She is different from the empress in the history books

Chapter 76 Rebellion 2
Pei Peng spoke sincerely. Although Li Xun still had doubts, he trusted Pei Wei a little bit more. It was one thing to be credible, but another thing not to want to make things big.

He still believed that it would be too much to allow tens of thousands of people to be buried with Pei Kui and the others.But the law stipulates that the crime of treason does bring harm to relatives.

This is something that Pei Peng can't decide, she can only look at Pei Wei—let's accept it as soon as it's good, it's really a big mess, and it's inevitable that more people will try to find the tricks in the "evidence", and the gain will outweigh the loss.

Fortunately, Pei Wei hadn't gotten to this point yet, so he took advantage of the situation to say that he didn't want to see so many people pay for the mistakes of Pei Kui and others, and only punished the culprits.

Pei Kui was executed for treason. Due to his royal status, in order to retain the last trace of dignity, Pei Kui was not executed, but was given poisonous wine.

It is said that Pei Kui was not convinced and tried to smash the wine glass to protest Pei Wei's framing, but finally drank it down.

Since Pei Kui's princess was completely unaware, Pei Wei allowed her to be taken back by her parents' family.But she waited in jail for several days, but no one came to pick her up, and she eventually committed suicide by hanging from a beam.

On the day she was hanged, a jailer was entrusted with a piece of white silk that would kill her. She saw this white silk and thought that her parents would let her fend for herself and not drag her family down. Only then did the final decision be made.

Pei Kui's adult sons, some who knew and some who didn't, were all executed.The underage sons were demoted to common people and expelled from the capital, naturally including the one Pei Kui secretly sent away.

The ones who were relatively uninvolved were Pei Kui's daughters.

However, most of his adult daughters married into wealthy families, and their natal families were convicted, so naturally they were treated coldly, and they even died of illness by default.

It is impossible for underage daughters to be granted the title of princess before their wedding. They can only be treated as ordinary clan daughters, and it is even far worse. After all, they have a rebellious father.

Pei Rong was an accessory to the crime, but her hatred for Pei Wei was even deeper. Pei Wei was never willing to let her continue to stir up trouble. Naturally, she would end up like Pei Kui.

It was Pei Rong's son-in-law. In the past, this pair was always called a good couple. From the time when they were married by the late emperor until Pei Rong's accident, even if Pei Rong's brother fell completely, it did not affect their relationship.

But this incident has shattered the illusion of this harmonious couple.

Pei Rong participated in the rebellion without consulting the consort.

The consort began to silently cut off the relationship when he vaguely anticipated what Pei Rong would do. In the end, it was confirmed that he was indeed so innocent that he seemed to be completely unaware, and naturally he was not affected in any way.

On the day he was released, he completely moved out of the Princess Mansion, and publicly severed relations with Pei Rong's children to show his intentions.

Even though Pei Wei had some disdain for him, he still had to admit that he was indeed good at avoiding trouble.

But Pei Rong's children are in a dilemma. Breaking up with their mother will harm their reputation. If they don't break up with their mother, it will be difficult to continue to maintain their previous lives, and their father's family cannot be relied on.

In the end, it was Pei Rong who offered to have a secret talk with Pei Wei, revealed to him more information he had, and committed suicide ahead of time, thus barely keeping the identities of the children.

As for the other two aristocratic families involved, as well as the relevant guards of the capital and the officials of the yamen where the inner city is located, they were all liquidated.

As for the merchants, slaves, craftsmen, etc. in the downstream links, their whole families will suffer.

Even if there were not tens of thousands of people buried with them as Li Xun feared, there would still be enough heads of a thousand people to die in this liquidation, and nearly ten thousand of their family members would be confiscated as slaves or exiled.

But Li Xun was quite satisfied with this result - [-]% of those affected were not from the family, or even officials, and the emperor who did not do anything to these people was the magnanimous and good emperor in Li Xun's heart.

The chief official agreed, and the other ministers also acquiesced, and finally the matter was completely settled.

After a few days, when Pei Peng came out of the palace again, opened the curtain of the carriage and looked out, he saw the empty princess palace and the prince's palace.

The few houses nearby, most of which were members of the clan, also fell silent, and there was no longer the lively scene of people visiting or seeking blessing from time to time.

Even Pei Peng himself sorted out the things in his hands after witnessing the end of Pei Rong and Pei Kui's family.

Those who violated the regulations, except for the long princess chariot given by Pei Wei, the rest were destroyed.

After all, if we really want to dig deeper into things like overstepping the rules, they can be closely related to rebellion.

The diners who spoke or behaved inappropriately were given silver coins to return home and dismissed in serious cases. Pei Peng also beat them if they were not too outrageous.

Pei Peng even returned the dry shares of two grain merchants, because she found that their business was a little out of control. Either they were suspected of transporting grain to the border, or they were too greedy to drive up prices, which could lead to bad results. Once Pei Peng was cautious, the two of them could no longer fall under her door.

After Xu Xiao heard about Pei Peng's actions, he even paid a visit.

She has been quite proud of herself recently. She has hardly been affected by the rebellion case. If I must say it, she has benefited from it. After all, when Cheng Guogong started to carve up Pei Rong's resources.But there is no mercy at all.

Moreover, she had just discussed the marriage with the Wang family, and the two families had initially reached an agreement.

She sent her niece to the palace, won the appreciation of her father-in-law, and found a good match for her daughter. How could she be dissatisfied?
Proud people naturally don't understand Pei Peng's cautiousness. It's just two grain merchants. What can be bad?

"Even if they really made trouble in the future and someone impeaches you, you don't have to take responsibility for them. Just say 'it's all their own initiative and you don't know about it'. How can you say that businessmen have done evil things? If you want to pin the blame on the people who protected them, then there won't be many innocent people in this court."

Pei Peng knew that what she said was not wrong, and this was how she had always dealt with it.

During the previous dynasty, the army was at war with the Hu people, and there were still forces behind them that were buying furs from Hu lands at low prices. Naturally, more than half of the money spent on the furs was probably used by the Hu people to buy grain and weapons. That's it, after being discovered They only killed the nine merchant clans and did not investigate the forces behind them.

She didn't care much about how the businessmen who worked for her made money.But this incident did serve as a wake-up call for her - if she wasn't careful, she could easily be framed by others.

What's more, her Chengyang County and even part of Taizhou are within the distance that a barbarian can reach in a day's gallop?
Her daughter was still thinking of ways to fight against the barbarians, and Pei Peng naturally had a deeper understanding. If a merchant secretly sold grain to the enemy, in her opinion, what was the difference between it and rebellion?

Thinking of herself and others, even though the tribe the two merchants sold to had nothing to do with Chengyang County, and the people who harmed them had nothing to do with Chengyang County, she decided not to protect them anymore.

As for completely suppressing these two people from doing business, Pei Peng really couldn't do it.

They are not alone, they are willing to give up the silver taels that are at their fingertips, and others may not be willing.

And if she only targets them for such a reason, no one can understand her thoughts. They will only think that she is looking for excuses to target other forces.

So Pei Peng didn't say too much to Xu Xiao, but explained:

"Just think that I'm scared out of my mind. As the emperor's younger brother, I'm not that easy to deal with, and I don't want to lose myself for a few thousand taels of silver a year."

"You really have a big business and don't know how expensive firewood, rice, oil and salt are. You can receive thousands of taels of silver without any worries. Look at me. I have recently prepared a dowry for my daughter. I can't wait to go back to my parents' home to enjoy the autumn breeze."

Pei Peng vaguely realized what Xu Xiao wanted to say.

(End of this chapter)