Chapter 196: Your Excellency, the Sea of Hundred Rivers

After returning to the capital to go to the morning court more, the biological clock seems to be set at four days, Su Yan woke up, the house is still dark …… not right, there is a light in the corner of the house, and it becomes even more dim after passing through the cover, and at the same time, a shadowed figure is reflected on the screen.

“Who!” Su Yan drank vigilantly. Besides Ah Chui, who else could sneak in silently? But Ah Chui wouldn’t light a lamp while he slept.

The man behind the screen replied instantly, “Relax, it’s me.”

Hearing this voice, Su Yan’s first reaction is to lift the quilt to see if the bedclothes are intact, there is no discomfort in the body, in relief at the same time annoyed: “You are not gone? Why did you come back while I was asleep, what do you want to do!”

King Yu was still sitting at the desk behind the screen, his tone as if rambling, ”I heard you tie up the bell again when you closed the window, are you worried about being assassinated by the assassins from the Seven Slaughter Battalion? At the moment, Shen Qi and Jing Hongchou can’t be counted on, besides me, who else are you counting on? I’m keeping watch for you, you should be thanking me.”

The reasoning is true, but the tone sounds a little irritating.

Su Yan thought again, soon relieved: once Yu Wang put him as a hunting object, full of “liver meat” “good boy”, a variety of coaxing small love child routine extremely meat and greasy. Now such a relaxed and casual way of speaking, does not indicate that the other party in his heart as a colleague, or a trench of allies?

His mood instantly improved quite a bit. He got up and got out of bed, saying as he dressed, “My humble servant thanks Your Highness, but there are guards in the front yard, so there’s no need to trouble Your Highness to stay up all night and take the trouble.”

King Yu snorted, “Those few imperial guards, unless you let them stay in your bedroom, they won’t be able to come to your aid as soon as a blood-pupil assassin sneaks in.”

Su Yan knew that King Yu was right, if the Seven Slaughter Battalion Master intended to put him to death, he would have to have an expert close guard to escape.

But you can’t just let the Prince stay in his room every night and act as his bodyguard, can you?

“I’ll put two couches in the outer room, and have two guards take shifts to keep watch every day, it’s always fine.” Su Yan said, “Your majesty’s jade body is precious, it’s better to go back to the house early to rest.”

King Yu was noncommittal, reaching out to bring the oil lamp over a bit to illuminate what was in his hands. Su Yan put on his fourth rank regular clothes, looked at the shadow on the screen and asked, “What is the king studying?”

There’s nothing to read on the desktop except for a few common books yah.

King Yu said, “Come and see where this came from.”

Su Yan girded his veiled gold belt and walked behind the screen, and saw that the few tattered pages held in King Yu’s hands seemed somewhat familiar.

“…… remembered, two days ago is not from the Lin Hua Pavilion secret passage chase floating sound, underground ‘Ming Hall’ after the explosion, this thing was lifted to me. At that time, I used a fire refractor to shine through, like some kind of scripture remnant, I don’t know if it has any relationship with the Seven Slaughter Camp, so I stuffed it into my arms and brought it out.”

Su Yan leaned over to scrutinize the fragments of burnt paper at the edges, the handwriting on it was quite clear, but the text was lost in the east and left out in the west, and it was difficult to read through the previous sentence without following the next sentence, so he could only guess that it was a fragment of the scripture based on some of the words.

He’d looked through it when he got back, too, and hadn’t gotten much out of it, so he’d just chucked it into his desktop booklet and almost forgotten about it.

King Yu took desktop white paper and transcribed the words from the fragment.

His hand of calligraphy iron painting silver hook, put but not wild, sharp bone temperament is really extraordinary. Every time Su Yan looked at it, he felt that a generous and heroic spirit of war leaped up from the paper and pounced on his face. Every time he looked at it, he couldn’t help but silently marvel at it: good calligraphy!

When King Yu finished transcribing, he left the burnt and broken places vacant, and took another vermilion pen to fill in the blanks.

“Suddenly penetrating …… something, before there was heaven and earth, there was something something something ……”

Su Yan read with a foggy head, couldn’t help but spit out in a whisper, “There was the Big Bang first.”

King Yu smiled uncertainly, skipped that, and went on to try to finish filling in the next scrap of pages:

There is badness in the mountains and rivers, and this peace, clear enumeration, enumeration, enumeration, enumeration, enumeration.

The enclosure is enumerated, and there are no beings. This everlasting existence, enclosure, enclosure.

He pondered for a moment, and wrote in the vacancies, respectively, “This,” “Eternally incorruptible,” “Nor God nor Buddha,” and “Nothing else “.

Su Yan read it again and kindly laughed: “Not even the mountains and rivers and all living beings, what a big mouth!”

King Yu said, “I’m not sure if the words filled in are correct, but taking a look at the contextualization of the words, they should be close.”

“Although the tone is big, the words used are straightforward and shallow, like it’s for the common people who don’t have a high level of culture.” Su Yan pointed with his fingertips, “Which is the so-called ‘this’…… exactly?”

King Yu shook his head as the two continued to look at the third one.

The third page is larger and the text is relatively complete, it reads:

Before …… the heavens and earth opened, light and darkness were already divided, so there were three interstices: the green sun, the red sun, and the white sun. Now it is the time of ‘red sun’, the light and darkness are fighting endlessly, the world is full of troubles, the horrible catastrophe is coming, only ……

“This paragraph has no beginning, no end, and it’s fanciful, how do I look at it, it’s like a godly trickster’s routine.” Su Yan snorted and brushed it aside to look at the last one.

The fourth scrap of page was small and burned down to a single line that read:

“The Great Tribulation is encountering the darkness of heaven and earth, and the Red Lotus appears to enter the vacuum.”

Next to the text, there were vague traces of dark red, like the fuzzy edges of some pattern.

Su Yan stared at the word “Red Lotus”, a heartbeat, from the hands of King Yu took away the vermillion pen, first in the white paper on the edge of the ambiguous drawing, and then a little bit of outlining, and finally drew a blooming eight-petal blood lotus.

“It’s not right …… the contact code of the assassins of the Seven Slaughter Battalion, how come it’s related to this godly scripture again?”

Against the two verses, the more he looked at the red lotus pattern, the more he felt that the fog in his mind was heavy, how to brush but could not be dispersed, and he felt that his right and left hands were holding two very different ropes, and how could he not connect the broken surfaces together.

“What exactly does the red lotus pattern represent …… What does the ‘great calamity’ refer to, and where is the ‘vacuum’?” Su Yan’s brows furrowed as he muttered, “In the Seven Kill Battalion’s underground stronghold, why is there a ‘Ming Tang’ hall with shrines, bushels, and scripture treasures …… Or is it not right ah, is it an assassin organization, or a cult? “

“What’s wrong with that?” King Yu asked rhetorically, “Why can’t it be both an assassin organization and a cult? Or more likely, these assassins were originally minions raised by the cult, whether they knew it themselves or not.”

Su Yan was enlightened when he broke through the fog, “No wonder Shen Qi couldn’t find out the origin of the Red Lotus Pattern in the Jianghu sects and forces before he exhausted the efforts of the Northern Zhenfu Division. But it turns out that it has nothing to do with the sects, and it is related to the sects!

“This underground hall, not specifically for the assassins to meet with, because the hall’s arrangement of the ceremony is too strong, rather like a place to preach and preach …… No wonder it is called the ‘Ming Hall’!

“‘The Son of Heaven made the Hall of Brightness, so as to communicate with the gods and spirits, to sense heaven and earth, and to correct the four seasons’ is correct, and there is another sentence after it – ‘out of the teachings of the world’.

“To name the underground hall ‘Ming Tang’ is not only to steal the Mandate of Heaven, but also to take the meaning of ‘educating all the people’!

From ancient times to the present, there have been many different kinds of sects, some of which have come to the forefront in the open, and have even been honored by the rulers as a religion for the protection of the country, such as the two religions of Buddhism and Taoism.

There are also those that are not recognized by the powers that be, and can only be developed in the private sector through secret associations or undercover development, with no less than a hundred or a thousand varieties, large and small, with names and characters. Each of them has its own doctrine, but in the final analysis, they all outline an incomparably beautiful realm in the clouds for their followers, so that they will work hard and sacrifice their blood for the ultimate dream that no one knows whether it can be realized or not.

The faithful paid tribute and sold their lives, the Pope received fame and fortune, and even utilized this force, combining it with the armed forces, in a great cause that has lasted through the ages, conscientiously and repeatedly lost – rebellion.

Wait a minute, it’s not all about “failure”, there are successes too!

Su Yan suddenly remembered that the founding emperor of Daming, with the body of a man of cloth from the end of the humble beginnings, is not the former dynasty’s rebellion?

According to the gossip in the wild history of the barbarians, it was said that this Emperor Taizu’s insurrectionary army back then had also been tainted with a certain sect, which was used to galvanize the people’s spirit of struggle against the tyrannical Yuan Dynasty’s rule. However, after he ascended the throne and became emperor, in order to consolidate power, he immediately banned this sect in the civil society, and drove it to extinction.

I wonder if that old anecdote has anything to do with this eight-petaled blood lotus?

Su Yan nearly asked Yu Wang: How much do you know about the secret history of your old Zhu family’s ancestors?

In the end, he was dragged back by reason. Not to mention an idle prince whose heart is not in the court, even Emperor Jinglong may not know. Even if he knows, he may not be willing to tell him, and may have to spank him again, why bother. If he had to inquire, he couldn’t be so open-minded.

Su Yan took a deep breath, gathered up the four remnants of the pages, clamped them back inside the booklet, and said to King Yu, “Since I can’t study it thoroughly, I’ll put it down for the time being. If my humble servant doesn’t go out again, I won’t be able to make it to the morning court.”

Yu Wang pointed to his own crown hat, through the black veil vaguely saw the gauze wrapped around the wound, “Dutiful Su adults whether forget, you and I are still wounded, this is only rested for less than three days. Imperial brother directly put me on half a month’s vacation, it seems to be very harsh on you.”

Su Yan laughed and said: ”His Majesty is wrong. The emperor also let me rest half a month to come, but you see today’s situation, can rest? Even if I don’t go to the morning court to stand shift, my humble servant has to go to the Da Lisi, to the Northern Zhenfu Si.”

“Northern Township?”

Su Yan told him all about the progress of the investigation of the case.

King Yu immediately said, “I will accompany you.”

Su Yan said: “This is my subordinate’s business, do not bother–” “Prince” two words have not been exported, was Yu Wang interrupted.

“How is it not my business? The Seven Slayers Battalion sent spies to lurk in my royal residence, blowing a flute to assassinate me, and killed Han Ben, so can’t I avenge him?”

This was a valid reason, and Su Yan had nothing to say.

“Then let’s go to the Northern Townships first.”

He walked to open the door to his room and just happened to bump into Su Xiaobei standing outside the door with a basin of hot water, seemingly hesitating to wake up the adults.

“My lord is awake, do you want to go to the morning today–” the second half of the sentence ended abruptly, Su Xiaobei looked at the Yu Wang behind Su Yan with eyes like looking at a ghost ……

He thought to himself: our adults are really …… walled in, and the sea is full of rivers! This kind of broad-mindedness, ordinary people can not reach! The problem is, in the future, in case Shen Tongzhi, as well as Brother Chou know, to make a fuss, how can I cover up for the Lord?

“Just …… just drank wine all night, nothing.” Su Yan had a moment of weakness and did not know who to explain it to. He picked up the towel in the basin and wrung it out, wiped his face, took another cup and a toothbrush dipped in green salt and honey, and went to the porch to brush his teeth.

Su Xiaobei was about to turn around when King Yu spoke, “Wait.” Reaching out, he fished out the wet towel Su Yan had used in the basin and wrung it out, wiping his own face and neck as well.

Su Xiaobei was shocked for the second time.

King Yu laughed and dropped the towel back into the water basin, “As you can see, it is indeed nothing.”

Thus, three feet away from Su Yan’s back, the new adulterous relationship that he didn’t know about was unilaterally sat upon by the family boy.