It's better to fall in love than seize the heir

In the depths of the cold and damp sky prison, the bone-piercing cold wind swishes in as the wooden prison door creaks open, and the shrill whistling is like a ghost crying at night.

On the haystacks on both sides, the wounded prisoners were leaning or lying down, and the fat rats creaked and crawled over their wounds recklessly.Seeing the jailer walking by with grinning grins, they just rolled their cloudy eyeballs mechanically and absently, and no one made any sound of grievance.

bang-

The brass lock on the cell door was roughly unscrewed, and the black-clothed jailer walked into the cell, looking at the warlock with his hands bound and dying hanging from the crossbeam in the cell, he gave a sinister snort.

"Can you do it? It's been a night, and he hasn't recruited yet?"

The red-clothed jailer who was panting with a whip at the side seemed hesitant when he saw the officer, and hurriedly approached and smiled obsequiously, "Sir, this monster is very stubborn, and the villain has already whipped him a hundred and eighty times. I also fainted and poured cold water a few times, but I am still a dead duck with a stubborn mouth and refuses to admit it. The villain will continue to teach him, so continue!"

"Okay, I think he won't cry when he sees the coffin!" The black-clothed jailer pushed him away impatiently, and threw an indigo package on the ground with one hand.The loosely tied knot slipped away, revealing several bundles of silver needles and a vial of dirty animal blood inside.

The sorcerer was already half-casting his eyes weakly, but when he saw the package, his expression suddenly became excited and panicked, and he made a ho-ho sound from his blood-soaked mouth.He was tied so black and blue that his wrists were constantly struggling on the top of his head, as if he wanted to break free from the shackles, and desperately snatched the package back.

"Why, you finally recognize your own things?" The black-clothed jailer looked at him with a sinister smile, pulled his braids that were soaked in salt water, and slapped him hard across the face.

The thick thorn whip severely carved a bloodstain on his face, and the warlock's face tilted to the left with the sound of the whip, and another mouthful of blood froth spewed out of his mouth.

"Give it back to me... where did you find it..." Warlock said hoarsely, as if he hadn't spoken for a long time, his voice was hoarse and mocking, as ugly and harsh as if the cloth was torn.

Seeing this, the red-clothed jailer quickly spat thick phlegm on his face and kicked him skillfully in the stomach.The hard toe of the boot just touched the softest part of the abdomen, causing the aged warlock to let out another muffled groan.

"Your Majesty of Dali Temple solves cases like a god. How can the criminal evidence that you, a Taoist dog hastily hid, escape his old man's eyes!" The black-clothed jailer slowly rolled up his sleeves, and dipped his whip in salt water again. He touched it, held it in his hand and weighed it up and down, "Now that the evidence of the crime is all there, are you going to convict or not? Hmph, in my opinion, you should explain the matter clearly as soon as possible, so as not to suffer from this flesh and blood again!"

The old warlock looked at the package on the ground, his face was pale and his eyes were dull.His chapped and pale lips squirmed twice, and finally he murmured in a low and dejected voice, "I, I beck...that puppet with needles was indeed made by me."

"Oh?" The two jailers looked at each other, with a flash of excitement in their eyes, "Then who is the master behind you? Who instructed you to do this?"

The warlock struggled, and a trace of deep fear flashed in his cloudy eyes.His body suspended from the beam began to writhe uneasily, like a dying fish out of water on a chopping board, whining in his mouth, but refused to reveal a name.

"You're being stubborn, aren't you? Hit me!" The black-clothed jailer snorted coldly, raised his chin, and signaled the people around him to do it.

The red-clothed jailer spent a whole night of hard work but couldn't get the old man to speak, he was worried about losing the favor of the chief, but now that he got the order, he even used all his moves to death.The sound of the whip piercing through the air whistled past, hitting the original scars on the flesh without leaving any strength.

The sorcerer had already been tortured all night, and now that his mind had collapsed, he was savagely thrown on his body by a sharp whip inlaid with barbs, and he was wailing even more.He gasped again and again, and finally he let out a high-pitched cry of pain, "Prince——Pindao was tortured overnight in prison for you, why didn't you come to rescue him?"

After a long and shrill cry of pain, the old warlock seemed to be unable to bear it anymore, his head tilted and he fell into a coma.

Seeing that he was finally willing to admit it, the two jailers suppressed the excitement in their hearts, threw the whip casually, ignored him, and hurriedly reported to the superior officials.

……

"What? Is what he said true?"

The emperor sat in the Zichen Hall with a stern expression on his face, and after listening to the careful report from the minister of Dali Temple, he hammered heavily on the imperial case with his right hand angrily.

"Okay, okay! He's really my good son!" The emperor's face was livid, he gasped for breath twice, and smiled angrily, his face was so cold that it was almost covered with frost, "This is so impatient to want Take my place!"

The people from the left and right palaces and the minister of Dali Temple quickly knelt down on the ground, and kept kowtowing, "Your Majesty, calm down."

"Your Majesty, you can't go in now!"

"Let go—you guys can stop me, too?"

Suddenly there was noise and disputes outside the Zichen Hall. Across the hall door, figures shoving and shoving could be vaguely seen, and women's sharp scolding sounds could be heard from time to time.An attendant hurriedly came from outside the hall, sweating profusely, leaned into the emperor's ear, and said in embarrassment, "Your Majesty, this... Concubine Duan wants to see you outside the hall. The servants really can't stop it! "

"Concubine Duan? Hmph, let her in. I want to ask her how she raised such a good son!" The emperor's eyes were gloomy and cold, but when he heard the noise outside the palace, the veins on his forehead twitched. twitch.

"It is said that Concubine Duan entered the palace—"

The attendant straightened up and summoned in a drawn out tone.Hearing the words, the guards outside the door immediately let go of the weapons that were criss-crossed in front of the hall door.Concubine Duan pushed them away, glared at them angrily, then adjusted her makeup and hair and walked into the hall quickly.

"Your Majesty! Hao'er was wronged!"

Before he saw anyone, he heard an anxious and mournful cry.Concubine Duan held up her skirt, rushed to the emperor's feet with tears on her face, raised her face and begged, "Hao'er has always admired and respected her father the most, and she always uses His Majesty as the standard in words and deeds. Share your worries for His Majesty. How could he—how could he do such a rebellious thing!"

"Share your worries?" The emperor looked at Concubine Duan kneeling at his feet crying pear blossoms and rain, his cold and hard expression was unmoved, "I don't think he wants to share my worries for me, but wants to replace me completely. Bar!"

Concubine Duan's heart tightened when she heard the emperor's words, and her face turned pale with fright.She quickly took two steps on her knees, kowtowed and kowtowed, "Your Majesty, you watched Hao'er grow up. Others don't understand his disposition. Don't you, his dearest father, still not know? Hao'er Sometimes he was a bit reckless, but in the face of big right and wrong, when has he ever been confused...Your Majesty, someone must have framed Hao'er. Hao'er was wronged!"

When the emperor heard Concubine Duan mentioning the eldest prince's childhood, his icy face softened a little when he thought of the appearance of his earliest son when he was young.Before he could speak, the attendant at the side handed over a stack of memorials to the table, bowed his head and said respectfully: "Your Majesty, this is the papers handed over by the courtier overnight."

The emperor closed his eyes deeply, and waved Concubine Duan to step aside.Although Concubine Duan was extremely reluctant, she also knew that women in the harem were not allowed to participate in politics, so she had to take a small step back to the seat, wiping her tears with a handkerchief and weeping mournfully.

The emperor opened the memorial, and as expected, it was all the advice of the ministers to persuade him to act calmly and cautiously, and not to jump to conclusions in a hurry.The memorial on the top was written by Deng Lei, the eldest prince's ancestral minister of the military department. His words were sincere, every word weeping blood, and he directly said that the eldest prince was framed by a villain with ulterior motives.

The emperor frowned, and let out a deep breath.After being furious, he gradually calmed down and saw something vaguely wrong.The maid who hanged herself after reporting the case, the old Taoist who couldn't help asking the First Prince for help in the dungeon, and the constant confrontation in the court these days, all seemed to be woven into a dense net.

With a sound of "bang", the emperor threw the teacup on the case on the ground with a little irritability, and the torn pieces of porcelain kept buzzing and trembling on the ground, splashing a few drops of steaming tea.The overflowing water almost engulfed Concubine Duan's skirt that was winding on the ground, but she could only take a step back quietly, not daring to disturb the extremely ugly-looking occupant.

"Concubine Duan, you go back to the palace first." The emperor piled up the stack of memorials on the case at one side, and said in a stiff and cold tone, "Let's do this first. Tomorrow morning, bring that monster to the Golden Palace. I want to interrogate him personally! "

……

On the second day, at the Golden Luan Hall.

Today's morning, the atmosphere is particularly solemn and dead.All the officials stood silently with their hands down, the officials of the First Prince's faction were burning with anxiety, while the rest of the officials quietly watched the show, just waiting to see how the emperor would deal with it.

The eldest prince, who was finally released from house arrest, looked obviously haggard. He looked at the bony and bruised warlock who was dragged to the temple, his eyes burst into blazing anger, and he clenched the fists beside him.If he hadn't been in the court, he might have swooped over like a vicious tiger, and beat the old man hard to relieve his anger.

Shen Jinghe also stood peacefully in the corner with a dignified expression.Like the courtiers in the palace, he heard that the magician in the dungeon finally confessed that he was ordered by the eldest prince before he fell into a coma, so he did such a disobedient thing that dared to curse the emperor.However, looking at the anger of the first prince towards the warlock today, and the expression of the third prince on the other side who remained expressionless, he felt more and more that this matter was probably just a trap.

——But according to the strategy of the third prince's city, he shouldn't have imagined that with the power behind the first prince, this time the disaster of witchcraft would cause such a fierce backlash and resistance from the first prince's faction, and most of them would be able to dispel and overturn the case in the end.The emperor is not a stupid fool, he put the eldest prince under house arrest in a moment of urgency, but when he came to his senses, he might not think that this disaster happened by chance and weird.

What is the purpose of the drama that the third prince arranged so painstakingly?

A trace of uneasiness flashed in Shen Jinghe's heart. He was about to think about it carefully, but the emperor on the seat had already looked deeply at the warlock and spoke.

"I sent people to thoroughly investigate the Taoist temples within a hundred miles of the capital and capital, and there is no name for you. You are not from the capital."

The old Taoist raised his head from the ground with difficulty, coughed twice, and replied in a low voice, "Pindao...Pindao is indeed not from the capital."

"Oh? Then where did you come from, and how did you get into the First Prince's residence?"

The eldest prince's face darkened, and he pointed at the warlock angrily with one hand and growled: "One day, this demon suddenly appeared in front of my son's mansion. A living half-immortal in the world. My son was fascinated by his magic for a while, so he invited him into the mansion to give a lecture in a daze, who would have expected him to be such a treacherous and treacherous villain!"

The emperor raised his eyelids and glanced at him coldly, his ice-like cold gaze swept across Shen Zhuohao's face, making him shiver from head to toe, shrank his head and stood back in his original position sullenly, without making a sound.

"Before I ask you, I don't need you to talk too much." The emperor said lightly, then turned his cloudy eyes to the warlock kneeling on the ground, "Where do you come from?"

"Pindao...Pindao came from Yancheng, and it is named in the Baiyun Temple outside Yancheng."

Yancheng?Shen Jinghe suddenly felt that this place name was somewhat familiar, as if he had heard it somewhere before.He frowned and thought about it, but he didn't notice that Shen Zhuoxuan's body beside him suddenly stiffened for a moment.

"I, Dayong, have always been cautious about the customs clearance certificates issued to Taoist priests and warlocks. There are only a dozen or so copies every year, and each copy is registered. However, there is no portrait or name of you among them." The emperor slightly He lowered his body, his expression unpredictable, "How did you come all the way to the capital?"

The Taoist priest trembled and his face turned slightly pale.He shook his head from side to side in panic, whispering something in his mouth, but no one could hear him clearly.

Seeing this, Deng Lei, Shangshu of the Ministry of War, had a flash of ecstasy in his eyes.Immediately suppressing his excitement, he rushed out of the line, clasped his hands and asked in a low voice: "Your Majesty, I see how strange this monster way is, the origin is unknown, and the words are confused and contradictory. There must be something strange in it, please be aware of it!"

"Poverty, poverty..." The sorcerer really panicked, his eyes frantically scanned among the courtiers, but he couldn't find a place to stop.The courtiers he saw took a step back as if avoiding suspicion, for fear of getting involved with the evil way of this conspiracy.

"Boldly bewitching! Why don't you hurry up and do it!" The emperor looked at him with increasingly frightened eyes, and let out an angry yell, like a thunderclap in the warlock's ears.

A guard had long been guarding His Highness, and when he heard this, he suddenly drew his sword, shining a sharp blade that reflected silver light, and walked towards the Warlock threateningly step by step.

The old Taoist struggled and twisted a few times on the ground, but finally couldn't bear the heart-wrenching power, and screamed, "I, I said..."

At the same time, Shen Jinghe finally remembered when he had heard the place name of Yancheng.His fingertips trembled slightly, and his face turned pale——

"Yes...it's Lord Ruan Lingruan!"

After a shrill scream, the old Taoist seemed to have been drained of all the strength in his body, and suddenly collapsed on the ground, panting heavily.

There was a dead silence in the hall.

All the ministers looked at each other with horror when they heard the words.Even the First Prince, who was still furious just now, his face became extremely weird because of the sudden distorted surprise.

"Fifth Brother!" Shen Jinghe whispered anxiously, supporting Shen Zhuoxuan's figure who took a step back because he couldn't bear it.

No one knows that Ruan Ling is from the Qingliu lineage, unrestrained and unrestrained, proud of his talents, but he has always been best friends with the fifth prince.He was only transferred back to Beijing from Yancheng more than a month ago, but because his usual words and deeds often offended the dignitaries in the court, and there was no shortage of official positions in the capital for a while, so he stayed at home all the time, only often reciting poems with the fifth prince Sing harmony, play the piano and talk.

But now the old Taoist pointed out that Ruan Ling instructed him to design to frame the eldest prince and curse the emperor. Isn't it just turning a corner to show that the culprit behind all this is that the shadow of the fifth prince is indispensable anyway?

"Ruan Ling?" The emperor's eyes turned cold, obviously because he thought of how much this Qingliu disciple had complained about the court.He turned his head and looked at Dali Siqing, "When did this monster appear in the capital?"

"Reporting to Your Majesty, after the minister sent people to investigate, the surrounding people all said that they saw this monster for the first time, about a month ago. After careful calculation... it just happened to coincide with the time when Ruan Ling returned to Beijing." Dali Temple Secretary He answered respectfully.

Shen Jinghe's pupils constricted, a trace of coldness flashed across his eyes, and the hand holding Shen Zhuoxuan became more and more forceful.

He finally understood... the drunkard's intention is not to drink, what a Shen Zhuomin!It looked like he was going to drive the First Prince into a place of eternal doom, but in fact he wanted to take this opportunity to turn his sword and kill the Fifth Prince, an opponent he couldn't win over but had to be vigilant with.

Anyone can see that the fifth prince has no intention of competing for the heir, but is extremely disgusted with all kinds of entanglements and struggles in the court, and is afraid to avoid them.However, even for such a person who is only obsessed with poetry and romance every day, Shen Zhuomin is secretly on guard, unwilling to let go of even the slightest possibility?

The old Taoist still hangs his head in frustration as if he had given up struggling, and slowly said everything in a low voice, "... When the poor Taoist was in Yancheng, he was called to the official mansion by Mr. Ruan, and asked carefully about the secret of the witchcraft. Pindao originally thought that Master Ruan was just curious about these yin and yang numerology, so he didn't think too much about it, and just told the whole story. Unexpectedly, when Master Ruan was about to leave for Beijing in the future, he would let Pindao secretly hide it in his motorcade , all the way to the capital."

The emperor's complexion became more and more ugly, and the back of his hand that was tightly clutching the armrest of the dragon chair was almost bruised.

"After arriving in the capital, Lord Ruan suddenly asked Pindao to leave the convoy again without saying anything. After waiting for a few days, he sent someone to send a letter over to meet Pindao at the Qingfeng Teahouse in the south of the city five days later to conspire Confidential. Now that I think about it, Master Ruan deliberately let Pindao settle in the capital to avoid suspicion..."

"Nonsense, Ruan Ling can never be such a person..." Shen Zhuoxuan's face was pale, startled and angry, and he was about to take a step forward to confront him, but Shen Jinghe grabbed his sleeve.

"Five brothers!"

Shen Jinghe called him softly, and shook his head solemnly at him, signaling that he should not act rashly now.

When Shen Zhuoxuan was called out like this, he recovered from his anger.He took a deep breath, calmed his ups and downs, and closed his eyes tightly.

"Jinghe, if something really happened to Fifth Brother this time..." He said with some difficulty, his hands under the sleeves tightly clenched into fists.

Shen Jinghe stopped him resolutely, and whispered in his ear, "No, fifth brother, I won't let you and Ruan Ling be wronged so plainly."

He looked at the old Taoist who was still narrating the "truth" with regret on his face, a thin layer of ice formed in his eyes.

"Let's first hear how he can deceive the public. After he finishes speaking, I will return your innocence."

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Help the little angels recall the chapters where Ruan Ling appeared: Chapter 34, Chapter 49~

Thanks Sagi and Ando Fengshuang for mine!mwah

Thank you Wanyi Niansheng and Ando Fengshuang for their nutrient solution!hug