Eagle-eyed and wolf-watching

Chapter 1509 Untitled!

If someone told An Miaoyi that he would not build a palace first but would build one for her, An Miaoyi would definitely not believe it. In her eyes, how could there be someone who doesn't like a comfortable and grand palace?
But since these words came from Ye Mingsheng's mouth, An Miaoyi was still a little skeptical!

If you count carefully, the two have been married for almost ten years. An Miaoyi has some understanding of Ye Mingsheng. In her understanding, no matter he was a local lord before or is now the ruler of Kyushu and the Emperor of Daqian, Ye Mingsheng does not have very high requirements for other material things except that he is very particular about food.

An Miaoyi saw with her own eyes that Ye Mingsheng had a hole in his underwear, but he continued to wear it as if it were a blind eye. This was really incomprehensible to An Miaoyi.

So when Ye Mingsheng said that he would build Fengluan Palace for herself first, An Miaoyi believed it a little bit!

Of course, although Ye Mingsheng said so, An Miaoyi knew very well that she could only listen to it and not take it seriously!
After all, Ye Mingsheng may not care much about this matter, but the court officials in the court will definitely care about this kind of thing!

If I really want to build Fengluan Palace by then, these court officials will probably submit memorials one after another, especially those censors who will really impeach me!

By then, she would be the target of everyone's criticism. Although An Miaoyi really wanted her own Fengluan Palace, she did not lose her mind because of this.

Therefore, An Miaoyi knew very well that the normal order should be the Empress Dowager’s Furen Palace, Ye Mingsheng’s palace, her own Fengluan Palace ranked third, and Jingren’s East Palace ranked fourth. No one could say anything if the palaces were built in this order...

Although according to the conventions of past dynasties, the imperial concubine should also have her own palace, but for An Miaoyi, who currently controls the treasury, it is simply impossible for her to pay from her own pocket to build a palace for Murong Qingwu, Pei Zhixiu, and Bai Yuanyuan!
Although she must first build a palace for Ye Mingsheng before it can be her turn to build her own Fengluan Palace, An Miaoyi also has her own little plan for this!

You have to know that the specifications of this palace are different. If the specifications are different, the cost will naturally be different!
A palace like the Furen Palace would cost at least hundreds of thousands of taels of silver. Under the assumption that Ye Mingsheng would not increase the revenue of the imperial treasury and would not let the Ministry of Revenue bear the construction costs, building a Furen Palace was already a limit to the current financial resources of the imperial treasury!
So if a palace as large as Furen Palace was built for Ye Mingsheng, An Miaoyi felt that she would not have to think about her Fengluan Palace for at least five years. This was very difficult for An Miaoyi to accept. She could not imagine that as the queen, she would have to live in the yard like other concubines for the next five years.

So An Miaoyi came up with an idea, which was to build a palace of average specifications for Ye Mingsheng first, so that the construction cost would be reduced, and it could be completed in one or two years so that Ye Mingsheng could live in it.

Under normal circumstances, the construction of Fengluan Palace can start in two years. If it goes faster, An Miaoyi will be able to move into Fengluan Palace in more than three years!
An Miaoyi knew very well that Ye Mingsheng would not care much about his palace being smaller than Furen Palace. Moreover, from the perspective of filial piety, it was normal for the emperor's palace to be smaller than the empress dowager's palace. If it got out, it would show that Ye Mingsheng was very filial, which was also a positive publicity for Ye Mingsheng...
But there is a problem with this plan. That is, when An Miaoyi builds her own palace, according to etiquette, the specifications must not exceed Ye Mingsheng's palace. Even if the specifications are equal to Ye Mingsheng's palace, it cannot be. It must be smaller than Ye Mingsheng's palace!

This made An Miaoyi very conflicted. She really hoped that her Fengluan Palace would be as big as Furen Palace.

Therefore, if this plan is followed, the progress of Fengluan Palace will be greatly accelerated, but the specifications will be much worse than those of Furen Palace!
An Miaoyi knew very well that this might be the only chance in her life to build a palace, and she really wanted to accomplish it once and for all!

She didn't want to feel disappointed and dissatisfied when she moved into Fengluan Palace after it was completed and saw that it was too small.

If something unexpected happened in the middle, for example, I didn't live longer than Ye Cui, then I would never live in a big palace in my life.

So now An Miaoyi is very conflicted, not knowing what plan to take to make the Fengluan Palace that she has been dreaming of become a reality!

She wanted to come up with a best of both worlds solution so that she could live in her favorite palace as soon as possible.

But unfortunately, this is like a story of fish and bear's paw. If you get the fish, you lose the bear's paw. If you get the bear's paw, you lose the fish.

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The 28th day of the twelfth lunar month, the first quarter of the hour of Hai

At the headquarters of the Coordination Office in Yijing, although the Coordination Office, as the secret service department of Daqian, has people on duty at all times, most of the spies in the office have already gone home to rest, leaving only the night watchman and a small number of staff in the office.

But at this time, the lights in a separate classroom in the headquarters were on, and this classroom with the lights on was the classroom of Ji Xian, deputy director of the Coordination Office.

Under the dim light, Ji Xian sat quietly in a chair with his eyes closed. He looked calm, but his hands on the table were moving subconsciously, showing that his heart was not as calm as he looked.

I don’t know how long it had passed, but there was a sound of hurried footsteps outside the classroom. Hearing the footsteps, Ji Xian immediately opened his eyes and looked towards the door of the classroom. As he was staring, there was a knock on the door.

"Enter!"

With Ji Xian's permission, his trusted centurion Zhao Li walked into the room and reported to Ji Xian:

"Sir! This guy surnamed Zhao confessed! He was the one who did it!"

After receiving this answer, although Ji Xian did not appear to have changed on the surface, he secretly breathed a sigh of relief in his heart and slowly spoke:
"Tell me the whole story!"

“Yes!” “Your Excellency, this Zhao Zilian was originally a doctor in the Taichang Temple. During the previous reform, the Taichang Temple was incorporated into the Ministry of Rites, and Zhao Zilian was dismissed because of this. So Zhao Zilian was dissatisfied, and colluded with his servants to fabricate the meteorite incident in Fanjia Town, intending to compare Your Majesty to the cruel and merciless Qin Shihuang…”

Hearing what Zhao Li said, Ji Xian said with some dissatisfaction:

"Details! I want details!"

"I am going to report this matter to His Majesty. If I tell His Majesty what you said, His Majesty will think that I just found someone to deal with it!"

Zhao Li hurriedly continued after hearing this:

"Sir, the details are that after Zhao Zilian was assigned to the Ministry of Rites, his salary was reduced, which made him dissatisfied. He said some sarcastic words in the Ministry of Rites, and these words happened to be heard by the Minister of Rites Su Yi. Minister Su directly slapped Zhao Zilian twice and then laid off Zhao Zilian from the Ministry of Rites!"

"Zhao Zilian believed that being slapped by Minister Su was a huge humiliation in his life, and being laid off by the court made his more than ten years of hard study meaningless, and also made him lose his life goals. So he wanted to take revenge on His Majesty who promoted reforms and laid off employees, and on Minister Su who slapped him!"

"According to his confession, he originally wanted to die with Minister Su, but since he was laid off, he couldn't enter the gate of the Ministry of Rites. Minister Su was escorted by the patrol battalion every day when he came to and left the yamen, which left him no chance to kill him!"

"So when he saw that the assassination attempt on Minister Su was fruitless, he wanted to use the power of rumors to take revenge on His Majesty and Minister Su. The meteorite from the Qin Shihuang era gave him inspiration. He wanted to make His Majesty, who had lost his status as Master G, be called a tyrant by future generations like Qin Shihuang, so he chose Fanjia Town!"

“As for why he chose Fanjia Town, it’s because he has an enemy in Taichang Temple whose surname is Fan. His name is Fan Taiyu, and he came from Fanjia Town. The two of them had a lot of friction in Taichang Temple, so Zhao Zilian wanted to kill two birds with one stone and take revenge on Fan Taiyu…”

Read the error-free version at 69shuba! 6=9+shu_ba is the first to publish this novel.

"He thinks that Your Majesty will do the same as Qin Shi Huang did and turn the area around Fanjia Town into scorched earth, so that he can kill people with a borrowed knife!"

After hearing this, Ji Xian continued to ask:

"Who are his helpers?"

"According to Zhao Zilian's confession, he had two main helpers, both of whom were servants of his family, named Wang Heiniu and Zhao Dali. The stone was found by Zhao Dali, and the words on it were written by Zhao Zilian himself. The three of them moved the stone there together!"

After listening to these, Ji Xian nodded with satisfaction. The reason why he stayed until the hour of Hai today was because he was waiting for this matter!
The previous meteorite incident in Fanjia Town was quickly settled by Ye Mingsheng, so it did not cause much disturbance in the court or among the people. Ji Xian also used Lu Zhongxian as a scapegoat to cover up the incident of the meteorite!

Although the matter seemed to be over, it was actually just a conclusion. After accompanying Ye Mingsheng back to Yijing, Ji Xian immediately began a secret investigation, trying to catch the culprit behind the meteorite!
After all, for Ji Xian, leaving this mastermind outside is always a scourge. He can create a meteorite incident, and naturally he can also fabricate the time of the incident to deal with Ye Mingsheng. This time, Ye Mingsheng quickly quelled the meteorite, but what if he fails to do so quickly next time!

Therefore, as the current person in charge of the Coordination Office, Ji Xian must eliminate this hidden danger as soon as possible to maintain the safety and order of Daqian...
In Ji Xian's plan, he believed that with the ability of the Coordination Office, they would be able to catch the culprit very quickly. Then he could take credit from Ye Mingsheng and strive to remove his current title of deputy and become the legitimate director of the Department of Coordination!

However, what Ji Xian did not expect was that the investigation was deadlocked from the very beginning and there was no progress at all!

In response to this, Ji Xian scolded Zhao Li and Zeng Dalei, his two trusted confidants who were in charge of this matter, as useless people. On the other hand, he had to take over the matter himself. However, he soon discovered that there was a reason why Zhao Li and Zeng Dalei were at a loss!

The main reasons why the investigation work cannot be carried forward are two problems!

The first problem is that in order to suppress the riots caused by layoffs in various parts of Daqian, a large number of elite agents from the General Coordination Office have been transferred out. Now those who remain in Yijing, except for those who are responsible for clerical work, are basically responsible for security and other tasks. Those who have investigation experience have basically been transferred out to suppress the riots.

The second problem is that in order to quickly eliminate the negative impact of the meteorite incident in Fanjia Town, Ye Mingsheng instructed Ji Xian to find a scapegoat to take the blame and prevent the incident from continuing to ferment and expand its impact.

Although Ye Mingsheng’s goal has been achieved, this incident did not cause much stir in the court or among the people. It was only occasionally used as a topic of conversation after dinner...
However, this added considerable difficulties to Ji Xian's investigation. After all, the case had apparently been closed, and it was Ye Mingsheng who decided the case, so Ji Xian could not conduct a large-scale investigation in a high-profile manner. He could not let people realize that he was investigating this matter!
Otherwise, one should doubt what is going on in this case, and by then the case, which originally had no impact, may be revived!
If that is the case, even if Ye Mingsheng hinted to Ji Xian to find a scapegoat, his Majesty cannot bear the blame, but only he, Ji Xian, can bear the blame!
So in order to avoid this situation, Ji Xian can only conduct a secret investigation, but the effect of a secret investigation is definitely not that good!

Just when Ji Xian was at a loss, Ye Mingsheng asked Ji Xian about the progress of the case some time ago. Although Ji Xian wanted to tell Ye Mingsheng that he had caught the murderer, facing Ye Mingsheng's gaze, he chose to tell the truth and told Ye Mingsheng that he had not found him.

At that time, Ye Mingsheng did not scold Ji Xian, but just asked Ji Xian to investigate the matter as soon as possible. However, Ji Xian could feel the disappointment in Ye Mingsheng's attitude, which made Ji Xian worried. After all, he was only the deputy director now. If he couldn't handle this matter well, his promotion might be a distant dream!
So for nearly a month, Ji Xian put aside other things on hand and focused on investigating the meteorite incident.

As the saying goes, God will not disappoint those who work hard. Perhaps God also saw Ji Xian's efforts, so there was a breakthrough in the investigation of the case five days ago. The old man in Fanjia Town told the spies from the Coordination Office that a few days before the meteorite case, he saw several people sneaking around Fanjia Town.

After getting this information, Ji Xian immediately used it as a clue to follow the clues and finally found Zhao Zilian, the real murderer!
However, Ji Xian did not expect that this matter also involved the Minister of Rites Su Yi. This was a pleasant surprise for Ji Xian!