Chapter 90 – If you have to rob, then rob.

Ci Ning Palace.

The Empress Dowager was trimming the freshly picked flower branches with golden shears, cutting off the excess leaf stalks one by one and inserting them into a peacock-blue glazed vase.

The summer lotus flowers lined her white jade-like fingers, and the cardamom on her fingertips was a strong, large red color, mirroring the color of her lipstick.

The Empress Dowager is already in her fifties, but due to her natural beauty and good maintenance, she looks only in her early forties. Graceful posture, bright eyes and the fine lines at the corners of her eyes and lips, together accomplished her being brewed by the years of moving flavor.

Emperor Jinglong walked into the hall amidst a crowd of palace maids and chamberlains ambling and kowtowing, and saluted, “Greetings to mother empress.”

“Get up.” The Empress Dowager didn’t raise her head, “Why does the Emperor have free time today, coming to me as soon as he gets off the court.”

Emperor Jinglong signaled the accompanying courtiers to retire before taking out a folded book from his sleeve and handing it over, “Come to report a case to mother.”

The empress dowager snorted, “The harem does not interfere in politics. In a case as big as the sky, the emperor himself will just take the idea, why bring it to talk to me.”

The Emperor insisted, “Mother will read the folders first.”

The empress dowager had to put down the flower branch and gold scissors, took the folding, signaling the emperor to sit with her on the Luohan couch. In the temple only mother and son two, the empress dowager also do not board the waist, some lazy recline, elbows on the kang table, browse the fine handwriting.

As he looked at it, his face gradually changed color, and his long pointed thumbnail poked a hole in the edge of the page.

She closed the folders, took a deep breath and adjusted her emotions before asking, “This is a case run by the Northern Zhenfu Division, and I know their usual tactics. Emperor, tell me honestly, what is written here, just how much is true and how much is false?”

The emperor looked directly at her, tone of certainty: “Lingguang Temple this case, ten percent ten is true. Physical evidence, witnesses are complete, each clean room was found in the secret passage, the lamp oil to the imperial doctor examined, indeed contains ecstasy, that night from the letter into the hostesses, all searched out the pills. The monks confessed that since Jiyao became the presiding officer, in order to show the saint and make a name for himself as a ‘living Buddha’, he had done a lot of such evil deeds, which can be described as heinous sins!”

The Empress Dowager was silent for a moment and coldly said, “In that case, kill it.”

“Jiyao’s death is not regrettable, but his one life cannot pay for the crimes he committed.” The emperor said in a deep voice, “Mother knows that after this case was finalized and made public according to the law, more than thirty women in the capital threw themselves into a noose, both civilian women and family members of officials. Overnight, the Tonghui River in the east of the city had nearly a hundred floating corpses, all of which were the bodies of infants under the age of one.”

As if choking, the Empress Dowager’s expression stiffened and she finally let out a long sigh.

After the truth of “Luohan sends a child” is revealed, some of the victimized women have gained the understanding of the husband’s family, some were immediately repudiated, and some killed themselves, and those who often stayed in the Ling Guang Temple, is even more ashamed, by the family disgust, the passers-by poke and point and had to go on the road to extinction. Where to go to Lingguang Temple to seek heir to give birth to the baby is even more pitiful, the big one expelled, the small one drowned.

Responsible for the aftermath of the Yingtian prefectural magistrate, had to report it to the court, requesting instructions. The emperor ordered the Lingguang Temple seized gold and silver, allocated part of the capital to the Ciyuyuan, specialized in sheltering those abandoned infants, and posted announcements, ordering the people not to kill babies, before basically curbed the trend.

The fallout from this case went far beyond that, shaking the foundations of Buddhism, Taoism and even a few other sects in the capital.

King Yu took the opportunity to submit a memorial, requesting the court to dismantle thirteen temples and Taoist temples, including Lingguang Temple, recover more than a thousand ultimatums of monks and Taoist priests, and allow these monks to return to secular life as citizens, and requesting that the monk’s field and the Taoist field be returned as a citizen’s field, and be re-measured and re-allocated.

Cabinet five university professors therefore another quarrel, each on the vote proposed, three votes in favor, two votes against. The emperor considered, approved a permit.

This wave of operation is very refreshing the view of the court on this prodigal prince, in the folk is also a lot of praise. And those religious people and their believers, behind his back to hate a gnashing of teeth, many Fang Shi even private rumors, Yu Wang blasphemy Buddha perish Taoist disrespect for the gods, they want to do practices to sue the court of heaven, so that the heavenly thunderbolt split him.

King Yu laughed out loud upon hearing this and said, “Let them go and do the magic, and this king will wait for the heavenly thunder to strike. If they don’t come, this king doesn’t mind being Ximen Bao for a time as well, letting them go up to heaven to be God’s ambassadors.”

Of course, this is an afterthought. Right now, Yu Wang is outside the Ci Ning Palace, heard the emperor in the inside, not to go in to join in the fun, since looking for a waterfront pavilion to rest.

Inside the temple, the emperor saw the empress dowager sighing, and suddenly said, “Do you remember, mother, I first ascended to the throne soon, mother at the birthday banquet, for the favorite species of agapanthus – ‘Gathering Eight Immortals’ composed a poem, ‘Clean white The Jade Emperor gave it to the royal family. The God of Flowers does not dare to split it lightly, and there should be no second flower in the world.’ Once this poem came out, where else in the world would dare to plant it privately, all said it was a royal flower. South Zhili, the two lakes and other places officials, have dug plants, to the car boat not far from thousands of miles, the people hurt money to send to the capital, planted out of the mountains of flower forest, to please the Queen Mother’s heart.

“Unfortunately, this flower in the capital of the water and soil is not convinced, the following year will be all withered, and the origin of the ‘Gathering of the Eight Immortals’ varieties, now has been extinct.”

The Empress Dowager said in a sharp voice, “What does the Emperor want to say, no need to beat around the bush, just say it directly.”

The emperor said in a warm voice: “As a higher power, it is easy to favor the lower, it is difficult to love; it is easy to seize, it is difficult to fulfill. To oneself, self-indulgence is easy, self-discipline is difficult. Mother is the most honorable woman in the whole world, the mother of hundreds of millions of people, she should set an example.”

“What a good example to set!” The Empress Dowager slapped the kang table, “Are you trying to say that it was because of my favor to Jiyao that he used his power to commit great crimes and poison the people?”

The emperor arched his hand and apologized, “My son does not dare.”

The Empress Dowager sneered slightly, “The Emperor is a good Emperor, a good son that I raised single-handedly. But how is it that this good son of mine doesn’t understand his mother’s heart?”

The emperor still wanted to say something, the empress dowager directly served tea to send off the guests, “You go back, my body is tired, I need to rest.”

The emperor could only get up to retire, take back the folders in his sleeve, and leave a package on the kang table, saying, “This is the lost things of Ci Ning Palace, my son helped to find it back, looking forward to the mother to collect properly.”

After he left, the Empress Dowager unpacked the bag, see is a jade pillow, immediately stunned. This jade pillow was once used in her bed, Jiyao pestered her to ask for it, saying that she wanted to keep it as a souvenir. She felt bad, did not agree. Who would have thought that the boy bully, secretly take the jade pillow, she found afterwards, reprimanded a few sentences, but also did not really have to ask him to return.

This time, however, because of the incident of Jiyao, the jade pillow fell into the hands of the emperor.

The empress dowager was embarrassed to the extreme, her face a burst of green and white, fiercely grabbed the jade pillow and smashed it on the ground, the strings collapsed, and the jade pieces of beads rolled all over the ground.

The personal palace maid Qiong Gu rushed into the hall at the sound of the voice, advised: “The mother rests her anger, take care of the phoenix body.”

The Empress Dowager gasped sharply and after a moment gritted her teeth, “The Emperor has a heart! I also have a return gift, you send it to him.”

–

Emperor Jinglong walked out of Cining Palace, stood in the corridor for a while, sighed silently, and was about to get up to go back to the Palace of Nourishing Heart, when he suddenly saw the familiar figure in the pavilion next to the lotus pond. He raised his hand and waved away the chamberlain, and raised his steps to go over.

King Yu was looking at the green lotus standing upright on the water, not knowing what he was thinking about, when he heard footsteps approaching and the figure was still three feet behind him, he turned around and saluted, “Greetings to imperial brother.”

The emperor said, “You have not lost any of your kung fu. I, however, am far behind.”

King Yu laughed, “Imperial brother is really lifting up my younger brother. You have a lot of time on your hands, I eat and drink and have fun, and I also have no time to practice, so why don’t you say that I’ve fallen behind more?”

Emperor Jinglong also laughed and shook his head, “Alright, alright, don’t sell yourself short. Knowing that you’ve done a few things well recently, as long as you can continue to share my worries, I won’t scold you for letting loose and doing nothing in the future.”

King Yu collected his smile, took a few steps forward and asked in a low voice, “Imperial brother just came out of the Empress Mother’s palace, is it for that matter of Jiyao? How is the attitude of the Empress Mother?”

The emperor also converged smile, frowning slightly: “The attitude …… is somewhat subtle. For Jiyao’s death, the mother did not have a different color, but because I politely advised her, she lost her temper.”

“Jiyao is despicable and unpleasant, after the Empress Mother knows the truth, she naturally won’t favor him anymore. My younger brother said long ago that he’s just a contraption, the Empress Mother just takes him for fun when she’s bored, imperial brother doesn’t have to care too much.” King Yu deliberately looked the emperor up and down and tsked, “Besides, since I was a child, when has the Empress Mother ever really lost her temper with you? It was all directed at me. Last time I slapped Jiyao in the face, she took a rouge box and threw it at me, look, here, it’s all bruised.”

King Yu brought the corner of his forehead over to show his imperial brother. The emperor pushed his face away and taunted, “Come on, even a crossbow can’t hit you, a rouge box can hit?”

“Since I was a child, although mother scolded you more, her heart is favoring you, I know-” the emperor raised his hand to stop Yu Wang’s explanation, and continued, “What I am worried about nowadays, you also know. At this moment, you and I are not kings and subjects, we are just fellow brothers, so tell me what to do.”

In the face of suspected late widowed mother, the two brothers at this time the position is very consistent, the mood is equally complex, and therefore unprecedentedly together.

King Yu has always scoffed at Zhu Zi Ethics, he himself is a deviation, after pondering, said: “In fact, it is not so serious, mother widowed for nearly twenty years, the deep palace loneliness, to take a gadget to pass the time, as long as the future no longer out of Jiyao’s stream of pickles, we do the son of the son, turn a blind eye and close your eyes even if it is.”

Let’s just say that she gave herself a whole human form of jade power, King Yu swallowed the latter half of this sentence back into his stomach and didn’t dare to say it in front of his royal brother.

The emperor frowned: “I’m not obliged to ask her to clear her mind, but as the empress dowager, she doesn’t consider her own honor, she doesn’t consider my face as the emperor, but she also has to consider the bad influence on the former harem, doesn’t she? After the death of a Jiyao, in case there is another Jishun or Jiyu, if this kind of bad thing happens again in the future, I will still have to plow through the court, and it will definitely damage the relationship between mother and son.”

King Yu was also conflicted. He thought that the world was much more lenient to men than to women, and that it was not fair for a widower to keep a group of concubines and male pets without being blamed, while a widow had to be loyal and faithful for the rest of her life. But this widow is his own mother, out of this kind of thing, as a human son, on the one hand, he feels sorry for his mother’s loneliness and torment, on the other hand, he feels embarrassed and embarrassed.

The two brothers are looking at each other speechless, the empress dowager’s personal palace maid Qiong Gu, carrying a birdcage covered with a cloth cover, approached the pavilion and bowed.

Qiong Aunt is from the Qin Wangfu out of the old man, took care of the two brothers in their infancy, the emperor is quite respectful of her, let her free of salute and leveled off, said: “What is the matter, account for the subordinates to do is, Qiong Aunt age adult, can not be overworked.”

Qiong Gu offered the birdcage: “The Empress Dowager instructed the slave girl to give this to His Majesty in person, saying that His Majesty would know her feelings once she saw it.” She said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

The emperor received, pull open the cloth cover, see pure gold to build the birdcage, the empress dowager love more than treasure of the bird of great happiness, has become a colorful corpse.

This bird comes from the forests of a distant foreign country and was brought to the Empress Dowager by a ship sailing from Xifan, making it the only one of its kind. With its gorgeous feathers and melodious song, it is said to be a divine bird that lives in the heavenly paradise and feeds on nectar from the nectar of immortal dew, hence its name “Joy”.

The empress dowager extremely favorite bird, ordered to serve carefully, not the slightest negligence. The emperor sometimes joked, “If I have a youngest brother, the mother does not see love like this.”

But now, the polecat is a corpse.

King Yu opened the door of the cage, reached in and held the bird body, looked over and said, “Still warm, newly dead soon. The bones of the whole body are all broken, and the internal organs are extruded from the mouth, which is …… pinched to death alive.”

He suddenly smiled lightly, “Imperial brother, what does Mother mean by this?”

The emperor stared at the bird corpse, the bottom of the heart is a little chilly, face is still calm and peaceful, said: “mother wants to use this bird to tell me, even if she is again beloved thing, is just a contraption. If I don’t see eye to eye, want to persuade her to clean herself, persuade her to restrain herself and self-discipline, she would rather destroy this thing with her own hands, but also don’t want to hurt the love between mother and son because of this.”

From the time he heard the Emperor’s footsteps until this moment, King Yu’s heart, which had always been suppressed, seeking to be whole, and striving to display warmth and affection, flared up with uncontrollable anger because of a certain word in the Emperor’s last sentence–

Clean up your act! Discipline yourself! Anyone is entitled to say such things, only you are not!

Mother is raising the head of the face, even if she may not be much attached, even if she only treats it as a contraption, but at least she will not pretend to cover it up, will not be inconsistent, will not mouth the words of love for talent and fulfillment of ambitions while dragging people to bed with such underhanded means as oxytocics!

This resentment burned Yu Wang chest burning pain, as if even the whole body blood flow are steamed into a poisonous gas, and even want to face to tear down his this lofty brother’s hypocritical face, to declare to him: your hidden forbidden domain, is already my people! What are you going to do, put me into the high wall of Fengyang?

Originally, he intended to let the emperor to see himself embracing the scene of beauty into his arms, this mentality, rather than hostile, more like a younger brother fighting with his elder brother, with a kind of “I know you can not take me, I just want to snatch back what belongs to me, to make you half dead,” the naivety and frankness.

But the bird carcass, as if it were a steeply struck chime bell, like a blow to the head, gave him a sharp warning–the

In the past ten years, he repeatedly provoked the imperial power, not on the court, not all the etiquette, love to come, love to go, the surface of the lethargy and diffidence, in fact, untamed. The emperor therefore often reprimanded him, but never actually chastisement.

As an idle prince who had been relieved of his military power, what qualifications did he have to stomp on his nose? It was merely due to the guilty heart, the intention to compensate him after the emperor had stripped him of everything – although unwilling to admit it, he did look up to this. Like a log with its roots cut off, he could only rely on a hard and tall mountain; one tremor from the rock and he would have to fall to the ground.

What makes him think that if he touches the emperor’s actual interests or insults the emperor’s face, Zhu Geen will still care about his blood relationship with him? Is it true that the emperor’s family is the most unfeeling?

King Yu held the gradually cold and stiff bird corpse in his palm, his heart’s flames converged and solidified little by little, gradually freezing into ice.

He looked at Emperor Jinglong’s pensive face, struggled out of despair with a trace of hope and impulse, and abruptly spoke, “Mother’s so-called ‘beloved’ is nothing more than a small trinket that is carefully nurtured in times of loneliness, and which can be decidedly discarded when necessary, but this is not the case for me. My ‘beloved’ is the one that I have to fight for no matter what, the one that I will never give up once I have decided to do so”.

The emperor slightly shocked, staring at him, as if because of the same heart, and in a flash to understand what he was referring to in his words, his face suddenly sank: “I know who you are referring to, and also several times warned you not to hit his idea, how come you are still obsessed with it?”

King Yu clenched his fists and squeezed out a sentence with almost all his strength, “That person, if I only want him–Royal Brother, can you not rob with me?”

The emperor’s face is calm, but his eyes are covered with frost, coldly said: “Zhu Xuxu, you have forgotten, ‘under the sky is not the king’s land, the rate of the land is not the king’s subjects’? A ‘rob’ word, is already committed the crime of disrespect. You as a prince, words and behavior should be in line with the etiquette, more should not speak out of turn.”

King Yu picked up the corners of his mouth and smiled with an ugly face, “It is my younger brother who has been rude, I hope that imperial brother will forgive me.”

The emperor pulled out the bird’s corpse from his palm and threw it into the cage, “Birds don’t speak, don’t have any feelings, and are robbed and sold senselessly, but people aren’t.

“Lifu Jing, keep in mind that if my beloved were a bird, I would open the cage door and let it fly away, and decapitate any hand that aimed an arrow or a net at it, whether that hand was trying to hurt it or capture it.

“It can stay anywhere, pavilions, mountains, forests, water islets, gold glazed roofs or wild reeds, and of course preferably on my knee, but everything must be of its own free will, understand?”

The Emperor dropped his last words and walked away with his arms folded.

King Yu looked at the back of the bright yellow dragon robe, his heart chilled to the core.

For the sake of the stability of the emperor and the peace of the earth and grain, his brother sacrificed his wishes, ambitions and freedom. Even though he was no longer willing, no matter how full of grievances he was, he endured it for ten years. After the Boundary Monument appointment, he never stepped out of the capital again.

This was the only time in the past ten years that he had pleaded with his royal brother, not even begging for a grant, but only begging the other party not to block him, and yet he still only received an indifferent back as a reply that the Supreme Being disdained.

–Is it true that only by becoming a Supreme Being will one not have to endure this humiliation of being held at all times, and will one be able to obtain the freedom one craves with one’s beloved?

As if dreaming, King Yu suddenly remembered the words he had said to Ye Donglou on that day of the Dragon Boat Festival, in the forested fine house in the East Garden:

“The good things under this sky will never be taken up by one man, to have the wind and the rain, except–“

He didn’t say the last half of the sentence at the time, because the thought was vague and remote, passing through his mind in no more than a flash.

But now, finally, he could finish the sentence with great clarity:

“No one can do what his heart desires except the True Dragon.”