Of course, the newlyweds are not praying to the ancestral temple, but the nature is similar. They are also praying to the ancestral temple. However, the Gao family's ancestral temple is in Xinzheng, so we can only put up ancestral tablets and offer sacrifices remotely. There are many rules in it, but they are not worth going into detail, so I will just mention it here.
As for visiting the aunt, that is, the young couple first visited Gao Cai and his wife at Baiyu Tower, and then went to Cheng Guogong Nanhu Villa to visit Huang Chengzu. It was also a routine matter and was not mentioned.
After this trip, the wedding has been settled in nine out of ten, and Gao Yingshi, who returned to Baiyu Tower, can wait to receive the gift.
With his high and pragmatic connections and status, after this wedding was organized, the gift list was piled up on six large desks, and the total number of various gifts was divided into categories, adding up to more than 2,000 pieces. This is not counting gold and silver. Worldly.
With so many gifts, it is certainly impossible for Gao Pragmatic himself to count them one by one. This is all the business of Gao Mo, the great butler. He just looked at the first batch of gifts - to be precise, the most important batch. gifts from people.
The number one gift list cannot be someone else's, it is the congratulatory gift from Zhu Yijun, the current emperor and Wanli emperor.
There were three congratulatory gifts from the emperor: a piece of Chen Han's "Annan and Dingbei", two sets of gold-inlaid jade chopsticks, and a Hotan white jade statue of Guanyin sending his son.
Needless to say, Annan and North are the same. Gold-inlaid jade chopsticks are also jade chopsticks inlaid with gold. Like the Guanyin statue, they both have the same meaning of "having a son early". The most valuable thing here is definitely the one-foot-four-inch jade Guanyin, but the most noble thing is the one written by the emperor's imperial pen, Chen Han.
Gao pragmatism surpassed the emperor's many Chen Hans. This time Chen Han's writing is the largest and can be hung in the main hall. The only trouble is that Gao Wuchen now lives in Baiyulou, and the decoration in Baiyulou is a typical French palace decoration. It would be a bit weird to hang a picture of Emperor Chenhan in it. Therefore, after thinking about it, he decided to ask his father Gao Cai to take it back to Xinzheng, frame it carefully, and then hang it in the main hall of Longwen Yayuan.
After the emperor's congratulatory gifts, there were the congratulatory gifts from the two empresses and the queen. However, their congratulatory gifts themselves were not important. What was important was their status, so there is no need to say more.
Further down are the congratulatory gifts from King Lu and several eldest princesses. This is rather strange, because generally speaking, King Lu cannot give gifts to the ministers of the dynasty casually. As for the two eldest princesses, although there is no such restriction, the eldest princesses in the past were usually more willing to be cautious and self-restrained and would not interfere with the human relations between the ministers of the DPRK and China.
Of course, these two eldest princesses have some relationship with Gao Pangshi, so it’s not a big deal to send a congratulatory gift. The key lies in Prince Lu’s actions—Prince Lu’s palace has been dragging its feet on repairs for so long. He had already given away two python robes before. This time, he ignored the feudal king's taboo and sent a wedding gift again. Even a fool wouldn't believe it if he said it didn't have deep meaning.
Thinking about this matter gives me a headache. He is not a stingy person. If he wants to spend money to eliminate disasters now, or if there are no other negative consequences besides making the emperor and the queen mother happy after giving a sum of money to King Lu, then he doesn't mind paying 200,000 yuan. , 300,000 taels, it doesn’t matter even if this money is definitely a huge amount of money for the private sector.
But the problem is that spending this money will definitely have negative consequences, and the impact will be very bad. There are a lot of people in the court waiting for him to make a mistake!
"Spending huge sums of money to marry the feudal king, your disloyalty is clearly revealed!" - Who can bear this?
However, if King Lu dares to do this, it means that there must be someone behind him, otherwise how could he dare? It's just that I don't know whether the person behind it is the emperor or the empress dowager, or both, and there is no way to ignore this.
Gao pragmatically looked at the gift lists casually. The items were all relatively ordinary, and they were all the kind that would not be caught by the official, so he did not look at them any more.
Next came the congratulatory gifts from the nobles, and the gifts on the gift list began to become diverse and their value increased sharply. All kinds of gold, pearls and jade articles are just ordinary items. What's more important is that there are many unique, rare and rare books handed down from ancient times, which are rare and precious gifts among literati and refined guests. Putting these things together is enough to hold an exhibition, but the specific value is completely impossible to measure.
Even a person like Gao Chou, who was born into a family of high-ranking officials, could not help but tremble with his hands after seeing so many elegant things. Gao Pragmatic was repeatedly told to take good care of them and not to be careless in the slightest. Gao pragmatically agreed with a smile and didn't seem to care much. Mrs. Zhang was afraid that he would take it lightly, so she explained it to Gao Mo alone.
After all these things were taken care of, Gao Pragmatic couldn't rest, so he took Huang Zhiting to greet his relatives and take a test on his brothers' homework.
The literary spirit of the Gao family may have been sucked away by Gao Pingshi alone. In his opinion, the homework of his younger brothers is relatively average. There is definitely no problem in being a birth attendant, but it depends on luck in being an abortion provider. He randomly asked a big question, looked at their answers, and handed it to Gao Cai.
After Gao Cai finished reading, he thought for a while, shook his head slightly and said, "It's quite satisfactory."
"It lacks aura, and even less grandeur." Gao Pragmatic spoke much more directly than his father: "The topic of the article is the general outline of the whole text. It must be done from a high position and have an overview of the overall situation. If you solve the topic like this, Even if you leave the following article to me to continue it, it won’t be a splendid one.”
The younger brothers all looked dejected and did not dare to say a word. Mrs. Zhang was still on the side to help, saying: "You guys usually study in the clan and think they are just for themselves. What do you think my mother said? Just you guys." If you have some ability, I will show you the article in front of my eldest brother. You will like it, so you should accept it now, right?"
Gao Wuguan, who had long been adopted by Gao Gong and favored Shang Baosi, saw that his younger brothers were frustrated, so he still carried forward a bit of his elder brother's style and advised: "The eldest brother is the number one scholar in the Sixth Prize, so it is inevitable that he will be picky. Although I read these articles. It can’t be said to be a masterpiece, but it still has some rules. If you read it deeply and carefully for a long time in the future, you will naturally improve - Brother, right?"
Gao pragmatic nodded reluctantly, and then said: "Originally, I couldn't understand articles like yours. I should teach them myself. But you also know that I have a lot of things now and I really can't spare much time." No, I have a man of the same age, whose surname is Xiao, whose nickname is Liangyou, whose courtesy name is Yi Zhan, and whose name is Hanzhong. He is the second in my ranking list, and is now an official in the Hanlin Academy. Let me go and tell him, and ask him to come and give it to you. If you do some counseling... you don’t want to go back to Xinzheng, and stay in the capital from now on."
It stands to reason that the head of the sixth house is Gao Zai, and he is here. Even if Gao Jingshi is the eldest son, he should not directly decide on it. But his eldest son was too special, and he was talking about academic matters. Gao Cai did not dare to question the views of Liushou No. 1 Scholar. Instead, he could only follow his words and said: "Okay, okay, okay! You guys If I can have Xiao Bangyan to teach me, I will feel relieved as a father."
Then he turned to Gao Pingshi and said, "Would you like Wu Zheng and Wu to stay with you?"
Gao Jingshi originally had six younger brothers. Among them, Gao Wuguan was adopted by Gao Gong. Gao Wuqin had already gone to Annan and was now named the general leader of the six towns. In this way, there are two biological brothers, Gao Wujian and Gao Wuzhong, followed by Gao Wuzheng and Gao Wuruo - the two youngest brothers are concubines and have the same father as him.
The reason why Gao Cai said this was of course worried that Gao Pragmatism would have too clear-cut views as his concubine, leaving only Gao Wujian and Gao Wuzhong, leaving Wuzheng and Wuruo aside.
But in fact, Gao Pragmatic basically doesn't care. He even feels that in a family like the Gao family, the bastard brother is likely to be much more obedient than the biological brother, and may be better to teach. So he said without hesitation: "Of course we stay here. One sheep is being chased, and a group of sheep are being chased. Why bother?"
When he said this, he glanced at his mother Zhang from the corner of his eye, and found that Zhang's expression was calm and she didn't mean anything unhappy. He thought for a moment and understood: In her opinion, it was impossible for the two commoner brothers to reach the heights of being the number one scholar in the Sixth Song, even if they studied hard, so she didn't care very much.
He was teaching his younger brother a lesson here, while Huang Zhiting was chatting with her three sisters on the other side. Among his three sisters, there are also two legitimate sisters and one concubine. Gao Pragmatic didn't communicate much with them, and he had no interest in participating in the chat at their daughter's house. He thought it would be good to communicate separately in this way.
About half an hour later, the sky gradually started to get dark, and the servants and maids had already started to go to the banquet hall to arrange the family banquet, when suddenly someone came to see them in a hurry.
At this time, Gao Qingshi was far away, but Gao Cai was close. The man who came actually knew Gao Cai. He hurriedly came forward to pay homage and said: "Master Gu, I am a servant of the Grand Scholar's Mansion. I just picked up Gao Cai." Go to Puzhou to report urgently, the old man... is riding a crane."
This man was in his forties, and he spoke with great vigor, and everyone heard what he said.
When Mrs. Zhang heard that her father had passed away, her vision went dark, and her whole body seemed to be drained of energy. She staggered and fell backward. Fortunately, Gao Wujian and Gao Wuzhong were close and quickly supported their mother.
Gao Jingshi also hurriedly stepped forward to check. Fortunately, Mrs. Zhang only had a sudden surge of blood. After being supported by her two sons, she came back to her senses. When she saw Gao Jingshi, the eldest son who pleased her the most, she burst into tears. He fell down, but no sound came out of his mouth, he just whimpered and cried.
Huang Zhiting also trotted over quickly. She had experienced the pain of losing her mother and could empathize with it far more than Gao Pragmatic. She helped Zhang sit down and whispered comfort.
Gao Jingshi felt that he should cry a few times, but he didn't have any sad thoughts. Instead, he secretly felt lucky: Fortunately, the matter of adding cabinet ministers was settled first, otherwise this would not be a bad dish?
Then I thought: No, I still have to squeeze out some tears...
Unexpectedly, when he glanced at him, he happened to find that his father Gao Cai also had a tangled look on his face, and seemed to be in an awkward situation where he wanted to cry but couldn't.
Gao Pinggong said sincerely: If dad doesn't cry, I'd better stop crying either, lest he be further embarrassed, then I might as well show some responsibility.
So he immediately said loudly: "Come here, check the carriage and horses, they will be used tomorrow morning! And you, you, you, you guys, go and pack things for the master and the wife, and you will go with the car tomorrow morning."
Mrs. Zhang listened on the side and sobbed: "No tomorrow, leave tonight!"
Unexpectedly, Gao Cai stopped him and said, "Not tonight, but tomorrow." As he said that, he winked at Mrs. Zhang.
Only then did Mrs. Zhang remember that she really couldn't do it today. Her son's wedding was only completed today, so what's the point of leaving tonight? He quickly took Huang Zhiting's hand and said, "Zhiting, I'm so worried about my mother..."
Huang Zhiting didn't pay too much attention, and quickly said that she could understand, and then continued to persuade her.
Gao Cai pulled Gao Pingshi aside and said with a wry smile: "I originally planned to stay with you for a while, but unfortunately things didn't work out as planned..."
Filial piety is more important than heaven these days. Of course, Gao Pragmatic would not express his displeasure, but said with a sad face: "Grandpa is leaving now, and my son has an official position. He can't leave easily. He can only go through this difficult journey for his father. My son Unfilial..."
The father and son chatted for a few words, but Gao Cai went to comfort his wife and freed Huang Zhiting.
Huang Zhiting didn't know if she was infected by Zhang, but she actually shed some tears along with her. When Gao Pragmatic pulled her aside, her eyes were all red.
It's a pity that Gao Pingshi didn't have that much sentimentality, and he got down to business when he started: "My grandpa has passed away, and tomorrow morning my uncle will definitely ask Ding You to resign. Although he is Yuanfu, generally speaking, he should step down in two or three days. I may be very busy for a period of time..."
"The slave family knows that, sir, don't worry, just deal with the changes in the court."
Gao pragmatically nodded and said nothing more.
There was no court meeting early the next morning, but Gao pragmatically went out before dawn and went to the Yamen of the Ministry of War to wait for news.
All yamen will have some connections in the General Affairs Department, and the Ministry of War is no exception. Before the morning was over, the news of Zhang Siwei's resignation from Ding You came through.
However, the emperor did not approve immediately. Instead, he rushed from Qianqing Palace to Wenhua Palace to summon Zhang Siwei.
The conversation between the emperor and his chief ministers was very secretive. Everyone was ordered to go out and wait outside, including Chen Ju, so Gao Pragmatic did not know what they talked about.
The only follow-up news was that after Zhang Siwei left the palace, he sent someone to tell Gao Jingshi that he would leave in the afternoon.
In the Ming Dynasty, "going to work" was also very important. Gao Pragmatic stayed until noon and hurried to Zhang Siwei's house to see him off - of course seeing him off was secondary, the more important thing was to see what his uncle had to say.
The Zhang family is a wealthy family, and the death of the old man was a sign of foreboding, so when Gao pragmatically rushed there, the Zhang family's motorcade was already ready.
When Gao Pingshi arrived, Zhang Siwei was sitting alone in the flower hall in a daze, seeming a little lost. After Gao Pingshi called him, Zhang Siwei came back to his senses and waved to his nephew: "Sit down."
After hearing this, Gao Pingshi sat down and said, "My condolences, uncle."
Zhang Siwei shook his head slightly and sighed: "Stop talking about these words and let's get down to business. I'm a little worried and want to talk to you."
Gao pragmatic nodded and said: "Uncle, please speak."
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Thanks to book friend "Cao Mianzi" for your monthly ticket support, thank you!
PS: The "Three Major Conquests" in this volume will be somewhat different from the three major conquests in history...
