This girl, only five or six years old, was held in the arms of the red lady. She looked like she wanted to cry but did not dare to cry. She was trembling all over, and her dirty little face was pale with fear.
The red lady was embarrassed and surprised to see her scared like this, but after coaxing her for a long time, the little girl was still trembling nervously even though she wasn't crying.
"Empress, use this..."
Seeing this, the female soldier on the side found a pear from somewhere and handed it to the red lady as a reminder.
"Come on, little sister, I'll treat you to some pears..."
"Eat it!"
Sure enough, after having pears to eat, the little girl finally calmed down a lot and looked at the red lady no longer so scared.
The red lady breathed a sigh of relief, and then asked with a smile: "Little sister, tell me what your name is? How old are you this year?"
"My name is Erya, I'm six years old." The little girl whispered while chewing a pear.
"Eat slowly, be careful not to choke."
The red lady wiped the juice from the corner of her mouth with her sleeve and asked again: "Then do you know who my sister is? Why are you afraid of your sister?"
"Well, I know, you are the Red Lady, the emperor's wife, and they all say you like to eat children..." The little girl nodded and whispered, and after speaking, she actually looked at the Red Lady with some fear.
The female soldiers and guards on the side became furious when they heard the child's words, and their faces were all red with anger.
The little girl's parents were so frightened that their faces turned pale, and they knelt down again with a plop: "My Majesty, please forgive me, Erya is young and ignorant, and talks nonsense. The villain has never taught her this, and has never said anything about your Majesty."
bad words…”
"Don't talk."
Seeing that the little girl was frightened and about to cry again, the red lady waved her hands to them, then turned around and said with a smile: "Little sister, can you tell me who told you these words? I'll give you a pear after that."
Eat, okay?"
"Okay, that's what Big Dog Brother and the others said."
"Oh, how big is Brother Big Dog? Do you usually play together..."
The red lady continued to seduce her, and asked people to find the big dog she called and all the children.
More than a dozen children, big and small, all knew about Red Lady, and they were all trembling with fear.
After some consolation and questioning, the red lady finally figured out what was going on. It turned out that some street vendors had arranged themselves in various places in Jiangnan to use some candy gadgets to deceive these children and corrupt her.
fame, and even composed a ballad.
"Mother, those small traders really deserve death, they are so heart-breaking!"
All the female soldiers and guards were gnashing their teeth.
These small traders are clearly deliberately trying to ruin the reputation of the empress, and they also target children, which is really insidious.
"It's not just the small traders who deserve to be killed!"
The red lady's face was also gloomy and scary.
She knew that those small vendors had no enmity against her, and would never and would not dare to make such random arrangements for her. They must have been instructed by those literati, or those small vendors were sent by people with intentions to disguise themselves.
It is conceivable that when everyone in the world thinks that the Red Lady is a heinous cannibal, even if His Majesty does not kill her, he will consider her reputation and send her to the cold palace.
Thinking of this, the red lady also shuddered.
For the first time, I felt how these literati used their mouths to kill people invisibly.
"Immediately send someone to investigate this palace. We must investigate the situation in all parts of Jiangnan and arrest all the traders who have arranged for this palace."
The red lady said coldly.
She has never cared much about reputation, so she doesn't care about the nonsense of Jiangnan literati.
Who would have thought that they would be so shameless, not only talking nonsense, but also targeting children, which is intolerable for a scholar, but not for anyone.
This happened.
The red lady was not in the mood to know the specific situation of these people anymore, so she directly announced that each household would be compensated ten taels of silver and moved to Beijing. The old and weak women and children would go by boat, and the young and strong men and women would walk.
When more than 100,000 people heard that they were going to move to Beijing, they were frightened to death, and not one of them was willing.
But when I heard that each household would be compensated ten taels of silver and that they could continue spinning and weaving in Beijing, and their children could study and test for merit, they no longer resisted.
The red lady looked at the little girl who was very close to her, thought about it, and asked people to go to the city to buy a large amount of fruit candies and cloth to distribute to all children under the age of ten.
"This is a reward given to you by the Imperial Concubine. The Imperial Concubine is a good person, and those who say bad things about the Imperial Concubine are the bad people. Do you understand?"
"knew."
The children all answered in unison.
"Come on, everyone, follow me and say that the Imperial Concubine is a good person, and the Red Lady is a female Bodhisattva who saves the suffering. Whoever speaks ill of the Red Lady is the bad guy."
"The imperial concubine is a good person, and the red lady is a female Bodhisattva who saves people in distress..."
Chen Yuanyuan and a group of women distributed things to the children while teaching them to follow her.
In the end, not only the children, but also their parents shouted slogans in unison.
"Yuanyuan, your method is good, but it's a little... ahem, a little too straightforward!" The red lady said the last thing, even blushing a little.
"My Majesty is a female Bodhisattva who rescues those who are in distress. The slaves are just telling the truth. Those people are so insidious that they have ruined My Majesty's reputation like this. As the saying goes, everyone's mouth makes gold. This matter of My Majesty is not a trivial matter, and we must not let it go unchecked."
Chen Yuanyuan was also very angry, but at the end of her speech she had a worried look on her face.
She knows better than the Red Lady how powerful people's words can be.
"Your Majesty, why don't you let me take the sisters to various places in the south of the Yangtze River to clarify things for Your Majesty?"
"Well, okay, let's do it like this. When the time comes, each household will be given two kilograms of salt, and the children will be given two feet of cloth, just like today."
The red lady gritted her teeth and said, obviously she was really frightened and decided to win over the people's hearts.
The scholars and literati who had been watching from a distance all looked at each other in disbelief when they saw the Red Lady's straightforward attempt to win people's hearts, and cursed her for being shameless.
"Haha, it seems that the imperial concubine actually cherishes her reputation very much!"
"Yes, this is not a bad thing!"
While everyone was talking about it, Tietou came over with a pair of soldiers. Everyone immediately became nervous, but still pretended to be calm.
"Everyone, the Queen has summoned you, let's go!"
"General, I wonder why the queen has summoned me?"
When they heard that the Red Lady was going to summon them, everyone was suddenly shocked. One of the ministers stood up and asked cautiously with his hands raised.
"I told you to go over there. Why are you talking so much nonsense? Let's go quickly!"
Tietou kicked him on the butt and cursed.
The other soldiers also came forward and drove them away with knives. Apparently they were simmering with anger because of what happened to the red lady. They didn't like these scholars and wanted to beat them up.
Thousands of scholars and scholars saw these soldiers with fierce looks and shining knives on their bodies. They no longer dared to utter a word. In the cold weather, all of them walked quickly with fans in hand.
While these literati were still in the mood to watch the excitement, the cotton merchants in the city were frightened when they heard that the Red Lady was going to send hundreds of thousands of people from outside the city to Beijing.
Without these people, how would they be able to weave, spin and dye cloth in the future?
Everyone is as anxious as an ant on a hot pot, their intestines are turning green.
But they were asked to compete with the Red Lady, but they really didn't have the confidence, so they had to go to the palace gate to see the Queen Mother and ask her to make the decision.
A group of scholars and scholars were also brought before the Red Lady. There were thousands of them, ranging from fifteen or sixteen years old to white-haired old men in their fifties or sixties. Almost all of them were wearing long robes and holding folding fans.
"Student Hou Fangyu pays homage to the imperial concubine!"
"Student Fang Yizhi pays homage to the imperial concubine!"
"student…"
All the scholars bowed in unison and saluted. Although their faces were neither humble nor arrogant, many people still felt the most uneasy in their hearts.
Apparently the rumors spread and even they themselves believed them.
"I know you four, you have a nickname, the Fourth Young Master of Jinling, right?"
The red lady nodded and looked at the four leaders including Fang Yizhi, Hou Fangyu, and Mao Bijiang.
"It's just a false name, it makes the empress laugh!"
The four of them looked humble, but they all felt a little proud in their hearts. The others looked at the four of them with envy and jealousy.
"It's good to know that it's just a false reputation. The four of you are so famous. I guess Enko will be in high school this year, right?" the red lady said slowly.
Seeing the imperial concubine being so direct, the four of them were all blushing with shame. If they were in high school, how could they have enough to eat and toss around every day?
"Why, you didn't pass the exam? No way? The four great princes of Jinling failed to pass the Jinshi exam, so how many other great men can pass the exam?"
The red lady had a smile on her lips, and wherever she looked, all the literati lowered their heads.
The four people who were the first to bear the brunt were eager to find a crack in the ground and crawl in. Apparently they all understood that the imperial concubine was deliberately humiliating them.
"You can't even pass the examination for being a scholar. Instead of going back to your hometown and studying hard behind closed doors, you spend all your time lingering on the banks of the Qinhuai River, talking and talking. It's a waste of food. In my opinion, you can't even do this.
Women who weave and spin are inferior!”
"A scholar can be killed but not humiliated. Why does the empress humiliate us like this?"
Although they knew clearly that the empress was deliberately humiliating them and wanted to take the opportunity to vent her dissatisfaction with the Jiangnan scholars, Fang Yizhi and more than a dozen scholars still felt angry and stood up to question them.
"Why are you still not convinced? Is this what I said wrong? You can't rule the country and bring peace to the country, and you can't fight with swords to kill the enemy. What else can you do besides talking nonsense, spreading rumors, causing trouble, and fooling children?"
The red lady held the sword in her hand, took a step forward, and stared at them.
Several scholars were shocked by the red lady's momentum and subconsciously took a step back. Fang Yizhi took a deep breath and said again: "Your Majesty, the rumors are not our fault. If your Majesty really wants to vent her anger on
Although we, the students, are just scholars, we are not afraid of power or life or death."
"Yes, we are not afraid of power, nor are we afraid of life or death. If you want to kill me, I will kill you. We will never frown!"
Influenced by Fang Yizhi, many scholars also blushed and stood up, looking as if they were ready to die.
"It's a joke. I am the imperial concubine of the Ming Dynasty. This time I went south to appease the people on behalf of the emperor. How can I go unpunished?
Let's do this. I give you a task. Within an hour, make a census of these hundreds of thousands of people. Write down clearly their place of origin, age, whether they have skills, and whether they are married. If you can't complete it, you will be punished at that time.
Not too late."
Everyone was relieved when they heard it from the front, but their scalps felt numb when they heard it. They were only about a thousand people, and each of the more than 100,000 people had to be responsible for at least more than 100 people.
A simple statistics would be enough, but a detailed list would definitely not be completed. After all, they had not prepared anything.
"Your Majesty, this is clearly forcing others to do something difficult!"
"Yes, it can't be completed within an hour."
Fang Yizhi followed his lead and others nodded.
"If you don't want to, you can leave. But you all have your honors. Don't you just want to serve the imperial court? If you don't want to serve the imperial court, then what's the use of your honors?"
The red lady said coldly, and after saying that, she didn't care about them anymore, and drove directly back to the palace, leaving a group of scholars and scholars at a loss.