Northern Dynasties

Chapter 1292 Owl Tongue

Although Zu Ting spoke very harshly at Sima Xiaonan's house, he was actually not very sure about how to deal with the persecution of Zhao Yanshen.

Although Zu Ting entered the court as a meritorious official, he completed the transition of his status faster than other Northern Qi survivors and smoothly integrated into the Tang Dynasty, but his status as a meritorious official did not bring him too much power and prestige to bully the weak and do evil. Otherwise, he would have been able to find out the inside story of Zhao Yanshen's self-redemption, instead of misunderstanding that Zhao Yanshen was wealthy and spent money lavishly.

At the moment, Zu Ting was just a fox using the tiger's skin as a banner to bully others. Deep down, he still hoped to scare Zhao Yanshen and force him to surrender and give him a huge fortune.

After Zu Ting left, the guests and hosts at Sima Xiaonan's mansion were no longer in the mood to continue the feast. In particular, Zhao Yanshen, who was blackmailed by Zu Ting, frowned and said nothing.

Sima Xiaonan, the master, was also in a very bad mood, but he was still a little puzzled and asked: "Why did Lord Zhao make a grudge against Zu Ting, a villain?"

Zhao Yanshen sighed after hearing this. The matter was actually very simple. Before, when he was in charge of the personnel of Northern Qi, Zu Ting had repeatedly submitted recommendations for employment, but he did not appreciate him very much. In addition, Gao Yan, the ruler of Qi at that time, did not like Zu Ting very much either, so he excluded Zu Ting from selection several times, which naturally led to an old grudge.

If Northern Qi had not been destroyed in the past, Zhao Yanshen would not have cared about it. He was in a high position, and since he had to do things, he would inevitably offend people. Therefore, there were countless people who hated him, but only a few could really take revenge on him. But now the world has changed its order, and villains like Zu Ting took advantage of the situation, which was beyond his expectation.

After listening to Zhao Yanshen's story, Sima Xiaonan also sighed and said, "The world is unpredictable, who can predict it calmly? Zu is here to pick a fight and want to harm Lord Zhao, but I won't allow it! But now that the situation between the east and the west has just been determined, human affairs are bound to be turbulent again. This old grudge has been brought up, and Chang'an has become a place of trouble for Lord Zhao. It is safer to leave as soon as possible!"

Zhao Yanshen nodded after hearing this. He also heard that although Sima Xiaonan was willing to protect him, he didn't want to cause trouble, so he advised him to leave Chang'an as soon as possible. And he really meant it. There was nothing worth staying in Chang'an. Taking this opportunity to stay away from the trouble and return to Jinyang was also a good way to save his life.

Not to mention the discussion between Sima Xiaonan and Zhao Yanshen, after waiting for two days and seeing no sign of Zhao Yanshen coming to give gifts, Zu Ting asked people he knew and found out that Zhao Yanshen had quietly left Chang'an with his family.

After learning about this, Zu Ting was extremely ashamed and angry. He was not only angry at the failure of his blackmail, but also ashamed and angry at being ignored. So he returned home and worked on his essay.

Although Zu Ting had no power to punish others at will, it did not mean that he had no way to control Zhao Yanshen. He was clever by nature and good at writing, so although he had a bad character, he was also a trusted official in the Eastern Wei and Northern Qi dynasties. During the Tianbao period, he once served in the Secretariat, and thus knew some of the secrets of the Qi court.

These personnel information have lost their timeliness with the passage of time, but after Zu Ting's weaving and clever use, they still pose a certain threat to Zhao Yanshen and other Northern Qi survivors.

Soon, Zu Ting, based on his own memory and some fabrications, wrote a book exposing the crimes of Zhao Yanshen and several other former important officials of the Northern Qi Dynasty, including but not limited to the various strategies and insulting titles they had presented to the Qi court against the Western Dynasty in previous years.

For example, the Qi court once planned to destroy and excavate the ancestral tombs of the Longxi Li family in Heluo as a means of winning the battle, but because the Longxi Li family's ancestral tombs had been moved first, they were not carried out. They only destroyed some tombs of Li's distant relatives around Yecheng. It is impossible to find out who proposed this matter, and now Zu Ting directly put the blame on Zhao Yanshen. Anyway, Zhao Yanshen has always been a confidant of Gao's father and son, so who knows whether the content of their secret conspiracy involves this matter.

In addition, he did not intend to let Sima Xiaonan go. When he visited him before, he was deeply impressed by the grandeur of Sima Xiaonan's mansion. Now that Sima Xiaonan had protected and condoned Zhao Yanshen's escape from Chang'an to avoid his blackmail, Zu Ting also made a complaint.

After he finished writing the petition, Zu Ting copied several more copies and prepared to send them to different places. Although he was a meritorious official and was granted a noble title, he had no permanent position and was not qualified to meet the emperor. He had no way to get his message heard by the emperor, so he could only use the clumsy method of spreading the word widely. He sent one copy to Jingzhao Prefecture, one to the censor's house, and planned to send it to the minister's carriage outside the imperial city.

He was good at scheming, and when some people in Guandong were still unclear about the status of the various offices in the Chang'an court, he had already figured out the structure of the court. When Wang Songnian, the Yellow Gate Minister of the Ministry of Personnel, drove into the office to work, Zu Ting rushed out from outside the imperial city and threw the file he wrote into Wang Songnian's car.

Wang Songnian glanced at the contents of the file in the car, and his face changed. He asked the staff to bring the person who wrote the letter to the Ministry of Personnel for temporary custody, and he hurried back to the Ministry to present the file to the two ministers and circulate it among his colleagues. Everyone felt that it should be treated with caution, so they immediately decided to order the officials to control all the people involved and report to the Supreme after verifying the authenticity. Next, Sima Xiaonan's mansion was controlled, and Zhao Yanshen's family, who left Chang'an and headed east, were also arrested in Tongzhou and taken back to Beijing. All other people involved, as long as they were in Guanzhong, were also controlled one after another.

The Ministry of Personnel itself did not have a torture and interrogation hall. After the relevant personnel were brought to justice, they were all transferred to the Censorate. Because this was not an ordinary criminal case, there was no need to cooperate with the Ministry of Justice and the Dali Temple. The Ministry of Personnel and the Censorate could conduct the interrogation.

Zu Ting was used to the political atmosphere of Northern Qi, which was full of oppression and slander, and was unfamiliar with the judicial process. It was not that Northern Qi did not have relevant judicial institutions and processes, but that everyone from top to bottom was lazy to abide by the procedures. Compared with rules and regulations, they were more willing to exercise their subjective initiative and simplify the process within their power.

The emperor could punish or reward his ministers at will, and ministers could attack and slander each other irresponsibly. Even if the prime minister's eyes were gouged out, he could only blame himself for being inferior to others.

So when he saw the Ministry of Personnel and the Imperial Censorate put on such a posture, Zu Ting's heart began to beat in fear, because many of the personnel matters in his files had some basis to follow except for the beginning, and then they were just based on hearsay, and when they came to the rise, they were directly fabricated, in order to make the charges bigger. If he really had to confront the people involved, he would feel a little guilty.

But one thing that is more fortunate is that Zu Ting's main target this time is Zhao Yanshen. Even if there are other people involved, they are either minor details or just to prove the truth of what he said. After all, when it comes to I heard it and I heard it with someone else, someone else, intuitively speaking, the latter is more credible.

Those involved in the incident were a little confused when they were suddenly brought to the Imperial City's Censorate. And when they heard the interrogators asking about old events in the Qi Ting several years ago, they were inevitably a little confused.

No matter how good their memory is, they cannot remember clearly all the people and events from a few years ago and then recount them accurately after several years. Therefore, during the interrogation process, they often recall the people and events mentioned by the interrogator, but they can't really explain them clearly.

But as long as they said it was true, then we could enter the confrontation phase. Zu Ting had a clear goal and had planned it long ago, and he was confident and sure of what he said. Others were intimidated by his momentum, and the vague parts of their memories were inevitably influenced by him and tended to favor Zu Ting's account.

Therefore, when Zhao Yanshen and his family were taken back to Chang'an, a considerable part of the things Zu Ting had accused him of in the files had been confirmed. Some other things could not be confirmed, such as whether Zhao Yanshen had suggested digging up the tombs of the Li family in Longxi, which required him to be tried in person.

Because a lot of things in the files had been confirmed and were not deliberate slander by Zu Ting, the Menxia Province reported the relevant matters to the Supreme Emperor while waiting for Zhao Yanshen and his family to be brought to justice.

However, when Li Tai saw this incident, more than ten days had passed. As the emperor of a country, he had to deal with a lot of important things every day. Although Zu Ting's report involved the personnel of Northern Qi, Northern Qi had already perished, and the related personnel were naturally not very important, so the Ministry of Personnel did not classify it as a major event when submitting the report, but put it in the category of miscellaneous matters.

But what was insignificant to the emperor was a matter of life and death to some people. For these trivial matters, Li Tai would squeeze out some time and then specially pick out a period of free time to concentrate on reading and commenting.

When he first saw this file, he didn't take it seriously, and regarded it more as a literary work. It must be said that Zu Ting is indeed a very powerful writer. Even if it is obviously an article that makes a mountain out of a molehill and fabricates a crime, it is written with great momentum and is worth appreciating.

As for the crimes listed in it, Li Tai didn't care much. Even if these things were confirmed to be true, it only showed that Zhao Yanshen was an impolite radical hawk in Northern Qi, and those strategies were rarely implemented, and even if they were implemented, the effect was limited.

If this is considered a crime, then Li Tai's uncle Lu Shuhu cannot escape. Lu Shuhu certainly did not offer any strategy to pacify the west to Qi Lord Gao Yan, and the strategies Zhao Yanshen mentioned are all in the past. Even Northern Qi no longer exists. There is really no need to pursue the speaker. Since the person has paid the money to redeem himself, there is no need to stir up trouble.

So Li Tai casually replied that there was no need to investigate the matter further, and he also wrote on the memorial, "You should have noticed the demise of the Qi family, and you should consider for yourself what to offer as a tribute." He ordered the memorial to be returned to Zu Ting, so that he could reflect on himself and think about how he could make a living, and not bring the bad habits of the Northern Qi to Guanzhong.