Chapter 35

Half-supported, he reached the low couch at the back. Teng Yan's face looked as pale as if he was frozen. He waved away everyone, leaving only the two of them in the room.

"Ji'er, don't let me worry about this. Leave it to me and don't worry about it anymore!"

Teng Xieji stared at him with red eyes, and tears hung on his almond-shaped eyes, about to fall, like a huge dewdrop.

"You mean you knew the prescription was wrong? You knew it, but you still gave it to the Yue family! Dad... do you want to watch Qingzhe die like this?"

Upon hearing this, Teng Yan suddenly jumped up, and his beard almost flew to his temples.

"How could I harm Qingzhe! The prescription I gave you won't hurt him, it will only make his recovery slower..."

At this point he realized something and suddenly stopped talking, but Teng Xieji had already grasped the key point. He was indeed delaying time. She had had doubts in her heart as early as when she got the prescription, but she blindly believed in her father at that time, believing that the two families were old friends and her father would never harm the Yue family!

But now, there is someone who is more important than the Yue family, and his father is willing to sacrifice Qingzhe to help him.

He made an unknown sound in his throat and Teng Xieji grabbed him.

"Who is he? Why did he ask you to do this?"

Teng Yan hurriedly pulled off his sleeves and stopped looking at her with a cold face.

"It's none of your business! I told you, you're no longer needed here. Go back home today and don't come out again!"

Teng Xieji watched her sleeve slip from her hand and almost lost all her strength to confront him. There were so many things she wanted to say and ask that she didn't even know where to start.

"Human life is the most precious thing, even worth a thousand gold. To save it is a greater virtue than that."

"Back then, the first thing my father taught me was medical ethics. I've learned this all my life and deeply believed in it. I never expected that a classic that was so important to me would be nothing to you. If you've already reached this point, why did you teach me all this back then? Why do you keep reminding me that a doctor's ethics are more important than anything else?"

Being questioned by his own daughter in this way, Teng Yan's face turned from dark to red, which was very exciting. However, Teng Xieji was not finished yet. He stood up from the couch and stood behind him. He was so close yet seemed to be standing on the opposite side of him.

"It was the Crown Prince. He told you to do this, right? He and the Marquis of Qingyuan have long intended to harm the Yue family. If the Yue family is wiped out, even if Uncle Yue survives, his life will be worse than death. By then, his will is depressed, which is exactly what they want. They can find a reason to send him away, and he will never come back. By then, no one in the court will dare to stand against them, and they can do whatever they want without any worries!"

Teng Xiji's face was covered in tears. "Father, how could you help the Crown Prince harm Uncle Yue? Have you forgotten our past friendship? The Yue family has helped us so many times, and Qingning and I grew up together and are like sisters. How could you do such a thing?"

After hearing this, Teng Yan finally couldn't bear it anymore, and dragged her to a side room at the back with a stern face. Rows of sand pots were boiling medicine, and the medicinal vapors enveloped the people who came in. They couldn't see each other's expressions clearly even though they were so close.

Teng Yan looked around and finally decided to tell his daughter the truth.

"The Yue family is indeed friendly with us, but you must know who our Teng family's benefactor is. When the late Queen passed away, His Majesty was extremely sad. He was furious at her bedside and demanded that our Teng family be buried with the Queen. If it weren't for Concubine Li's plea, do you think you would still be standing here angry with me?"

Hearing this, Teng Xieji was stunned and sobered up a little from his anger.

"Li Fei? Isn't that His Royal Highness Prince Shou's..."

Teng Yan quickly covered her mouth and said, "Don't mention that person anymore! Your Majesty is thinking about Prince Shou's mother. Don't mention the past anymore."

With her mouth covered, she was dazed for a while, and finally she connected the things together.

It was Prince Shou who asked his father to delay the treatment of the illness in the capital and delay curing the patient. But why did he do such a thing? It is said that His Majesty has already sent him to the Cha Luo family. There is no reason for him to stop the Imperial Hospital from curing and saving lives!

Seeing her dazed look, Teng Yan put down his hand and sighed deeply.

"The affairs of the court are not something you and I can clearly understand. You just need to know that we are still able to stand here thanks to the kindness of Concubine Li. Although she is gone, Prince Shou is still here. As long as our Teng family survives, we must repay Prince Shou. No matter what he wants, we will do our best to help him, even if..."

Even if it goes against my original intention...

Even if it means taking human lives.

The so-called court struggle turned out to be like this. The powerful people fought each other, but the consequence was the unnecessary sacrifice of the little people. They themselves didn't even know what had happened and they lost their lives so absurdly.

Teng Xieji opened her eyes wide but couldn't see the direction in front of her. She squatted down quietly with her hands covering her chest, and a feeling of suffocation surged in her heart like a raging storm.

Seeing her like this, Teng Yan was helpless. She was still too young to understand that things in this world were never under one's control. Even they were just a small chess piece in the Great Sheng Dynasty, and she had not even met the person who truly controlled the chessboard.

As they were about to leave, Teng Xieji struggled one last time.

"How long do we have to wait for him? The people outside are about to die..."

She looked up at him, as if wanting him to have mercy on those innocent lives, and wanted him to beg that prince to at least spare them, no matter what his grand plan was.

But the person who walked to the door paused, and finally left her alone without looking back, pushing the door open and leaving.

In this imperial city of gold bricks and green tiles, even the edges of stones will be smoothed out, and even stubborn bones will be broken. Anyone who was not stubborn and unwilling to change in the past will eventually be crushed under this dense imperial city and unable to breathe. Even if they want to die, they cannot. This lesson is inevitable after all, and it is time to grow up.

After waiting for a long time, Sister Teng never came back, and no one even removed the seal on the door. Yue Qingning had a hunch that nothing good was going to happen.

She was trapped in the mansion and couldn't get out, so she had no idea what was happening outside.

Fortunately, not long after Sister Teng left, a letter was delivered from the palace. When she took a look, she found that it was news from her father.

"My wife and children, I am glad to see you in person. It has been several days since I left home and entered the palace. I have not been home yet and I am deeply worried about you. However, the affairs of the court are very complicated and I have no time to spare. Fortunately, everything is fine and there is no need to worry."

There was another page after this one. Yue Qingning knew that this one was for his mother, but his hand still unconsciously turned to the next one to read. His father had never concealed anything from his mother, so in this article he wrote about his temporary stay in the palace and his meeting with Prince Shou.

It turned out that Prince Shou had been very busy during this period. His Majesty had entrusted him with the task of investigating the Luo family. Prince Shou lived up to everyone's expectations and found the body of the sick horse. He also seized evidence pointing directly to the Minister of War, Luo Feng.

Luo Feng tried his best to deny it at first and refused to plead guilty, but he suddenly repented one night and explained everything clearly. It turned out that he wanted to collude with the Imperial Household Department to mix the sick horses from Liangzhou into the newly surrendered war horses this year, and wanted to make up for the deficit of several years by using the excuse of sick horses. It turned out that he had already falsified the names of war horses, and he had been greedy for more and more over the years, and the difference in quantity was getting bigger and bigger, so he took the risk and wanted to use the excuse of sick horses to erase the difference in amount.

Many years ago, Luo Feng began to collude with local governments, exempting many wealthy provinces from handing over horses and instead allocating the vacancies to a few poor provinces and counties. The number of war horses that local governments that could not afford bribes had to hand over soon exceeded the court's regulations.

After so many rounds of circulation between Luo Feng and the Imperial Household Department, the poor counties became poorer and the rich counties became richer. Many herdsmen and farmers in counties and towns who could not afford to pay even began to sell their children to buy horses. People lived worse than animals, but the money was still concealed and not discovered until now.

The scope of involvement behind this is unprecedented. What was discovered this time is only the surface layer. The letter frankly admits that there must be a layer of powerful and influential families buried underneath. Now that something has happened, each family is busy trying to distance themselves. Now it all depends on whether Your Majesty wants to continue the investigation.

After reading this article, Yue Qingning had a general understanding of the progress of the horse plague case, but he was worried and felt that things could not be so simple.

Luo Feng worked in the capital, and as the Minister of War, he received a considerable annual salary. In addition, he colluded with the Imperial Household Department to collect bribes from all over the country, and he had already made a fortune.

With such ability, why would he have risked transporting sick horses to Beijing? Rather than using the sick horses as an excuse to fill the gaps in the accounts, it would have been much easier to find an opportunity to destroy the accounts and use that opportunity to push a scapegoat. The situation would have been much simpler to resolve.

Besides, even if he didn't think it through for the moment, there was no need for him to do this. There was no high-ranking official in the capital who didn't have people working for them. If something went wrong, they could just blame it on them. There was no need for him to take the risk himself.

Qingning tucked the page under his tuck and looked at it again. Sure enough, his father had the same idea. Luo Feng took such a big risk this time because he obviously thought that he could not trust others in this matter. And the only person who could give Luo Feng orders was Qingyuan Hou, except for his teacher Luo Xiang.

These two people are physically in Dasheng, but their hearts are in a foreign land.

Especially the Marquis of Qingyuan, everyone knows that he has bad intentions. If he deliberately wants to infect the war horses with the plague this time, his wolfish ambition to subvert the government is obvious.

Prince Shou has already reported the results of the investigation. Luo Feng insisted that he was the only one who did it and would never dare to accuse Marquis Qingyuan.

There is only one guess: the position of Marquis Qingyuan cannot be shaken at all. His Majesty is partial to the Queen Gong family. Nearly half of the officials of the Crown Prince faction in the morning court are trying to excuse Marquis Qingyuan, so the horse plague case can only end here.

His Majesty decreed that Luo Feng be executed three days after his imprisonment, and that the entire Luo family be exiled to Lingnan for life, never to return to the capital. Prime Minister Luo, though uninvolved, would nonetheless be charged with raising a scoundrel. His Majesty ordered him to reflect on his mistakes for seven days, with no one permitted to see him.

If the Yue family had not been implicated in this incident, the 100,000 troops in the capital would have been defeated. Such a huge matter was actually put to rest and no longer investigated. The people sent by the prince only captured Luo Feng. Not only was the public outrage unappeased, but some officials with integrity in the court were also indignant and kept writing letters to His Majesty asking him to send people to investigate the Marquis of Qingyuan.

The letter also said that Prince Shou had already asserted that he could not blame Marquis Qingyuan, and the matter needed to be discussed later. In addition, General Cui also assisted Prince Shou and found the whereabouts of the sick horses involved in the horse plague incident, which meant that he had completely stood on Prince Shou's side.

Yue Qingning sighed inwardly. He didn't expect that in just a few days, Cui Hu would already be standing beside Prince Shou.

But it's better this way. They were worried that the Cui family would stand on the side of the prince, and that the two would get along and cause a lot of trouble in the future. Anyway, now that they both stand on the side of Prince Shou, there is no need to worry about discord between the couple in the future.

Since the case has been concluded, they can no longer think about it. Compared to these, she wants to know more about Sister Teng.

The prescription had been sent to the palace earlier, but no one had come to remove the seal yet, which made her a little worried. After all, the epidemic affected the public, and she had not heard that the prescription had to be changed. It seemed that something had delayed it.

Thinking about this, Yue Qingning didn't have time to rest, he picked up his pen and wrote another letter to send to his father.

[The effective medicine has been prepared and has been handed over by Mrs. Teng to the Imperial Hospital for revision. Father, please ask Your Majesty to remove the seal. The palace will be safe.]

After the letter was handed over, Yue Qingning watched with her own eyes the messenger ride away on horseback. However, she had to see someone handing the letter over, but she didn't know whether the letter could be delivered to the person it was meant to receive.