Qingyu Case: Female Minister of Dali Temple

Fu Jiu rushed to ask, "What did you know?"

Xu Guang excitedly picked up the pen and wrote the words again in the correct order. Then, under Fu Jiu's suspicious gaze, he wrote the words again in the order that Chen Shao had written previously.

After writing, without waiting for the ink to dry, he took it to the window and exclaimed in amazement at the sunlight: "Wonderful, it's really wonderful!"

If Chen Shao had not reminded him, he would never have known that the order of the words was wrong, which would lead to such a difference.

Fu Jiu followed him and looked at the paper he was holding. She glanced left and right and asked, "What's so wonderful about it?"

Xu Guang put the paper down and pointed at the word "家" and said, "Look at this word. I wrote the dot first and then this part according to the correct order. Even though I wrote the dot a little bigger and this part covered the dot, at a glance, you can still clearly see that I wrote the dot first and then this part, right?"

Fu Jiu nodded.

Xu Guang pointed to another word "家" written in reverse order and said, "Look at this word again. I wrote this part first and then this dot. Shouldn't this dot be suppressed?"

Fu Jiu nodded, but didn't understand the point of such a distinction.

Xu Guang returned to his desk, picked up the letter from the General of the State, found the characters with the imperial seal, and asked Fu Jiu, "Look at these characters. Was the dot written first, or was this part written first?"

Fu Jiu picked up the letter and held it up to the light, then said without hesitation, "Write the first part, then this part."

"That's right." Xu Guang put down the letter and picked up the calligraphy and paintings, but he was stunned when he saw the words on the calligraphy and paintings. The words on the calligraphy and paintings were too small, and it was very difficult to tell whether the word with a treasure cover was written first or later.

Fu Jiu came over and saw this situation, and immediately looked at him with a smile.

Xu Guang's face flushed, and then he slapped his forehead: "Wait a moment, I'll go get something."

Watching his rapidly departing figure, Fu Jiu muttered, "Could it be that he didn't recognize me and wanted to escape?"

When he returned to the desk, he saw Li Tianliu, Chanyi and Quan Shuyu were still studying those words. He coughed lightly, pushed them aside and repeated what Xu Guang had taught him. After repeating, he saw that they had understood, so he picked up a painting and stood in front of the window to study it.

Li Tianliu, Chan Yi and Quan Shuyu ignored him. After each taking a painting, they also stood in front of the window.

"Look at this word 'An', is it the dot written at the end?" Thinking that it was Quan Shuyu next to him, Chan Yi pointed at the word 'An' on the calligraphy and handed it over. She saw a smudge of black in her peripheral vision, and when she looked up, she realized it was Li Tianliu. Without waiting for him to turn around, she quickly took back the calligraphy and went to Quan Shuyu's side.

Li Tianliu raised his eyebrows and said, "It's the point written later."

Chan Yi turned slightly to the side, with her back to him, pretending not to hear.

"The word 'An'?" Fu Jiu could not see the undercurrent between them. When she heard Chan Yi say the word 'An', she immediately found a word 'An' on the calligraphy she was holding. She stared at it in the light for a long time, then agreed, "It does look like the last point."

After making sure that Chan Yi ignored him, Li Tianliu started looking for other characters with the "宝盖头" character on the calligraphy and painting.

While they were expressing their opinions and arguing with each other, Chen Shao took out the letter written by the prince and read it twice word by word. After making sure that there was no word about Chen Zhao in the letter, she closed her eyes and opened them again.

When the previous dynasty fell, nearly nine hundred officials surrendered to Datong. It would be a huge task to check each of these nine hundred people one by one, not to mention that it had been nearly a hundred years.

But no matter how difficult it is, you have to check.

The prince did not specify who the seventy-seven descendants of the nine hundred people who are still serving as officials in the court are, or what their official positions are. Judging from the listed official positions alone, the investigation must start with the twenty-six officials of the fifth rank and above.

After thinking it over again and again, Chen Shao opened the drawer, took out a few pages of letter paper, and wrote down the information that he had interrogated from the Zhu, Gu, Fan and Qi families that would be helpful for the investigation, such as Geng Yu's words that he had once said that he was able to sit on the position of Wujun prefect with the promotion of the prince's party in the previous dynasty.

After finishing writing, she was silent for a while and then added a few more words of greeting to Chen Zhao.

She and Chen Zhao had only been together for more than two years, but less than three years. She spent most of the first year helping him detoxify, and for the next two years, she spent all day and night studying all kinds of knowledge. It was certainly not possible to say that she had deep feelings for him, but it was undeniable that he was one of the few ties she had to this dynasty.

If he hadn't asked her to, she would definitely not have come to Hongyuan County.

In other words, if something happened to him, she would not go anywhere else after dealing with the affairs of Hongyuan County, and would not interfere in any new or old grudges of the previous or next dynasty.

When the country prospers, the people suffer; when the country perishes, the people suffer. Therefore, she does not think she has the ability or responsibility to save the people of Tai Tong from danger.

Putting down the pen and waiting for the ink to dry, Chen Shao folded the letter and handed it to Chan Yi. When he asked her to pass it back to the capital, Xu Guang rushed in excitedly holding something that looked like a bronze mirror.

"Where are those calligraphy and paintings? Put them on the desk quickly." Xu Guang walked quickly to the desk, pulled over a calligraphy and painting, and then picked up the bronze mirror-like object to shine it on the signature.

Seeing the painting and calligraphy magnified several times through the bronze mirror in his hand, Fu Jiu took it without thinking and asked, "Lens! Where did you get this thing?"

Xu Guang rubbed his hands and chuckled, "Miss Quan gave it to me."

Seeing that everyone was looking at her, Quan Shuyu quickly smiled and said, "It wasn't me who gave it to him. He said his eyes were blurry and asked me if the Zhu family or the Gu family had any lenses. If so, could I give it to him? He was lucky. He asked the day before and found the lens in Old Master Zhu's room the next day. I thought it was really hard for him to get up early and work hard, so I gave it to him."

Xu Guang still laughed: "Almost, almost."

"Let me have a look." Chen Shao said. She had forgotten that there were magnifying glasses in ancient times.

Fu Jiu handed the lens to her.

Chen Shao took it, flipped through it, and then looked at it against the letter from the General of the State.

The lens is a round convex mirror made of polished crystal, with gold and silver filigree decorations around it, and a few gemstones of various colors. The mirror surface is polished very smoothly, and Old Master Zhu has kept it very carefully, which can clearly magnify the handwriting five times the size.

It is truly a gorgeous and practical thing.

He motioned to Xu Guang to bring over the two paintings and calligraphy. After Chen Shao looked at them one by one with a lens, he returned both the lens and the paintings to Xu Guang.

Xu Guang took it and observed it one by one, then said with certainty: "The handwriting on these paintings and this letter were written by two people."

"Let me see it." Fu Jiu said impatiently.

"Wait a moment." Xu Guang said as he placed the lens on the seal on the painting. After repeated comparisons with the seal on the letter, Xu Guang finally found two more things wrong. One was that the seal on the letter had a thinner border, while the one on the painting was slightly thicker. Another was that the strokes of the font on the letter were smoother, while the one on the painting was slightly sharper.

With these two differences, plus the difference in the handwriting, Xu Guang was certain that the calligraphy and letters were from two different hands.