After leaving Jia's house at night, Li Xia went back to his house and had a nap. He got up at the fourth watch, changed into a solemn court dress, and walked to the inner palace city.

There is a big court meeting today.

The sky was still dark and gray, but the Royal Street was already brightly lit and busy with traffic.

"Wow." Liu Jinsuo kept turning his head and sighed: "There are so many officials..."

In the inner city of Lin'an, which is also a small Qiantang County, there are more than 400,000 officials and family members, which is certainly a lot.

It can be said that just by pulling out the officials from the government to form a large army, the number of people can already exceed Meng Ge's army.

After squeezing through the imperial street, Li Xia saw that it was still early, so he took a look in the leaking courtyard first. He saw that there were too many people and there was no resting place for military officials like him, so he simply quit and lined up in front of Li Zhengmen.

Although he was concentrating with his eyes closed, he was upright and erect with outstanding posture, which quickly attracted the attention of others.

"Hey, a fourth-grade earl of such an age... dare I ask you your name?"

Li Xia turned around and saw an official in red robe stroking his beard and asking questions in the queue of civil servants next to him.

"Your Majesty, I'm asking you, but I don't dare to take the high-ranking title. Li Xia, Li Feiyu."

"Zhao Yumin, courtesy name Zhongfu."

Hearing this word, Li Xia was silent for a moment.

Zhao Yumin was about forty-five or six years old, with an elegant demeanor and quite a sense of character. He said his name with a smile and introduced himself: "Doctor Zhongfeng, Minister of the Ministry of Household Affairs, and also knows Lin'an Prefecture."

"It turns out it's the governor, I'm rude in front of you." Li Xia quickly bowed his hands.

Li Xia actually knew that Zhao Yumin was from the Song Dynasty clan.

Because recently he has been secretly inquiring about people in the clan in order to prepare against King Zhong.

The reason why I have an impression of Zhao Yumin is because I heard that Zhao Yumin had a son... the great calligrapher Zhao Mengfu.

But Zhao and Min couldn't do it at first glance.

Zhao and Min were of the same generation as the current officials, and were both the tenth generation grandson of Emperor Taizu Zhao Kuangyin.

However, the official family is after Zhao Dezhao, King of Yan, and Zhao Yumin is after Zhao Defang, King of Qin.

The difference is too far, and they have been diverging since the ninth generation ancestor.

In terms of bloodline, there are hundreds of people in the clan ahead of Zhao and Min.

"Feiyu was born in the Li family in Jiaxing?"

"Yes, the Li family moved to Jiaxing for more than a hundred years." Li Xia responded. He didn't know much about this matter. He had heard Li Zhaocheng say something about it.

Zhao Yumin nodded and asked again: "May I ask Mr. Yuzhai who is Feiyu?"

"It's my great-uncle."

Li Xia knew that Duke Yuzhai was referring to Li Renben, the head of the Li family and Li Yong's uncle.

Because Zhao and Min did not address each other by their official names, but only by their trade names, which was a private conversation, Li Xia had no choice but to use the courtesy of a junior. He did not like this kind of response.

"Then you and I are still close to each other." The smile on Zhao Yumin's face became thicker, but with some sadness, he sighed: "My deceased wife, Mrs. Li, was the niece of Yuzhai Gong's clan. My deceased wife's name was

Yuzhai Gong's 'uncle', she and your father are also siblings in the clan..."

This was the first time Li Xia heard about this.

He only knew that Li Renben married his eldest daughter to Rongwang Zhao Yurui, which caused a lot of trouble for the family. But he didn't know that the Li family had a distant relative who married Zhao Yumin, a member of the clan.

Of course, this is not a strange thing. There are many clans in the Song Dynasty.

Zhao and Min were already the last members of the clan, and the ninth grandson of King Qin had hired a sihu to join the army. His status was very low, even worse than before the current officials succeeded to the throne.

The fact that he is now a fourth-grade official depends on his personal talents.

The Song Dynasty's method of raising a clan seems to be better than many other dynasties...

In short, Zhao and Min were well matched when they married a girl from the Li family.

"I recall that back then, when Princess Xianrong first got married, I was also present and had a chance encounter with your father... I never expected that Prince Rong and the Li family would get into this kind of trouble."

Zhao Yumin shook his head and sighed.

Li Xia understood clearly that Zhao Yumin was making his position clear - I look down on Prince Rong Zhao Yurui.

Zhao and Min seemed to have misunderstood something, thinking that Li Xia was Wu Qian's person.

Or perhaps, he was deliberately testing Li Xia's attitude...

No matter how he answered this question, Li Xia simply refused to answer.

Zhao Yumin smiled and asked again: "Feiyu is not twenty yet, right? Have you ever been married?"

"Already married to a woman from the Gao family in Shuzhong."

Zhao and Min were stunned for a moment, feeling a little regretful.

Afterwards, the drums in the palace sounded, the palace door slowly opened, and the court meeting had begun...

~~

Li Xia walked through the palace tower, entered the main hall and stood there, thinking about things all the time.

He realized that he knew too little about the Li family.

The Li family was once a scholarly family.

At that time, the head of the family, Li Renben, was quite talented but did not want to be an official. He wrote a poem: "The gold belt is heavy, the purple robe is wide, and the end is not like the feather room. If the king allows incense, he will hang a crown in front of the Shenwu Gate."

This poem alone can reveal the Li family’s heritage.

Many of the Li family's daughters married into the Zhao and Song clans, and their families were not as prominent as those of the Xie, Jia, and Yang families, but they were not bad.

When the official Zhao Yun succeeded to the throne, the emperor's younger brothers Zhao and Rui were granted the title of King Rong. Zhao and Rui were equivalent to rising from commoners to nobles.

Therefore, Zhao Yurui married the eldest daughter of the Li family in order to borrow the prestige of the Li family.

One of the maids who accompanied Li's daughter in marriage, one named Huang Dingxi, hooked up with Zhao Yurui and became pregnant.

The Li family's daughter gave Huang Dingxi an abortion medicine, but the abortion failed, causing Zhao Fu to be born with a mental defect.

For many years, this matter was nothing and not many people knew about it.

Until the official Zhao Yun planned to accept an heir in the clan.

At that time, Li Renben and a group of courtiers firmly opposed the official's choice of Zhao Yu.

Ignoring whether there was public concern or not, I only talked about Li Renben's personal agenda, because Princess Li had passed away for many years at that time, and Zhao Yurui also had a successor princess. As for Huang Dingxi, his son, he had no friendship with the Li family, only hatred.

It was Li Renben who helped confirm and spread the news that Zhao Fu had a lowly biological mother and was intellectually disabled.

Afterwards, Jiaxing was attacked by thieves. The thieves broke into the Li family. Li Ren himself died and the Li family was destroyed. Only Li Yong, who was an official in Yuhang at the time, and Li Zhaocheng, who survived, were left.

At this point, the opposition to Zhao Yu died down, and Zhao Yu became the son of an official from the son of King Rong, and was granted the title of King Zhong.

A dose of abortion pill has become a family-killing enemy...

In these years, Li Yong was able to survive obviously because he was protected by a group of courtiers.

So according to Li Yong's thinking, is it possible to survive only by defeating Zhao Yu and switching to another clan?

…

Thinking of this, Li Xia suddenly had an idea.

He turned his head slightly and glanced at Zhao Yumin, the prefect of Lin'an, who was standing in another row.

Think about it from Li Yong’s perspective.

If you support a clan...

For example, to use an unlikely analogy, take this Zhao Yumin.

Zhao Yumin had ten sons and fourteen daughters. He was very talented and had an excellent tutor. He taught all his sons well.

If you choose any of these ten sons to be an heir to the official family, they will definitely be better than Zhao Yu.

Let’s not talk about how it was beneficial to the Song Dynasty.

From the perspective of Li Yong's personal agenda, Zhao Yumin's deceased wife was also a daughter of the Li family.

Among the ten sons of Zhao Yumin, five were the sons of his deceased wife Li...

Of course, this is an analogy. Zhao and Min are far from qualified. Zhi Lin'an Prefecture is just a "mission", and Lin'an Prefect changes almost every year.

Moreover, among Wu Qian's forces, there was far more than just one Li Yong, and there were too many people who were married to the clan.

In the clan, there are too many people ranked ahead of Zhao and Min.

But this is what Wu Qian meant when he said, "The whale sinks to the bottom, but will eventually jump."

Well, this is actually what Li Yong meant.

…

Li Xia discovered that he had underestimated Li Yong.

I thought that Li Yong was filled with a foolish desire to repay his kindness and wanted to flee to Lin'an to be destroyed and ruin his hard work.
To be continued...