Zhao Xinchong shook his head at Lu Shoushan: "I am not a bannerman."
Zhao Xin remembers clearly that his father took him to visit a relative in his family ten years ago. In terms of seniority, his father wanted to call the old lady Qi Grandma.
During the conversation, the grandma of the seventh ancestor mentioned that our Zhao family moved from Jiangsu in the early Qing Dynasty, but the old lady couldn't tell where exactly, it seemed to be Yancheng.
"We are not the subjects of your Qing Dynasty. Don't you understand after seeing our clothes?" Wu Siyu explained to Lu Shoushan.
"Yes, no one here has pigtails. They are all said to be overseas survivors." Liu Sheng helped.
Lu Shoushan felt relieved after hearing this. Like the Xu brothers, he also has tattoos on both sides of his cheeks, with "Disobedience" tattooed on the left cheek and "Ning Guta" tattooed on the right cheek.
And this was also the reason why the four of them did not dare to hide in inhabited villages; anyone who looked at them would know that they were runaways, and they could receive rewards if they were caught and sent to the official.
Lu Shoushan begged: "Master, let me take a look at the young master. I won't wake them up."
However, Zhao Xin didn't say anything. He walked to the car, gently opened the door, and waved to Lu Shoushan behind him.
Lu Shoushan tiptoed up to him, looked into the door, and was startled.
When he was at the Xu family before, he had never seen such wealthy furnishings.
Zhao Xin pushed behind him and asked Lu Shoushan to get in the car, while he followed and closed the door. He patted Lu Shoushan on the shoulder and pointed to the bed where the two children were.
After Lu Shoushan got in the car, he was dazzled by the furnishings around him and took a breath of cold air. He didn't dare to move at all. Following the direction of Zhao Xin's fingers, he saw the two brothers sleeping in the quilt, and the quilt rose and fell with his breathing.
"Sir, where is my brother?" Lu Shoushan slowly turned around and asked Zhao Xinyi, holding his hands in front of him.
Zhao Xin turned around and pointed to another bed. Lu Shoushan took a look and saw that it was not Pan Xiucheng. His face was turned outward and he was also sleeping soundly.
Only then did he feel relieved. Seeing Zhao Xin waving to him, he followed Zhao Xin out of the car.
When Zhao Xin closed the car door, he returned to where he was standing just now. Lu Shoushan stepped forward quickly, knelt down and kowtowed to Zhao Xin.
"If you keep kneeling like this, I won't care about you." Zhao Xin said to Lu Shoushan with a serious face.
Lu Shoushan still kowtowed three times respectfully, then stood up and said to Zhao Xin: "These three heads, I want to thank the master on behalf of the Xu family. If the master had not come to rescue, the Xu family would have been extinct." ”
"Xu family?" Zhao Xin thought for a while, but he didn't have much impression. "Can you tell me what's going on with you guys?"
"Master, can you find a secluded place? There are so many people here." Lu Shoushan looked around at the refugees who were busy in the camp.
"Okay. Angkor, you guys are coming too." After Zhao Xin finished speaking, he turned to Li Ji who was standing aside and said, "Find an unoccupied tent and ask two people to come over and keep an eye on it so that no one can listen."
In fact, this was meant for Lu Shoushan. Who else in the camp except Zhao Xin and the other seven could understand it.
What no one noticed at this time was that Liu Sheng turned around and left.
Liji went in a hurry, and trotted back after a while, saying that the tent was ready.
So Zhao Xin asked Li Ji to lead the way, and he, Lu Shoushan, and Wang Yuanfang arrived at a tent on the outermost side of the camp. Not long after he sat down, Liu Sheng, Ding Guofeng, Zhao Liang, and Deng Fei also came. It turned out that he had gone to call someone.
Everyone sat cross-legged on the cotton mats in the tent. Soon, Shino and Miao entered the tent carrying a pot of tea and several cups.
After pouring tea for everyone, Shino retreated, while A Miao stayed outside the tent to wait in case Zhao Xin had anything to say.
Lu Shoushan held the teacup, thought for a while, and asked Wu Siyu: "Sir, you can speak our Dongtai dialect, but do you know Yizhulou in Dongtai County?"
Wu Siyu shook his head in confusion and said: "My ancestors are from Yangzhou, and I only learned a little Dongtai dialect from listening to others."
Lu Shoushan saw that he didn't know, so he said: "This incident in the Xu family happened five years ago. However, the root of this matter has to be told more than forty years ago..."
As Wu Siyu was translating some dialects in a group, Lu Shoushan narrated a past incident that made everyone who heard it sad.
Lu Shoushan was once called Xu Shan. He was a follower of Xu Shoushan's grandfather. He also read some books when he was young. Because he had been working as a servant in the Xu family since he was a child, he took the surname Xu. As for Pan Xiucheng, who was still showing off, he was the coachman of the Xu family and originally took the surname of his master, Xu Xiucheng.
Lu Shoushan had followed Xu Shounan's grandfather for many years. When he grew up, he ran several errands and was highly appreciated by the Xu family. Later, he was asked to change his surname back to his original surname, and the word "Shou" was added to his name.
The Xu family was originally the largest squire in Tuancha Town, Dongtai County, near Taizhou, Jiangsu Province. The story begins with Mrs. Xu, the great-grandfather of Xu Shounan, the master of the Xu family.
This old man Xu was originally named Xu Shukui and given the courtesy name Xiaowen.
In the third year of Qianlong's reign (1738), Xu Shukui passed the provincial examination at the age of thirty-five. However, because he wrote in the answer question on the examination paper, "Those who are polite will kill themselves", which violated the examiner's taboo. Therefore, he failed to pass the examination of the Ministry of Rites, and was disqualified from participating in the future examinations. From then on, he was no longer in officialdom.
This matter was widely circulated in Dongtai Town. Lu Shoushan heard his master Xu Huaizu tell it several times and remembered it.
It is said that Xu Shukui was so disappointed that he had to return to his hometown to study knowledge and write poetry. He built a library in his courtyard. Because there is a large pillar standing in the center of the library, and the roof beams rest on this pillar like umbrella ribs, it was later named "One Pillar Tower".
In the twenty-seventh year of Qianlong's reign (1762), Xu Shukui died in depression, less than sixty years old.
After Xu Shukui's death, Xu Huaizu, Xu Shounan's grandfather, invited his father's two students, Xu Foufa and Shen Chengzhuo, to sort out his father's works. He also invited famous celebrities to write prefaces to the works and publish them in books. This is "Yizhulou Poetry Collection".
In the more than ten years since then, no one has ever suggested to Xu Huaizu that there were fallacies in his father's books.
It was not until the forty-second year of Qianlong (1777) that Cai Jiashu, the second eldest son of the Cai family in the same village, became angry because of a land dispute with the Xu family.
To put it simply, the eldest son of the Cai family sold his land to the Xu family because of his family's decline. But the Cai family's ancestral graves were in this field. At that time, the Xu family set aside an acre of land around the Cai family's ancestral graves and returned it to the Cai family.
Later, Cai Jiashu verbally clashed with Xu Huaizu about donating money to the village. Xu Huaizu used Cai Jiashu's son to shave his head on National Memorial Day and sued the Cai family to the county government, forcing the Cai family to donate money. Cai Jiashu held a grudge.
In the summer of this year, Xu Huaizu suffered from an emergency and died.
The head of the Xu family was replaced by Mr. Xu's son Xu Shitian, who was the father of Xu Funan and Xu Shounan.
After the winter of that year, Cai Jiashu came to the door and said that he wanted to redeem the land that had been sold for 2,400 taels that year for 960 taels. How could Xu Shetian agree to this request? He was kicked out on the spot.
As a result, before leaving the house, Cai Jiashu said that Xu Shitian's grandfather's "Yizhulou Poetry Collection" contained the words "destroying this dynasty" and that he wanted to sue the official.
Xu Shitian immediately found his grandfather's disciples, Xu Fufa and Shen Chengzhuo, who were also the organizers of the work. As the proofreaders of the Yizhulou Anthology, these two old scholars were prominently listed on the front page of the book. ("First hair becomes a hair" coincides with dissatisfaction with the Qing court's shaving of hair)
Several people carefully considered the words and sentences in the work and found that some words would indeed cause criticism. However, the prevailing trend in the literary world at that time generally believed that a good poem must have character, and if it does not express a few complaints, it cannot be considered to be of high quality.
Moreover, among the people who wrote the preface to "Yizhulou Poetry Collection", apart from Yao Delin, who was the ambassador of the salt field at the time, the other one was once called "an old famous person in the south of the Yangtze River" by Qianlong. After his death, he was posthumously named the prince and grand master, and was given the posthumous title Wen. Later, Shen Deqian, a great scholar from Suzhou, went to the Xianliang Temple to worship.
After some discussion among several people, Xu Shitian decided to hand over the printed and distributed books and book plates to the county government. Other unprinted books were also handed over one after another.
After Cai Jiashu on the other side returned, under the instigation of his housekeeper Tong Zhilin (who wanted to study in Taizhou in his early years, but was not allowed by Xu Shukui, so he held a grudge for many years), the two of them found the "words of disobedience" in Xu Shukui's works, so He submitted a complaint to the county government, and the complaint mentioned the land dispute between him and the Xu family.
When Tu Yuelong, the magistrate of Dongtai County at the time, was interrogating the case, he also noticed poems in the book such as "It would be a shame to destroy my clothes, and destroy the nest in the Ming Dynasty." But because he did not want to directly conflict with the big squires like the Xu family, he sent the manuscript, stereotypes and books to Jiangning Bookstore for processing.
In his judgment, Magistrate Tu first praised Cai Jiashu's behavior. However, it is said that the Xu family had handed over the engraved books to the county government before the Cai family came to make the first complaint, so they were exempted from prosecution according to the law; as for all Xu Shukui's writings, he would send someone to Jiangning Bookstore for review; as for Cai Xu, Due to a land dispute between the two families, the Xu family was ordered to allocate ten acres of cemetery land, which the Cai family would redeem at the current price.
After the county announced the verdict, Cai Jiashu refused to accept it. In the forty-third year of Qianlong's reign, he continued to appeal to the Jiangning vassal.
Tao Yi, the then Chief Envoy of Jiangning, had no intention of taking care of such trivial matters, so he asked one of his capable staff, Lu Yan, to handle it on his behalf.
After some understanding, Lu Yan issued a letter to ask Xie Qikun, the prefect of Yangzhou, to try the case in Dongtai County. He believed that the first prosecution of Cai Jiashu was "a case of cunning people taking advantage of suspicion." (Lu Yan finally wrote this paragraph in the plaque he sent to Yangzhou Prefecture: "Anyone who talks about classics and biographies, or publishes them as songs and chants, if his words are inappropriate, involved in suspicion, and has no actual evidence of rebellion, will be prosecuted.") The person in charge immediately sat down in accordance with the law for the false accusation, and there were clear rules. If Cai Jiashu made accusations based on suspicion and made false accusations, he should also strictly adhere to the proposal.")
After Tao Yi, the chief envoy, read the text on the plaque, he did not make any changes. At that time, he just smiled and said that Lu Yan hated evil as much as he hated evil, and it came out vividly on the paper. Tao Yi never thought at this time that his carelessness would eventually lead to disaster.
After receiving the inscription from the feudal lord, Xie Qikun, the prefect of Yangzhou, immediately issued a document ordering Dongtai County to detain the first accuser and defendant in the case and transport them to Yangzhou.
After being interrogated in court, Xie Qikun carefully read the "Yizhulou Poetry Collection". In the end, it was determined that there were indeed rebellious words in the collection of poems. The Cai family sued the Xu family for printing anti-poems, and they were right.
After the second questioning, Xie Qikun escorted the tagged poetry collection, Dongtai County case files, and all the book editions to the Chief Envoy Yamen.
Unexpectedly, before the reply from the feudal lord arrived, Cai Jiashu's son and housekeeper Tong Zhilin took the petition and complained to Jiangsu academic administrator Liu Yong who was staying in Yangzhou.
That's right, it's that Liu Yong.
After Liu Yong's staff received the petition and the collection of poems as evidence, they realized that the matter was serious and reported it immediately.
Mr. Liu first noticed that the preface in the book was written by Shen Deqian, a great scholar from Suzhou, and it was full of beautiful words. The most important thing was that he noticed that in the collection of poems, there is "Zhenhe in the Ming Dynasty, and he went to the Qing capital in one fell swoop." , "When we meet again tomorrow, please put the pot aside." He immediately understood that this was another serious crime after the "Zi Guan case" that happened last year.
(In the 42nd year of Qianlong's reign, Wang Xihou, a native of Xinchang (now Yifeng), Jiangxi, was reported for compiling "Zi Guan". Qianlong said that "the crime cannot be punished, so he should be asked according to the law of great rebellion." Wang Xihou was executed and seven descendants They were all sentenced to beheading, and the relevant relatives were "consigned to Heilongjiang and made slaves with the armored men." All the officials involved were questioned.)
The matter was serious and Mr. Liu, who was "brave in taking charge", immediately submitted a memorial to Qianlong and ordered the immediate arrest and detention of those involved in the case.
(Liu Yong wrote in the memorial to Qianlong, "If there is any disobedience, it will be dealt with strictly; if there is no rebelliousness, it will be written off, so as not to confuse people's hearts and customs. Now it is transferred to the governor to handle.")
Qianlong was furious after receiving Liu Yong's report, so he ordered a strict investigation and handling.
As a result, the case escalated indefinitely because of Liu Yong, and the implication was extremely wide. The first to bear the brunt was the Xu family of Dongtai, followed by the Xu family and Shen Chengzhuo family, the Suzhou Shen family, Jiangning Chief Minister Tao Yi's family, Tao Yi's aide Lu Yan's family, and all the officials handling the case.
As long as it comes into contact with "Yizhulou Poetry Collection", I won't let it go.
All the above persons were searched and their homes were searched, and then their punishments were determined.
