The darkness in front of my eyes suddenly faded away, and the light of the torch was extremely dazzling.
Du Wei looked up and saw a prison guard with a ferocious face holding a torch into the execution room and tearing off the rag from her mouth.
"Unjustly accused!" Du Wei shouted: "The Du family is unjustly accused!"
"Madam Du, please stop shouting." Someone outside the execution room suddenly said leisurely: "This is Jingzhao Mansion. If you are a smart person, you should know that no matter how you shout, it will be in vain."
There were attendants holding lanterns beside this man, illuminating his blue official robe, slightly upturned beard, and the mocking look at the corners of his mouth.
It was Cao Jiwen, the Dharma minister of Jingzhao Prefecture.
When Du Wei saw it, she yelled: "A lackey! A lackey who wants a cockfight!"
"It's okay to scold me." Ji Wen shook his head and said, "It's not okay to scold the right prime minister."
"Snapped!"
The prison guard in the cell immediately stepped forward and slapped Du Wei hard.
Ji Wen then continued: "Today, I have gained a nickname, no, half of it. It is called 'Luo Cong Ji Net', and 'Ji Net' is my French net."
"Bah, you are a cruel official. If you are not ashamed, you are proud of him."
"You are a great beauty. I advise you not to try my French methods." Ji Wen touched the blood on the doorpost, rubbed it gently with his fingers, and said to himself, and then asked: "The prince sent someone
Burn the evidence that Liu Ji made friends with the ministers for him?"
Du Wei gritted her teeth and said, "Don't you want me to recruit..."
The prison guard grabbed Du Wei's hair and asked, "Did the prince send someone to destroy the evidence?!"
"Slow down, slow down." Ji Wen scolded: "I don't know how to cherish a beauty. Madam Du has to be kept as a witness. How can I torture her?"
Then, he changed the topic and shouted: "Someone, bring them in!"
The door of the torture chamber was opened, and there was a lot of yelling and crying outside.
The prison guards dragged in a naked and bloody woman.
Du Wei took a closer look and saw that her liver and gallbladder were split.
"Liu Shang!"
"Beasts! You beasts! Let her go!"
"..."
Liu Shang was obviously in great pain, his voice was exhausted from crying, and even his moans were hoarse.
The blood continued to flow down, gradually covering the ground.
Ji Wen gave a distressed "tsk" twice and said: "Ms. Du, you don't have to cry for this bitch, it's not worth it. She has confessed, and I already know who burned the evidence, but there is only one witness missing to prove that this is the case."
Instructed by the East Palace."
After that, he asked Liu Shang: "Tell me, is the person who set the fire, Xue Bai, the person sent by the prince?"
Liu Shan made two "gurgles" in his throat and cried hoarsely: "Yes...yes..."
"It's useless to say that. You are just a cheap servant. I want your wife to tell you."
Ji Wen smiled, turned around, looked at Du Wei, and asked, "Really?"
Du Wei kept crying and shook her head: "Don't do this!"
Ji Wen stepped forward, stroked her hair, and said softly: "Your useless husband Liu Ji has confessed to enough crimes."
A foul stench came from his mouth, and Du Bei almost felt sick and cried: "No."
"The entire Du family has been imprisoned and is being tortured. A person who commits the crime of beheading the entire family cannot escape."
"No."
"It's pitiful, a great beauty is not kind to others. You are the only one who can save the Du family now." Ji Wen said: "Let me ask again, did the prince send Xue Bai to destroy the evidence?"
"Please...please..."
"Do you still want to protect the prince?"
Jiwen pretended to be surprised.
"Strengthening? It's useless." He walked up to Liu Shan, stepped on her head, and said with a smile: "In my eyes, the prince has nothing to fear, so you fight with me? With this step, you will know that you are an ant.
Just ants."
"No!"
Amidst Du Wei's cries, Ji Wen had already raised his foot, and then stepped down hard.
It's like trampling an ant to death...
~~
A few ants were hibernating in the ground, but their homes were dug up innocently. They had to crawl around in a panic on a newly dug piece of land and burrowed into the soil again.
Snowflakes were still flying, and gradually, this small piece of new soil was covered with a thin layer of snow.
There is a large vat buried underground.
It was completely dark inside the vat.
Qing Lan's tears had already wet Xue Bai's front.
"Stop crying, you will consume too much oxygen and kill us."
"We... are going to die..." Qing Lan was so panicked that she kept sobbing and cried again: "I don't want to die..."
"Then don't cry, don't talk." Xue Bai said in a stern tone, "save your breathing."
"We're already……"
"Cry again?" Xue Bai said fiercely: "If I kill you, I can save half of the oxygen, and I can also use you to tiptoe."
Qinglan was so frightened that she burped.
Immediately afterwards, she felt Xue Bai's hand touch her shoulder, go up her neck, and touch her face.
"Don't...I'm really scared..."
She wanted to refuse, but she froze in fear, and her fingers and toes were numb.
Until Xue Bai touched her bun and pulled out her wooden hairpin.
With her hair falling down, Qing Lan was at a loss and said in a trembling voice: "What...are you doing?"
"Pull off the hemp rope."
Xue Bai spoke urgently, tried his best to adjust his breathing, and stuffed the wooden hairpin into the gap between the cover plate and the mouth of the cylinder.
A boot was wedged in the gap.
He just took it off Qinglan's feet and stuffed it in before the soil was fully filled.
Use hemp rope to tie the large round cylinder and the wooden cover. The hemp rope is prone to slipping at the arc. With the hemp rope pushed loose just now, he might be able to pry the cover open a little.
After working on it for a while, Qinglan suddenly said: "I... I can put my little finger in..."
"You pull the rope." Xue Bai said.
He began to scrape the soil outside the gap with a wooden hairpin.
Compared with the coffin, the vat is much higher. If it is buried in a pit of the same depth, the soil layer above the vat will be much thinner than the coffin.
Xue Bai was very glad that those people didn't work too hard to put the vat upside down.
He scraped the soil around the cover into the tank bit by bit, hoping to give the cover a little room to shake.
The wooden hairpin moved with difficulty in the gap, and a few grains of soil fell on Xue Bai's face. Compared with the entire soil layer above, these small grains were really a drop in the bucket.
After scraping for a long time, Xue Bai's fingers were so sore that he tried to push the cover hard.
There were a few rustling sounds, and more soil fell down.
"It seems a little looser?" Qinglan said in surprise, "I touched the hemp rope."
With this little hope of survival, both of them cheered up and looked for a more comfortable way to apply force, not caring about sticking close to each other.
"Cough cough cough..."
More and more dirt fell into Xue Bai's mouth and nose.
"Cover your face." Qinglan said.
In the darkness, she pushed Xue Bai away with her hands, took off the belt and handed it to him, then tore off Caijian's skirt and tied it around her face.
After a while, Xue Bai stepped up his actions and stuck a wooden hairpin between the cover plate and the cylinder mouth to see if he could pry the cover plate open.
Apply force carefully.
The cover shook unexpectedly.
"Pull the hemp rope again and I'll pry it off."
"good."
Finally, they made a small gap above the cover.
"Snapped."
Suddenly there was a sound and the wooden hairpin broke.
"Look for it." Xue Bai continued to insert the half of the wooden hairpin in his hand and pinched it with his fingers to pry it hard.
Qing Lan quickly touched the other half, groping around Xue Bai's body for a while, and said happily: "There is a wooden stick!"
"Don't pull it out," Xue Bai said angrily.
Qing Lan gently pulled out the gun twice, was stunned for a moment, then gave up in frustration.
After groping for a while, she whispered: "I found it."
"It can't be pried anymore, let's scrape it."
The two of them could only raise their hands and scrape the soil in the gaps above bit by bit.
The soil fell all over them and was shaken by them to the bottom of the tank.
Progress is slow and the process takes a long time.
They maintained a half-crouched posture, their legs were entangled, their upper bodies were close to each other, and their hands could only go around each other's backs to scrape the gap above with difficulty.
Every breath seemed to take a long time, and my whole body felt so sore that it felt like it was going to break.
It was clearly winter, but the inside of the tank was getting hotter and hotter. The sweat of the two people flowed together, moistening the soil below.
Gradually, the soil beneath them became very thick and was compacted by them with their buttocks. The space in the big tank became smaller and smaller.
The cover still won't move.
"Shake the dirt."
After an unknown amount of time, Xue Bai felt the weight of the soil on his body and gasped.
Qing Lan did not cooperate with the shaking of the soil, and her whole body lay on top of him. She seemed to have fainted and twitched from time to time.
Xue Bai was dizzy and his fingers were weak. In his panic, half of the wooden hairpin fell off and he couldn't touch it in the dark.
He knocked on the cover.
The soil fell rustlingly, but it could no longer shake below their bodies, so it gradually engulfed their intertwined legs and their waists.
When the soil was almost buried in his chest, Xue Bai felt that his internal organs were being clenched tightly, feeling uncomfortable, weak, and unclear about his will.
A feeling of suffocation came over him, and he finally despaired and wanted to give up.
Suddenly, as if he had regained his memory, he saw some pictures in his mind... The carved balustrades and painted buildings in Pingkang Square were pinched by someone's neck. He struggled desperately, but could only see a pair of frightened eyes.
.
It's fear.
What is the murderer afraid of?
After that, he fell into a coma for a moment. No matter how hard he tried to recall, he only had memories of Xue Bai from later generations and a strong fear of death.
Suddenly, the will to survive drove Xue Bai to hold on.
"Sususususu..."
The soil fell like snow.
Something cold fell on Xue Bai's neck.
He couldn't help but get excited and slammed the cover.
"Bang."
It was as if the already weak heart suddenly started beating again.
"Bang!"
With a loud noise, a tiny bit of light came in, like a grain of rice in the originally deep darkness, extremely precious.
"Bang!"
A little bright light like a grain of rice was scattered and turned into a ray of sunset.
Xue Bai felt that the hand that was holding his internal organs began to slowly loosen, and he was so frightened that he did not dare to move.
He thought of the memories of when he was suffocated just now, and suddenly felt confused. He didn't know whether he was a young man who lived in the Tianbao period and had a long dream when he was about to die, or whether a soul from later generations had taken over this body.
Zhuang Zhou's dream of butterfly, is it Ye Fei Ye?
No matter what, you have to work hard to live.
Xue Bai gasped, his nose opening and closing constantly, sweat dripping on Qinglan's loose black hair.
"Huh...huh..."
Qing Lan was also panting, and when she opened her eyes, she seemed to have been drunk and woke up in the sunset.
~~
The sunset casts its light on the spotless corridor.
In front of the steps, Li Jingzhong swept the snow off his red robe, took off his muddy boots, went up the corridor, and walked to a private room in the backyard.
The furnishings in the wing are simple but elegant, with a gentle fragrance floating around.
A middle-aged man stood in front of the window with his hands behind his hands, admiring the snow.
He was not wearing a scarf, half of his white hair was visible, and his back was hunched over.
Only showing your back gives people an endless feeling of exhaustion.
"Your Highness." Li Jingzhong leaned down and called softly.
Li Heng did not answer, but murmured to himself: "Shrike flies in the east and swallows fly in the west. We will meet when Huang Gu and the Weaver Girl fly."
He let out a long sigh, and the white air dissipated in the sunset, feeling affectionate and helpless.
Li Jingzhong's eyes showed sadness and he said: "The people have been settled. The old slave has found a secluded place where no one will disturb him."
"Be sure to take good care of her daily life, and make sure there is no shortage of food and clothing."
"Please rest assured, Your Highness." Li Jingzhong said: "The important thing is that Your Highness must take good care of his body and not be sad and hurt his body."
"Isn't it sad? People are like swordsmen, and I'm like fish and meat."
Li Jingzhong lowered his body and said solemnly and consolingly: "Your Highness is not a fish on the ground, but a hidden dragon."
"Oh, Qianlong, even the last bit of dignity..."
Li Heng said, suddenly choked up.
There were tears falling on the window coffin. He held it with one hand and pinched the mahogany wood with his fingers angrily. His fingertips turned pale from too much force.
"He refused to give me even the last bit of dignity. He forced me to divorce my wife twice and taught the world how to look at me?!"
"Your Highness." Li Jingzhong shouted softly and said: "Your Highness, please bear with me... After all, it will not cause the longevity king to be embarrassed, let alone the deposed prince and three other people to be miserable."
Li Heng was speechless for a moment.
Li Jingzhong cleared up the phlegm, and her face became sadder, but there was a faint hint of excitement in her eyes.
"Today, a group of traitors are blind, mistaking the hidden dragon for a snake, and beating the snake to death. When the hidden dragon takes off in the future, this group of traitors will be defeated!"
~~
It's snowing again in the evening.
Snow fell on the plum branches in the courtyard, all over Chang'an City, and further out on the outskirts of the city.
In an uninhabited wilderness, a roar suddenly sounded.
A small piece of snow soil was arched up.
A hand reached out from it, and then someone crawled out of the ground with difficulty.
Like a humble ant.
I may not be able to read this chapter in the next few days. Please read it and vote for me.