Red Mansion Royal Cat

Chapter 603: The Second House Father and Son Attack

Every year during the New Year's Day ceremony, the masters of the Ministry of Rites always have a headache.

The annual opening drama must be staged in the Fengtian Hall. Perhaps because the imperial court sealed it in time before the New Year, Jia Zheng did not have time to vent his anger, and he held it in until today, and scolded seven colleagues in a row.

Among them were Li Chunqiu who impeached his son Baoyu, Geng Xuzhou who impeached his elder brother She Da Lao Ye for abducting the emperor to sea, and Wang Bairen who impeached his brother-in-law Lin Ruhai for abusing his power and forming a clique...

As for these charges, everyone, whether the Crown Prince who was the regent or the discerning people in the court, could see that they were all trumped-up charges.

If Wanyan Gou were allowed to sit on the throne, both the Jia and Lin families would have to prepare to run away.

Fortunately, the Crown Prince Regent was wise and knew that these were just Xiang Zhuang's sword dance aimed at Pei Gong, so he ignored them.

But we can't keep being stared at and criticized like this, we have to fight back.

So Master Zheng specifically chose this special time point to scold seven people in one breath.

Unlike the other party's impeachment, he came prepared and every point was well-founded. The charges might not be serious, but they were definitely disgusting.

For example, Li Chunqiu's crime was that he was an official appointed by the imperial court, but he stayed in a brothel at night and kept a prostitute as his concubine...

"A mere seventh rank official, born in a humble family, but he was able to redeem the body of the most beautiful girl in Jiangnan... Tsk tsk tsk tsk, Li Jieshi, where did you get the money?"

Mr. Zheng had seen the red-light districts of Jiangnan and knew the price of a courtesan. How many thousand taels? In the past, salt merchants spent a fortune just to win the smile of a beautiful woman. Without thirty or fifty thousand taels of silver, they would not dare to bid.

Jia Cong, who was hiding behind a pillar and eating melon seeds, couldn't help but applaud. Second Uncle was amazing today. He was really hitting the target right in the face.

Li Chunqiu, who had been trying his best to refute and argue with Jia Zheng, was now like a rooster with its neck strangled. His face flushed and he stuck out his neck to argue, but no sound came out of his mouth.

He clearly did not bring the courtesan back to the capital, but only placed her in a farm outside the city. How did Jia Zheng know this?

Everyone in the hall was not stupid, so they naturally saw something fishy from the change in Li Chunqiu's expression.

"Hey, that's amazing. Li Chunqiu was able to redeem the Jiangnan courtesan. Back then, I only went there occasionally to have a drink and listen to music. Even this cost me a lot of money."

"I have seen this when I was working in Suzhou. Someone spent 60,000 taels of silver to redeem the famous Li Yuanyuan in Jiangnan. But it was a pity that the beauty was short-lived. The wife of that family was very powerful. Within a year, Li was tortured to death."

"Li Yuanyuan, one of the Eight Beauties? Oh, I remember now, it's that family, right?"

"It's unspeakable. Just let me know, brother."

"Come on, how can you eat half of the melon? Go on, who is this family?"

Ok?
"Marquis Yongfeng, when did you come here?"

You, a top dignitary wearing a purple robe with a golden unicorn pattern, come to eavesdrop on our circle of green-robed minor officials. That’s not good... right?

Jia Cong ignored the frightened looks of these people. Instead, he gave each of them a handful of melon seeds from his pocket and laughed.

"Come on, it's New Year's Day, let's talk about something interesting... You... I remember you are from the Ministry of Revenue..."

"I am the head of the Zhejiang Qingli Division of the Ministry of Revenue, and I am in charge of the world..."

Yu Shiren was almost on the verge of tears. He really wanted to slap himself in the face and wondered why he couldn't control his mouth.

Jia Cong looked at the young official who had just whispered with Yu Shiren and asked, "Are you from the Ministry of Personnel?"

The man gave a bitter smile, bowed slightly and replied in a low voice: "My Lord, you have a good memory. I am Yang Zhenyuan, the Director of the Ministry of Personnel's Examination and Rectification Division."

"I remember now, Yu Shiren, you were the county magistrate of Changshu County in Suzhou a few years ago. That year, it was my first time to go to Jiangnan. When I went to Suzhou with my father to pay homage to my aunt, you and the county officials and gentry greeted us at the city gate..."

No wonder this person looks familiar, it turns out he is really an acquaintance.

"What a coincidence! You were promoted from Gusu, and I am the son-in-law of Gusu City. We are both half Gusu people. Come on, tell me quickly, was Li Yuanyuan redeemed by someone? What family did that person come from?"

God damn, you are half from Suzhou, I don’t want to be familiar with you!
Unfortunately, Yu Shiren's inner cry was destined to be useless. Just when Master Zheng and Li Chunqiu started fighting in the palace, Yu Shiren made a bitter face and told Jia Cong an old story.

……

Master Zheng, with a pair of panda eyes, walked out of the Fengtian Hall with a heroic and imposing manner.

Today he became famous in one battle. His windmill punch swept through the hall, but he was eventually fined half a year's salary by the "furious" Prince Regent.

At the same time, he ordered the Ministry of Justice, the Censorate, and the Dali Temple to select personnel to form an investigation team to conduct a thorough investigation of Li Chunqiu and others.

Especially since Li Chunqiu actually had tens of thousands of taels of silver to redeem the courtesan, the source of this silver must be investigated.

"Second uncle is so powerful. Today's battle is just like our grandfather's!"

Jia Cong blinked his eyes and started talking nonsense. He basically knew about the demeanor of old man Daishan when he was alive from the old saint or his father Jia She.

However, there is one thing that Master Zheng can still agree with Master Daishan on, and that is the incident of beating people in the Fengtian Hall.

Back then, Jia Daishan, the Duke of Rong, who was the most decorated military officer, never lost a fight at the Fengtian Hall. Jia Zheng saw with his own eyes that one time his father took a stance and shouted that he would beat ten people...

"If I don't beat up these shameless scum today, wouldn't it be a loss of prestige for our Jia family? You don't know that these people have already prepared to throw dirty water on Baoyu today."

Huh?
"There is such a thing? How did Second Uncle know about it?"

This was beyond Jia Cong's expectations. He helped the panda-eyed Master Zheng into the carriage, and only then did he understand the mystery.

"On the day before the seal was sealed, His Highness suddenly summoned me to the palace..."

It turns out that the source of this incident was still the dispute between the New Rites and the current Lijiao. To be more specific, it was another confrontation between conservatives and reformists.

Baoyu is a doctor in the News Department of the Ministry of Rites and the editor-in-chief of the Daxia Daily and the Jingcheng Evening News. To put it bluntly, he is the mouthpiece of the reformists.

Before there were newspapers, the leading power of public opinion was actually controlled by the Shilin. As the largest force in the Shilin, the conservatives had seen many cases of calling a black cat a white cat and confusing right and wrong.

But now it is no longer possible. The emergence of newspapers has directly broken their control over public opinion. Moreover, newspapers are aimed at ordinary people all over the world. No matter whether they are rich or poor, they don’t need to understand the intricacies of the language. As long as they can hear the plain language, they can understand the information disseminated in the newspaper.

Look, this point has far surpassed the traditional conservative way of public opinion.

It’s not that the conservatives don’t want to learn this trick, but the official newspapers, as the mouthpiece of the imperial court, have inherent advantages.

For example, the articles in magazines run by the conservatives, such as "Gyeonggi Monthly", "Reader's Newspaper", "Shilin Digest", etc., are written in a flourish, but none of them can compare to Jia Baoyu's storytelling skills.

Especially the series of tragic stories about the cannibalism of ethics and morals recently published in the Beijing Evening News. I wonder how many young men and women in Beijing are criticizing the unreasonable ethics and morals.

For example, yesterday on New Year’s Eve, the Beijing Evening News published Baoyu’s latest short story in its New Year’s Eve special edition, which stabbed the hearts of the tender-hearted boys and girls on New Year’s Eve.

Under Jia Cong's curious gaze, Mr. Zheng took out several copies of "Beijing Evening News" from an exquisite box and handed them to Jia Cong.

"That's all. My son may not be good at other things, but when it comes to telling stories, Li Chunqiu and those rubbish are far inferior to him!"

Tsk tsk, Master Zheng is so arrogant. He usually treats Baoyu with indifference, but he even carefully saves every newspaper that publishes Baoyu's articles.

Of course Jia Cong would not point this out. He took the newspaper and started reading it.

"Hmm? Brother Bao is awesome!"

The first thing I saw was yesterday's evening paper. Beyond the current affairs news on the front page, the third page was a short legendary story belonging to a man named Master Yihong.

"'Goddess', this name is very attractive!"

Stories about talented men and beautiful women are the most popular among the people. Stories like a rich girl falling in love with a poor boy, with many twists and turns but finally a happy ending are timeless.

But who is Baoyu? His current understanding of the world is far more thorough than that of most people.

It's obviously a fairy-like title, with a comedy at the beginning, but it takes a sharp turn for the worse in the middle, describing a goddess from a wealthy family who becomes a prostitute due to her family's decline...

He finally saved enough money to redeem himself, and worked hard to run a teahouse to earn money to support his childhood sweetheart to go to Beijing to take the imperial examination...

According to the previous routine, the childhood sweethearts should pass the imperial examination and become the top scholar, refuse the arranged marriage proposal, marry the goddess and then live a shameless and happy life.

But Baoyu did the opposite. The man did win the top spot in the imperial examination, but he was unfaithful and ungrateful, and he turned around and wanted to marry the prime minister's daughter.

The goddess waited anxiously for news in her hometown but received this tragic news. She was so angry that she went to the capital to seek justice.

The road to Beijing was full of twists and turns, but fortunately with the help of kind people, I finally arrived in Beijing...

The unfaithful man was an official and the son-in-law of the prime minister, so the goddess naturally could not get any good things from him. In order to seek justice, the goddess, with the help of kind people, resumed her old business in the capital and opened a teahouse to earn money to live a peaceful life while looking for opportunities for revenge.

At this time, even Jia Cong thought that the goddess would eventually succeed through her own efforts, but when Baoyu got angry, he was really good at using one trick after another.

The unfaithful man secretly instigated someone to expose the fact that the goddess had been a prostitute...

"Damn it, this dog-like thing should be cut into pieces!"

Jia Cong wished he could travel back to the story and skin the unfaithful man alive, but Master Zheng standing by just stroked his long beard, smiled and said nothing.

How could it be easy for a woman who had been a prostitute and had no relatives to rely on to survive in this world even if she was established as a female household?

Even though there were kind people who helped her, the goddess eventually died in grief and anger on a cold winter day after going through so many twists and turns and exhausting her energy.

On the contrary, the unfaithful man not only rose to the third-rank official position, but also had many children and grandchildren and lived to be ninety-nine years old.

In the story, the goddess had three good marriage opportunities, but almost all of them were ruined by her past.

Moreover, there were also some hypocritical "gentlemen" who used the rules of ethics to suppress the goddess, and gradually forced to death this goddess who just wanted to live a fair life in the world.

"The goddess, a goddess with a noble character, eventually fell into the mortal world because of the rules of etiquette and died tragically... Baoyu told a good story, no wonder they were crazy about throwing dirty water on Baoyu!"

A legendary story vividly depicts the greatest malice of the current ethical rules towards women, and this is just one story.

Jia Cong roughly looked through the remaining copies in his hand. There were stories about a daughter whose arm was accidentally chopped off by a stranger, a woman who was falsely accused and thrown into a pig cage, and a story about parents using filial piety to pressure their sons to give up their beloved and marry someone else, and then they died in depression...

It can be said that Baoyu has really studied the routines of family ethics dramas thoroughly, and has used storytelling to criticize all the unbearable aspects of the current ethics from all aspects without any blind spots.

This includes not only calls for "women's liberation", but also proposals to break the restrictions on men imposed by ethical codes.

For example, one of the articles is about a poor student who was oppressed by the academic tycoons and labeled as a poor student. In the end, with the help of one confidante after another, he broke through the cage of the academic tycoons and reached the pinnacle of his life...

"Why does this story seem so familiar? I seem to have seen it somewhere before?"

"It should be something I told him after I came back from my post as the education commissioner in Zhejiang. Look here, and here, isn't this what the Xilin Party is best at?"

After Mr. Zheng's reminder, Jia Cong actually saw some of the flavor of the former Xilin Party in it.

Any disobedient poor student, anyone who dared to express a different opinion from theirs, was considered a heretic and would be killed as a cult demon.

"The Dragon Guards have received news that these people want to destroy Baoyu's reputation, and then find a way to have their people replace Baoyu to the News Department, so as to control public opinion and promote their ideas. Your Highness said that since we are going to fight this battle, we might as well make things clear, let Baoyu give full play to his strengths, and deeply analyze the current restrictions and persecutions imposed by the Confucian school on the world."

"Are you going to open up a new battlefield and have a decisive battle?"

"Ok!"

hiss~
Jia Cong couldn't help but feel a toothache. The prince really thought highly of Baoyu!
Even though the new policy is being implemented in full swing and seems to have the upper hand.

But in fact, it is only prosperous on the surface. The material prosperity is far from allowing Daxia to get out of the quagmire of conservative ideas.

Not to mention the people, even the conservatives in the government are always hiding everywhere, waiting for the reformists to make mistakes.

Why is Mr. Zhou, who has been editing books for two and a half years, still debating with conservatives? To put it bluntly, he is still hoping to take the path of upper-level reform.

The prince wants to take the grassroots route and "overthrow the superiors", but this road is very difficult!

"It's not easy. Letting Brother Bao be the vanguard, Uncle had better be aware of this. He might die in this battle..."

Although Mr. Zheng looked solemn, his eyes were full of pride as he looked at the newspaper in his hand.

He nodded: "Your Highness said that Baoyu will definitely become the target of public criticism. But I still firmly believe that if the ethics can be reformed, Baoyu will go down in history. I, Jia Zheng, Jia Cunzhou's son, can withstand setbacks, rumors, and even all kinds of disasters, and become a national hero!"

Monthly ticket recommendation ticket

　I didn't expect that I would get an infection and a fever even in the summer. I was in the hospital today and got an IV drip. I came back in the evening to catch up. I'll update one chapter first and continue tomorrow.

　　good night!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)