My chat group is full of female losers

Chapter 260 Aftermath
The turmoil in the Hall of Mental Cultivation did not subside immediately after the officials left.

The news that Chu Lu cleverly captured the real murderer and foiled the assassination attempt in the palace spread like wildfire inside and outside the palace at an astonishing speed, and then spread to the entire capital city.

For a time, the wind direction in the government and the country quietly changed.

"He used the enemy's trick against him and lured the snake out of its hole... and at the last moment, he anticipated the enemy's moves and easily thwarted the assassination attempt? How could he be so amazing?"

"The Emperor actually found out the truth? And caught the assassin?!"

"Amazing, really amazing! I thought your majesty was just fooling around, but I didn't expect that we were wrong."

"I need to be more careful in the future. His Majesty is not someone who can be fooled."

…………

Compared with the officials' shock, the atmosphere in another place was gloomy and depressing.

Deep inside the palace, there is the Imperial Stables.

Next to a remote stable, the stable was filled with the smell of hay and horses. The light was dim, with only a few rays of sunlight shining through the gaps in the high windows, barely illuminating the corners.

Zhang Wei, the General of the Right Guard of the Imperial Guard, was standing respectfully in front of an old man in ordinary eunuch clothing. The old man had a white face and no beard, and his eyebrows were drooping. He looked like an ordinary old eunuch who worked in the stables all year round. However, his identity was not ordinary. His public identity was Li Zhu, the eunuch in charge of the Imperial Horse Administration, and his hidden identity was even more special, he was one of the three chief officials.

"How's the matter going?" Li Zhu asked without raising his head as he slowly brushed the mane of a majestic black horse with a horse brush in his hand.

Zhang Wei had an expression of uncontrollable pride on his face. He bowed and said, "Reporting to the Chief Secretary! Everything went well! Ah Ling has already started, and she must have succeeded by now! That tyrant must be..."

"Let me ask you, how sure are you?" Li Zhu stopped what he was doing, turned his head, and looked at Zhang Wei with cloudy eyes, interrupting his boasting, "This method was just something you came up with on the spur of the moment, and I didn't know about it beforehand. A Ling is just a palace maid after all. If you fail, it will alert the enemy and ruin other plans. Can you afford it?"

Zhang Wei's heart trembled. He knew that this plan was indeed an impulse idea he came up with to save face after his attempt to frame someone failed. But so what? In his opinion, this was not a risk at all! That tyrant was a complete idiot and a complete fool!

He was lucky enough to escape last time. Now that he was being forced into a state of panic by that group of old stubborn people, he must be in a state of panic. How could he still have the brain to see through A Ling's tricks? He never thought that this plan would fail.

Therefore, he had to demonstrate his complete confidence to the Chief Secretary and not have any hesitation, otherwise he would leave a bad impression of being incompetent.

Thinking of this, he immediately straightened his back, with a confident smile on his face, and said firmly: "Don't worry, sir! There is no risk of failure! The tyrant king is extremely stupid and stubborn, and he is besieged by his ministers. This is the time when his mind is the most confused and his defense is the most lax! All Aling needs to do is follow the plan, and he will definitely die! I dare to guarantee that this time he will be killed!"

Li Zhu stared at Zhang Wei for a moment. Seeing how confident he was, and even a bit of contempt for the emperor, he nodded slowly with a satisfied smile on his face. He turned back to continue brushing the horse: "Very good. If you can really accomplish this, it will be a great achievement. I will speak well of you in front of Lord Tianshu."

"Thank you, Lord Si Shou, for your cultivation!" Zhang Wei was overjoyed and quickly bowed again, imagining the bright future ahead.

But at this moment, a burst of hurried footsteps broke the harmonious atmosphere. A figure dressed as a eunuch hurried over with a panicked look on his face.

"Master, Master! Something bad has happened!" The eunuch ran up to him, panting, his voice trembling.

Zhang Wei frowned and said unhappily, "You are so flustered! What's the matter? Why are you so panicked?"

The eunuch looked at Li Zhu, then at Zhang Wei, swallowed hard, and said in a trembling voice: "News came from the Yangxin Palace... Ah, Ah Ling... failed! Not only did she fail to poison her, but she was also seen through by the tyrant, and was caught red-handed!"

"What?!" The smile on Zhang Wei's face froze instantly, replaced by extreme shock and disbelief. He cried out, "Impossible! This is absolutely impossible! How could that stupid emperor..."

"Snapped!!!"

A crisp sound like thunder suddenly rang out next to the stable!
Li Zhu had put away the horse brush without knowing when, and now had a shiny black whip in his hand. He swung the whip violently, and the tip of the whip hit the stone pillar next to him hard, and the explosion made people's eardrums hurt!

"Waste!" Li Zhu turned around, his old face that used to be kind and gentle was now filled with ferocious anger, his cloudy eyes flashing with a terrifying light, "Is this what you told us was foolproof?! Huh?! Is this what you promised with all your heart that it would succeed?!"

He approached Zhang Wei step by step, the whip in his hand trembling slightly, as if he was going to whip Zhang Wei at the next moment.

"Master Si, please calm down! I... I didn't expect... that tyrant king..." Zhang Wei was so frightened that his face turned pale, his legs went weak, and he fell to his knees, kowtowing repeatedly, "I am incompetent! I deserve to die! Please spare my life, Master Si! Please spare my life!"

"Forgive you?" Li Zhu sneered in a low voice, his voice piercingly cold. "I think you have lost your mind! You have committed such a big mistake, and you still want me to forgive you. How am I going to explain this to Lord Tianshu?"

He swung his whip and pointed at the door: "Get lost! Go back and reflect on your mistakes! Wait for the punishment from the department!"

"Yes, yes..." Zhang Wei was shocked and frightened as if he had been pardoned. He crawled to his feet, not daring to say another word, and fled from the Imperial Stables in a panic.

Li Zhu looked at his embarrassed back, the anger on his face slowly subsided, and finally turned into a gloomy look. He looked at the black horse again, his eyes became hot and dangerous.

"It seems that the wings of the Fire Crow must be dipped in blood..." He muttered to himself. A small fire bell appeared in his hand and shook gently, making a strange sound.

As soon as Zhang Wei, who was scolded and driven away, left the Imperial Stables, the fear in his heart was quickly replaced by boundless anger and resentment.

"Damn it! Damn you tyrant! Why don't you just die?" He cursed in a low voice, his fists clenched so hard that they made a creaking sound, "You've made me have to be punished!"

He thought of Ah Ling again: "And that loser! He couldn't even do something as simple as poisoning and assassination! What an idiot! He deserves death!"

Filled with anger and with nowhere to vent, Zhang Wei returned to the barracks he commanded. He happened to see several soldiers of the Imperial Guards on duty standing a little loosely. He immediately rushed forward as if he had found a punching bag, and started scolding and cursing them.

……

In the Hall of Mental Cultivation, with the departure of the Empress Dowager and the officials, the tranquility of the past was finally restored.

Chu Lu let out a long sigh, a trace of fatigue on his face, but more of a desire to complain after being relieved. "It's finally over..." He rubbed his eyebrows and said to Qin Su in his heart, "But the development of this plot is too different from what I expected, right?"

Indeed, judging from the results, he successfully captured the real murderer A Ling and also shocked the court officials, which can be said to be killing two birds with one stone.

But this process was very different from his original plan.

According to Chu Lu's original idea, after discovering that Zhao Dequan was framed, he did think of turning the tables. But his original plan was much safer than it appears now.

He originally planned to pretend to be confused by Xiao Luzi's denunciation and the evidence he found, and then stubbornly determined that Zhao Dequan was the murderer. Then, under the strong opposition of the Qingliu, he would be angry, but he did not dare to really do anything extreme, so he just detained Zhao Dequan, and then ordered the Imperial Guards to continue to investigate, but deliberately gave them the wrong direction, so that they could make a mess of the investigation and make more jokes.

This repeated several times, causing chaos and panic among the people, and everyone thought that he was a foolish emperor who could not investigate the case and could only mess around. In this way, the real culprit behind the scenes could be paralyzed to the greatest extent, making them completely relax their vigilance, self-righteous, and think that the emperor was not to be feared, so that when he gave up struggling and became discouraged, he would strike again.

As for the detail that the poison didn't match the year, it was indeed an excuse that he arranged for the imperial physician to prepare in advance, just to reasonably save Zhao Dequan's life. After all, Chu Lu would try not to kill innocent people unless necessary.

But who could have imagined that the reaction of this group of clean officials would be so intense.

Just because he privately interrogated Zhao Dequan, they went to the point of forcing him to abdicate and die. This directly disrupted all his subsequent plans, forcing him to bite the bullet and confront them head-on and forcefully play out the drama of turning the tables on them.

If Zhang Wei and A Ling hadn't been even more impatient than he expected and had not actually started fighting again at such a tense moment today, Chu Lu wouldn't have known how the situation would end.

"These people are too brave, aren't they?" Chu Lu couldn't help but complain to Qin Su, "I am an emperor after all, why don't they give me any face? Aren't they afraid that I will really chop them down?"

"This is probably... indirectly influenced by those heroines." Qin Su's voice sounded at the right time.

"Hmm? Tell me more about it."

"In the original plot of this copy, there is no part where you personally investigate the case." Qin Su explained, "So, after you advance the plot, the behavior patterns of these supporting characters will be deduced based on the current world view setting and the image of the emperor you show."

"In the previous plot, your image as the emperor has undergone subtle changes due to the presence of several heroines. Just think about it, the eldest princess Jiang Miaoyan could rush into the palace in broad daylight and beat up the queen and the prince; the second princess dared to break into the study and grab the tiger talisman; the third princess could even threaten you in person... Under the subtle influence of these events, your majesty and power in the eyes of the original characters have actually been weakened."

"Similar situations can be seen in history. When an emperor behaves too weakly, some officials, whether good or bad, will become extremely bold and have a bottom line, which leads to the scene just now."

"I see..." Chu Lu understood immediately, "It seems I have to be more careful in the future."

Just then, a chat group notification popped up and Chu Lu clicked it to take a look.

[Detected that the relevant story line has concluded, correction value +10. 】

"Huh? It's over already?" Chu Lu was a little surprised. "A Ling hasn't been interrogated yet."

"Well, that's the end of her story line." Qin Su said, "Given her identity and the training she received, she will definitely find an opportunity to commit suicide by taking poison after being caught. So the system determines that her story line has ended."

"But only 10 points?" Chu Lu showed some dissatisfaction. He felt that he had been busy for a long time, acting and confronting, but the final profit was not very high.

"After all, it's just a minor role in the spy network, and you don't have many scenes. It's good to have 10 points." Qin Su comforted, "Don't worry, there are many supporting roles in the future. As long as you keep catching them, you can always upgrade. And the correction value is very cost-effective."

She added: "For example, take the heroines you have met so far. The hot-tempered Princess Jiang Miaoyan, who has a rebirth cheat, only needs 10 points of correction to completely suppress her heroine aura and prevent her from causing trouble again."

"What about the others?" Chu Lu became interested.

"The second princess who was crazy and stole the tiger talisman probably needs about 30 points. And the third princess who threatened you with her words probably needs about 80 points."

"How much?!" Chu Lu's eyes widened in shock. "Eighty points?! Why is the difference so big?"

"There are also differences in status among heroines," Qin Su explained. "You should have experienced this from the difference in status between Mo Nian and Zi Yan in the last instance. The amount of correction value required mainly depends on two factors: one is their status within the organization, which is usually determined by the number and quality of completed tasks. The higher the status, the stronger the heroine halo; the second is the strength of their own personality in the 'original work'."

"I see. But the third princess seems quite ordinary. Not as crazy as the psychotic eldest princess. Why is she eighty points? Is her status so high?" Chu Lu was still puzzled.

"Her status is indeed higher than the other two princesses. But more importantly, her personality is far stronger than you can imagine." Qin Su's tone was a little solemn, "On the surface, she looks like an ordinary princess who thinks but does not learn, and is a little rebellious, but in fact, she possesses an extremely terrifying freezing ability."

"Freezing ability?"

"Yes. She can summon a blizzard. In a small area, she can easily freeze a person and make her unable to move. In a large area, she can freeze the whole world. And her control precision is extremely high. She can even make a man shiver with cold as soon as he goes out, while a woman walking next to him will not feel anything at all."

Chu Lu was silent for a moment, then complained: "What the hell is this? Did she come from a fairy tale novel?"

"No, her original work is indeed a fictional historical novel without magic." Qin Su replied calmly, "It's just that her character is a top immortal who traveled through time and space from the world of immortal heroes."

Chu Lu: "??? Then isn't the difference between her character's strength and the world's strength too big?"

"It's not surprising that they are the heroines." Qin Su added, "Many of them like this extreme bullying of the weak and fear of the strong. With the help of the supernatural plug-in, they can bully the weak who have no ability to fight back at will - most of the time, these weak are their relatives, lovers, and friends."

After listening to this, Chu Lu could only shake his head helplessly and sighed at the outrageousness of the female content.

"Okay, I understand." Chu Lu then sat up again. "Anyway, the game is starting off smoothly, and no heroine has come out to mess things up. So let's continue to clean up these spies and accumulate correction points at this pace. When we have enough points, we'll get rid of them one by one!"

"Well, come on." Qin Su also encouraged.

(End of this chapter)