Beiming Palace, Imperial Study Room.
Emperor Xuanwu closed the memorial with force. As he read through the memorials one after another, the ministers repeatedly mentioned the prince's weakness and incompetence, hinting at the idea of changing the crown prince, which gradually made a thin layer of anger gather in his eyes. Thinking about his sons who were fighting to the death all day long, I felt depressed and exhausted.
The position of the crown prince has been determined long ago, and all the princes have also established princes and mansions. They are afraid that these brats will fight for this position to death. However, the prince is always a piece of rotten wood, which makes the other princes rise up. He was so dissatisfied that he tried hard to pull the prince down.
Emperor Xuanwu sighed heavily in his heart. Now that the situation in Nanling is getting worse, all the spies lurking in Nanling have been wiped out. Under Emperor Dehui's guard, the new spies can no longer go deep into Nanling City to find out the secret information. , coupled with the fact that Beiming is far away from Nanling, it has already lost the opportunity. I am afraid that the other two countries are already thinking about how to swallow the meat of Nanling, but I am unable to do anything and am troubled by these little bastards all day long. What a fool!
This tone had been suppressed in his chest for a long time. In a rage, he swept all the memorials stacked on the case to the ground. The palace attendants who were waiting on the side were so frightened that they knelt on the ground.
Seeing this, Lu Yao, the chief eunuch of the Imperial Palace, picked up the memorials one by one and put them back on Emperor Xuanwu's desk. He softly comforted him: "Your Majesty, you must take care of your dragon body!"
Emperor Xuanwu rubbed his temples with a gloomy expression, closed his eyes slightly, and after a while he slowly exhaled a breath of turbid air, and ordered in a deep voice: "Let them go down."
Lu Yao waved the whisk in his hand towards the palace people kneeling on the ground, and the palace people immediately filed away as if they were receiving amnesty.
Emperor Xuanwu slowly opened his eyes. The tiredness in his eyes made him look a little more haggard. Even his usually majestic voice showed a hint of fatigue: "Lu Yao, they say that the royal family values heirs. Only by having heirs can the country be protected." For thousands of years, there have been people from generation to generation, and the Three Palaces and Sixth Academy have used the emperor's heir as a means to compete for favor. But I have discovered that having more sons is not necessarily a good thing."
"Your Majesty, are you worried about the princes again?" Lu Yao picked up a cup of hot tea and respectfully presented it to Emperor Xuanwu.
Emperor Xuanwu originally had nine sons, but the family was the most ruthless. For that position, the brothers fought against each other, and there were all kinds of sinister plots behind the scenes, and they used all possible means. Except for the second prince, who had been weak and died of illness early in his childhood, the other princes had lost half of their power in the years of overt and covert fighting.
Although Emperor Xuanwu was furious, the forces of various families in the former harem were intertwined. In addition, he was over fifty years old, and the royal bloodline always needed someone to pass on. He could not and could not bear to impose serious crimes on his few remaining sons, so he took advantage of the Feng family. To check and balance the power between the prince and the family behind him.
Prime Minister Feng Lanzhi devoted himself to the Beiming Dynasty and always maintained a neutral attitude towards the partisanship among the princes. He never formed a party for personal gain, so he gave his legitimate son Feng Guinian the military power of the city guard army, making the Feng family unique in the court. On the one hand, its purpose was to demonstrate the clear distinction between rewards and punishments in the royal family and to stabilize the Feng family's loyalty to the royal family. On the other hand, it was to use the Feng family to weaken the relatives' families and other forces in disguise, so as to control the situation of the entire government and opposition parties.
Emperor Xuanwu frowned slightly, took a sip of the tea that was presented to him, and said calmly: "It is said that the nine sons of Longsheng are all different, but I see that they are all equally ruthless! I wanted them to be the princes when I appointed them. I don't want them to be brothers and sisters, but they should at least understand that I don't want to see them killing each other. I don't want them to be so unwilling to restrain themselves, and they have fought under my nose all these years. Life and death.”
With a "bang" sound, the teacup was knocked heavily on the desk, and at the same time, his voice full of anger was heard. In an instant, there was an invisible pressure in the entire imperial study room, "No matter how bad the prince is, I will also confer him the title." The prince, for so many years, they have been uniting with the people of their mother's clan to suppress the prince, but have they ever put me in their eyes?! I haven't died yet, but I have been thinking about this position all day long. Could it be that I still want to kill the king and my father? ?!”
Lu Yao stood aside with his back hunched, quietly waiting for Emperor Xuanwu to vent the anger accumulated in his chest, and then gently advised: "Your Majesty, calm down and be careful of the dragon body! Even if the princes have big ideas, they still respect your Majesty very much. You would never dare to have such rebellious thoughts."
"Don't you dare?" Emperor Xuanwu's eyes were slightly cold, and he couldn't help but sneer, "Humph, I think their wings are not full yet. If the Feng family hadn't stopped them, these bastards would have turned upside down!"
He closed his eyes, sighed deeply, and said: "If they were willing to focus more on the affairs of the country with their overt and covert struggles and cause less chaos for me, Beiming would not miss many opportunities. How can I leave the country in their hands with confidence if they are so unsatisfied?"
Lu Yao secretly observed the expression of Emperor Xuanwu. Seeing that the anger on his face gradually dissipated, he was slightly relieved. He showed a submissive smile and said flatteringly: "Your Majesty, since ancient times, the birth of nine sons from the dragon has been auspicious. It’s a sign, since God has given nine princes, it must mean that your majesty is a real dragon, and God will protect your majesty’s kingdom for a long time.”
Emperor Xuanwu relaxed his brows slightly, turned to look at Lu Yao, and said with a smile: "You are an old guy, you are always good at flattering others, and you always like to choose some nice things to say to me, but you know how to make me happy than my sons."
Lu Yao smiled humbly: "I don't think I have the ability to make His Majesty happy. I'm just telling the truth."
Emperor Xuanwu moved his gaze to the outside of the palace, the smile on his lips gradually faded, and there was an indescribable meaning in his eyes, "I don't know if it's because I'm getting older, but I always think of the late Emperor Dongchen these days. I and him We have been fighting secretly for many years. Although we have different positions, I have always regarded him as the most powerful opponent, and I sincerely admire his courage in many things. It's like he originally only had three sons, but he was willing to sacrifice two to protect one. This position is indisputable, and this move was so ruthless and accurate that it has to be admirable."
"The late Emperor Dongchen's blessings were shallow. He only had three princes and not even a princess during his lifetime. How can he compare with His Majesty's blessings?"
"It's not that it doesn't exist, it just can't exist." Emperor Xuanwu's gaze stared forward for a long time, as if he had passed through the vicissitudes of time, staying in those unknown past events, with countless complicated emotions passing through his eyes, and finally he just sighed deeply. He said, "What a shrewd man he is. He made up his mind from the very beginning to abandon his chariot to protect the commander-in-chief. What he wanted was a prince who could inherit the throne, not a princess. Back then, he calculated against everyone and replaced Emperor Jingren. We secretly eliminated many obstacles, even if Emperor Jingren was not the queen, in the end the queen's huge mother's family still wholeheartedly served Emperor Jingren, how clever!"
The corner of his mouth curled up into a half-smile, with a hint of appreciation, "But Emperor Jingren did not live up to his expectations. He acted ruthlessly and decisively and governed the country well. He was indeed a born emperor. No wonder he dared to make a desperate move back then."
