On the other side of the street, colorful flags with embroidery paintings temporarily covered the sky in the small street.
Various ceremonial guards of wood carvings and iron, gold and silver ornaments, as well as avoidance, silence, official title plaques, iron chains, wooden sticks, and black sheath whips, one after another, as dense as a forest.
After a while, I saw a large black fan with a title and a large yellow umbrella with three eaves covering an eight-carriage sedan slowly entering the small street.
The onlookers had never seen such a formation before.
An old man saw this and murmured: "Even Lu Yun and Lu Butang didn't have such scenery a few days ago. Who is this?"
Before anyone could think about it, the officers and soldiers in front of them had already used whips and gun barrels to drive them away.
Li Chaozi also wanted to say something, "one of our own", but those officers and soldiers didn't give him a chance to speak at all. Seeing that he was standing there motionless and ugly, they went up to his pocket and whipped him several times. Squeaking like a fat monkey.
Among these people, only Xu He and the horse owner Bo knew each other's background.
The horse owner Bo saw the words on the official title card, while Xu He had seen the same card in the Yangzhou Mansion Inn.
At this time, Zeng Dayou, the right minister of the Ministry of Rites, was sitting in a sedan chair, and his mood could not be calm at all.
He looked at the green bricks and small tiles outside the sedan through the gauze curtain. He was from the north, and this was the first time he saw the folk houses in Jiangnan so close.
In the narrow alley, moss decorates the corners of the walls and in the gaps between the stone slabs. Take a deep breath, the air is moist, with a hint of spring vitality.
Think about it, in the past month, I have set out from the capital to Yangzhou to deliver the decree. As soon as I arrived, before I could sit down, several of the people who were rewarded by the decree were arrested and imprisoned. Among them, Zhou Yi and Ge Youli were even killed.
This kind of thing is obviously murder and silence.
He accidentally waded into the muddy water, which made Zeng Dayou feel depressed.
Fortunately, after waiting for so long, the court's decree was issued again. He felt a lot more relaxed when he saw that he was not thrown into this chaos.
So after Li Zhijie read out the decree conferring on him the post of general magistrate of Yangzhou Prefecture, he rushed to Hailing County without stopping.
Here, Zeng Dayou was still admiring the foreign customs through the window, but who knew that a big, plump face appeared at the window.
This big face...
Zeng Dayou was startled. He frowned and asked, "What's going on?"
Because there is no chief seal officer in the county, Hu Xian Cheng, who came to greet the important person temporarily, said with a smile: "Your Majesty, the imperial envoy, there is something going on up front..."
Zeng Dayou almost raised his eyebrows when he heard this. This trip to convey the message was really not going well. Something happened to Zhou Yi and Ge Youli, which made him tremble in the eye of the storm in Yangzhou. They dispersed, but when they arrived at Hailing, they encountered trouble again.
At this time, the people under Hu County Cheng came back and reported: "It's not good. The horse owner Bo took Xu He away and said he was going to beat him."
Hearing this, Hu Xian Cheng said, it's not bad, the little brother is very understanding of human nature, and he is very happy to get along with him. The most important thing is that he also helped him bring in a lot of income. How can something happen to such a "good guy"?
Huxian Cheng was thinking in his heart, and turned around and said to Zeng Dayou in the sedan chair: "It's not good, the county government chief Bo will capture Mr. Xu Hexu who asked for the order!"
Xu He is still the same Xu He, but with a prefix added to his name. It is such a small change, but it sounds like thunder in the ears of Zeng Shilang.
"What? How dare you, the chief registrar of Hailing County, attack someone who has been commended by the emperor?"
Hu Xian Cheng was a good talker, so he opened his mouth to sue Bo, the horse owner who had robbed his business a few days ago: "That's right. Although Bo, the horse owner, is used to being the boss of the county government, he is a pretty good person, but... Why don't you know the priority of things at this time? What should I do if I delay the announcement of the master's decree?"
You see, the art of speaking is that I say something bad about you, but then I say something nice about you, so that I can stay out of it and give people the impression that my words are impartial and fair, but at the end I deliberately complain.
In this way, if others cause trouble for you, I can completely ignore it.
Zeng Dayou had been serving as an important official in the Qing Dynasty since the dissolution of the Hanlin Academy. How could he understand the words of these petty bureaucrats? In other words, even if he did, he would not expose them.
His face was as dark as water and he said: "Let the chief clerk come over quickly..."
After saying that, he quickly added: "You must not ruin the person who receives the order. How can it be appropriate to borrow an order with a bruised nose and a swollen face?"
Hu Xian Cheng secretly laughed in his heart and quickly ordered his clerk to deliver the message.
After a while, the old horse was panting and pushed away the soldiers, kneeling in front of the Imperial Envoy's sedan with a plop: "I didn't know that the Imperial Envoy was coming to this county. I am late to receive you. Please forgive me!"
At this time, Zeng Dayou heard a young man's voice coming from outside the sedan: "I've seen the imperial envoy!"
The voice was clear and sweet, neither humble nor arrogant, and it immediately reminded Zeng Dayou of the handsome young man Xu He he had seen in Yangzhou Station that day.
Zeng Dayou said: "Is it Xu He who is here?"
Xu He bowed outside the sedan and said, "It's me, kid!"
Zeng Dayou said with a smile: "I was in Yangzhou Post Office just in time for the Yangzhou Prefectural Examination. I heard that you wrote an article and was named the head of the case by Prefect Peng. Is this relevant?"
Xu He didn't expect that Zeng Dayou also heard about this incident, and said quickly: "It's a shameless work that makes the Fang family laugh!"
Zeng Dayou disagreed and said: "Songs of nine virtues and nine merits are like the harmonious singing of phoenixes and birds. Which one is better?"
Then, he read again: "Dancing for nine Shao and coordinating nine tunes, staggering like a hundred beasts dance at the same time, whoever is allowed to follow it."
After reading it, he sighed in the sedan chair: "If this article is taken to the examination, I can get it! I am ashamed of myself!"
Master Ma was shocked when he heard this. Hearing this, the imperial envoy knew this Xu He?
And they seem to appreciate each other's articles.
He looked up again at Lao Hu, who had never dealt with him, and saw this guy looking at him with a smile.
"What's worse, every time this smiling tiger smiles like this, I will suffer!"
Sure enough, the next second, Zeng Dayou said: "Hailing County Lord Bo, why did you want to arrest the person who was commended by the imperial edict? What crime did Xu He commit?"
"This..." Cold sweat broke out on Lao Ma's forehead, and he didn't know how to answer.
"Report to your lord..." Seeing this, Xu He told everything about what had just happened.
Embezzling the pensions of soldiers who died in battle, plucking their hair, stripping them layer by layer, breaking their bones and sucking their marrow, and bullying their orphans and widows. These disgusting things even made the guards of the Imperial Envoy turn to look at Master Ma after hearing this. glare.
Zeng Dayou was a self-proclaimed Qingliu man, and he could not bear to see such scandalous things. After hearing this, he trembled in the sedan chair with anger, finally calmed down a little, and then said to Hu County Magistrate: "The new county magistrate has not arrived yet, you Take my post to Zhang Jingxian to mobilize some people, and arrest Li Chaozi and others first!"
"As for the Chief Ma, you'd better go home and wait for help!"
Although the imperial envoy had retinues of soldiers, they were for his own protection and could not overstep his authority to recruit people locally, so he asked Zhang Jingxian, an indigenous official with the title of magistrate and in charge of soldiers, to go and get the people first, and then wait for the new magistrate to take office. Deal with Li Chaozi's bunch of little people.
As for Master Ma, although his official position is small, he is also an official of the imperial court, so he has to go through the process of depriving him of his position through the Nanjing Ministry of Civil Affairs. As for whether he will be demoted or sentenced, that is another matter.
When Master Ma heard this, he slumped on the ground like a plague chicken and was almost frightened.
Seeing this, Hu Xian Cheng twitched the corner of his mouth slightly, but there was no obvious smile. Instead, at this moment, he turned to Xu He and said: "What are you waiting for? Mr. Xu, the imperial envoy is here to read out the decree to you, hurry up Go buy the big case and the incense burner and prepare to receive the order!"
