Deep Palace past events

At dawn the next day, the chief eunuch Wang Dakang woke everyone up and said, "Brothers, everyone has had a hard time today. The damn heavy rain has done us all a miserable job. Many places are blocked, and I heard that there are also several gutters around the main hall that are also blocked, everyone, quickly get the tools and follow me to dredge and clean it up."

After the old and new eunuchs washed up indiscriminately, they went to a utility room in the yard where brooms and other tools were piled up to get tools.After everyone was tidy up, Wang Dakang raised the voice of a male duck to assign work:

"Wang Daxi, you take Zhang Shao, Li Wu and Yuanyuan, and the four of you will go to Jinshen Hall with the deputy chief eunuch to help dredge the gutter there. Luo Jinjin, a high-achieving student, the two of you will go to Xuanwu Gate to help Su Gonggong and the others clear it up. Down the ditch. Yang Sanhe, you lead these five new little brothers to clean our cleaning place and the surrounding alleys and clean houses. The rest of you will follow me to Donghuamen to clean Yujie."

The eunuch named Yang Sanhe was the old eunuch who received the new eunuchs yesterday. After everyone left, he said to several new eunuchs: "Everyone heard clearly, your task today is to clean our house. In the cleaning place and the surrounding alleys, everyone is not from a wealthy background, and they have done these jobs at home before, so I don’t need to teach them how to clean.”

"Understood!" The new eunuchs agreed in unison and joined the battle.But because it is still raining, they are unwilling to work in the rainy fields.

A new eunuch rushed into a room first to start working like a gold grab.

Seeing this, the other two new eunuchs hurriedly took on the job of cleaning the gutter.

Yang Sanhe said to Yang Fan and Zhang Xiaomao who hadn't moved yet: "You two go to clean the gutter on the left side of the clean house one by one, and the other go to the right side with me to check."

Zhang Xiaomao said to Yang Fan: "I'm going with Eunuch Yang, Yang Fan, you go to the clean room for inspection."

Yang Fan understood, put on a bamboo hat and a long broom, and went out.

Yang Sanhe didn't know that he had ghosts in his heart, seeing that he was not like others, he couldn't help but secretly nodded.

Yang Fan walked to the clean room alone, whenever he saw any clogs in the ditch on the way, he actively dredged and cleaned them up.After pretentiously and selfishly inspecting for a long distance, I never saw any graffiti anywhere else, so I went back to check the clean room again.

He walked into the clean room, looked closely at the graffiti on the wall for a while, and made sure that the original traces could not be seen. Feeling relieved, he came out to check the surrounding environment again.

When he walked in front of the bamboo grove next to the clean room, he couldn't help but shrink back. He saw more than a dozen messy footprints on the muddy ground, and what made him even more horrified was that there was an obvious dragging mark beside the footprints, as if someone had dragged them. He entered the bamboo forest with a heavy object.

With a stirring in his heart, he already had a vague guess. He pretended to clean up the bamboo leaves that had been knocked down by the heavy rain last night, and rubbed away these suspicious footprints and drag marks with a long broom.

After destroying these traces, he went to the clean room to check again. This time, his heartbeat became even worse. The soil under the bamboo forest behind the clean room had obviously been turned over, and a piece of turf was destroyed, exposing new mud.

What's even more frightening is that there are still a few drops of blood under the lump of mud!

"Could it be that Eunuch An was killed by the person who changed his name and buried under this bamboo forest?"

Although he didn't understand the identity of the person who changed the name, and he didn't know why the other party wanted to save him, but this matter was very important and his life was closely related, so he didn't think too much, squatted down, grabbed some balls of mud and wiped the blood buried.

Then, he hurriedly picked up the fallen leaves that had just been swept up in a pile and put them on the new soil with his hands, completely covering up the secret.

After he was sure that there were no more suspicious traces, he was about to leave when suddenly he heard a light footstep coming towards the clean room.

He only said that the person who came was going to enter the clean room, and he wanted to leave quietly after he left, but he immediately heard that the footsteps were not coming into the clean room, but were walking towards the bamboo forest behind the clean room.

Although Yang Fan didn't kill anyone (if someone was really killed here last night), when he heard the footsteps, he felt a sense of panic that he was caught on the spot after committing the crime.Thinking that it would be disadvantageous for me to be found sneakily hiding behind the clean room, I deliberately coughed loudly and pretended to clean the fallen leaves on the ground.

The person who came didn't seem to expect that there was someone behind the clean room, and when he heard his movement, he stopped immediately.

Yang Fan also paused nervously.

For a moment, both of them seemed to be immobilized by someone, and they didn't move.

In the silence, Yang Fan suddenly realized that the person who came could be the murderer from last night—he must have been worried about what he had left behind at the scene of the crime, so he came to check again!

The person who came came to his senses at this time, and seemed to understand that he would be suspicious if he retreated at this time with a guilty conscience. To cover up his gaffe just now, he coughed loudly twice on purpose.

Hearing his voice, Yang Fan was shocked again: This person is actually a woman!

Just when he was in doubt and didn't know what to do, someone had already appeared in front of him——

It was a young court lady, wearing a purple palace uniform, with white skin, a slender figure, and quite beautiful features.

What surprised Yang Fan was: this maid was the mysterious palace lady with a glazed lantern that I witnessed in the big square last night!

The two looked at each other for a while, and the woman looked away first, and said to herself: "I see that there is no one in the cleaning yard, so I thought everyone went to Yujie to clean the gutter."

Seeing that Yang Fan didn't answer, the woman asked casually: "Wang Dakang is not here, did you take someone to Yujie?"

Yang Fan saw that the other party was actually more nervous and guilty than him, and his nervousness eased immediately, and he said, "Yes, they have all gone out, and there are only five new eunuchs in the cleaning room."

The woman let out an oh, and pretended to say nothing: "It's okay, you can do your work." She turned and left while talking.

Although she pretended to be calm, Yang Fan still caught her secret - at the moment she turned to leave, her eyes took a quick look at the pile of fallen leaves covering the new soil.

After the mysterious woman left, Yang Fan was in a daze for a long time before recovering.She said to herself: "It seems that she doesn't know me, so why did she save me?"

After thinking about it, I suddenly realized: "Ah, I must have misunderstood! She changed the name, not to save me, but just to cover up the secret that Eunuch An was killed by her!"

Thinking of this, he seemed to see the terrible scene that happened by the toilet last night——

After preparing to escape from the palace, Eunuch An sneaked into the clean room under the cover of a thunderstorm, and wrote a deadly secret on the wall with charcoal sticks.

Unexpectedly, the praying mantis was catching the cicada, and the oriole was behind him. In the darkness, there was a pair of eyes watching his every move!

After seeing his strange behavior, the man decided to use his tricks. Taking advantage of Mr. An's unpreparedness, he rushed out and stabbed him to the ground, and then dragged the body to the bamboo forest behind the clean room to bury him.

Just as he was burying the body, Zhang Xiaomao entered the clean room and found the terrible "graffiti" on the wall. He ran back to the house immediately and told Yang Fan the secret.

After the two entered the clean room to erase the "graffiti", the murderer had already buried the body. Fearing that Mr. An's "disappearance" would attract suspicion and investigation, he "restored" the erased graffiti, but Yang Fan The name was changed to An Datong.

In this way, even if Yang Fan and Zhang Xiaomao found something wrong, they would not dare to tell the truth to others.After other eunuchs saw it, they would definitely go to find Eunuch An.But Eunuch An has been buried underground, so naturally he cannot be found, so everyone will think that he escaped from the palace in fear of crime...

Thinking of Eunuch An's corpse buried in the ground in front of him, looking at him with his eyes open, he felt his scalp go numb, he didn't dare to stay any longer, and left in a hurry.

Because he suspected that Eunuch An was dead, he decided to endure it for a while.I thought to myself: "After news of Eunuch An's incident has passed, it's not too late for me to find a reason to ask for leave and leave the palace. That woman is a murderer, so naturally I dare not stand up and expose my secret."

After wandering around in the rain a few times, he returned to the cleaning place.

Zhang Xiaomao and the three new eunuchs were all in the courtyard, and they were sitting on the benches under the eaves, listening to Yang Sanhe talking with the other three eunuchs.

I only heard Yang Sanhe say: "I heard that An Datong has escaped from the palace, it seems that he is really a fake eunuch!"

Hearing that they were talking about Eunuch An, Yang Fan felt even more apprehensive. He looked at Zhang Xiaomao with a guilty conscience, then walked over, found a low stool and sat down to listen to them.

The fifty-year-old eunuch said: "I don't know if I have escaped from the palace. I heard that the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not find Mr. An last night, so I sent someone to the Meridian Gate to inquire. I heard that Mr. An was on duty last night. He did not leave the palace with the door letter. The Ministry of Internal Affairs sent people to several other palace gates to inquire, but everyone said that they did not see Mr. An, nor did they see any door letters."

Yang Sanhe said: "That's strange, isn't he still hiding in the palace, isn't that waiting to die?"

The old eunuch sneered and said: "I guess he has probably sneaked out of the palace, but the guard on duty who let him go heard that Eunuch An was a fake eunuch, he was afraid of being punished, so he didn't dare to confess. "

Yang Sanhe nodded and said: "Well, there is such a possibility. However, if he doesn't have a door letter to leave the palace, the guards at the Meridian Gate should not dare to let him leave the palace."

Hearing this, Zhang Xiaomao sneaked a glance at Yang Fan, and couldn't help interjecting and asked: "Eunuch Yang, do you have to be educated to go out of the palace?"

Yang Sanhe said: "The rules are like this, but sometimes eunuchs are ordered to go out of the palace, because the matter is not big, and they only go out of the palace for a while, so they don't bother to do the door documents, and some guards will do it conveniently. But there are also some guards You don’t recognize people, you don’t have a door letter, no matter who you are, you won’t be allowed out of the palace. For the door letter, some eunuchs even quarreled with some guards, and even fought.”

It is not uncommon for eunuchs to have disputes with the guards on duty because of lack of knowledge.On August [-]th in the sixth year of Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty, it appeared once:

A young eunuch named Li Sanshun was ordered by Empress Dowager Cixi to send 2000 taels of silver out of the palace to reward her younger sister, Qifujin who lives in Prince Jin's mansion.

After Li Sanshun arrived at the Meridian Gate with the gift, he was stopped by the guards on duty Yulin, Xiangfu and others because he had no door signs. After the two sides quarreled over this, several guards beat Li Sanshun unconscious.

The chief eunuch Liu Yuxiang heard the noise at the Meridian Gate and rushed to dissuade him, but was also injured on the ground.

When things get serious, both parties will naturally have to face the board.Several guards were all dismissed, and Li Sanshun and Liu Yuxiang were also punished with a stick and a six-month fine of Yueyin respectively.

After discussing the conflict between the eunuch and the army guard for a while, everyone brought the topic back to the matter of Eunuch An.The skinny old eunuch who had been listening in silently said suddenly: "I'm afraid this matter is not as simple as we talked about."

Yang Sanhe was slightly startled, and asked, "Ma Shushu, what do you mean by that?"

Ma hesitated to write the book, then lowered his voice and asked back: "Did you forget someone?"

Yang Sanhe asked: "Who?"

Ma wrote: "Kou Deqing."

Yang Sanhe and the old eunuch said in unison: "Kou Deqing?"

The new eunuchs had never heard of Kou Deqing's name, but seeing the difference in expression and tone of the two old eunuchs, they were all very curious.

Yang Sanhe was stunned for a while, and then said nostalgicly: "If you don't mention this name, I almost forget it!"

He let out a long sigh, and then asked in wonder: "Kou Deqing has been missing for more than ten years, why did you suddenly mention his name?"

The fifty-year-old eunuch also said: "Yes, what does Mr. An's matter have to do with Kou Deqing?"

Seeing their blank expressions, Ma Shushu sighed, and finally said: "Kou Deqing has been missing for more than ten years, of course it has nothing to do with Mr. An's disappearance. However, they have one thing in common, that is...they have all done The 'vegetable household' of that court lady."