilled into the Shufang Palace, some scars in the tree under the circle a few times, and finally ducked into the Palace of Guangxin has not been inhabited for a long time, that even in the beginning of the autumn in the wind of the slightly dry, and still kept emitting a ghostly sense of grievance of the cold Guangxin Palace. Palace of the white mantle has long been a remnant of the brittle yarn, there are plum no one, just brilliant, open to rotten, still lonely.

Compared with the quiet harem, the front hall around the imperial city is located, but also with the palace’s light atmosphere is not suitable, especially the green stone imperial city inside, deep in the vermilion palace wall below that room, a solemn and staid color, a few steely-eyed and cold general officer guarded outside the room, while the room does not know in the room to talk about the content of what.

“The Grand Palace doesn’t know when it will return.” Grand General Gong Dian, who had resumed his position as the commander of the Forbidden Army and was in charge of the safety and security of the entire Imperial City, stood beside that person and said slowly with some unenthusiastic feelings.

There weren’t many people in this world who could make Gong Dian stand by so honestly, and the one beside the table at this moment was naturally one of them. The Privy Council’s main envoy, the Marshal Ye who had achieved unparalleled success in the Kyoto Rebellion and was now appointed by His Majesty the Emperor to be in charge of the world’s military forces, stroked his teacup with one hand, his eyes showing a slight gravity, and did not say anything for a long time.

“Senior brother?” Perhaps it was this silence that made Gong Dian a little hard to bear, he finally couldn’t help but remind him.

“Oh.” Ye Chong seemed to have awakened from his contemplation and responded, “Little Fan Dean will be returning to the capital in a few days. It will be at least the beginning of spring when the Grand Palace will return.”

He glanced at Gong Dian, his eyes flashed with a complex emotion, and after a long time, he said in a deep voice, “What exactly do you want to ask? Even if the Grand Palace Minister returns to the capital, I’m sure that he will immediately be transferred to Yanjing City by His Majesty to prepare for the Northern Expedition. What exactly do you want to ask?”

Gong Dian was silent, both he and Ye Chong were amongst the Emperor’s close confidants, however, this afternoon, the entire Imperial Palace appeared to be calm and peaceful, but there was a hidden murderous intent that made him extremely uncomfortable. He vaguely guessed that this killing intent was related to the big man who had just left Kyoto not long ago, or else his senior brother would not be so bad that he was not in the Privy Council to see the matter, but rather calmly and quietly at the Imperial City, waiting for a whole day.

“What are you waiting for?” Gong Dian looked at Ye Chong and asked.

“I’m waiting for His Majesty’s decree.” After Ye Chong finished this sentence, thinking that His Majesty was making a decision at this moment, a trace of anxiety and uneasiness appeared in his eyes unexpectedly, with Ye Chong’s status power strength, there were too few things in this world that could make him feel such emotions, he slowly closed his eyes, not wanting Gong Dian to see this scene.

However, Gong Dian had already seen it and knew that he had finally guessed the right thing. Today, inside and outside the Imperial City, it seemed peaceful, but in reality, the dark currents were surging, the entire defense level of the forbidden army had been elevated to the most tense situation, Gong Deng had only accepted the transfer order from the inner court without knowing what exactly His Majesty, who was deep in the palace, was defending himself against. Immediately following the morning hours, the forbidden army side received a handwritten letter from the Kyoto Guard Division, which made it known that Shi Fei, leading fifteen thousand officers and men of the Kyoto Guard Division, had spread out a formation along the southward direction of Kyoto, which appeared to be a drill, and also appeared to be a preparation for a great battle.

The Privy Council also moved, the inner court also moved, in the streets and lanes of Kyoto, each part of the forces began to prepare.

To be able to mobilize so much military power and put out such a big battle in one day, it could only be His Majesty, the Emperor of the Kingdom of Qing. And in today’s world, there was only that one person who could be worthy of His Majesty’s serious and careful treatment, and who had the ability to make His Majesty consume so much of his mind.

Only that one person could make Ye Chong, the honorable Minister of the Privy Council, feel unsettled and anxious while waiting for His Majesty’s final decree.

With all the circumstances intertwined, Gong Dian finally confirmed that His Majesty was going to make a move against President Chen!

“Why?” Gong Dian’s throat was a little dry, and he took a seat beside Ye Chong, lifting the cold tea and drinking it in one go, but it still didn’t quench the fear that was burning inside.

The forbidden army protecting the palace, the mobilization of the guard division and the Privy Council was undoubtedly a setup against the Kyoto Inspectorate. However, no matter if it was His Majesty the Emperor, Major Marshal Ye, or the Palace Canon, once they thought that it was Chen Pingping that they would be dealing with today. None of them had full confidence. Only these characters at the topmost class of the Qing Dynasty knew what kind of powerful strength Chen Pingping, the dry and thin old cripple, possessed in his hands, although this person was no longer the head of the Supervisory Academy today, he had been the king of the darkness of the continent for several decades, and once he was caught in a critical situation, who knew what kind of energy would erupt.

What made Gong Dian feel most terrified and even somewhat vaguely angry at His Majesty was that he simply could not find any reason or cause for the court to deal with Dean Chen!

Was it simply because of the high merit? This did not make sense at all, if this was a consideration, His Majesty might have had to kill Chen Pingping twenty years ago. Could it be that Chen Pingping had dissent? But the whole world knows that old Dean Chen is the most loyal subject beside His Majesty, if it wasn’t for him, His Majesty wouldn’t have known how many times he would have died back then.

Why? This was the one explanation that Gong Dian needed to get the most. He was beginning to feel that His Majesty was too dim! Regardless of what the world thought of the Supervisory Yuan and what they thought of Chen Pingping, the Supervisory Yuan was His Majesty’s secret service, Chen Pingping was His Majesty’s loyal dog, and His Majesty would actually risk the danger of a great chaos in the court to do such a senseless thing, what was it if it wasn’t mediocrity?

Ye Chong sat beside the small table and remained silent for a long time, not saying a word. Of course, he knew what Gong Deng’s behavior was due to, even if he had countless soldiers and horses in his hands, but knowing that today he had to deal with Chen Pingping and the entire Supervisory Yuan, he still felt a wave of shakiness and fear deep inside his heart.

Chen Pingping’s reputation is too strong, the things that are thought in that brain are not things that the general courtiers can understand, decades of history has long proved that anyone who wants to deal with Chen Pingping with plots and tricks does not end up in a good place.

Sean, who was in his heyday back then, was one of the examples, and rebellions like that of the Elder Princess and the old Qin family had even turned into a joke in general, with Old Dean Chen joining hands with His Majesty.

Ye Chong took a deep breath, and in the darkness of his square face, he brought out a color of perseverance: ”The thing you have to do is just to protect the safety of the palace, and the thing I have to do is undoubtedly to stabilize the army of my Daqing. As for those things, naturally someone else will do it.”

“You definitely have to step in, or else His Majesty wouldn’t have summoned you here today.” Gong Dian looked at his senior brother with worry, his heart was a little upset, back then, Chen Pingping was able to put in the old Qin’s house to enumerate the spies for twenty years, who knows who is Chen Pingping’s person in today’s Ye family, or even in the most reliable Dingzhou army?

“Your Majesty …… is confused.” Gong Dian thought of the fact that if His Majesty really broke with Old Dean Chen, no matter how it ended up, the entire Qing court would definitely be irreversibly damaged because of this upheaval.

“The Supervisory Yuan doesn’t necessarily oppose ……” Ye Chong closed his eyes tightly and said quietly, “His Majesty definitely has his own means of control regarding the Supervisory Yuan.”

Gong Dian, however, just shook his head, although in his heart, His Majesty is the most powerful and worthy of allegiance and worship in the world, but Chen Pingping is undoubtedly the most powerful person hidden in the darkness, the Supervisory Yuan is not so good to control, and he immediately thought of another Tsubaki terrible thing.

“If the old dean is really captured back in Kyoto.” Gong Dian stared at Ye Chong’s eyes and said through clenched teeth, “What would young Lord Fan do? Your Majesty …… is confused!”

This was the third time he had said that His Majesty was confused. As a loyal courtier, Gong Dian’s reaction today was indeed a bit too big, but it was not his fault, anyone who knew the real movement of the court today would feel cold from the bottom of their hearts.

This action, if it was targeting Chen Pingping, it was tantamount to targeting the Supervisory Court.

“Fan Xian?” Ye Chong suddenly opened his eyes and said coldly, “He has only just left Dongyi City now, once the wood has been turned, what can he change? Even if Chen Pingping has passed on the favor of succession to him, but in fact, this is ultimately His Majesty’s intention, as a human son, would Fan Xian rise up to take revenge on his father just because of an old superior?”

Gong Dian pondered carefully and nodded slowly. These two military heavyweights only thought that it was His Majesty’s intention for Fan Xian to be able to take charge of the Supervisory Court, and that Chen Pingping was merely playing a role in passing it on, but they had completely failed to think of Fan Xian’s feelings towards Chen Pingping, and the story from many years ago that this matter involved.

“Shi Fei has already taken the Kyoto Guard Division south.” Ye Chong opened his mouth and said slowly, “I only hope that the fluctuations caused by this matter will be smaller.”

“Impossible.” Gong Dian broke Marshal Ye’s fantasy very directly. They were all subjects of the Qing Kingdom, and they all hoped that with the current situation being so favorable, the Qing Kingdom could maintain stability and harmony, and that it could move at the set pace, calmly and powerfully towards the most glorious day, however, everyone knew that the war between His Majesty and Chen Pingping would surely cause a great ditch to be created in this land.

“I don’t know what His Majesty is thinking.” Ye Chong’s face was like iron as he said word by word, “I only know that since His Majesty wants to take Dean Chen, it must be that the Dean has done something.”

Gong Dian shook his head and said, “I don’t think so.”

If His Majesty, the great Emperor of Qing was like the deity in the midst of the sunlight, unattainable, radiant, and reigning over the world, then Chen Pingping, who had been in charge of the Supervisory Academy for decades, was like the king in the darkness, who had always been careful to hide behind His Majesty’s radiance, accomplishing things for His Majesty that were inconvenient for him to do, and manipulating some of the contraptions in the darkness on behalf of the State of Qing.

For decades, the Qing Dynasty’s courtroom had been moving forward in the struggle between the civil official system and the Supervisory Yuan, no matter if it was the powerful prime minister Lin Ruofu back then, or the later Munxia Zhongshu Ducha, no one was able to shake Chen Pingping’s position in the courtroom, and no one was able to diminish His Majesty’s holy favor and trust in Chen Pingping.

Officials have long been accustomed to this, has died, they think that his majesty and Chen Pingping is a pair of monarchs and ministers between the anomalies, perhaps will know each other until the white head, and then old age and death, is still such a light and dark intertwined, monarchs and ministers mutual trust, is really a pair of birth, the earth to create a pair.

That’s why Gong Dian will be afraid, Ye Chong will be anxious, they dare not imagine, once the conflict between light and darkness, will tear out how many horrible energy to, and those energies, I’m afraid that not a large army can be resolved by pressing the city.

Shi Fei, who knew the inside story and was rushing towards the southeast of Kyoto, was the one with the heaviest heart, he, like Gong Dian, couldn’t figure out why His Majesty had to lay hands on old Dean Chen, obviously the old Dean had already resigned from all his duties and wanted to return to his hometown for his retirement, so why would His Majesty make a move at this time? Most crucially, why himself?

Shi Fei couldn’t help but shiver a few times when he thought that he would have to go and face Chen Pingping, even when he was speeding in the warm breeze of early fall. He would rather face the murderous barbarians of the Western Hu, and that Uesugi Tiger of Northern Qi who used his army like a god, but he was not willing to face that old cripple who only had a few hundred men with him and dozens of women.

He led four thousand elite soldiers, who had long ago reached a mountain not far from Dazhou, and waited nervously and helplessly for that moment to come. It was good that his majesty had never made his decree clear, he could not have to send out troops now, he wished he could never send out troops, he was waiting for his majesty to change his mind, or to save his own life.

The moment he left the city, Shi Fei, the general, returned to the capital to capture Director Chen, he already had the vision of exchanging his life for his own.

He rode on his horse, looking back in the direction of Kyoto, his eyes narrowed slightly, secretly praying that His Majesty’s final decree would never come.

Eunuch Yao stood quietly in the imperial study. The earlier words with trembling were just the duty he should do as a lackey, just like all the generals and ministers’ lackeys in the Qing Kingdom, he was not willing to see His Majesty and President Chen flip out.

However, following Hong Si Itch, Eunuch Yao, who had become the court commander within the Qing Kingdom, knew too many insider secrets and thought he knew the reason why His Majesty had suddenly developed such great murderous intent towards old Dean Chen, so he just stood nervously and uneasily at the side, not daring to say anything at all.

The Emperor was still thinking. Earlier, a trace of perplexity also involuntarily surfaced in his eyes, for the emperor’s heart like the sky, this perplexity was an emotion that had not appeared for many years, perhaps only Chen Pingping, the companion who had accompanied him since his childhood, the loyal and unswerving lackey who had saved his own life many times, opened up the mountains for the Kingdom of Qing, and made countless achievements, would cause him to fall into this kind of emotion.

There were thin copies of several dossiers on the table in front of him. One was the internal court investigation into the strange assassination of the third prince in the deep palace during the rebellion in Kyoto. One was the covert investigation of the Hanging Temple matter, especially as it involved those disputes between the six divisions of the Supervisory Yuan that actually hosted the Shadow and the Four Gu Swords in the Dongyi City Lord’s Mansion in the spring of this year, as well as Fan Xian’s covertly sending the Shadow to the south of the Yangtze River after his serious injuries. The third was the valley sniping Fan Xian back then, the anomalies that arose in the Supervisory Yuan on that day, and the process that occurred when those two city-guard crossbows were transported out of the inner library, the C Square.

The fourth investigation dossier was the thickest, but the things recorded were also the most vague, the inner court and the court secretly investigated for three whole years, but in front of the Supervisory Yuan, under Chen Pingping’s deliberate cover-up, Emperor Qing also only found a hint of the flavor without any solid evidence, what this dossier said was that the fire in Kyoto’s Hui Chun Hall, the defection of someone in the three divisions of the Supervisory Yuan, and the things were directly referring to the inner palace, the Crown Prince, the Elder Princess, and the The night of the thunderstorm.

There is also a fifth, sixth ……

“Lao San, Lao Er, Cheng Qian, Yun Rui ……” The emperor’s face was somewhat faintly white, he picked up a thin dossier, put it aside, then he would say a name, threw four copies, said four names.

Finally he picked up a few copies of the dossier, his knuckles slightly hard, gently set aside, sighing, “This is An Zhi.”

The emperor slowly raised his head, the confusion in his eyes long gone, what was there was just a faint touch of sadness and a self-deprecating sneer, “My most loyal subject once tried to kill all of my sons, or rather forced me to kill these sons.”

His brows furrowed, “What surprises me the most is that this old dog didn’t even spare An Zhi, in the first place, if it wasn’t for An Zhi’s great life, I’m afraid that he would have already died at his hands.”

Emperor Qing slowly shook his head and took a deep breath, his eyes were slightly made of coldness as he said quietly, “Bring that old dog back, I want to ask him what is going on here.”

Eunuch Yao didn’t dare to say more, he bowed deeply and marched towards the outside of the imperial study, his legs were almost soft, because he understood his majesty’s emotions better than anyone else, his majesty’s last sentence of ghostly words had overflowed with too much unstoppable killing intent.

When he was about to leave the imperial study, the emperor suddenly opened his mouth and said coldly: ”Send word to Yan Bingyun, say that I am watching him. And then send word to Shi Fei that I want him alive.”

The emperor’s face remained cold, “If that old dog dies, he should not come back to me alive either!”

“Bring that old dog back alive, I will ask him what is going on!” The emperor repeated his order once again, he slapped his palm on top of the desk table, and in a violent rage, the desk table transformed into countless pieces of wood powder that shattered into fine sand, flying all over the sky and filling the room.