Tai Jia

Lost in the ancient road, misty and rainy.

The west wind is shining, and the sound and dust are cut off.

The official road stretches straight to the end of the world, the rammed loess is surrounded by decaying grass, there are few cars and horses, and pedestrians are almost extinct.

A solitary tea shed stood beside the road, with three or four square tables, where four or five pedestrians sat, and a hunchbacked old man served tea and water.

"Where do you all come from?" The round-faced man seemed quite talkative, and he took the initiative to talk to the scholar at the next table.

"We are Lingnan students, going to Chang'an to take the exam, how about you, brother?"

The round-faced man smiled and said, "Coincidentally, I'm from Chang'an."

When the scholars heard this, they immediately cheered up, "Is that so? Brother, you are quite well informed. Have you heard any news related to scientific research?"

The round-faced man sighed pretentiously, "I don't know if you are lucky, something big happened in court!"

"Ah? What happened?" Not only the scholars were astonished, but the tea guests at the other tables stopped chatting and listened carefully.

The round-faced man was very satisfied with the reactions of the people around him, and then he threw out a shocking news: "The emperor was expelled from Beijing by the queen mother and the general!"

"What!" There was a short silence first, and then everyone exclaimed in surprise.

The round-faced man seemed to have read a few books, and shook his head, "Isn't our great general now doing Yihuo's affairs? The problem is, Taijia was only exiled in the Tong Palace of the Emperor's Tomb, but our Son of Heaven , was exiled to Shuozhou, the ancestral land of the He clan!"

Everyone was even more horrified, and one of the scholars said tremblingly: "Taijia has only stayed in Tong Palace for three years, maybe in less than three years, our emperor will be welcomed back to Chang'an?"

His companion whispered, "I just hope it's Yi and not Huo."

If General He really followed Huo Guang's example and abolished the establishment, then he would never go back.

"But I vaguely remember that the first emperor has only one heir today, not even a princess. If..., wouldn't it be..."

"How big of a mistake do you think the Son of Heaven made to make the General so angry?"

"That's hard to say. No one knows that the Empress Dowager is not the Son of Heaven's biological mother at all. The Son of Heaven is fifteen this year, and it's because the He family wants to hold on to power and not allow him to take over the throne."

"That's all. The key is that the emperor was optimistic about the lady of Qingliu Yushi Zhongchengmeng's family. The general wanted to leave it to his son. At that time, Dali Secretary Zhihe Xichao forced the emperor to marry them. Who would have thought that He Xichao would not marry her?" It’s hard to say what you want to belong to, but it’s hard to obey, and the young lady was so tired that she finally married far away in Shuzhong.”

"Is this He Xichao Dahe or Xiaohe?"

One of the scholars seemed to have been immersed in the way of imperial examinations for a long time, so he said without hesitation: "I know this. He Xichao was Da He who was accompanied by the emperor when he was young, and Xiao He was the child prodigy who collided with the name of the emperor and changed his name. Tanhua He Xihua."

"You said, this He family will not be the second Deng family?"

Perhaps it was because the place was too remote, and everyone spoke recklessly, but when Deng's was mentioned, everyone still couldn't help shivering.

Now the country name is Xuanqi, inherited from Tianqi.The reason why the country name was changed in the middle was because the Deng family of the Empress Dowager Deng attempted to usurp the throne in the last years of Tianqi, and almost wiped out the blood of the Xuanyuan family.If it wasn't for Xuanyuan Hui, the founding emperor of the Xuanqi Dynasty, who was entrusted to Suzhou in the early years, and regained Jin'ou with the assistance of his wife's Zhao family in Yingchuan and the Hedong gentry behind him, his mother's Huihe, and Tianqi's widow, there would be more than a hundred years of Xuanqi's founding of the country. years of stability.

Many people still remember the tragedy of those years, and it has only been 120 years of peace. Is it going to repeat the same mistakes?

No longer in the mood to tease and laugh, everyone is concerned.

"It's gone, let's go." The round-faced man threw down a few copper coins, bowed his hands to everyone, and drove the mule cart away.

The scholars sighed and sighed for a while, chatted about their dream of being named on the gold list and making contributions, and then continued westward.

The hunchbacked old man cleaned up the table and continued to smoke the hookah.

No one noticed that there was a person wearing a bamboo hat, sitting in the farthest seat, without saying a word from the beginning to the end, gently placed three copper coins on the table, and left quietly.

Under the bamboo hat was a face full of dust and dust, for some reason it was still covered with black ash, and the facial features could hardly be seen, except for a pair of phoenix eyes, which were astonishingly bright as lacquer.

He led a thin horse, and staggered but firmly walked towards the nearest city - Linhuai County.

"My lord," the head secretary of Linhuai County said respectfully to a person who buried his head in official documents, "in this world, there are not many people who can read and write, let alone count. , It has been more than a month, and no one has exposed it. You see, do you want to change it."

"No need." The man still didn't look up, "It's better to be short than to be indiscriminate."

The master wanted to insist on a little more, so he heard the man continue, "You know, I don't know that you want to make a fuss for your brother-in-law?"

The master's face turned pale, and he said embarrassingly: "Where is the county magistrate, you can't avoid relatives if you are worthy, my brother-in-law."

The man raised his head, and it was a rather pretty face. If it wasn't for his indifferent expression, he might still be a bit feminine, "If I remember correctly, the chief jailer in the county prison is the cousin on the other side of your mother." Brother, although it's not too much, the oil and water he has received these years is enough to buy a few acres of land, right? Mr. Chen, enough is enough."

Master Chen was startled, and was about to kneel down to apologize, when suddenly there were hurried footsteps outside, "My lord, the notice has been taken down!"

"Isn't that here?" The county magistrate smiled, "Please invite him in, I'll test him face to face."

The visitor was dressed in a bunt, with the wind and frost blowing his face, but his stature was quite tall, estimated to be eight feet one inch, and he looked a bit dull. When he saw the county magistrate, he would kneel down, "Caomin has seen the county magistrate."

The county magistrate glanced at the young servant beside him, and the young servant immediately supported him before his knees touched the ground, "There is no need to perform such a grand ceremony, what is your name? Where is your family? I heard that you can read and count? How many words can you recognize? Can you write articles? How far do you count?"

The man spoke methodically, "Returning to your lord, the humble name of the grassroots is Sun Xiong, and he is from Lantian, Fengxiang. He knows a few characters, and he can recognize a few hundred characters in addition to the thousand-character script. He is proficient in writing and ink, and can help people write family letters. As for arithmetic, grassroots people will use calculation chips."

"That's pretty good." The county magistrate was a little suspicious, "Since you are from Gyeonggi Province, why did you end up living here?"

Sun Xiong smiled wryly, "Caomin's parents died young, and their stepmother seized the family property and kicked them out of the house, so they ended up in exile. I heard that there were a lot of households lost due to floods in the Henan Province, and people were needed to open up wasteland, so I thought about earning some money first. Go buy some acres so that you can settle down."

It is reasonable, although the county magistrate still felt that something was wrong, and thought that Linhuai County had nothing to plot, so he ignored it, tested his knowledge, and looked at his handwriting, but he was rarely satisfied, " Well, from now on, you will be doing some copying work in the county government office, since you have nowhere to go, you should live with other subordinate officials or government servants."

"Thank you, my lord." Sun Xiong bowed to the ground without raising his head, "May I ask your lord Gao's surname?"

The county magistrate smiled warmly, "I am He Xihua."

The author has something to say: the old rules are updated every other day

I'm busy with work and this is the update frequency, hope you understand Haihan