The disaster of the world begins with Dongfang Bubai

Chapter 23 Tian Fragrant Cardamom
A few days later, Emperor Zhengde finally passed away. After the prince had made the necessary three requests and three resignations, he had already lived the life of a puppet.

It was because both the Empress Dowager and the cabinet ministers, in view of Zhengde's absurdity, required the prince, who had not yet ascended the throne, to get up early every morning, study hard, and take strict examinations, which resulted in him being blamed for any mistakes.

As a result, the young prince was often in a trance and lived in fear of being dominated. He had no childishness or joy of becoming an emperor.

Xi Mingzhang naturally had no opinion on this. Strict teaching was the common will of the Empress Dowager and the cabinet ministers. How could he, a eunuch in the eyes of foreign officials, influence their will?

The enthronement ceremony was held in the Fengtian Hall according to tradition.

Then, nobles, the seal holder of the Imperial Household Department, cabinet ministers, and all officials presented their congratulatory messages one after another. Except for the little emperor on the dragon throne who was a little uncomfortable, everything seemed to be in order.

However, in the next few days, an imperial censor impeached Xi Mingzhang, accusing him of relying on his high position and power to control the government, forming a clique for personal gain, and wantonly murdering loyal officials in order to eliminate dissidents.

Xi Mingzhang served three generations of emperors and had been friends with the Grand Empress Dowager for decades. When she was still the Crown Princess, she was surrounded by attacks from all sides and it was hard to guard against them. She was always safe and sound thanks to Xi Mingzhang's protection, so she had great trust in him.

Therefore, he kept the memorial and did not send it out, which naturally aroused more impeachment from the censors and imperial officials.

When they saw that their memorials were kept in the palace and not sent out, they knelt down at Zuo Shunmen and shouted that if the eunuchs were not eradicated, the Ming Dynasty would be in danger.

Xi Mingzhang was the first person to receive the news. He had been sitting on the throne, but he showed off his power as the head of the East Factory and ordered people to take them all down with the imperial decree.

As a eunuch who is almost called the Nine Thousand Year Old, although everyone wants him to be killed, there are actually countless eunuch cliques in the court, and the East Factory and the Embroidered Uniform Guard are in his hands.

None of these censors were clean, so they had been prepared and had been secretly collecting evidence of these people's crimes. Now they were arrested together, their properties confiscated and they were punished.

A few days later, the East Factory took the confessions provided by these people and questioned officials everywhere, which made the officials' lives miserable. This led to the further corruption of Xi Mingzhang's reputation. Many people began to curse Cao behind his back as a eunuch, a dead traitor, and an old monster.

Afterwards, lists were posted all over the capital, recording the evidence and deeds of the officials whose homes had been searched and whose crimes had been investigated. These were naturally the people's favorite to read.

As a result, every list was surrounded by people.

"Tsk tsk, this Li Qing is a Jinshi from two lists." Some people looked at him with contempt.

The people around him shouted angrily:
"What a crap Jinshi who was selected for the imperial examination. He married a leftover geisha from a businessman like a treasure and even used bribes to coax her. He has completely brought shame to his ancestors."

"And this Censor Zhou, before the evidence was found, he was very confident and talked about gentlemen and villains. But after all the evidence was found, he collapsed on the ground and just cried out for injustice. As a result, hundreds of thousands of strings of cash were confiscated from his home."

In this way, the struggle among the censors, in which they killed 800 enemies and lost 10,000 of their own, came to nothing. After all, if the water is too clear, there will be no fish; if the person is too strict, there will be no followers. After becoming an official, no one can guarantee that he will be clean.

This anti-Cao movement ended with much ado about nothing.

In the court, the three forces of eunuchs, court officials, and Hulong Villa began to maintain a strange balance.

"Master, Princess Yunluo loves to practice martial arts. She heard that there are many masters in Hulong Villa, so she begged the Empress Dowager to let her go to Hulong Villa."

"The Empress Dowager couldn't persuade the Princess, so she allowed her to stay at Hulong Villa for three months."

Xi Mingzhang listened to Sun An's report and said calmly:
"After the assassin showed up that night, there was a big, burly maid by her side."

"That's right. The spy I arranged heard the princess calling him Cheng Shifei, and then investigated outside the palace and found out that he was actually a man, and a gambling scoundrel."

"Cheng Shifei disappeared a few days ago. He must have left the palace. I guess the princess used the excuse of going to Hulong Villa to practice martial arts to look for Cheng Shifei."

Xi Mingzhang nodded:
"Go tell Qianmian Langjun to find a chance to bring the mermaid pearl from the princess to me, the governor." "Yes."

As Sun An left, Xi Mingzhang's eyes became deep. He wanted this little mermaid pearl, so he wanted to control Zhu Wusi.

This man is an ambitious and ruthless tyrant, but unfortunately he has a fatal flaw, which is that he is obsessed with love.

Because his mother was a palace maid, he was not welcomed even though he was born into a royal family, so he simply went out to venture into the world.

Later, he met the undefeated boy Gu Santong, and the two gradually became good friends. In the process, he also met the love of his life, Su Xin. It just so happened that she and Gu Santong were childhood sweethearts and had an engagement.

It can be seen that Gu Santong only had martial arts training in his mind, and after he became indifferent to Su Xin, he had other thoughts in his mind.

Because Gu Santong and Zhu Wushi are both obsessed with being the best in the world in martial arts, they work together to crack the secret of Tianchi Strange Hero and obtain the "Vajra Indestructible Magic Kung Fu" and "Absorbing Power Kung Fu".

However, in fact, Gu Santong had already discovered this place, but he was playful and martial by nature, and thought that it would be fun to train someone who could be his rival.

Later, Gu Santong's martial arts skills became so advanced that he could no longer suppress his desire to be the best in the world. Naturally, he became the public enemy of the martial arts world and even alarmed the imperial court.

Then there was the incident where Gu Santong competed with the eight major sects and the four chief constables in Taihu Lake.

Among them, Gu Santong challenged all the martial arts masters to a fight alone, but of course he was not sure of winning. He was afraid that he would die in the battle and ruin Su Xin's life, so he pushed her to Zhu Wusi.

Of course Zhu Wusi was delighted to take Su Xin back to ask the late emperor for permission to grant them marriage.

It was natural that this was opposed, even all the ministers were against it, thinking that how could a prince marry a woman who was already engaged.

Having been rejected, Zhu Wusi wanted to make a great contribution and get the consent of his father and ministers to join the team to hunt down Gu Santong.

Gu Santong, who wanted to make great contributions but only loved to compete with others, was naturally not qualified. So he arrived at Taihu Lake in advance, and took advantage of the unpreparedness of the four major constables and the eight major sects, killed them all with the "Power Absorbing Technique", and put the blame on Gu Santong.

In this way, not only will your martial arts skills improve by leaps and bounds, but you will also achieve great merit.

Unfortunately, the two had a decisive battle at Tianshan. When their strength was about to be exhausted and in the last palm of the duel, Su Xin arrived in time and rushed directly between the two. She was hit by half of Zhu Wusi's palm and was in danger.

Zhu Wusi let Su Xin take his own cardamom to save her life.

Cardamom is a rare fruit that bears fruit once every thirty years, with only one fruit each time. If you eat it, no matter how serious the injury is, it will not get worse and your appearance will remain young.

But the person who eats it will fall into eternal sleep until someone finds a second cardamom and feeds it to him. Only then can he wake up. However, he must take the third cardamom within a year to be completely brought back to life.

At that time, the small country Tianxiang outside the Great Wall sent three Tianxiang cardamoms that could bring the dead back to life. One was given to Shen Hou, another was given to the Queen Mother, and the third was given to the most favored Concubine Shu.

After Concubine Shu died, she gave Princess Yunluo a night-shining pearl containing a fragrant cardamom, which is the mermaid pearl.

Xi Mingzhang had already obtained the second cardamom, and now only the third cardamom was left.

His eyes turned and he said to himself:

"Once we have the two fragrant cardamoms in our hands, I'm sure Zhu Tiedan, who loves beauty more than the country, will be overjoyed."

(End of this chapter)