newbobooks Chapter 274 Abandoning literature and embracing martial arts
Chapter 274 Abandoning literature and embracing martial arts
Huo Qingyun is four years younger than the late crown prince. She has liked following her cousin the crown prince since she was a child. Since the late crown prince took good care of the imprisoned Prince Yan, she also had a lot of interactions with the Prince Yan.
Huo Qingyun was gifted and studious. At the age of thirteen, he took part in the provincial examination and won the title of Jieyuan. From then on, he became famous for his talent in Kyoto.
Who would have thought that on the eve of the imperial examination in spring of the following year, the prince suddenly passed away, shocking the whole country and the imperial examination was postponed accordingly.
The late Crown Prince Chen Xuanli was the son of Aunt Huo Qingyun. After the death of the late Crown Prince, Aunt Huo Qingyun could not bear the blow and soon died of depression.
The head of the Huo family at that time, who was also Huo Qingyun's grandfather, lost his daughter and grandson in succession. He guessed that the death of his grandson was related to the Lin family, so he submitted a memorial to Huizong requesting a thorough investigation into the sudden death of the late crown prince.
Unexpectedly, before Huizong made a decision, the Lin and Tang families united to counterattack. Memorials impeaching the head of the Huo family poured into the imperial study like snowflakes, giving Huizong a headache.
It happened at a time when bandits were rampant in the south of the Yangtze River. At first there were only a few of them, but gradually their numbers increased and eventually they spread like wildfire. Many of them started the rebellion in the name of the remnants of the previous dynasty.
No one expected that the banditry would be so massive that it could not be suppressed by the government garrison alone. The governor of Yangzhou could only petition the court to send troops for support.
Huizong was already weak. He lost his beloved son and concubine one after another, and was caught in the game between the Huo family and the Lin family. Coupled with this bandit uprising, he was exhausted and fell ill.
When the situation was critical, Lin Xiaotian volunteered to lead his troops to the south of the Yangtze River to suppress bandits.
Huizong approved the request.
Lin Xiaotian came back from suppressing the bandits and became a great hero. The people of Kyoto vied to praise him. The Lin family, which was already the leader of the five great families, became even more prestigious at this time.
The head of the Huo family knew that there was no hope of redress, and he suffered a stroke out of anger, and from then on he had to stay in bed.
In order to reverse their declining position in the court, the Huo family urged Huo Qingyun to study hard and continue to prepare for the imperial examination which would be postponed to next year. On the other hand, they planned to send Huo Qingyun's sister Huo Xilan into the harem.
It seemed that everyone had forgotten that Huo Xilan was only thirteen years old at the time, while Huizong was already over fifty years old.
In the end, Huo Xilan did not enter the palace, and Huo Qingyun did not take part in the imperial examination the following year, but went directly to work in the Palace Front Department.
This move shocked the government and the public.
You know, although the Palace Front Department has the responsibility of guarding the imperial palace and can show up in front of the emperor more often to leave an impression on him, they are ultimately "guards."
The people from the five great families were extremely disdainful of working in the Palace Front Department.
Just as Li Heng told Chen Ji, people thought that Jiang Bin could no longer make it in the Jiang family, so he came to the Dianqian Division to beg for food.
Therefore, Huo Qingyun, as the eldest grandson of the Huo family, actually gave up the imperial examination and joined the Palace Front Department, which shocked everyone at the time.
Besides, everyone knows that Huo Qingyun is extremely talented, but no one has heard of his martial arts skills!
Huo Qingyun dared to serve in the palace, or was able to serve in the palace, so he must have some skills, but he just had not shown them in front of others before.
And the fact proves that excellent people are excellent everywhere.
Huo Qingyun didn't care about the mocking words, malicious looks and deliberate suppression. In just two years, he was promoted to deputy commander of the Palace Front Division.
Two years later, the eighteen-year-old Huo Qingyun became the youngest commander of the Palace Front since the founding of the Daliang Dynasty.
In the third two years, Huo Qingyun was promoted to the commander of the Imperial Guard, in charge of the three departments of Palace Front, Pacification, and Military Affairs. He was deeply trusted by Huizong, and the Huo family was no longer as precarious in the court as before.
However, the good times did not last long.
A new emperor appoints new ministers. When Emperor Huizong passed away and Emperor Tianqi ascended the throne, Huo Qingyun's position as the commander of the imperial guard became awkward.
There is no other reason. The Lin family is behind Emperor Tianqi, and the Huo family and the Lin family have been at odds with each other since the death of the former crown prince.
There is one thing that can clearly reflect Huo Qingyun's embarrassing situation.
Last year, right after Concubine Bai was promoted to the position of Concubine, she secretly sent people to her hometown to bring her brother and sister-in-law to Kyoto, hoping to share the glory and prosperity with them. However, instead of her brother and sister-in-law arriving, she received news of floods in the south.
When she heard that a large number of refugees were pouring onto the official road heading north, Concubine Bai suddenly panicked, fearing that her younger brothers and sisters would be caught up in the refugees and in danger.
So, Concubine Bai asked Emperor Tianqi to send someone to welcome her brother and sister-in-law to Beijing. After all, the strength of the people she sent privately and those sent by the emperor were incomparable.
Emperor Tianqi doted on Concubine Bai, so he readily agreed to such a small matter and immediately sent Huo Qingyun to lead people to search for Concubine Bai's brother and sister-in-law along the official road.
When this order came down, Huo Qingyun didn't react much, which made his subordinates feel frustrated as if they had eaten a fly.
Concubine Bai's father was only a seventh-rank county magistrate. The children of a seventh-rank county magistrate actually required their parents to pick them up in person. Isn't this simply disgusting?
However, the emperor's will could not be disobeyed, so they set out anyway, and soon after, they found the bodies of Concubine Bai's brother and sister-in-law in an abandoned post station.
Judging from the situation at the scene, they were looted by the victims.
Huo Qingyun ordered his men to load the bodies of Concubine Bai's brother and sister-in-law onto a truck and take them back to Kyoto.
The emperor asked us to pick him up, but he didn’t say whether he was a living person or a dead person, right?
When the bodies arrived in Kyoto, Concubine Bai was heartbroken when she saw them. She wailed loudly in front of her brother and sister-in-law's bodies and begged Emperor Tianqi to thoroughly investigate the murderer of her brother and sister-in-law.
However, there is a 99% chance that Concubine Bai's brothers and sisters died at the hands of the disaster victims, and now there are tens of thousands of disaster victims heading north. Where can we find the disaster victims who killed her brothers and sisters?
At that time, Emperor Tianqi had just ascended the throne, and he didn't know what price he would pay after relying on the Lin family to come to power.
Emperor Tianqi, who had just become the emperor, was full of vigor and ambition.
The Changzhou prefect who embezzled relief money was beheaded, a "porridge factory" was set up to accommodate the victims, and each government office was ordered to send more doctors to help with the relief and fight the plague...
After the flood, from a series of actions taken by Emperor Tianqi, we can see that this young emperor had ambitions and ulterior motives.
Concubine Bai knew that it was unrealistic to find the murderer who killed her brother and sister-in-law among the vast number of disaster victims, but she could not swallow this anger, so she advised the emperor to close the city gates and stop accepting disaster victims in order to prevent the plague from the south from spreading to Kyoto City and even the Imperial Palace.
The emperor really liked Concubine Bai, so he did not reject her advice. He also considered that the "porridge factory" located in the suburbs of Beijing could provide a unified resettlement for the victims, so he ordered the city gates of Kyoto to be blocked.
However, Emperor Tianqi was worried that the victims would panic because they could not enter the capital city, so he sent his elder sister, Princess Qingyi, to the "porridge factory" to inspect the situation of the victims in person. It can be said that he really cared about the victims.
At that time, Emperor Tianqi was truly concerned about the country and the people, and he trusted Princess Qingyi!
This is in stark contrast to the scene today where the young eunuch who pleaded for the eldest princess was beaten to death in front of the Taiping Palace in public.