Those many statements holding the court accountable originated from another manifesto that Bian Chunliang ordered his advisers to distribute when he left Yuezhou.
This manifesto exposed the evil deeds of the imperial army in poisoning Yuezhou and deliberately creating a plague, as well as shooting innocent infected people in Yuezhou. Every word in the manifesto was as sharp as a knife, and it exaggerated the original facts. Once it spread, it caused a shock everywhere and aroused countless public resentment.
Those with ulterior motives from all sides denounced this incident, lamenting that "although the plague is poisonous, it is far less harmful than the intentions of those in power" - pointing the finger at the imperial court and the empress, with some even stating that they wanted the emperor to issue an edict of remorse in order to quell this disaster and public resentment.
However, the emperor has no intention of blaming himself.
The emperor was also furious, but denied that the plague was caused by the imperial army. She ordered people to draft an edict to announce to the world, asserting that the plague in Yuezhou was a punishment from heaven for Bian Chunliang's many evil deeds; as for the shooting of the infected people, it was because most of the infected people were disguised as Bian's army, intending to spread the plague, and the imperial army was not at fault for blocking the Bian army's conspiracy; in short, this plague was a manifestation of heaven's punishment for the Bian army, and the Bian army was brutal, and after causing the plague, they tried to confuse the public and incite the people of the world, and it was really worth dying!
After the war is over, the imperial court will thoroughly investigate all those who took advantage of this incident to deceive the people and give a complete explanation to the people of the world.
Public opinion has always been a game. It is impossible to accept everything the opponent says, otherwise it is the same as standing there and being hacked to death by the opponent, which is no different from sitting and waiting to be killed.
But what is the truth? Most officials in the court have a clear idea in their minds.
Previously, Xiao Min had reported this matter to the emperor, but the emperor did not publicize it, nor did he give any clear instructions. He only told the army that they should focus on the war and conduct a thorough investigation and evaluation of the merits and demerits afterwards.
Firstly, what the emperor cared about most was the war. Secondly, since then, the emperor had anticipated the public opinion that might arise in the future, so he was not in a hurry to ask for punishment. Because once the emperor asked for punishment directly, it would be equivalent to taking the initiative to admit the "fault" on behalf of the court, and there would be no room for maneuver.
The empress was never foolish, she always clearly considered the pros and cons.
But even so, the current situation was beyond the Empress's expectations. She thought Bian Chunliang would use this to make a fuss, but she didn't expect it to cause such great public outrage...
If this had happened in the past, it would not have fermented to this extent in such a short period of time, and there would not have been so many voices that dared to blame the court without any scruples - all this was because those people only had the ambition to take advantage of the opportunity to cause trouble, and no longer had the respect they had for the court in the past! This realization made the empress extremely angry, but she never showed it at all.
Dignity can never be increased by anger. On the contrary, useless anger will only highlight the incompetence of the ruler. The most urgent thing she has to do is to wipe out Bian Chunliang's rebellious army to deter the voices with ulterior motives around her!
Li Xian's plan was too presumptuous and had many flaws, but if it could completely quell the rebellion of the Bian army, it would not be in vain to have caused this turmoil...
As a king, she never shielded anyone, she always just made the choice that was most beneficial to the royal power.
From the day she decided to sit on this position, she was no longer a human being, but the embodiment of royal power.
Many officials in the palace also denounced Bian Chunliang for his evil deeds of confusing right and wrong and inciting the people.
Wei Shuyi, who also had his own considerations in mind, thought again and again, and finally stepped forward: "Sage, I think the most urgent thing at the moment is to try to control the spread of the plague to avoid causing a larger-scale epidemic and unrest."
The war was the most important thing in the emperor's mind, but how the war went was not something that the civil officials could influence, and he didn't need to say much. Controlling the plague was also an urgent problem that needed to be solved, and it didn't conflict with the war.
Prime Minister Ma also said: "...Yuezhou has been recovered. I heard that there are still many people suffering from the epidemic in and outside Yuezhou. We should gather them together as soon as possible, count their number, and try to treat them."
Seeing that the Left Prime Minister and the Right Prime Minister had spoken, the rest of the officials also echoed.
It is imperative to stop the spread of the virus as soon as possible. As for treatment... it is certainly difficult, but at least on the surface, such a process should be established to demonstrate the attitude of the court and to calm the current surging public anger to the greatest extent.
The Holy Ce Emperor, who looked a little tired, nodded and immediately gave orders to make arrangements. He also ordered the medical officials in the capital to select a hundred people to set off for Yuezhou in three days.
In order to show importance, Fang Ting, the newly appointed Minister of Rites, was appointed as the imperial envoy to be in charge of this matter.
Usually, when traveling on such an imperial decree, if the chief imperial envoy is a minister, he must be accompanied by at least one or two lower-ranking officials to provide assistance and supervision.
At this time, a young green figure at the end of the civil servants stepped forward to recommend himself.
"I, Song Xian from the Imperial Censorate, would like to go to Yuezhou with Minister Fang. I hope Your Majesty will approve it!"
Song Xian is a sixth-rank Imperial Censor. Apart from attending court on the first and fifteenth days of each month, he is not eligible to attend the daily morning court. He is here today because he submitted several memorials concerning the plague in Yuezhou in the past two days. As this matter happened to be discussed today, he was summoned to the court to answer questions.
He was worried about the disaster in Yuezhou and took the trouble to learn a lot of information, so he thought it would be more appropriate for him to accompany Minister Fang.
Song Xian entered the officialdom as the top scholar, and due to the current situation, he was promoted to an actual position in an exceptional manner. The empress was naturally impressed by him, and when she saw him recommending himself, she thought for a moment and nodded in agreement.
After the court session, the Imperial Censor gave Song Xian some instructions: "When you arrive in Yuezhou, you must be extra careful in your actions..."
In official circles, people usually speak only to the point.
Song Xian vaguely heard that there was another implication in the words, but seeing that his superior had no intention of elaborating further, he did not ask any more questions and just bowed in response.
But no matter what, he only had one thing to do on this trip, and that was to rescue the people suffering from the epidemic to the greatest extent possible.
The palace doctors quickly decided on the candidates to go out of the capital, and at the same time recruited good doctors from the public to go with them.
"You...you're going to Yuezhou?"
In Xingningfang, in the mansion of the Marquis of Loyalty and Bravery, Doctor Sun, who had occupied the mansion for a long time, looked at the girl in the green skirt in front of him and asked with a stuttering voice out of surprise.
Qiao Yumian nodded.
"You..." Doctor Sun couldn't help but ask, "Did your family agree?"
Qiao Yumian said: "I haven't told my family yet."
Doctor Sun's eyes widened for a long moment before he asked, "Then why did you... tell me?"
He didn't want to bear the secret that the daughter of the Imperial College's chief academic officer had run away from home. This would put a lot of pressure on him, and he was afraid that he would not be able to eat or sleep peacefully.
Therefore, Doctor Sun always wanted to keep a sufficient distance from others, even if the other person was his only disciple.
"Because I need to trouble you, Master, to cover up for me." Qiao Yumian pleaded, "I am now working in the Imperial College Medical Hall. If I suddenly don't go, my father and mother will definitely be suspicious... So I told my mother that I had a difficult and complicated disease recently and needed to consult you, Master. So I asked for leave from the medical hall and lied that I was staying in Xingningfang for a while. So if my family asks about it later, please help me deal with it."
“……” Doctor Sun was visibly panicked.
Does he look like someone who could be entrusted with such an important task?
"You..." Doctor Sun looked extremely embarrassed: "Do you really have to go to Yuezhou?"
Qiao Yumian nodded without hesitation: "My disciple just got a few ancient books about curing plague, and I learned a lot from them--"
Those books were extremely rare and were secretly copied for her by Cui Lang.
"But this plague... is said to be man-made." Doctor Sun tried to dissuade him, "There are dozens of types of colds alone, not to mention a man-made plague..."
"I understand, disciple." Qiao Yumian thought of the tragic news about the plague in Yuezhou and said, "There will be no shortage of good doctors on this trip, but I want to try my best, even if it's just to help cook a bowl of medicine."
Qiao Yumian looked at him pleadingly and said, "Master, I really have no other choice. Please help me this time."
Doctor Sun began to pick his fingers.
Helping to lie and dealing with the Qiao family...can he really do it?
He said: "I'm afraid I'm not strong enough and will be exposed in a few days..."
Qiao Yumian was easy to talk to: "Even if it's delayed for four or five days, it should be enough."
Doctor Sun hesitated for a moment, but his expression became even more panicked. Wait, the most terrifying thing would be after he was exposed, right? How would he explain it then? How would the Qiao family look at him? Thinking of that scene, Doctor Sun quickly broke out in a sweat, and he wished he could close his eyes and be buried on the spot, as a corpse that didn't care about the world.
Qiao Yumian took his panicked silence as tacit approval and bowed with a smile, "Thank you, Master."
At this time, Xiao Qiu came over and said, "Girl, the luggage is ready."
Qiao Yumian then said goodbye to her master.
"……etc!"
Qiao Yumian had just taken a few steps when she suddenly heard Doctor Sun's voice from behind her.
Qiao Yumian turned around in surprise. It was the first time she heard her master speak so loudly.
"I..." Doctor Sun wiped the sweat from his forehead and said, "I will go to Yuezhou with you!"
Whenever he thought that the Qiao family might come looking for him at any time, he felt as if his feet were stepping on a red-hot iron... He could not stay in the Mansion of the Loyal and Brave Marquis for even a moment.
Qiao Yumian looked at her master in surprise: "Master is going to Yuezhou?"
Doctor Sun nodded. Saving people was much easier than dealing with them.
Seeing his expression, Qiao Yumian vaguely understood what was going on. She felt a little embarrassed for a moment. Just as she was thinking about whether she could make up for it, she heard the voice say, "I once... participated in the treatment of a plague... more than ten years ago, when there was a severe drought in Shu."
When he heard about what happened in Yuezhou, he was a little shaken, but he was unable to make up his mind.
Qiao Yumian was overjoyed.
Doctor Sun: "But on the way, and after arriving in Yuezhou..."
"I will leave everything to you." Qiao Yumian said immediately, "Master, you don't have to speak to anyone."
Doctor Sun breathed a sigh of relief, nodded, and turned around to pack his bags.
…
Li Xian camped outside Tanzhou for ten days but was unable to move his troops.
Since that battle, because he had been fighting all the way at a high speed and was infected by the Bian army, most of his soldiers fell ill one after another. Although they had been taking preventive medicines, their illnesses were not very serious and would not easily kill them, but they could not continue fighting in the short term.
Most of Xiao Min and the tens of thousands of troops he led in the rear had fallen ill, perhaps because they had been fighting in close combat with the infected Bian army for too long, and they became more seriously ill. Even Xiao Min had a high fever for several days.
In addition, the hot weather was not conducive to the body's heat dissipation. Many soldiers themselves were not suitable for the hot and humid climate in western Jiangnan. Some injured soldiers suffered from multiple diseases and nearly a thousand people died of illness.
Even though Li Xian was anxious and angry, he could do nothing for the time being and could only let the army continue to rest and recuperate.
For him, the only "good news" was that because of Bian Jun's stay in Tanzhou City, there were signs of the spread of plague again, which made Bian Chunliang very worried.
During the confrontation between the two sides, Li Xian also heard Bian Chunliang's inflammatory manifesto and the accusations from all sides.
Li Xian was very disdainful of this. Looking through the history books, he found that poisoning in warfare was not uncommon, and massacres of cities were also everywhere. Those people talked about benevolence, righteousness, and morality, but they all had their own purposes.
But the emperor's denial made him realize that he should be cautious in this matter and should not continue to expand the impact, otherwise it would be a handle in the hands of others.
Li Xian pursed his lips. He could ignore other people's opinions, but he could not go against his aunt's expectations.
In front of my aunt, if my merits outweigh my faults, then it's easy to explain. But if my faults outweigh my merits, then it's hard to explain...
In fact, he initially just wanted to use this to deal with Bian Chunliang. After taking back Yuezhou, he would burn away the plague in Yuezhou city...but he didn't expect that Bian Chunliang would expel the infected civilians and soldiers from the city, causing those people to flee everywhere and cause trouble.
The more people who escape outside, the harder it is to control the plague, and the fewer people alive, the more controllable the trouble will be...
Li Xian turned around and asked the deputy general beside him: "Do you know where Xiao Min placed the people who were infected with the disease?"
Before this, Bian Chunliang had expelled the sick people from Yuezhou City several times, and he ordered them to be shot to death. But later, Xiao Min ignored his orders, forcibly took away some of the sick people, and resettled them together.
Xiao Min asked people to provide food and medicine, but people still died every day.
Even so, Xiao Min still sent people to look for people suffering from the epidemic and take them to resettlement places.
Thinking of this, Li Xian sneered in his heart. There are always some stupid people who do some useless things and then think they are saviors.
The deputy general replied: "I heard it is in the northernmost villages of Yuezhou."
Those villages had long been looted by Bian's army and were almost uninhabited. Xiao Min had people build simple sheds to accommodate the people suffering from the epidemic.
Li Xian raised his eyebrows and said, "General Xiao is short of manpower, send more people to help search for people."
"And spread the news appropriately, saying that the doctors sent by the court can treat the epidemic, and use this to lure out those people who are hiding, and then take them to those villages together—" Li Xian said in a slow and long voice: "Settle them well."
The deputy general understood and left.
Those common people living outside had also heard to some extent about how General Xiao had resettled the people and provided them with medicine and food. Now that they heard that the court had a way to treat them, they no longer hesitated and most of them stopped hiding and followed him to the resettlement place with hope.
In just a few days, the number of people resettled in several villages has increased from thousands to nearly ten thousand.
On this day, several soldiers spread firewood along the back of the huts where the people were housed and poured kerosene on it.
A little boy of about six or seven, with a dirty face, saw this and asked curiously, "Sir, do you want to light a fire?"
As he said this, he took two steps forward diligently: "Let me help you carry the firewood!"
See you tomorrow~
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