"What do "Water Margin" and "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons" have to do with me?" Zhao Jiu said confidently. "It's just a short story I wrote casually. Minister Hu is knowledgeable. Why not take a look?"
Hu Yin suppressed an impulse and frowned as he read it carefully. However, after reading it for a while, he didn't know where to start complaining. Only when he read to the end did he finally sigh and roughly understood what Emperor Zhao meant.
It turns out that this short story is called "Jade Guanyin", which is a type of novel that has become popular recently. It is said that it follows the Tang Dynasty legends on top, and imitates the vernacular language of "Water Margin" and "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons" that a certain official refused to recognize, while in reality it echoes the increasingly prosperous and complex variety show performances.
Nowadays, students in Tokyo city like to write this kind of book and exchange it for pocket money with monks and Taoists.
The plot is also very simple.
She was nothing more than a little girl from a family of framers. She was born smart and beautiful, but because her family was poor, she was sold to a prince in Chang'an as a maid a long time ago.
This is a standard popular start.
But who would have thought that the official would actually come up with a counter-routine, and then wrote that the prince was vulgar and arrogant, and wanted to grant the marriage just because the girl's family did things properly and cleanly, and there happened to be a jade craftsman in the palace who was good at craftsmanship and honest. Who would have thought that the girl's family was born stubborn and wanted to have a good marriage, but because she didn't know the jade craftsman's character at the beginning, and the leader of the prince's personal army took a fancy to the girl's family, he interfered and slandered the jade craftsman, so the girl's family was unwilling to marry, and the prince simply gave up the matter and was too lazy to ask.
However, as they got along better and better, the girl's family discovered that the jade craftsman not only had real skills, but also had a good temperament, good looks, and was an honest man. He was exactly the kind of good marriage they were looking for. So they finally came back to each other, and fell in love with each other. The jade craftsman also used the leftover jade materials to make a jade Guanyin as a token of their love, and prepared to elope.
As a result, the matter was discovered by the chief of the palace's personal army, who became jealous and reported it directly to the prince.
When the prince heard that his arranged marriage was rejected, the two of them actually fell in love again and prepared to elope. The prince thought he had been humiliated and flew into a rage. He arrested the jade craftsman on the spot, first sent him into exile, then beat the girl to death with a stick and buried her in the harem of the Chang'an Palace.
However, several years had passed since they last met, and the prince had grown older and his temper had cooled. He began to repent of what had happened, and ordered his troops to find the jade craftsman and make some compensation. However, the troops followed the official documents and were surprised to find the young girl and the jade craftsman in a small town by the Yellow River. They found that the two had actually gotten married and had opened a shop in the town.
The soldiers were panicked and reported to the prince. The prince thought it was a ghost and went to see for himself. It was indeed the case, but he did not dare to go forward. He returned to the palace in a daze and had people dig up the place where the little girl was buried that day. As expected, there was no body, only a broken jade Guanyin.
To be fair, the plot of this story is pretty good, and it is one of the best popular novels on the market, especially the contrast between the four characters, which is very vivid... The little girl is stubborn and beautiful; the jade craftsman is honest and dutiful; the leader of the personal soldiers is talkative and narrow-minded; the prince has a fiery temper and regards human life and marriage as worthless.
But these were not the reasons why Minister Hu lost his voice. To put it bluntly, Minister Hu had seen a lot of things. What was this? In order to stabilize the people's hearts in the rear, he had made a great effort to fight the Northern Expedition. He even broke up the marriages of the sons of Prime Minister Zhao and forced them to be matchmakers... What really made Hu Yin speechless was that this prince was originally named Prince of Yan'an in Chang'an, and later when he repented, he was promoted to Prince of Qin for his military merits.
Taking into account Han Liangchen's usual strong and rude style towards his subordinates, as well as his previous experience of being a vicious person, one can almost say that this prince is Han Shizhong.
"The emperor has good intentions." After a while, Hu Yin, who thought that this was really done by Han Shizhong in Chang'an, sighed. "This is because he is worried that the King of Qin will not be able to survive in the future..."
"Isn't this what Minister Hu reminded me of?" Zhao Jiu said indifferently. "I have thought about it. If I want to write, I will write a series, one for each of the eighteen princes, and write according to their personalities... Han Shizhong is hot-tempered and strong, Zhang Jun is greedy for money, Zhang Rong indulges his old brother... Yang Yizhong has them all, but he attaches too much importance to the reputation of his family... In the end, they all end up with a good intention but a bad deed. Just a thought, a negligence, a personality exposure, and they almost destroy the families of the common people and create a tragedy."
"Since ancient times, the powerful have done evil because of this. The government wants to warn its officials, so of course it's fine." Hu Yin looked at Yang Yizhong, who looked confused and terrified, and asked seriously. "But what about Yue Fei? Did Yue Fei do this kind of thing?"
"Being too harsh on family members and younger generations, resulting in a tragic human relationship?" Zhao Jiu, who was sitting behind the desk, was thoughtful. "It can't be that all the other seventeen people wrote it, but he didn't, right? Wouldn't it make me, the writer, a little unfair? And if they ask about it privately, it won't be good if he doesn't write it."
"That's true." Hu Yin wanted to refute, how could he make something out of nothing, but when he heard that it seemed to be sent privately, he thought about Yue Yun's face, and then he realized that the emperor was worried about his son-in-law, but he still shook his head. "Your Majesty, from the heart, I still agree with this idea, but I don't agree with this method. Besides, after a great victory, is it not appropriate to write these now? So that someone who receives this will have some misunderstandings? Did someone fight for credit during the enthronement?"
"That's not the case." Zhao Jiu shook his head. "I just think that it's ridiculous for me to endure this kind of situation like I did in the past ten years... For the sake of the monarch and his subjects, it's better to be the bad guy and say the dirty words first... Besides, I want to send it to them privately after all."
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