Wandering the Heavens

"Burying living people alive is an old custom that was restored after the Yuan Dynasty came to control the Central Plains. This act is against the harmony of nature, and Emperor Taizong could not bear it, so he issued an order to abolish and investigate the practice of burying living people alive." Yu Qian's words were not sincere at all.

"Don't give me that. With my father's personality, would he care about other people's life and death?" Zhu Gaoxu said nonchalantly.

Yu Qian's mouth twitched unconsciously when he heard this. Your Zhu family is really a family with kind fathers, filial sons, friendly brothers and respectful younger brothers!

You won't die for saying such things in public, but I'm afraid the emperor will kill me.

"Prince Han, I, Yu Qian, have not offended you. These Jinyiwei and soldiers have taken good care of you and the family of the Prince of Han along the way, so please be merciful!"

Zhu Gaoxu was speechless when he saw Yu Qian like this. He turned around in the cage and looked elsewhere.

The rest of the journey was much more boring. After sending the person to Fengyang and handing him over to the official responsible for monitoring illegal royal family members, Yu Qian continued to go south to do his own job.

The rebellion of Prince of Han Zhu Gaoxu ended in such a whimper. Zhu Zhanji also remembered his third uncle who was imprisoned in the 19th year of Yongle, and simply ordered to send him to Fengyang as well.

After dealing with the affairs of the previous dynasty, the court officials set their sights on Zhu Zhanji's harem. They were all worried about the fact that he did not have a son yet.

But the fact that the emperor had no son could not be said publicly, and everyone was secretly trying to find a solution. In March, the matter finally calmed down, and news came from the palace that Imperial Concubine Sun was pregnant. No matter whether it was a boy or a girl, they would wait until the baby was born.

The entire court, except Yu Xian, was worried and prayed to God that it must be a son.

The long pregnancy ended. On November 11, the second year of Xuande, Concubine Sun gave birth to the eldest son. The empress dowager was happy, Zhu Zhanji was happy, the eunuchs and palace maids in the Forbidden City were also happy, not to mention the court officials.

According to the rules set by Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhu Zhanji named this child, who was born with everyone's expectations, Zhu Qizhen.

But Sun Ruowei and Hu Shanxiang were unhappy. On the one hand, they hated Zhu Di's family, and on the other hand, they hated their only living relatives because they had given birth to children for their enemies...

This kind of ridiculous logic made the two sisters at loggerheads, causing trouble in the harem every day. In the end, Hu Shanxiang was defeated first. She believed that Zhu Qizhen's birth stabilized the Ming Dynasty, so she wanted to take action against Zhu Qizhen, who had been appointed as the crown prince. As a result, she was seen by a eunuch and the matter was exposed.

The position of the queen was abolished, and Sun Ruowei became the new queen. The eunuch who saw Hu Shanxiang was going to harm Zhu Qizhen was called Wang Zhen, and Zhu Zhanji arranged for him to follow Zhu Qizhen from then on.

At the same time that Queen Hu was deposed, Concubine Wu gave birth to the emperor's second son, named Zhu Qiyu.

With all the elements gathered, Yu Xian put down his worries and began to plan how to control Zhu Jianshen after the Battle of Tumu. He had already mapped out the map and sand table of Northern Zhili clearly while hunting and stored them in Yujiazhuang outside the city.

Among these adopted children, there are dozens who are extremely smart and have already passed the Tongshi examination. I believe that some of them will be able to become Jinshi in the imperial examination in the eighth year of Xuande and enter the officialdom.

Zhu Zhanji had a good life in recent years. After Hu Shanxiang was deposed, the harem became much quieter, so he had more time for entertainment and rest. He would come to Yu Xian to ask for money every now and then. Yu Xian couldn't stand it anymore and had to hide in Yujiazhuang outside the city.

The years during Zhu Zhanji's reign were actually very peaceful and boring. From the first year of Hongxi to the tenth year of Xuande, there were no large-scale wars in the eleven years of the Ming Dynasty. Apart from sending Zheng He to sail to the West again, there were no other major actions.

The fortunes of the empire are always changing, either rising or declining. Fortunately, at this time Zhu Zhanji was still able to support the rising fortunes of the Ming Dynasty.

Everything seems to be going in the right direction.

However, the disaster that was destined to come still came. In the first month of the tenth year of Xuande, Zhu Zhanji suddenly fell ill. Knowing that he was powerless to save the situation, he entrusted the crown prince to five ministers.

Although the emperor had entrusted his son to his mother and had clearly ordered her to make decisions on important matters, the capital was not at peace. Rumors spread everywhere that Empress Dowager Zhang wanted to pass the throne to Prince Xiang.

The Empress Dowager never expected that just after her son's death, someone could not help but instigate civil strife in the court. On the one hand, she took Zhu Qizhen to announce in front of the court officials that the child was the emperor of the Ming Dynasty; on the other hand, she ordered the Earl of Xuanwu who was away to come to the court to investigate where the rumor came from.

Yu Xian couldn't keep a low profile now. Some people just couldn't live well and had to bully these orphans and widows. He hadn't taken action for many years and everyone had forgotten about it. This time, he had to make some people see blood! So when Yu Xian walked out of the Forbidden City wearing the Feiyu suit given by the Empress Dowager, countless people were secretly trembling.

Martial law was imposed in Beijing. The Shuntian Prefecture Governor and the Five Cities Military Command were all mobilized. They did not do much but were divided into several teams to patrol everywhere. If they heard anyone talking about the royal family, they would be arrested immediately. For a time, all the prisons in Beijing were overcrowded.

At this time, Yu Xian was interrogating a captured suspect in the imperial prison, to be precise, a eunuch.

"You bold Yu Xian, I am a eunuch in the palace and it is not your business. Now you have detained me without permission, I will report you to the director of the East Factory! Then I will cut you into pieces!" The eunuch tied to the tiger bench had no awareness of being a prisoner and was cursing instead.

"You are just a small attendant of the Imperial Kitchen, which is a long way from being a eunuch. Let me ask you, what happened to the menu of the late emperor from December last year to the days when he passed away? Why are there so many traces of erasures?" Yu Xian asked, taking out a booklet stained with oil.

"I... I don't know, I can't read." The eunuch lowered his head.

"Don't you know? You have only been promoted to the position of permanent attendant since you entered the palace in the 15th year of Yongle, but your relatives in your hometown live a very wealthy life. Unfortunately, they all became rich in the past two or three years. The reason is naturally that you, a eunuch, have gained power in the palace. But you know very well how they made their fortune." Yu Xian was too lazy to chat with such people.

"That's the flattery of the villagers who have never seen the world. What does it have to do with me?" The eunuch was good at making excuses.

"Torture!" Yu Xian said, then stood up and left for another cell.

Interrogating this eunuch was nothing more than rooting out the spies in the palace. Yu Xian's real target was the doctors in the Imperial Hospital. Before this, Yu Xian had already controlled the Imperial Hospital and read Zhu Zhanji's medical records several times, and found many problems.

From the time Zhu Zhanji suddenly fell ill to the time he passed away, there were people from the Imperial Medical Bureau present, but the records were a mess. This is not something that can be overcome by simply replacing people on duty.

"Doctor Li, tell us why there were so many corrections in the records you made when the late emperor was ill?" Yu Xian asked directly.

"That was the first time I participated in such a big event. I was very nervous, so I made many mistakes when recording and had to correct them." If Doctor Li's hands were not tied, he would definitely want to stroke his beautiful goatee.

"Are you bullying me because I don't know any medical skills?" Yu Xian slammed the registration book in his hand on the table and shouted.