The guards in the archives verified his identity, but after seeing the gold medal in his hand, they all became respectful and dared not make things difficult for him. You must know that the gold medal embroidered envoy is second only to the Grand Commander in the Embroidered Pavilion.
Some people even tried to curry favor by helping him find information, but Zu'an dismissed them all with excuses.
A man came to the archives room. Fearing that someone would discover any clues later, he deliberately looked through all kinds of files, interspersing them with what he wanted to find.
He stayed inside for two hours and finally found some information.
What he wanted to find out was information about the previous dynasty, and he even wanted to know some details about the change of dynasties.
After some investigation, he discovered that the previous dynasty was named Meng, and its founding emperor was a great ruler with outstanding sons.
Unfortunately, for the emperor, having too many outstanding princes is not necessarily a good thing, because once they are outstanding, they will be unwilling to be inferior to others, and everyone will want to compete for the position of crown prince.
In the end, the crown prince won, but the struggle for the throne left him with psychological trauma. He was always wary of his brothers, and subjected them to various forms of power reduction and surveillance, which led to the deaths of several brothers in depression.
Unfortunately, his lineage suffered from a genetic problem or something else, as his descendants all died young and did not reign for long. This led to power gradually concentrating in the hands of a powerful minister, who became the founding emperor of this dynasty.
As expected, the last emperor of the Meng Dynasty, knowing that the situation was irreversible, wisely abdicated the throne to Emperor Taizu.
"Abdication..." Zu'an sneered inwardly. This kind of drama had appeared far too many times in history, and almost none of them were done willingly.
He really wanted to find out some specific information about the abdication back then, but unfortunately there was no record at all. Even the abdication itself was only mentioned briefly in a few archives.
However, he still found a relevant one: after the last emperor of the Meng Dynasty abdicated, he was enfeoffed as the King of Linzhang, with a fief of ten thousand households. His palace was located in Gaoyang City of Linzhang Prefecture. He was given the right to use the emperor's banners, to have five auxiliary carriages for the seasons, to follow the Meng Dynasty's calendar, and to follow the Meng Dynasty's system of sacrificial rites and music for the suburbs and sacrifices to heaven and earth. He was also given the privilege of not addressing his subjects as a subject when submitting a memorial to the emperor and not bowing when receiving imperial edicts.
These were clearly tactics used by Emperor Taizu of Zhou to win over the people after usurping the throne. However, it must be said that they were very effective. Although there were criticisms of their usurpation from both inside and outside the court, they were still praised for their good treatment of the former imperial family.
Therefore, this record was not forgotten, after all, it was used to sing praises.
Zu'an also noticed that the last emperor of the Meng Kingdom, who later became the Prince of Linzhang, had few offspring, and it seemed that his children died at a very young age.
He wanted to find more information, but after searching the entire archives, he couldn't find anything useful.
As for the most secret room, Zu An couldn't get in. For the time being, he didn't want to alert Zhu Xie Chixin, since the other party was the emperor's loyal dog. If he went there to check without a reason, it would definitely arouse the emperor's suspicion, which would be troublesome.
After putting all the files back, his mind raced. He had discovered a hidden ailment in his body when he first transmigrated, and learned from Old Man Mi that it had been sealed away by an extremely insidious method when he was very young.
At the time, Old Man Mi was a little puzzled. Such vicious methods were usually found in the palace, since the concubines in the harem would stop at nothing to win the emperor's favor.
The idea that a mother's status depends on her son is a universally acknowledged truth in the imperial harem. Everyone wanted to give birth to a prince, but at the same time, they didn't want to see other concubines give birth to princes and compete with them.
As a result, everyone resorted to various means, such as poisoning or deliberately frightening the other party to cause a miscarriage. Tragic incidents of swallows pecking at imperial grandsons occurred frequently in the imperial courts throughout history.
The royal family naturally forbids such behavior, and the punishment is very severe if discovered.
But these are all human nature. There are always countermeasures to policies. Later, the imperial harem gradually figured out some new methods, which were methods that did not show any damage in the short term, but whose harm would only become apparent later.
One example is the restriction imposed on the original owner of this body.
Zuan finally realized that he had been wondering why others could just cripple him if they could place a restriction on him. Wouldn't that have been simpler and more convenient?
Looking back now, it wasn't that I didn't want to, but that I couldn't. If I were to directly cripple it, the symptoms would be too obvious and wouldn't be able to hide it from others. So I had to use some insidious sealing methods.
Another question that puzzled him was why the Grand Master of Ceremonies had helped him in the first place. He was deeply embroiled in a scandal with the Crown Princess, which even alarmed the reclusive Grand Master of Ceremonies, who had to come forward to determine whether he was lying.
He was quite nervous at the time, after all, the reputation of the chief priest was too great, and he was worried that his skills might not be able to hide them from the other party.
Before he could even use his skill, the other party immediately determined that what he said was true.
The others naturally believed it without a doubt, but Zuan knew very well that the other party had deliberately helped him.
But he didn't understand why the other person would help him, after all, they were two people who had absolutely no connection.
At first, I thought the other party was deliberately trying to trip up the emperor, but this guess was not very convincing until today when I heard Xie Daoyun mention in the academy that the Grand Master of Ceremonies had some connections with the royal family of the previous dynasty.
Not many people in the capital knew this. For some reason, everyone seemed to have forgotten this history. Xie Daoyun only learned about it by chance because her teacher was the chief disciple of the Grand Master of Ceremonies. However, she did not know the specific relationship between the Grand Master of Ceremonies and the royal family of the previous dynasty.
Zu An's mind raced, and suddenly a thought popped into his head: Could I be a prince from the previous dynasty?
Having watched so many TV dramas in his previous life, he was used to similar plot developments. He even imagined many details: for example, after the previous emperor abdicated, the Zhou Dynasty's founding emperor appeared magnanimous but was actually not at ease. So he arranged for someone to secretly tamper with the previous emperor's offspring, ultimately causing them to die out.
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