Since the Accounting: A Chronicle of the Roman Khanate

Chapter 620 Everyone is happy
After the banquet started, Zhu Wenkui and his friends had a little more free time. Because they just had to follow the process, eat and drink as required, and say some auspicious words, which did not require much thinking, and generally no unexpected situations would occur.

Before, when Zhu Wenkui attended banquets, he had to secretly bring some food for his family. Later, Guo Kang found out and couldn't stand it, so he took him to the Niangniang Temple and asked the chef to prepare some food for him. Zhu Wenkui was embarrassed, so Guo Kang said that he remembered that there were such things in the Spring and Autumn Period, and that the ancients encouraged it, so he didn't need to care.

Guo Kang had been working there and was very familiar with everyone in the temple. Relying on this relationship, Zhu Wenkui would bring a large group of people to the temple cafeteria to eat. In this way, he gradually became familiar with Guo Kang.

Now, he finally doesn't have this need anymore, and he doesn't have to think too much when eating. Thinking about it this way, his living conditions have improved a lot...

During the meeting, a few messengers got drunk and started arguing. However, everyone had experience and immediately pulled them away. Apart from that, nothing happened and the meeting ended smoothly.

The only unexpected situation was that the kids at the door started fighting for some unknown reason.

Zhu Wenkui asked and found out that it was those people who wanted to play with the toys that Urban brought, and they started fighting. The honest and introverted Murad couldn't beat Constantine, and was beaten and ran around. Seeing this, little Jeanne also joined in and helped Murad beat Constantine. She was the strongest one, and she beat Constantine until he was in tears and shrank under the table, not daring to come out.

Urban couldn't persuade them at all, so he had to call for help. Everyone pulled the children apart and called their parents. However, Constantine's parents, Zhu Wenkui, Princess Ma and others were still inside congratulating the bride and groom, and they couldn't interrupt them.

As for Murad's uncle, he had just drunk too much fermented grape juice and was now completely drunk. No matter how hard he tried to shake him, he couldn't wake up. He could only give up for the time being. Later, it was only when Lady Jeanna arrived in time and took away the most violent little Jeanna that they stopped making a big fuss.

After taking his sister away, Zhu Wenkui no longer had the appetite to eat.

Now that the main process has ended, what remains are the various performances and celebrations on the street. Because of the last incident, the citizens did not have enough fun at the triumphal procession and Christmas. Now, there is finally a reason to relax. The activities held by the Khanate are also meant to appease the citizens and end their previous tension.

But at this time, the streets must be very chaotic. Zhu Wenkui thought about it and told his men that they could go out to play, but they should not act alone and should pay attention to safety. As for himself, he should stay in the workshop.

As expected, over the next few days, the streets were in chaos day and night.

Perhaps they really wanted to vent their emotions, this time, the citizens were more violent than before. Not only did they cause trouble in places like markets, theaters, and pubs during the day, but every night, drunk people would gather to fight, and even break into the curfew area and fight passionately with the guards.

In the past, the Night's Watch was responsible for maintaining law and order in the city. They were already familiar with these situations, knew how serious the disturbance would be, and might even know the citizens. However, the Night's Watch was still undergoing retraining, and the guards from various places were all newly transferred border troops. They didn't know much about the city, and some of the newcomers had not even experienced this kind of ceremony. If they found someone making trouble, they would immediately use heavy hands to stop them.

As a result, many Greeks who participated in the carnival were beaten by the soldiers every day and thrown out in a daze. Moreover, because no one realized this, others often did not know about it and were beaten again the next day. The intensity of the fight was even greater than other activities.

Apart from these, people participating in the game would also fight with each other for various inexplicable reasons.

On the third day after Zhu Wenkui went to work as a blacksmith, Joanna found his home and asked him to arrange a meeting between her and Guo Kang, saying that she wanted to discuss the canal.

Joanna said that she had not seen Guo Kang since the wedding. Although she knew it was not good to be so anxious, she needed to come up with more things to persuade merchants from other city-states to make additional investments before the expedition. Now it was not convenient for other people with more distant relationships to come forward, so she hoped that Zhu Wenkui could help again.

However, in the entire Wu Wang Mansion, Zhu Wenkui was probably the only one who believed such words. The Princess Ma and Lady Jeanna who stayed behind saw what she wanted at a glance, and blocked her away on the grounds that Zhu Wenkui and others were busy making weapons.

Joanna was very disappointed, but she was still polite and sent her men to invite the people who stayed in the palace to dinner and get close to them.

As a result, something went wrong during this meal.

As they drank, they talked about the recently popular story of the Three Kingdoms. Zhu Wenkui's Bohemian soldiers began to praise the Yellow Turban Army, thinking that although these people did not succeed, their spirit of resistance was worthy of praise, and that the organizational method they adopted was the best example for a new sect to emulate when it wanted to overthrow the rule of the old aristocracy. Until now, it still has great value.

However, the Italian businessmen at the banquet disagreed with this. They felt that Taiping Dao was a heretical religion and that even if it could succeed, it was not worth emulating.

The Bohemians were very dissatisfied with this and felt that it was an allusion to themselves. They believed that in order to overthrow the corrupt and evil lords, an organization must be established; and there are actually only a few forms of establishing an organization. Replacing the original church organization with a new church is a legitimate and effective way, and there is nothing wrong with it. Several Italians insisted that they should not do things that break principles for the sake of convenience. The Yellow Turban Army felt that "Heaven" was useless, so they introduced a new God; the Bohemians felt that the church's beliefs were problematic, so they wanted to change the doctrines and canons. These two behaviors are essentially the same and are serious blasphemies.

They believe that faith cannot be measured by "useful" or "useless". If everyone starts to use secular standards to measure the sacred, then the sacred itself will be secularized and lose its divinity. This idea is even more serious than heresy and paganism, and has reached the level of atheism. In comparison, even heresy is just a superficial manifestation of this idea.

The Bohemians, of course, rejected this accusation. In their view, faith and ritual are two different things. Having faith does not mean following all rituals or recognizing all organizations that claim to represent this faith. Mixing them up is like forcing sacredness on secular things, which is definitely wrong.

The Italians countered that what most people can see are just secular things. The whole society is organized on the basis of these sacred things. The statue of God in the church is not God himself; if you pray to it, it cannot come down to help you. However, normal people will still pay respect to the church, the instruments, icons, etc. inside. Because if faith collapses, society will fall into complete chaos.

Everyone knows that it is impossible for everyone to be so pious. But even so, in the whole of Europe, only lunatics and Jews would not care about respecting Brother Tian. If they continue like this, God knows whether they will be like this.

Everyone was just bragging and debating normally, but the argument got more and more intense, and at this point, many people couldn't hold back their anger. In the end, both sides took advantage of the alcohol and started fighting.

There were many Italians present, but the Bohemians who were invited were all representatives of some status in the palace and had fought many times. Although there were fewer people, they quickly beat the Italians and made them flee. Joanna tried to stop the fight, but everyone was fighting and it was a mess, and no one paid any attention to her. She was in the middle, and she didn't know who punched her twice, so she quickly ran away.

This kind of drunken fight has long been a daily occurrence in most cities. Both sides claim to have their own reasons, and it is hard to tell who is right or wrong. But this time the fight was so serious that the hostess who paid for the dinner was even beaten.

The people in the palace came to tell him that Princess Ma had called him back and told him to take care of his own affairs. Zhu Wenkui felt very embarrassed and had to return in a hurry to restrain his men and reprimand all those who participated in the fight, and then wondered whether he should apologize.

However, the etiquette master in the mansion told him that according to custom, apologies should be classified according to levels. His status was too high, and it would not be good for both parties to apologize to a businessman. He should find someone of similar status to apologize.

However, everyone in the palace was an official. The people who went to fight were all officials such as Qianhu and Baihu, and the leader of the beating was a commander. Anyone picked out at random would have a higher status than a white merchant. What should we do...

Zhu Wenkui suddenly realized that it made sense. After discussing it, everyone felt that businessmen should pay more attention to practical benefits. I heard that before, she came to the mansion to ask for help, but the prince was not there, so Princess Ma and the others persuaded her to go back. It would be better to help her and then talk about the handling of this matter. They should be satisfied.

Sure enough, Joanna was very happy to learn that Zhu Wenkui agreed to find an opportunity to arrange a meeting between her and Guo Kang. She not only said that she had no problem and did not need to apologize, she even suggested that she could also provide additional sponsorship to the Wu Palace to help them prepare for the expedition.

Obviously, in Joanna's opinion, getting punched twice in exchange for a chance to meet with Guo Kang was well worth it.

Since she thought so, Zhu Wenkui was also happy to be free. He felt that Guo Kang would not cause any big trouble anyway, so he could just let him handle it himself. Unfortunately, Guo Kang had not been seen in the past few days except for going out to attend banquets. Zhu Wenkui, Tuohuan and others had a hard time finding him. He could only ask Miss Qiao to wait a little longer while he went to say hello first.

In the following days, when he was resting, he went to Guo's house and the Niangniang Temple to ask, but the people there said that Guo Kang was not there and had been taken away by the princess. Zhu Wenkui went to the palace again, but the guards also told him that the princess and her husband had left after the banquet and were not there either.

Zhu Wenkui had no choice but to go to the temple again to ask Da Lama Wang. After all, he had the widest network of contacts and was the master of ceremonies, so he wondered if he knew more. But he didn't see Da Lama Wang, but saw Guo Po Nu, whom he hadn't seen for a long time.

Guo Po Nu also seemed to be here to ask about the situation. However, the priest who received her told her that the Patriarch had been busy entertaining visitors these days and would meet with several Muslim representatives today. Father Peter and others also had their own things to do and were on business trips. If she wanted to consult the scriptures, she would have to wait.

However, Guo Po Nu seemed unwilling to give up and insisted on finding someone to see her, saying that she must understand how the church's regulations on divorce were explained and why they were contradictory. The priests could not stop her and could only keep making excuses.

Having said that, even an honest man like Zhu Wenkui who works as a blacksmith every day can roughly guess what the current situation is based on those rumors.

Fortunately, Guo Po Nu was concentrating on fighting with the priests and didn't look back. Zhu Wenkui turned around and ran out again, so as not to get entangled with her and get into trouble. No matter what happened now, let's talk about it later...

(End of this chapter)