On the night of the fourteenth day of the first lunar month, the grand celebration planned by Li Chongrun was not staged in Yangzhou City because the fireworks prepared earlier were set on fire by Jianzhen and others.
However, the few fireworks that were made in a hurry opened the eyes of the traffickers and lackeys in Yangzhou City, and the momentum could not be covered up by the great dramas on the stage under the lonely tower for several days.
The grand play of praying for the prince will be sung for seven days. Although there are no new plays, the few fireworks at the beginning and end are enough to make a group of Jiangnan scholars who have been idle for the New Year go crazy.
Especially after hearing that the Prince of Linzi, who had not composed a poem for a long time, wrote a sentence one day: "Thousands of flowers bloomed in the east wind at night, and the trees blew down, and the stars were speechless," the scholars who advocated the first place in literature became even more crazy.
, I wrote countless poems like "Tie trees and silver flowers reflect the red eyes" at that time, which has a certain meaning that Yangzhou paper is expensive.
Because of this, the second floor of the wine shops around Guta is the most suitable place for watching the scenery and listening to the opera. Even if you just order a pot of the most ordinary turbid wine, it will cost you two hundred small silver coins.
The waiters in several wine shops were counting the copper coins rewarded by the extravagant scholars for reciting poems that they thought could surpass Prince Linzi of Linzi, the most famous poet in today's world. The topic turned to the drama in the palace these days: "
Hey, tell me, there are so many wonderful sights in the world, none of them can outstrip the fireworks field in Yangzhou City."
"We in Yuzhou have a Taoist temple that makes iron flowers when we offer sacrifices to the Supreme Lord, but they are not so high and do not have so many colors." A waiter with a Gyeonggi accent replied: "Our fireworks come down from the sky.
When I saw it once, I thought it must be a goddess scattering flowers, and I almost knelt down on the spot."
"Stop talking about you, look at the old ladies over there. They are still kneeling when you see them these days."
"It's really a magical method. No wonder people say that the prince is descended from Wenquxing. All these actions are performed by divine methods. I heard that there was a water bandit incident a few days ago, and it was the prince who used these magical methods to wipe out the bandits."
"What water bandits? Didn't the elder brothers of the yamen say that they were pirates from the Japanese country? Seeing that we have money in Yangzhou, they wanted to come and rob us. Just in time to catch up with the prince's mastery of magical skills, he wiped them out with a flip of his hands."
"Then why is the prince injured again?" Although the news of Li Chongrun's injury was kept strictly confidential, as Li Chongrun recovered, it slowly spread. Many people had seen Li Chongrun sitting on a four-wheeled vehicle.
Gongsun Lan pushed around the world.
"I heard that I suffered some injuries when I was fighting with the gods of the Japanese country, one against two, but I heard that I have recovered."
Just when a few waiters from the Shangyuan Festival in Yangzhou, which should be the most fun place in the world, were already wondering which god from the sky Li Chongrun was descending to earth, a big show that was far more lively than Yangzhou was quietly unfolding in Luoyang.
The curtain opened.
The day before the Lantern Festival, news came from Luoyang, the sacred capital, that the great monk Xue Huaiyi, a close minister of His Majesty the Emperor, refused to enter the palace and gathered nearly a thousand monks in the Dabaoen Temple with the intention of rebelling.
A censor who patrolled the city reported the matter to His Majesty, but His Majesty just laughed and called him a crazy monk and let it go.
Luoyang, the capital of the gods, is the Lantern Festival, the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, at night.
Linzi Prince's Mansion, on the rockery.
"Wan'er, since you have been in the palace less and less, it has been difficult to see you recently."
Princess Taiping, dressed in men's clothing, held Shangguan Wan'er's slender waist and spoke softly against Wan'er's ear.
"The Shen Nanqiu you recommended has been hanging around His Majesty every day recently. It is really inconvenient for me to accompany His Majesty as I did before."
Shangguan Wan'er did not refuse Princess Taiping's intimacy and swayed gently with her. "Since you came back from Yangzhou, you have been so busy that you can't see anyone. You blame me."
"That must be our fault. If Divine Doctor Shen doesn't catch up with His Majesty and show off his skills, we really won't be able to get rid of Xue Huaiyi's reliance."
"Who will come with your family..." Aunt Shangguan squeezed the Lushan claw that Princess Taiping extended to her, but did not push it away: "So, then Xue Huai is dead?"
"Definitely dead. I heard that Divine Doctor Shen has been awarded the title of imperial doctor this morning. I heard that he has moved into the palace." Princess Taiping was very satisfied with the successful implementation of her arrangement: "If there were not so many monks, I think I can let him make trouble, but he wants to be the prince, which is not possible."
"The prince's seat can only be occupied by one person, but that person is definitely not this fake monk selling Dali Pills." Shangguan Wan'er answered the question smoothly, and the two looked at each other and smiled, and then turned to talk about tonight's event. arrange.
"What plans does the monk have for the Lantern Festival?"
"Feng Yiwei didn't dare to investigate things in the divine capital, but the few people our boy left behind still played some role. I don't know how they got through to the Senate, and got a lot of information from there. .”
Shangguan Wan'er looked at the brightly lit secret room under the rockery secret passage, and told Shangguan Wan'er the news he got today: "He has been building a lot of things in that Mingtang for a few days. I heard that he built a big pagoda. But I don’t know what mechanism was used. I went to see it several times, but I didn’t see where he had repaired the Buddha statue.”
"Now there is another Buddha statue hanging on the opposite side of the Tianjin Bridge. It is said that it was painted with blood on my own knees. What a joke. If the Buddha statue that is more than ten feet high is painted with human blood, I don't know how much human blood it will take..."
Shangguan Wan'er knows the temper of His Majesty best today: "Drawed with human blood? He actually used up all the human blood he had saved before? That really means that even if you don't want to kill him, Your Majesty will kill him."
After Princess Taiping came back, she told Shangguan Wan'er what she had learned from her trip to the south of the Yangtze River, including the methods Xue Huaiyi used to keep her Majesty young.
"For many years, your Majesty has been the most averse to being threatened by others. The gathering of people to conspire before was considered one time, and this human-blood colossus is another. If he wants to seek death again, no matter how reluctant your Majesty is, he will definitely kill him. "
"Believe me, there will be a third time soon."
Very bright lights were lit in the direction of Ziwei Palace, and the north wind carried some bells and drums. It sounded like an unobstructed meeting in the Mingtang was about to begin.
When the royal carriage arrived at the Mingtang, they saw countless dignitaries in purple and red robes running out of the Mingtang. They all came out to take a look at the sky, and then hurried back.
The Mingtang was brightly lit, and the tables in the middle of the hexagonal space that were originally used to display the emperor's banquet had been removed. A large group of young monks with delicate faces were holding silk and bamboo sounders and blowing out loud sounds, boundless Sanskrit music. Amidst the singing, a very magnificent pagoda, decorated with seven treasures and made entirely of copper and gold, was slowly lowered from the several-foot-high patio of the Mingtang.
"So this is the method. No wonder I couldn't find where he hid the pagoda."
Princess Taiping listened to the Legend of the White Snake in Yangzhou, so she naturally knew the mechanism of the Leifeng Pagoda on the theater.
However, only Princess Taiping knew about this method.
His Majesty Wu Zetian, who was sitting south on the main seat in the north of the Ming Hall, seemed to be very happy with this trick. He was smiling and nodding to Xue Huaiyi, who was sitting next to him.