Chapter 457 1 Whale Falls, All Things Come to Life
Chapter 457: When a Whale Falls, Everything Comes to Life (5k)
assassin!
Along with this heart-wrenching cry, dogs barked in the quiet Caoyun Yamen.
The light from the stars and the moon above his head also became colder. As Ning Zechen shouted a warning, he also felt a strong sense of anger and confusion rising in his heart.
However, the enemy did not give him time to think. Four killers in night clothes attacked him from four directions almost at the same time.
The sharp blade in his hand was dazzling like a spider web, trapping the Governor of Grand Canal Transport in the center. Such an attack would be difficult for him to resist even at his best, not to mention that he was already seriously injured.
Is he going to die... At the moment of his death, Governor Ning tried his best to turn his head and look towards the bedroom. He saw that the window was lit and his wife's shadow was rapidly enlarging.
"Don't go out..." He wanted to warn, but the assassin was already right in front of him. However, at this moment, the air in the night seemed to be filled with circles of illusory ripples.
A sigh-like Buddhist chant came from afar:
"Amitabha……"
In the sky, illusory lotus flowers were spinning and falling like snow.
The four assassins were horrified to find that they were surrounded by a quagmire and could not move. If they took one more step forward, they would be able to kill Governor Ning, but that step was like an insurmountable barrier.
Not only that, the murderous intent in the hearts of the four of them was wiped out by the Buddha's name, and they lost their desire to kill. They felt the urge to lay down their butcher knives and become Buddhas on the spot.
It was because of this delay that a black shadow passed through the darkness. On the roof, the old eunuch Hai Chunlin in a python robe came rushing in. The royal worshiper glanced at him coldly and flicked his fingers.
"Ding!"
The four blades fell to the ground at the same time. The black-clad assassins looked at each other in horror, gave up their actions, and fled in four directions.
"Still want to leave?"
Eunuch Hai snorted coldly and took a step forward.
In an instant, four "Eunuchs of the Sea" appeared at the same time, intercepted the assassins one by one, and hit them on the head with one palm. The four elite assassins died at the same time and their bodies fell to the ground.
Immediately, the four eunuchs merged into one and landed in front of the collapsed Governor Ning.
——Where are the clones? It’s just that his body movement speed is too terrifying, leaving four afterimages at the same time.
"master!!"
The door was pushed open. Madam Ning, who was in her inner clothes, held the door with both hands. She screamed miserably with a pale face as if struck by lightning. She ran over in two or three steps and hugged her husband, who was spitting blood and had blue lips.
The girl who was asleep next door was also awakened. When she opened the door and saw this scene, her legs went weak and she fell to the ground.
In the distant night sky, a white gauze floated over, revealing to be the plump Prajna Bodhisattva with a lotus mark appearing between his eyebrows.
"He was poisoned. It should be the poison on the assassin's knife."
Eunuch Hai squatted down and pried open Governor Ning's eyelids, without turning his head:
"It's all on you."
Prajna Bodhisattva smiled sweetly: "The poison is very strong, but it is good that it is timely."
She raised her hand and found a jade bottle in her hand. The white porcelain bottle was embossed with Buddhist texts, vaguely piecing together to form a small statue.
——“Medicine Buddha” among the Buddhist deities.
A cluster of water splashed out of the bottle and condensed into a water man that looked like a Buddha. It hovered in the air and drilled into the mouth of the nearly unconscious Governor Ning.
Then, circles of Buddha's light appeared on Governor Ning's gray face, and then, in the surprised eyes of everyone, his complexion visibly returned to normal.
He suddenly spat out a mouthful of black blood, and then he woke up, gasping for breath:
"Husband...ma'am?"
Governor Ning looked around blankly before noticing the old eunuch and the female Bodhisattva beside him.
Mrs. Ning cried with joy, hugged her husband to check the wound, and was surprised to find that the knife wound on his back was healing rapidly.
"I have performed a healing spell, and fortunately no vital parts were damaged. The treatment only consumed some of the Governor's energy and blood. After three days of rest, he will be back to normal." Prajna Bodhisattva said with a smile.
Ning Zechen finally understood what had happened, and was filled with joy at having survived a disaster. After comforting his wife and daughter, he supported his weak body and stood up. He first thanked them, and then asked in confusion:
"Sea offering? Bodhisattva? Why are you here?"
Eunuch Hai also breathed a sigh of relief and said:
"Zhao Duan guessed that you might be in danger, so he asked the two of us to come to your aid. He is lagging behind and will be here later."
Did Envoy Zhao send someone to rescue me? Ning Zechen was startled.
But this was not the time to talk, so Ning Zechen first comforted the official on duty in the yamen and ordered an inspection of the four bodies. He was then helped back to the bedroom to wait.
……
A moment later, Zhao Duan, who was protected by Lang Shiba and Ji Yue, finally arrived.
"Governor Ning? Fortunately, it seems our enemies have miscalculated."
Zhao Duan stepped into the bedroom and saw that the person was still alive. He breathed a sigh of relief and smiled.
Eunuch Hai quickly gave a brief account of the matter and said at the end:
"The assassins are all deadly warriors with poison in their mouths, so their identities cannot be identified."
Prajna Bodhisattva smiled and said, "Your Excellency owes me a favor."
"It is a monk's duty to save a life. Why should he ask for favors?"
Zhao Duan pulled up his pants, turned his face away and didn't acknowledge the old nun. He walked quickly to the bed.
Governor Ning sat on the bed, looking grateful: "Envoy, if it weren't for you, I would be dead."
The wife and daughter beside him also bowed at the same time. Madam Ning's eyes turned red:
"Your Excellency first saved my mother and me, and then saved my master. I have no way to repay you..."
"What are you talking about? I should be the one apologizing. If it weren't for me, the Governor wouldn't have been implicated and in danger tonight." Zhao Duan felt ashamed and looked at everyone:
"I want to speak to the Governor alone."
Everyone walked out of the room in tacit agreement.
When there were only two people left in the room, Ning Zechen couldn't help but ask:
"My Lord, how did you know I would be assassinated?"
Zhao Duan pulled a chair, sat beside the bed, and recounted his experience of being assassinated by the courtesan:
"...I sensed something was wrong, and then I thought about your wife being kidnapped, and I guessed that the enemy might be pretending to assassinate me, but actually attacking you... In this way, they can both stop the 'new policy' and make me lose support."
Governor Ning was silent for a moment, with a mixture of bitterness and disbelief:
"Your Excellency... do the Shen family really have such courage? I just thought about it and still find it hard to believe. You know, in another month, your Majesty's dragon ship should arrive. At this juncture, the Shen family... or is it not the Shen family who assassinated us?"
As the governor of the Grand Canal, how could he be stupid?
Recalling the appearance of Prince Jing during the day, he began to have some guesses in his mind.
Under the candlelight, Zhao Duan stared at this colleague who also relied on women to get to the top. His face flickered in the candlelight:
"Governor, does it matter whether it's the Shen family or not?"
Ning Zechen fell silent!
Yes, is it important?
Zhao Duan said in a deep voice:
"For the imperial court, the Shen family is one of the toughest bones to chew when it comes to implementing the new policy. Whether Prince Jing's Mansion takes action or not, it will only accelerate the contradiction between the imperial court and the local nobles.
You have been in charge of Jianning Prefecture for several years. Do you still have hope for these clans? Do you expect them to wake up and follow the trend?
I know that you are here with your hands tied and your feet restrained. There are many things you can’t do, so I came here this time, in addition to preparing for the Fengshan ceremony, to cut the Gordian knot.”
After a pause, Zhao Duan stared at the second-rank official:
"I will say what you dare not say, do what you dare not do, and kill whoever you dare not kill!!"
"I just want the result to be that before His Majesty's Fengshan ceremony, I have to break the backbone of these great families!"
Governor Ning stared blankly at the ambitious young man in front of him. Seeing the fire dancing in his eyes, his heart was filled with boiling blood.
He almost lost his life tonight and died in office, which was a huge shock to him.
As a military officer, how could Ning Zechen be the kind of person who would just sit there and do nothing?
"Envoy Zhao, what are you going to do?"
Zhao Duan reached into his bosom, pulled out a "map", and spread it out by candlelight. On it was the Shen family's vast assets.
Its tentacles extend to all kinds of businesses, as well as a large number of farmlands and shops.
“The Shen family is the leader of the powerful families. If we defeat them, the other noble families will naturally collapse. However, since Prince Jing’s Mansion has intervened, it will be difficult to arrest their members by forcibly using the Cao Gang case.
Moreover, such a rough method can easily cause fear among the nobles... which is not good. Fengshan is approaching, so we should be more elegant in our methods. "
"So, I plan that within the next month, you and I will join forces to strike at the Shen family's business from all aspects... We must make the Shen family unable to bear it, and in turn force Old Lady Shen to bow her head..."
"And, the most important thing is that every time we snatch something, we have to distribute it to other small families in the city...
As the saying goes, when a whale falls, all things come to life. The only way is to make other noble families realize that it is beneficial for them to share the Shen family, and this benefit... may make up for the losses suffered by accepting the "New Deal"..."
"In this way...they won't stick together, or even turn around to help us..."
Zhao Duan talked about the plan he had thought of along the way one by one, which he named the "Whale Fall Plan".
Ning Zechen was stunned when he heard this, and the look in his eyes when he looked at him was strange.
I thought, is this also called "elegant means"?
You are trying to dig up the Shen family's roots!
In particular, the idea of "sharing the Shen family and making up for each family" turned the conflict between the court and the aristocratic group into a conflict with the Shen family...
Living King of Hell.
At this moment, Ning Zechen finally understood the significance of the nickname "King Zhao".
"Your Excellency's plan is brilliant, but if this is the case, I'm afraid the number of assassinations you and I will face will increase instead of decrease." Ning Zechen sighed and said.
Zhao Duan smiled and said, "Is the Governor scared?"
Ning Zechen laughed heartily, and this practical man's eyes revealed a fierceness that was almost like that of a mad tiger: "The Bodhisattva in the temple still has some temper. Ning's life and property are about to be lost. If I continue to be weak, won't I be laughed at by the world?"
"Somebody come!"
Shout loudly.
The bedroom door opened, and Master Wen Liang walked in with his head bowed: "Governor, what do you want?"
Ning Zechen threw away the official seal and said harshly:
"Mobilize the canal troops! I need to vent my anger! I've had enough of this humiliation!"
……
……
The next day, early morning.
When the sky in the east began to turn pale, all the shops in Jianning Prefecture had already opened their doors to welcome customers.
In this era, because there is no nightlife, people wake up very early, in a silk shop belonging to the "Shen Family".
The shopkeeper instructed his employees to sweep the street in front of the door, organize the goods, and prepare to welcome customers.
"Boss, when can we take down the white paper lanterns outside our shop? Our business has been so bad since we put them up that people outside refuse to come in when they see them because they think it's unlucky. The Sun family's shop across the street even threatened that we were selling funeral clothes..."
A waiter complained while wiping the table.
Immediately, he knocked the shopkeeper on the head with a long wooden ruler and glared at him:
"If you can't talk, sew your mouth shut! If the boss wants to hang you, then hang you for a full month. If you spread this, I won't care if he breaks his legs, but don't implicate me!"
The guy shrank his neck in fear and dared not speak, knowing that the Shen family was indeed capable of such a thing.
For these local nobles, as long as they don't kill people openly and deal with some small characters, no one will care.
The shopkeeper walked to the door, looked at the Sun family's silk shop across the street and snorted:
"Let the neighbors be proud for a few days. Don't worry, after the second master is buried, please tell the boss to pay back the money you have taken from the business. In our Jianning Mansion, we are..."
Just as he was boasting, he heard shouts from the street. A large group of soldiers wearing uniform military uniforms, holding swords and guns in their hands, came in pairs. The leader pointed at the long street:
"Anyone who hangs a white lantern at the door will be confiscated! Seal the accounts and send them to the government office for the legal advisor to review!"
A group of foreign soldiers responded: "Yes!"
Then, groups of ferocious monsters came roaring out.
Like a pack of wolves, they rushed into the shops owned by the Shen family, which were hung with white cloths, and violently smashed and looted them, driving the people out roughly, in the surprised eyes of the people.
"What are you going to do?"
The silk shop owner was horrified when he saw a group of soldiers rushing in:
"Do you know who our boss is? Who dares to ask you to act like this?"
Merchants have been afraid of soldiers since ancient times, but with the support of the Shen family, the shopkeeper has the confidence to scold this group of soldiers.
The soldier who was giving the order swaggered in, sneered, kicked the shopkeeper to the ground, and spat:
"What Shen family? We have no right to interfere. We are only following the orders of the Governor! The Governor has received a report that some merchants in the city are hoarding goods and disrupting the market price. Anyone who dares to stop them will be thrown out!"
The shopkeeper screamed as he and a group of his employees were thrown into the street, where they watched helplessly as the grain transport soldiers locked the door of the shop and posted a cross-shaped seal with a large red official stamp.
He was shocked and angry. As people on the street were watching and pointing, he looked up and saw that all the shops of the Shen family on both sides of the bustling street had been sealed off, while the other shops were intact.
A similar scene was taking place in various places in Jianning Prefecture during the day.
……
……
"Snapped!"
In the Shen family mansion, in a study.
The current patriarch of the Shen family, the biological father of the deceased "Second Master Shen", threw another "letter of help" in his hand fiercely on the table.
He raised his head, staring at the family members standing in a row with their heads bowed in the room like a lion, and roared:
"You all just stood there and watched those soldiers cause trouble?!"
A group of students were trembling, and one of them mustered up the courage to say:
"Master, when we received the news from the people below, the incident had already happened and it was too late to stop it."
Another person also complained:
"Yes, Master. Besides, those people are soldiers after all. Although they are a group of low-class people, they are wearing military uniforms. We dare not do anything rashly, for fear of causing trouble for the family."
The Shen family is a large family, and the owners of ordinary businesses below are not even qualified to step into the Shen family mansion.
After receiving the news, they could only report it to the boss above them, and the smaller boss would then report it to the larger boss, and the news would then be gathered to the hands of the younger brothers in each branch of the Shen family.
Therefore, by the time the head of the family found out, the incident had already happened a long time ago.
"In one day, not only were all the shops in the city closed down, but the farm tenants were also arrested on pretexts, and even the goods of the caravan that was supposed to be dispatched were seized..."
The head of the family looked unhappy: "Ning Zechen... now that he has the support of Zhao's concubine, he has finally shown his fangs."
No one dared to say anything.
He waved his hand with a gloomy face, and a group of his disciples fled as if they had been pardoned. Only he was left, walking out of the study and towards the mourning hall.
……
Inside the mourning hall.
The black coffin was still placed in the hall and had not yet been buried.
But today, there are only the old lady and her personal maid, Miss Hong, here.
The old lady, who was short in stature, wearing pure black mourning clothes and with silver hair, was sitting on a cushion. The dragon-headed cane was placed on the ground beside her.
There was a copper basin in front of the old lady. She was throwing paper money into the basin alone.
The paper money was devoured by the flames and burned into white ash. In the past few days, the paper money burned all night long was enough to fill five large houses.
Just because of what the old lady said: "Even if the descendants of our Shen family go to the underworld, they will not lack money to spend."
At this moment, Miss Hong led the head of the family to the outside of the mourning hall and said to the old lady's back:
"Madam, the master is here."
The patriarch who was like a lion just now was now as gentle as a cat. He bowed and said, "My son has something important to report."
The old lady didn't even turn her head and continued to burn paper money: "Speak."
"The people below reported that Ning Zechen was assassinated yesterday and nearly died... Zhao Duan originally stayed at Jingyuan and was suspected to have been assassinated by the courtesan as well. Then he rushed to the Caoyun Yamen at night to rescue Ning Zechen..."
"Since dawn today, Ning Zechen has sent out a large number of transport troops to seal and seize the goods in many of our stores..."
The head of the family told everyone the news he had received.
As the old lady listened, she stopped feeding paper money.
When she heard that many of the family's businesses had sent requests for help, she was distracted for a moment and her hand was nearly licked by the flames.
After taking it back in pain, the old woman came to her senses and said:
"Were those assassins sent by my Shen family?"
The head of the family said, "Mother, without your order, how dare we rashly assassinate him? Yesterday, some of Wuji and his juniors did have the idea of taking action, but they did not carry it out. Moreover... even if someone did it secretly, it would not be possible to do it so quickly and so carefully, with two lines of assassination."
The old lady listened and murmured softly:
"Yes, it was too quick and too thorough. How could it be a spur-of-the-moment decision? It was clearly a long-planned one."
The patriarch gritted his teeth and said:
"Mother! This was probably done by Prince Jing's Mansion, who wanted to frame us. Now that Ning Zechen has the support of the man surnamed Zhao, they are tearing their faces apart and are ready to start a war. We..."
Without even turning her head, the old lady raised her right hand, interrupted the latter, and said softly:
"Everyone knows what Prince Jing's intentions are. It's not surprising."
After a pause, she said, "If we can guess, then how can Zhao and Ning not guess?"
The head of the family was stunned for a moment: "You mean, they deliberately want to use this as an excuse..."
The old lady said calmly:
"Whether there is Prince Jing's Mansion or not, this battle must be fought. The boy surnamed Zhao has many experts around him. If he wants to forcibly arrest you and me and throw us into prison, no one can stop him, not even Xu Jinglong. But they didn't do it. This is not because they are kind, but because they are cruel.
Knowing that if they capture you and me, it will cause fear among the noble families, and they will rebel and join the Eight Kings... On the contrary, this method is more clever and more deadly. "
She stood up slowly, and Red Girl hurried forward to help her pick up the dragon head crutch.
The old lady turned around in the mourning hall and looked down at her eldest son who was listening to the admonition. Her wrinkled face was cold and indifferent:
"This battle is worth fighting. If Zhao wants to fight, then I will fight with him. What do you think?"
The head of the family suddenly raised his head: "Mother..."
The old lady ordered majestically: "Give the order, fight back. Do not stop until you are dead!"
……
Help catch typos
(End of this chapter)