Jingtai Fengyun: The First Absurd Emperor of Ming Dynasty

Chapter 410 The prince was killed
In the early morning of the next day, from the nobles to the common people, they found that they could not go out.

The entire capital is under martial law.

All the squares and cities, the streets and alleys, are guarded by heavily armed soldiers.

This was the first time such a scene appeared in the Jingtai Dynasty.

Even when Ye took the lead in besieging the city with the Oala army, the capital had never been under such thorough martial law.

Serving civil and military officials also have to go through layers of inspections before they can reach their respective yamen.

Even the cabinet bachelors and the six ministers were at a loss about this.

The ministers who tended to the emperor even panicked: Could it be that there was a mutiny?
The civil and military officials who tended to surrender to the emperor were full of contradictions in their hearts: they expected the emperor to be restored and regained control of the court, but they didn't really hope that Emperor Jingtai would collapse now.

Because Emperor Jingtai is really improving the treatment of officials, especially at the level of salary.Once the emperor is changed to respectful and let the emperor regain control of the court, it is absolutely impossible to maintain the current salary level of the officials.

If the successor ignores the account of the predecessor, Emperor Jingtai's salary increase plan will inevitably come to an end.Even the Daming Banknotes were bound to start printing again.

As a result, civil and military officials will live a "good life" where waste paper is paid for their salaries.

Therefore, when Emperor Jingtai was in power, everyone picked criticisms in various ways; when it came time for Emperor Jingtai to "fall down", everyone couldn't let go of it.

But no matter how the officials guessed, there was no edict for a long time.

In the cabinet, it is relatively better.

Luo Tong has clearly informed the other important ministers that the Ministry of War has not mobilized any troops.

In other words, it was either the Yumajian army or the Jinyiwei who initiated the martial law.

If it is the Imperial Horse Supervisor Army, it must be the handwriting of the emperor.

If it's Jinyiwei, then it's probably because the emperor asked the emperor to launch a mutiny.

Chen Xun was the most helpless, he only met Emperor Gong Rang yesterday afternoon, and he came up with a very 'radical' idea, which turned out to be like this early this morning.So I had to plead with Wang Wen:
"Qianzhi, tell me, what happened?"

Wang Wen shook his head and spread his hands: "I really don't know."

Chen Xun looked at Huang Pu again: "Chengji, tell everyone, it's already this time, so don't hide it."

Huang Pu also shook his head very resolutely: "I really don't know, I didn't intend to deceive."

Among the people present, Wang Wen and Huang Pu are the most trusted by the emperor, and they don't even know about it?

Chen Xun wanted to ask again, but Wei Ji scolded: "That's enough, the capital is under martial law, there must be a major event. Your Majesty has kept it secret, and His Majesty has his own reasons. As ministers, we just wait and see what happens, and don't add to the chaos." .”

The ministers of the cabinet and civil and military officials were suffering until almost noon, when the news finally spread from the inner court.

The eunuchs Ruan An and Chen Mian, the supervisor of ceremonies, came to the cabinet in person.

Just seeing these two people, the important ministers knew that something really big happened in the inner court.

Wang Cheng, Shu Liang, Zhang Yong, and Wang Qin, the emperor's cronies, disappeared.

Jin Ying, Xing'an, Chen Xiang, and Cao Jixiang, who respected the emperor's cronies, also disappeared.

The ones who showed up were replaced by two neutral old eunuchs.

When Ruan An came to the cabinet, his first sentence was: His Majesty has a purpose.

Everyone's heart skipped a beat, which emperor is this 'Your Majesty' referring to?Now Daming has two His Majesties.

After being stunned for a moment, everyone knelt down to accept the order.

Ruan An waved his hand to signal everyone not to kneel, and then continued: "Your Majesty has an order to order the important ministers of the cabinet to go to Nangong to pay homage to the emperor."

Chen Xun hurriedly stepped forward and asked, "Dare to ask Mr. Ruan, what happened?"

Ruan An replied with a dejected face: "Shangshan Supervisor has a traitor who poisoned and murdered the second and third princes, with the intention of framing His Majesty.

In the end, it was discovered by several young eunuchs in Nangong, and now the disaster happened.

The person who poisoned him, together with all the servants of the Shangshan prison, have been secretly imprisoned.

Your Majesty and the Emperor Gongrang are all furious, it is better for you to proceed carefully. "

As soon as this statement came out, the whole hall was in an uproar.

Even Wei Ji, who was mature and prudent, found it unbelievable, and hurriedly asked: "How are the two princes?"

Ruan An shook his head: "The villain is so eager to plant blame that he has lost his mind. What he gave the prince was a strong drug. Moreover, the method of poisoning was so ingenious that the palace servants who served the prince had no way to guard against it.

However, the specific process of poisoning is a secret of the inner court, so please forgive me for not being able to tell everyone.

In short, the lives of the two princes are dying, and now all the imperial doctors in the imperial hospital are in Nangong, and they have been treating them all night, hey! "

After Ruan An finished speaking, he sighed again and again.

Without Ruan An's urging, everyone rushed to Nangong together.

Entering Emperor Gong Rang's dormitory, everyone saluted, and looked at Emperor Gong Rang again, his face was ashamed, as if he had aged ten years overnight.

Although Zhu Qizhen himself is still ill and his mind is dizzy, he also knows that his brother did not instigate this incident.

Because even if the younger brother wants to attack, he should choose to poison slowly.It's totally against common sense to rush to the ground with such strong medicine.

Besides, even if he wanted to do it, he would poison the crown prince first, and then himself, the courteous emperor.Apart from infamy, is there any other meaning to poisoning the two princes to death?

At this time, Empress Qian and Concubine Wan Chen were guarding the two princes inside.

Before the important ministers of the cabinet arrived, Zhu Qizhen had persuaded Queen Mother Sun and Queen Zhou to go back.

From Zhu Qizhen's point of view, Empress Zhou had motives and suspicions.

As for Empress Dowager Sun, she also had motives and suspicions, even greater suspicions than Empress Zhou.

Because the emperor wanted to investigate the death of Empress Hu, the news of the extermination of the three clans of the murderer spread in the palace only yesterday afternoon.That night, there was an incident of poisoning the prince. It was clear that the purpose was to frame the emperor and divert the attention of the government and the public.

And the eunuch Shangshan Supervisor is precisely the Empress Dowager Sun's confidant Jin Ying. After the incident is completed, as long as all the palace people who poisoned the prince are silenced, everything can be pushed to the emperor's head.

At that time, the government and the public will be shaken, the matter will boil, and the emperor will be coerced by public opinion. Not only will he have no way to investigate, but he will have to make large-scale compromises to appease the public anger.

Of course, this prediction is based on the fact that the emperor has repeatedly shown weakness and made concessions.

Just because the emperor, the crown prince, the second prince, and the third prince respectfully allowed the four of them to fall ill, the emperor was coerced by public opinion to back down again and again.If the second and third princes died, the emperor would definitely make greater concessions under pressure.

This is the Queen Mother Sun's perception and judgment of the emperor.

Originally, Zhu Qizhen might not be able to figure out the joints so quickly. It was the trusted eunuch Chen Xiang who risked his life to speak out, and made the whole context of this incident quickly outlined.

And Chen Xiang was the previous eunuch who was in charge of Shangshan Supervisor.

Now Chen Xiang and Xing'an are in charge of Nangong together, and Zhang Min and others who discovered and captured Shangshan's poisoned palace guards were assigned to work under Chen Xiang's errands.

Why did Zhu Qizhen look ten years old all of a sudden, because if his younger brother poisoned him, Zhu Qizhen would understand.But his own mother ordered the palace servants to kill the prince with poison, so as to exonerate the family with the poison of bitter meat, this is too vicious.

Although the evidence is not conclusive and the case needs to be further investigated, Zhu Qizhen has already believed it.

Chen Xun, Wei Ji and others didn't dare to say anything in front of Emperor Gongrang who was already on the verge of collapse.It can only be said that auspicious people have their own fortune, and that the prince will be able to turn the crisis into safety.

Zhu Qizhen got tired of hearing this, and waved his hands weakly, telling everyone to wait outside the hall.

No one dared to leave, so they stood guard outside the hall for two hours.Just when everyone was hungry and flustered, Ruan An came to deliver an order again, ordering the chief officer of the Sanju Department to go to the Metropolitan Procuratorate to try the case.

After Wang Wen received the decree, he left in a hurry.The rest of the people looked at each other. It turned out that the person involved was not sent to Jinyiwei Prison, but was sent to the Prison of the Metropolitan Procuratorate after a short period of detention.

This is very strange.Under normal circumstances, major and important cases are sent to prison first, and after being tried by Jin Yiwei, they are then transferred to the Ministry of Punishment.

Or you can send them directly to the Ministry of Criminal Justice for interrogation.

Although the Metropolitan Procuratorate also has prisons, it is extremely rare to send them directly to the Metropolitan Procuratorate for interrogation.

But he said that Zhu Qiyu didn't come to Fengge to watch things until the afternoon.

Zhu Qiyu was leaning on the soft couch upstairs, and the staff of Zhongshushe were nervously summarizing the information from all sides downstairs.

As for those responsible for passing information upstairs and downstairs, there are only two people: He Yi and Lian Gang.

And there were only two people drinking tea with Zhu Qiyu: Xu Zheng and Huang Jian.

In Zhu Qiyu's view, when it comes to critical moments, historical experience can still be relied on: Xu Zheng and Huang Jian in history were the two unlucky ghosts who succeeded in seizing the door in Zhu Qizhen and were executed by Ling Chi after the restoration of power. And Wang Wen's fate was much worse.

So these two people can't be traitors who love Zhu Qizhen.

(End of this chapter)