Chapter 28 Family
Zhou Shuyi stuffed the pastry into her mouth and swallowed it whole before replying: "I'm serious, I just like Yue Sister's beauty. I would feel bad if you were a concubine."
Xie Fengyu had a strange look on their faces and finally whispered two words: "I'm sick."
She put the bowl down and stood up to salute: "Princess, please eat slowly, and I will go back to the room first. My mother and brother left earlier to greet my father at the city gate, so there is a lack of etiquette. I hope you can forgive me, princess."
Zhou Shuyi raised her head and blinked with round eyes: "Teacher Xie has also returned to Chen County?"
Xie Fengyu nodded: "Father sent a letter back earlier, saying that the ancestral hall needs to be repaired to worship the ancestors."
After hearing the news, Xie Fengyue lowered her eyes and started to think. Why Taifu Xie would come back at this time, I really can't blame her for thinking too much. These days, Xie Fengyu has to be more considerate in his hesitant words.
Wang Yan was much better informed than Xie Fengyue. His people followed Taifu Xie all the way back to Chen County from Kyoto. When he was more than ten kilometers away from entering Yong'an City, the secret message came into his hands.
He rubbed the folding fan in his hand and looked out the window. Through the rockery and flowing water, he saw Xie Fengyue and Zhou Shuyi kneeling on the corridor and chatting.
Even from such a distance, the girl's beauty could not be concealed. Her silk belt was flying around her waist, and her black hair was like ink. From a distance, it looks as beautiful as a painting.
Wang Yan sighed softly: "What a pity."
Songshan, who had just entered the house, wondered: "What's such a pity?"
The regret that Wang Yang had over the passing of his beauty was immediately dissipated by the question. He asked, "What happened to the Huanxue sent to her?"
Songshan got angry when he thought of this: "The girl Zhezhi arranged to clean outside the yard, Huanxue was originally planned to be sent to the Zhou Palace! It's really a waste of natural resources."
"Does Xie Fengyue have any arrangements?" Wang Yan lowered his eyes. She should know what this person is used for, so she wouldn't arrange it so far.
Songshan glanced at him and said, "Mr. Lang, I am your attendant and not a girl from the Xie family. How do I know? Why don't you go and ask?"
Wang Yan's expression froze for a moment, then he straightened up: "Today, you will arrange for people to explore those locations to see which one is the real paper mill of the Xie family. If it is determined, just set it on fire for him." Let the paper-making master die in the sea of fire without leaving any future troubles.”
"Does Mr. Lang want to go back to Langya? It's so urgent." Songshan asked.
Wang Yan lowered his voice: "Thank you, Master Xie, for returning to Chen County. It's better to end the matter as soon as possible to avoid having too many dreams at night."
Now the Wang and Xie families can't at least openly quarrel with each other. He burned those fake workshops just to warn the Xie family.
If there was an internal fight between the two great families in the north, the only ones who could benefit from it would be the royal family and the wealthy families in the south of the Yangtze River. He couldn't afford to take such a risk.
Nowadays, the Zhou royal family is becoming more and more powerful, and they are making small attempts to weaken the family's centralization of power. Queen Wang, who originally passed away, is also from the direct branch of the Wang family and is Wang Yan's direct aunt.
This is a bit of a joke among the aristocratic families. The wealthy family has been flourishing for hundreds of years, with thousands of people in the family, tens of thousands of troops, and tens of thousands of hectares of farmland. It must be difficult to explain in a few words whether a legitimate direct lineage will be married to the royal family that has been in power for a long time. Outsiders only know that His Majesty already had his first wife by his side when he was in the dormitory. At that time, His Majesty was just a transparent prince who was criticized for having bad blood. Even his title was just the word "harmony". The first wife was the legitimate daughter of a small family. If the late emperor hadn't been so crazy at that time, he might have been deceived by using a concubine.
In the last few years of his reign, the late emperor seemed to be suffering from some kind of madness. He always wanted to centralize power and seize land. The Wang, Xie, and Fan clans headed by the aristocratic families turned a blind eye, gave many insignificant benefits to the royal family, and allowed him to kill several small families to scare the monkeys.
Everyone thought that the late emperor had thought about Ming Jun's addiction, but they never thought that the aristocratic family's concession made the emperor, who had a sudden ambition in his heart, think that the aristocratic family was just mediocre.
So he issued several imperial edicts, first asking the Wang family to hand over the military power in Longnan, Xiangxi and other areas. The Xie family was also allowed to farm their land, and the tenant farmers were not allowed to use their slave status as private soldiers.
They even had the whimsical idea of asking the Tang family in Beihai to hand over their printing paper skills, open up the family's treasure troves, and print unique books to the royal family to set up an enke, hoping to attract more children from poorer families to recruit for the imperial court.
If that was all it was, everyone could just use various excuses to ignore it.
In the last year of the late emperor's reign, the royal family vigorously supported the poor families, and even robbed the wealth of the aristocratic families to help the poor families. The reason why the poor families could not be compared with the aristocratic families was not because they lacked money. But it can only be reflected based on the foundation of ethnology, book collection, etc. that takes time to accumulate.
The late Emperor's last foolish move caused Liu Dahongru, who was full of disciples all over the world, to issue a letter to the students all over the world.
The general meaning is, "On behalf of the tens of millions of students in the world, please ask all the aristocratic families to open their family collections. It doesn't need to be opened to many people. It will be open to dozens of students selected by Qingshan Academy." Liu Hongru was originally He teaches and educates people with the idea that there is no distinction between people and the world is unified.
This allowed the aristocratic families to smell a hint of danger and the threat contained in it.
When the late emperor was young, he was ignorant and ignored the government affairs, and indulged in pleasure. There were only three princes in total, the crown prince and the imperial concubine, Prince Chen. They fought openly and both sides suffered losses.
Only Prince He, whose biological mother was once a minister's wife, was later brought into the palace by the late emperor. Because the birth month was wrong, there were rumors that the prince born by this noble Qian was not of the orthodox royal lineage, and was sent away early. The palace became an idle prince.
With the aristocratic family behind it, the late emperor wanted to make great efforts to govern, but his two sons died in the struggle for the throne before he started his business.
The back-and-forth exchanges between the Crown Prince and Prince Chen made the two Jiangnan clans, who were originally considered to be the most famous ones, so violent that they both lost and no longer posed a threat. The northern noble families put the unknown bloodline King He on the throne in one go.
The change of dynasties must be accompanied by sacrifices, which is already a certainty. The crown prince was imprisoned, Prince Chen fled on the verge of death, and the cowardly He Wang ascended the throne and became the current Emperor of Zhou.
Originally the matter came to an end. The former head of the Wang family traveled with his wife and children, but was killed by the Crown Prince and Prince Chen's remnant gang in a counterattack. No one survived.
For the present, the difficulty of changing dynasties is not even as serious as changing the patriarch of a large family like the Wang family. Wang An, the youngest son of the direct descendant, was ordered to take over the position of clan head in the face of danger, and the uncles in the next room were even more eager to watch.
Originally, Wang An was just the youngest in the family. He had never wanted to be educated according to the direction of the clan leader since he was a child. Even his wife was not selected according to the standards of a clan wife. He was devoted to the mountains and rivers, and just wanted to be an idle aristocratic son.
(End of chapter)