Shaojun riding the sea

Chapter 200 Killing someone with a borrowed knife

Lan Yubai raised his head and met Ning Jiu Niang's sparkling eyes. She was obviously smiling, but the sadness and pain in her eyes were so real and deep. She seemed to be tearing her heart out to Lan Yubai. look--

"Lan Yubai, when you deliberately approached me, you were only interested in my identity as the adopted daughter of the Yue family. You didn't care about me, but in the Yue family, I was just a chess piece in your hand, used to deal with the Yue family. The family’s chess piece, right?”

The cold wind is blowing outside the pagoda, and the fireworks blooming in the sky illuminate the frost and snow on the top of the pagoda. New Year's Eve, the warmest night of the year, was originally a hard-won moment of reunion, but now it has become a cruel and embarrassing face-to-face exposure, cold and cold. During the confrontation, there was only deathly silence in the hall.

Lan Yubai pursed his thin lips tightly. After an unknown amount of time, he looked directly at Ning Jiu Niang and said softly: "Do you believe what those bad gamblers say? Jiu Niang, they are just trying to defraud you of your money. Just repay their gambling debts. They are the kind of scoundrels who hang out in the market. They can make up any lies. When they pretended to be a refugee couple and took the lead in making trouble, they just wanted to take advantage of the chaos. How could they make arrangements in advance? Is there any evidence? Can such an empty statement be framed on my head? "

After a pause, Lan Yubai stretched out his hand to Ning Jiu Niang, with the tenderness in his eyes still: "Ning Jiu Niang, we have been married for many years, but you don't have any trust in me? We first met in Youzhou, and our love will last forever. We face each other day and night, playing the piano and the harp. "Don't you feel my affection for you at all?"

Ning Jiu Niang looked at the hand stretched out to her, shook her head, took a few steps back, and smiled sadly: "I just trust you too much, so I have been holding back. I'm also afraid of listening to them." I wronged you with my one-sided statement, so I didn’t say anything. I pretended to be nonchalant, lest you find out. I just secretly collected all kinds of evidence. I wanted to prove that you had planned it for a long time, but I was afraid that I would really find you out. Do you know how I survived these past few months?"

"How much I hope in my heart that everything is just a misunderstanding. You have never used me to deal with Yue Jia, and you have never used those plots and tricks on my closest family members. But tonight, just tonight, I put on this red Cloak, do you know what this means?"

Those last few words resounded throughout the tower, and were almost screamed out by Ning Jiu Niang in despair. She threw the wine glass at Lan Yubai, and tears instantly burst into her eyes: "In the battle at Kuocang Valley, you sent people You know what you did when you sneaked into the military camp!"

Just before going to the banquet tonight, Ning Jiu Niang received a special reply, but she did not dare to read it and was eager to go to the banquet, so she asked her maid Xiang'er to prepare two cloaks for her, one red and one blue. Color, red represents the answer is "yes", blue represents the answer is "no".

This is actually a code she agreed with Xiang'er, which represents the reply of the person in the letter, and this answer is also crucial to her, because it determines -

Did Lan Yubai approach her deliberately and use her to deal with Yue Jia?
Unfortunately, Xiang'er came in and put on the red cloak for her. The answer couldn't be clearer. Her heart was shattered in an instant. The betrayal of the person beside her made her feel like the sky was falling!
This reply came from a veteran named Nie in a border town. She called him "Uncle Nie". He was her father's comrade-in-arms and her best brother. They served together under the Marquis of Yue, and they were both loyal and loyal men. Man.

During the battle at Kuocang Valley, Uncle Nie was involved in the battle. He was trapped in the snow valley with the Marquis of Yue, and had to hold on for half a month before receiving reinforcements.

But the rice was infested with worms and the cotton wool was black. The so-called "support" was like a joke. One hundred thousand Yue soldiers were fighting bloody battles outside to protect their homes and the country. However, there were people in the court who embezzled military pay, enriched their own pockets, and treated the lives of the soldiers as nothing. .

The official who was responsible for dispatching and escorting the grain and fodder back then was named Wei and was a brother of Queen Wei.

After his deeds were exposed, Lord Wei was blocked in the valley by angry soldiers. With the crowd so angry, the Marquis of Yue personally executed him and chopped off the man's head.

In the end, morale was greatly boosted, and the Yue army returned victorious. However, the Marquis of Yue won the battle at Kuocanggu, but he completely offended the Wei family. His method of killing first and then showing off also made Emperor Yun dissatisfied. There were members of the Wei family in the court. They also kept impeaching the marquis of Yue for relying on his own merits and having no superiors. All of this implicitly laid the groundwork for the massacre of the Yue family after the genocide. Therefore, the battle at Kuocanggu is a very critical node. Ning Jiu Niang has been asking Lan Yubai to search for clues, trying to find out whether the real culprits behind the frame-up of the Yue family are the Queen Wei's family, but Lan Yubai has been searching for a long time to no avail. Ning Jiuniang thought of an old friend who had retired long ago, Uncle Nie.

But before she could find Uncle Nie, she had already met the gambling brother and sister in the market. The "truth" they told her was unbelievable to her, but she also vaguely captured something.

Are the refugee riots in Youzhou and the siege and military chaos in Kuocang Valley very similar to some extent?
Had it not been for the fierce anger among the army and the intensifying military rebellion, the Marquis of Yue would not have acted impulsively and killed Queen Wei's brother, which led to a feud between the Yue family and the Wei family, causing him to be impeached by Manchu officials and causing serious consequences. The king's suspicion also laid the root of his separation from Emperor Yun.

So is there a possibility that all of this is actually caused by someone with a hand that changes the clouds and rains, adding fuel to the fire behind the scenes, pushing Yuehou and Yuejia into a place of eternal destruction step by step?
A bold guess appeared in Ning Jiuniang's mind. While suppressing the turmoil in her heart, she quietly contacted Uncle Nie, who had long since retired, hoping to learn more details about the battle in Kuocang Valley from him. .

In her letter, she asked Uncle Nie if there were any new recruits from the Yue army, or some with unfamiliar faces and Youzhou accents, who took the lead in making trouble in the snow valley, shouting that they must kill the Wei family disciples. Inciting the morale of the army and forcing the Marquis of Yue to make a decision, he finally set off the military rebellion that surrounded the imperial officials.

When Ning Jiuniang got married, she invited Uncle Nie to come to Youzhou for a wedding drink. Uncle Nie also lived in Youzhou for a while, so he was familiar with the Youzhou accent.

However, Uncle Nie wrote back and told Ning Jiuniang that he was not very impressed. After all, several years had passed and he could not remember many things clearly. However, he provided another important information——

There were indeed a few new recruits back then. They didn't have much of a Youzhou accent, but they all had extraordinary skills, especially equestrian skills. Among them, there was one who was the most handsome, nicknamed Zhui Feng, who could subdue fierce horses with one hand. Even the Marquis of Yue praised him a few times, and when the Wei family disciples were surrounded, it was he who charged into the battle and caused the most ferocity in the front. At that time, the army even praised him as a newborn calf who is not afraid of tigers and is a strong-blooded man with strong bones. !
Ning Jiuniang, who received Uncle Nie's reply, was shocked when she saw the words "excellent equestrian skills", because the Lan family has a Danxi horse farm, which is famous in Youzhou, and there are many men with strong skills and excellent equestrian skills. And this "Chasing the Wind" that impressed Uncle Nie the most, also successfully evoked Ning Jiuniang's long-standing memory.

When she first married in Youzhou, she was attacked by a crazy horse at the Danxi Racecourse. A young man saved her in time. That man seemed to be Lan Yubai's capable subordinate. She saw her when she went to the racecourse. She passed him several times, but the man behind him suddenly disappeared. She even mentioned it to Lan Yubai, but Lan Yubai only said that the man was not a native of Youzhou and had returned home for something, so she did not go to find out more about Tai. too much.

Now that I think about it, wasn't the year when the young horse trainer disappeared also the year when Kuocanggu fought?

Coupled with the fact that Uncle Nie described the physical appearance of the "Chasing the Wind" in his letter, Ning Jiu Niang looked more and more like her. It happened that her personal maid Xiang'er was very good at painting and had also met the man who had saved her back then. After asking her horse trainer, the master and servant immediately relied on their memories to add details to each other, and finally made a lifelike portrait, which they attached to the letter and sent out overnight.

It is impossible to describe how uneasy Ning Jiu Niang felt during the days of waiting for a reply. In fact, too many "coincidences" have confirmed her conjectures, but she still needs a final answer, one that can shatter all her self-deceptive illusions. exact answer.

And tonight, the warm night of gathering together on New Year's Eve, the answer she was waiting for came -

Uncle Nie replied that the horse trainer in the portrait was the recruit "Zhui Feng" in the military camp back then!
"What a Zhuifeng. You arranged him into the Yue Family Army from Youzhou Racecourse. You followed the same trick and used it once in Youzhou and a second time in the battle of Kuocang Valley. No, or Speaking of these devious tricks, you don’t know how many times you have used them, but now I only see these two on the surface, and in those invisible places, you don’t know how many methods you have used, how many traps you have set, just waiting Falling in hard, right?"

"You are deliberately planning and planning every step of the way just to make the Yue family and the Wei family enmity, and to kill people with a borrowed knife, aren't you?"