The Emperor was indeed the Emperor. In just one hour, he had solved the case. The heinous villain Han Gui, also known as Han Yannian, despite racking his brains and using every trick, still could not escape His Majesty the Emperor’s pair of eyes that could penetrate clouds and fog. He was dragged out from the three-thousand-person procession, prepared to have his head chopped off before the Heaven Worship ceremony. The charge was plotting to harm the imperial family. This was the head of the Personnel Ministry’s Selection Bureau!
Yun Ye had previously drunk wine with this elder brother several times. His brother-in-law’s position was settled thanks to asking this elder brother for help. A good man with good alcohol tolerance—straightforward and kind to people. In official matters, his word was as good as gold. In terms of integrity, he was as clean as water. Aside from liking to appraise the quality of gold, he had no flaws. The Yun Family had always been troubled by not being able to determine gold purity. Hearing that Selection Bureau Director Han had excellent skills in appraising gold, how could they pass this up? Experts were hard to find, so he presumptuously asked Old Han to help with the appraisal.
But Old Han said with a worried expression that official duties were busy and he had no time. Finally, under circumstances where Yun Ye nearly lost his temper, he reluctantly agreed to help the Yun Family appraise two hundred taels of gold. It was just that official duties were busy, and he didn’t know when he could finish the appraisal. He asked the Yun Family to wait patiently and specifically wrote a receipt for this. If he wasn’t allowed to write a receipt, he would immediately turn hostile.
Since someone agreed to help, who could rush the speed? That wasn’t how honorable people behaved. So for nearly a year, the Yun Family never asked about it, until after his brother-in-law entered his position did the Han Family send their old steward to return the Yun Family’s two hundred taels of gold.
An expert was indeed an expert—the gold quality appraisal was very accurate. Yun Ye was very satisfied. Wang Cai liked the gold the Han Family sent. Taking advantage of the opportunity while Yun Ye was writing a receipt for the old steward, he ate one gold ingot after another until they were completely gone, not leaving Yun Ye even a bit. When the Han Family’s old steward left, he even specifically took out a large handful of copper coins from his bosom and stuffed them into Wang Cai’s pouch, praising him as a fine horse.
The position of Selection Bureau in the Personnel Ministry was a position like farting in oiled pants—it was also the position with the highest fatality rate. That Old Han had safely spent five years in this position was already a rare anomaly. His reputation for integrity had benefited him greatly.
Listening to Old Han righteously shouting the slogan “With a heart to kill thieves, but powerless to save the heavens” before having his head chopped off by the executioner in one blow, Yun Ye’s heart rose with a faint sorrow. He still had seven younger sisters not yet married, which meant there were seven brothers-in-law who would very likely need to use Old Han. Now that he had so heroically and generously sacrificed himself, this loss was enormous.
The next Selection Bureau chief official would have to be clean for at least a year before inadvertently revealing some tiny little quirk. But Runniang was getting married next month. She had already told her brother long ago that if Second Qin didn’t get a good position, she would go find Grandmother and complain tearfully. She also said Second Qin was born of a concubine, the Qin Family didn’t really look after his affairs now, and if he didn’t have a good future, she would definitely die of depression.
Standing together with Li Tai, scratching his chin in sorrow, watching the martyr’s wife very calmly use needle and thread to sew her husband’s head and body together, then roll him up in a mat, tie it with rope, and prepare to drag him all the way home with her son who wasn’t even thirteen years old…
“Ye Zi, do you think I should stand up?” Li Tai turned his head to ask Yun Ye.
“Under the Grand Ceremony, you and I are both just passersby A and passersby B. What are you jumping out to show off for? As for Han Gui’s way of dying, he got exactly what he wanted. Didn’t you hear him just now loudly shouting ‘With a heart to kill thieves, but powerless to save the heavens’? Your father emperor has one less chess piece to use for establishing authority. Do you plan to make your father emperor have one less chess piece again?”
“A great man acts without changing his name whether standing or sitting. What is this? If I took out that bastard, how would my father emperor deal with me? Strip my title? I don’t even care about my fief—would I care about a title?” Li Tai was very proud. He suddenly discovered that as long as he didn’t care about titles or fiefs, he could walk sideways in Great Tang. He could now, and in the future when his elder brother became emperor, even more so.
Ministry of Rites officials were clanging gongs over there, organizing the procession and preparing for the Heaven Worship. Li Yuanzhang, swollen beyond human form, also had to attend. Seeing his terrible condition, cold sweat ran down Yun Ye’s neck. He had never imagined a person’s head could swell to this extent. Seven or eight huge bumps shone brightly, with yellow fluid constantly flowing from the small black holes in the middle. After this incident, Li Yuanzhang’s handsome appearance that he was so proud of would be ruined forever. The poisonous hornets of the Qinling Mountains were creatures even tigers dared not provoke. When they swarmed, there were precedents of bears being stung to death. These things didn’t produce honey themselves but specialized in robbing other honey-producing bees. Both honey and bees were their food. Extremely fierce, they were absolutely the tyrants of the Qinling Mountains. Of course, before orioles, they were nothing.
Everyone subconsciously distanced themselves from Li Yuanzhang. Yun Ye didn’t even see Li Yuanzhang’s body react. This guy was definitely in a coma now.
A small cloud drifted over from the distance, temporarily blocking the sun. This was the only good thing heaven had done these past two days. With the cloud, wind began to blow in the mountains. The man pretending to be the Wind Earl happily waved the flag in his hands. The Ministry of Rites Celestial Official, dressed in full Heaven Worship ceremonial robes, chanted the memorial in his hands with a strange intonation while coordinated by a large group of dancing Daoists.
Envoys from various countries dressed in colorful bright clothing made whooping calls as they began performing from below the platform. They had obviously been trained by the Ministry of Rites beforehand—their movements were neat and uniform. Occasionally two idiots would jump wrong, like Xie Li, who would glance at Li Er’s expression each time he made a mistake. Yun Ye and Li Tai stood right behind Li Er and could see clearly.
“Ye Zi, is this the heroic lord who dominated the grasslands for twenty years?” Li Tai asked Yun Ye with a disdainful expression.
“He was originally a very formidable figure. When I was on the grasslands, I heard many legends about this guy. They say with one arrow he could shoot down eight eagles. With one hand he could wrestle down the strongest bull. In one meal he could eat an entire cow, and after the meal still need three lambs for dessert. He could also find the most beautiful flowers on the grasslands to give to the most beautiful girls in the tribe. He could sing songs more melodious than an oriole’s. One person could tend ten thousand cattle. In his leisure time when he had nothing to do, he would go fight the grasslands’ most terrifying demons. He threw one demon to the North Sea, where it hid at the bottom of the sea not daring to come out. He strung another demon on the highest mountain, and whenever he thought of it, he’d go give it a beating.” (Referencing the Epic of King Gesar) Yun Ye exaggerated to enhance Li Er’s greatness, making Li Tai gasp for breath. He tried hard to turn his head away, but beside him was Li Yuanzhang’s pig head, so he could only turn back, gritting his teeth and holding on to keep himself from vomiting.
Where there were rational people, there were irrational ones. Li Daozong quite liked this topic and said to the imperial family member beside him, “What Marquis Yun says sounds bizarre, but that’s exactly how they describe a hero on the grasslands. Any little thing gets infinitely boasted about and magnified. Old man has heard even more nauseating ones.”
A young imperial family member whose mouth still had fuzz on it spoke up, “Ninth Uncle, even if this Xie Li was formidable, wasn’t he still caught by our soldiers in a marmot hole? He can’t be considered a hero. Looking at his disgusting appearance now, after your nephew returns to the capital, I’ll go to his door and beat him up. He can’t even dance properly—unlucky.”
While everyone was pointing and laughing at those foreign people, a sharp-eyed young imperial family member pointed at a group of foreigners beside the forest and asked Li Daozong, “Ninth Uncle, why aren’t those foreigners going down to dance?”
Li Daozong glanced over and said, “Why the rush? They’ll all go down to dance eventually. If they don’t dance now, in the future they’ll dance wearing shackles. Boys, train well. They’ll soon come to Great Tang to present songs and dances. I hear Goguryeo’s hand drum dance is quite good.”
Time passed quickly when chatting idly. Originally there was only a small patch of cloud in the sky, but in just this short while it had connected into a large mass, with a tendency to turn black. Ministry of Rites officials hurriedly stopped the songs and dances and requested the Emperor to worship heaven. Otherwise, if it rained later, there would be no way to worship heaven.
While Li Er was conversing with heaven, Yun Ye wet his finger with saliva and felt the wind direction against it. Li Xiaogong beside him, doing the same motion, said to Yun Ye, “Boy, it’s about to rain. We’re not worried, but the old, weak, women and children can’t endure the rain. Do you have any good solutions?”
“If the Astronomical Bureau doesn’t even have a backup plan, your nephew believes they can all be sent home. What use is keeping these good-for-nothing incompetents?”
The Ministry of Rites Celestial Official had gone mad somehow. With countless ready-made ceremonial formats in the *Book of Rites*, instead of using them, he insisted on finding the most wicked one. He dug up some clues from old papers, had a brainstorming session himself, and ended up with the current situation. During the Yellow Emperor’s rule of the land, they hadn’t even figured out how many pieces of cloth people wore on their bodies—and they wanted to follow those protocols?
When a tribe had nothing to eat, they would take all their belongings and move to find food somewhere else—that was common. But you couldn’t wholesale transplant this to Great Tang. Everyone had delicate bodies. Walking fifty li was like fleeing disaster. What’s important was that they were all nobles. Who would walk mountain roads themselves when they had nothing better to do instead of riding in carriages?
His heart suddenly skipped a beat. This kind of thing had been done by one fool of an emperor—the famous Northern Wei Emperor Xiaowen, Tuoba Hong. To properly seize Han Chinese civilization, he tricked those nobles by saying he wanted to campaign in the Central Plains. Taking all their belongings, they marched magnificently into the Central Plains. After everyone had suffered all kinds of hardships, only then did he say he was too tired and they weren’t going back—how about establishing their capital right here instead? Thus the Xianbei people quickly merged into the great Han ethnic group. Could it be that this ceremony was Li Er and these other Xianbei remnants paying homage to their ancestors? Otherwise, why would the Emperor worshipping heaven bring along the Grand Emperor?
People just loved to overthink things. The more he thought, the more suspicious it became. Those Responding Dragon, Rain Master, Wind Earl, and Golden Armor God—no matter how he looked at them, they all seemed randomly found to fool people. If the Yellow Emperor period relied on these few idiots to unite the Central Plains, Chiyou would have long since captured and roasted them for eating. How could he have become the ancestor of China?
Too suspicious! Especially when Zhangsun Wuji with his naturally curly hair turned his head to smile at Yun Ye—his heart became even more suspicious. This old guy was not only suspicious in appearance but even his name was suspicious.