Rebirth of Zhu Di's son

Chapter 291 This may not be the truth

Meng Xiaowen is from Guilin.

He was born in the 25th year of Hongwu. His ancestors were farmers for three generations. He had a younger brother named Meng Zhongyi.

This Meng Zhongyi was a ruthless man. When the Jingjiang Palace was recruiting chamberlains eight years ago, he went to apply for the job regardless of his family's objections. Because of his strong body, he was selected into the palace to purify himself and became a palace chamberlain.

Relying on his own advantages of strength and good conduct, Meng Zhongyi quickly emerged from among the palace servants. Two years after entering the palace, he was promoted and became the on-duty chamberlain serving King Jingjiang's daily life.

After Meng Zhongyi gained such an identity, he naturally began to work hard to perform in front of King Jingjiang in order to obtain rewards and send them home.

Not long after, his wife and children all moved into new brick houses.

When Meng Zhongyi became prosperous, of course he did not forget to help his brother Meng Xiaowen.

In line with the principle of "teaching a man to fish is worse than teaching him to fish", Meng Zhongyi asked someone to open a grocery store for Meng Xiaowen in the city of Guilin, so that he could stay at the grocery store and sell some things during the off-season, so as to increase his income. income.

Originally, it was good to live like this, but for some reason, King Jingjiang came up with the idea of ​​taking a concubine three years ago.

Because Meng Zhongyi was valued by King Jingjiang and was the servant on duty of King Jingjiang, King Jingjiang ordered him to take charge of this matter together with Po Liu, a stable woman in the palace.

Meng Zhongyi and Liu Po ​​searched for dozens of women in Guilin and surrounding counties, but the King of Jingjiang disliked the large feet of these women, so he sent them again to Suzhou, Hangzhou and other provinces to find women with small feet "like paintings" to buy back. They were given three months to complete the task.

However, the two did not find the woman who met the requirements of King Jingjiang in time.

King Jingjiang originally wanted to punish Meng Zhongyi and Liu Po, but considering that they were tired from running around and had no merit but hard work, he reprimanded them.

Under normal circumstances, this matter would have gone by.

But at the beginning of last year, King Jingjiang somehow learned the news that King Zhu Gaochi of Han had issued a royal order to select concubines for the crown prince Zhu Zhanji.

King Jingjiang was inspired and decided to follow the example of King Han.

Therefore, he appointed Meng Zhongyi as the chief concubine selection envoy and Liu Po ​​as the deputy chief envoy. He led a group of servants and wives in the palace to widely spread the news of his concubine selection in the surrounding counties of Guilin, and encouraged young and beautiful women to go to Guilin City. Stand for election.

Even though each person's participation fee was as high as ten silver dollars, many wealthy businessmen, middle peasants, and wealthy families around Guilin still paid a participation fee for the eligible women in their families.

Everything went smoothly, and in the end [-] women participated, but King Jingjiang only selected three women as concubines.

The total participation fee of the remaining unselected candidates was as high as 5000 taels. King Jingjiang ordered Meng Zhongyi and others to return it to the candidates.

But Mrs. Liu and her confidants had already misappropriated this fee without telling Meng Zhongyi, but they accused Meng Zhongyi of embezzling the money.

Meng Zhongyi, as the chief internal envoy for selecting concubines, bore the main responsibility. After being framed, he could not defend himself. He could only use his savings over the years and sell off properties, fields and other assets, but in the end he could only collect more than 3000 taels.

King Jingjiang knew what Meng Zhongyi was and didn't believe what Liu Po ​​and others said, so he investigated secretly and learned the truth.

However, under the pressure of public opinion, he had to cut off Meng Zhongyi's knees, expel Meng Zhongyi from the palace, and beat Liu Po ​​and others to death.

However, most of the candidates were not satisfied as they did not receive their participation fees back.

Unavoidably, things got worse and worse. King Jingjiang took some money from the palace treasury and personally directed all the servants in the palace. He spent three days outside the palace gate to return the money to the candidates one by one.

Meng Zhongyi, who was expelled from the palace, has become a cripple who cannot walk.

His wife was afraid of retaliation and was unwilling to take care of him, a disabled person, so she ran away with the child overnight before he returned home.

Regardless of his wife's dissuasion, Meng Xiaowen resolutely sold the grocery store and food at home, and withdrew a small amount of savings from the Guilin Branch of the Royal Bank of Ming Dynasty to hire a famous doctor to treat Meng Zhongyi's legs.

However, in the view of Meng Xiaowen's wife, Meng Zhongyi deserved to be disabled because of his corruption and perversion of the law.

She did not want to be implicated, and was afraid that relatives of Mrs. Liu and others would seek revenge on the Meng brothers, so she took Meng Xiaowen's only son back to her parents' home when Meng Xiaowen was not paying attention.

In this way, Meng Xiaowen had to take care of his young sister Meng Youniang and his disabled brother Meng Zhongyi at the same time.

Some people probably thought that Meng Zhongyi was greedy for the 5000 taels, so some gangsters broke into Meng Xiaowen's home while he was taking Meng Youniang and Meng Zhongyi out to farm, and turned his home into a mess.Later, the gangsters refused to give up and took advantage of the darkness to kidnap Meng Xiaowen's wife and son, leaving a message for Meng Xiaowen's parents-in-law to bring to him - two thousand, five hundred taels for each person.

Since Meng Zhongyi did not misappropriate the 5000 taels of election fees, Meng Xiaowen certainly could not take out the money, so the gangster chopped off one of Meng's wife's hands as a threat.

As a last resort, Meng Xiaowen chose to report to the official.

After the local county magistrate sent someone to investigate, he concluded that bandits were plundering the people, and told Meng Xiaowen that he would report the matter to the superior government official for a final decision.

More than half a month passed. Although the county magistrate sent people to search the mountains, they still found no results and no bandits were caught.

Soon after, Meng Xiaowen received a package thrown into the house through the window late at night.

He opened the package and found that it was his wife's head.

When the gangster dropped the package, he also left harsh words, saying that if he didn't pay the money again, he would kill his son.

Meng Zhongyi believed that all of this was caused by his insistence on joining the palace as a chamberlain, and that he was the one to blame. He advised Meng Xiaowen to stop caring about him and let him fend for himself.

However, Meng Xiaowen vowed to seek justice for his family.

Desperate, Meng Xiaowen could only use a cart to pull his younger brother Meng Zhongyi and younger sister Meng Youniang to kowtow to the King of Jingjiang outside the Jingjiang Prince's Mansion.

King Jingjiang missed Meng Zhongyi's old love, and at the same time felt sorry for Meng Xiaowen's experience, so he received Meng Xiaowen.

However, he refused to go into the mountain to suppress the bandits on the grounds that the palace guards could not be mobilized without orders.

However, King Jingjiang came up with a way. He wrote a secret letter and gave it to Meng Xiaowen, and sent three guards to escort him into Beijing.

King Jingjiang told Meng Xiaowen that as long as he beats the Dengwen drum on the morning of the 21st of the first lunar month after entering Beijing, he will definitely be summoned by His Majesty the Emperor.

Moreover, after His Majesty the Emperor reads the secret letter, he will definitely give him justice.

Meng Xiaowen was worried about his sister Meng Youniang, so he took her with him along the way.

In the Fengtian Palace, after the civil and military officials listened to Meng Xiaowen's account of his own experiences, most of them turned out to be skeptical.

For example, Xia Yuanji, the Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, based on his understanding of King Jingjiang's personality, he felt that if Meng Zhongyi was really the chamberlain that King Jingjiang valued, then Meng Zhongyi, who had been the chamberlain on duty in the palace for six or seven years, would never be able to give out even 5000 taels of silver yuan. .

Who in the world doesn't know that the current King Jingjiang is the richest prince in the Ming Dynasty?
Meng Zhongyi, as the on-duty chamberlain who attended to the daily life of King Jingjiang, often got along with the King of Jingjiang day and night, so the relationship between master and servant must be unusual.

What's more, King Jingjiang was very generous with his rewards to his servants. After six or seven years, just counting the ordinary rewards, Meng Zhongyi's accumulated wealth was definitely more than a thousand taels.

If we include the rewards given by King Jingjiang during the holidays and the filial piety that Meng Zhongyi himself received by taking advantage of his position, I am afraid that after six or seven years, he has accumulated not more than 7000 taels, but at least [-] taels.

Xia Yuanji was thinking that if Meng Zhongyi was King Jingjiang's tool to make money, then King Jingjiang would definitely kill people and silence him.

According to Meng Xiaowen, Meng Zhongyi is still alive, so this can be ruled out.

In this case, there is only one reasonable explanation, and that is that Meng Zhongyi spent the money!

In other words, Meng Zhongyi's money was given to someone else, and this person was someone he would rather destroy his family than reveal his identity.

If this is the truth, then the election fees misappropriated by Mrs. Liu and others may have also fallen into the hands of that person.

Mrs. Liu, Meng Zhongyi and others are just that person's scapegoats.

Meng Xiaowen's wife and children were probably kidnapped by that person.

Xia Yuanji was shocked when he thought of this, and couldn't help but look at Zhu Gaoxu on the throne.

Perhaps, the truth lies in the secret letter in Zhu Gaoxu's hand.

(End of this chapter)