Chapter 242 Extras
Qi Mingxu Extras (Part 1)
On the day he was named Duke of Zhenbei for his military exploits, Qi Mingxu took his three brothers to drink all night.
The three brothers had been serving as officials in the capital for many years, so naturally they could not match his drinking capacity. They all fell down after drinking before the third round of drinking.
Looking at the three people staggering, Qi Mingxu shook his head helplessly and asked the servants to come in and help them back to the house to rest - his Duke of Zhenbei Mansion had reserved rooms for the three brothers, so that they could stay overnight. As for
him, he went to the rooftop to drink for a while.
Carrying the wine pot, Qi Mingxu climbed to the rooftop by stepping on the trees in the yard, and continued to drink in the night breeze. The past suddenly came to his mind.
His family suffered a great change, his parents passed away one after another. He came to the capital with a heart full of hatred and pain, wanting to assassinate Ji Yushan to avenge his parents and clansmen.
The result of the assassination was not unexpected to him. He had made the move with the intention of destroying both himself and his family.
What really surprised him was that he was saved by a young man during the assassination.
The young man's mind was easy to understand. He just wanted to recruit him and his brothers.
But no one could refuse that kind of recruitment - especially for them who had nowhere to go at the time.
Everything that happened afterwards was like a dream.
He joked that the person he admired most was General Guo Ziyi of the Tang Dynasty, and then he really took a similar path to Guo Ziyi under the arrangement of the young man.
- "You will always have a place by my side. Today, so will it be tomorrow."
- "I hope Brother Qi has the military ability of General Yao, but I hope Brother Qi will be like Guo Ziyi."
- "I want to be the leader of the revival, and Brother Qi is my famous general of the revival."
From the second-rank cavalry general to the first-rank general.
From the Marquis of Zhenbei to the Duke of Zhenbei.
This road to becoming a famous general, he walked more smoothly than General Yao and Guo Ziyi.
Maybe he recalled too much, or maybe he drank too much. When Qi Mingxu climbed down from the roof and went back to his room to sleep, he had a long and strange dream.
This dream was so long that he seemed to have experienced his entire life in it.
The first half of his life in the dream completely overlapped with reality.
The bifurcation point was when he went to Beijing to assassinate Ji Yushan.
This time, there was no young man named Nan Liujing in his world, and he was not rescued by Nan Liujing. Instead, he was captured by Ji Yushan's men and imprisoned in the Tianlao.
In the Tianlao, he was severely tortured. In order to make merit, those yamen runners kept whipping him and wanted to force him to tell the whereabouts of other accomplices.
Many times, Qi Mingxu thought he was going to die in there.
He was in a daze in the Tianlao, and had no idea how time had changed, nor what was happening in the outside world.
Until one day, even though he was in the Tianlao, he heard the shouting and noise from the outside world.
The outside world was in chaos, and no one cared about these death row prisoners imprisoned in the Tianlao. No one knew which force broke into the prison to rescue people, and they were kind enough to open the doors of other cells. Qi Mingxu followed the group and escaped from the prison and the capital. It was
a long time later that Qi Mingxu learned that a coup had broken out in the palace that day -
Ji Yushan and Ji Guifei colluded from inside and outside, led troops into the palace, and wanted to support the Sixth Prince to take the throne and force Emperor Yongqing to abdicate.
Even a tiger will not eat its own cubs, but Emperor Yongqing was already crazy and didn't care whether there would be a flood after his death. He hated the Ji family so much that he ordered people to assassinate the Sixth Prince, and before he died, he ruined Ji Yushan's wishful thinking.
After the palace coup, the court quarreled several times, and various forces played against each other. Finally, the third prince who grew up in the cold palace was pushed to the front.
It was not until the coronation ceremony was approaching that an official remembered that the third prince had no name and had not even been recorded in the royal family tree, so Ji Yushan casually gave the third prince the name "Nanli".
Everyone knew that this emperor named Nanli was just a puppet of Ji Yushan to control the government.
Things were just as everyone expected. No matter how excessive Ji Yushan's request was, the young emperor would not object.
Later, Qi Mingxu changed his appearance, wandered around, and returned to Jinling.
When he met his three brothers again, they all cried bitterly for each other's desolation.
It turned out that during the time when he was imprisoned in the prison, the three brothers had been hiding in the Ganxiao Temple outside the city waiting for him, and they had always been trying to rescue him.
Unfortunately, their rescue was unsuccessful, and the fourth brother Qi Si was seriously injured and wandered around the gates of hell for a long time before being rescued.
Even so, Qi Si and his brothers were unwilling to give up.
But a penny can make a good man fall. Even if Qi Si and his brothers did not need to pay for accommodation in the Ganxiao Temple, they still had to spend money on their meals and Qi Si's medical treatment.
So after hearing that all the fugitives in the prison had escaped, Qi Si and his brothers also returned to Jinling.
After arriving in Jinling, Qi Si and his friends finally found out what happened during their absence.
Li Guanqi's father lost his accounting job, and the family lost their source of income, so food and drink became a problem.
Jiang Ding's mother caught a cold, but because she had no money to see a doctor and could not contact Jiang Ding, she died at home for several days before being discovered by neighbors.
This incident not only became a lifelong regret for Jiang Ding, but also a lifelong guilt for Qi Mingxu.
If it wasn't for revenge for him, how could his brothers have experienced such a thing?
Later, a flood broke out in the south, and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. Qi Mingxu stood up from the refugees and gradually formed an uprising army.
As the scale of the uprising army grew, Qi Mingxu raised the banner of "cleansing the emperor and punishing the traitors" and used the ten thousand words written by Qu Jianbai before his death as a manifesto to attack Ji Yushan.
Daye's luck had already run out, and countless people surrendered wherever the army passed.
That was when Qi Mingxu was most vigorous.
However, at that time, something happened that made him very sad.
His fourth brother Qi Si died of illness during the march.
Later, Qi Mingxu fought outside the city of Kyoto.
After all, the capital is the capital. It is not easy to take it. In addition, the soldiers under Qi Mingxu were already exhausted after marching all the way, so Qi Mingxu ordered the entire army to temporarily station outside the city to rest, and at the same time try to force the people in the capital to open the city gates and surrender.
After arranging everything, Qi Mingxu simply washed up and went to sleep in the tent.
In the middle of the night, he was awakened by a loud noise, and then his third brother Jiang Ding opened the tent and walked in.
"Brother, a guard named Liang Guangyu appeared outside the military camp. He said he came to see you on the order of the emperor."
Qi Mingxu frowned. It was actually on the order of the emperor instead of Ji Yushan?
Finally, Qi Mingxu nodded: "Okay, let him in. I want to see what kind of medicine the young emperor is selling."
After a while, candles were lit in the tent.
Qi Mingxu sat at the top and watched a middle-aged man with a sad face walk into the tent holding a wooden box.
At Li Guanqi's signal, Liang Guangyu stopped at a safe distance.
"The emperor ordered you to come to see me. What's the important matter?" Qi Mingxu asked.
Liang Guangyu slowly pulled up the wooden box in his hand and raised it above his head: "The emperor ordered me to come and present a head to the leader of the rebel army."
Qi Mingxu asked with interest: "Whose head is this?"
"The current Taifu, Ji Yushan." When
these words came out, everyone was shocked.
Liang Guangyu took Ji Yushan's head out of the box, put it on the table, and asked Qi Mingxu and others to check it.
Someone who knew Ji Yushan came forward and checked it back and forth for a long time. Even though it was hard to believe, he still gave his own conclusion: This is indeed Ji Yushan's head, and Liang Guangyu did not take someone else's head to impersonate.
Qi Mingxu was shocked, thinking of Liang Guangyu's background, and asked: "Who killed Ji Yushan?"
Liang Guangyu said in a sonorous voice: "Such a person who harms the country and the people must be killed by your majesty himself."
Qi Mingxu lowered his eyes slightly, thinking that he guessed the purpose of Liang Guangyu's visit.
The slogan of his rebel army was "Kill the traitors and purge the emperor". Now that Ji Yushan is dead, could it be that the young emperor wanted to use Ji Yushan's head to persuade him to surrender?
Not to mention Qi Mingxu, even Li Guanqi, Jiang Ding and others thought so.
But Liang Guangyu's next words completely overturned their guesses.
"Your Majesty has heard that the leader of the rebel army is a man of great talent, and wherever the army passes, the people are not harmed. So your majesty ordered me to bring Ji Yushan's head to surrender and open the city gate to welcome the rebel army into the city."
Qi Mingxu stood up from his chair suddenly, looking at Liang Guangyu in surprise and doubt, not daring to believe that this was true.
His army had just arrived outside Kyoto and had not yet begun to attack Kyoto; he had not racked his brains to persuade the high-ranking officials in the capital to surrender, nor had he promised any benefits, and then...
someone cut off Ji Yushan's head? Someone
opened the city gate and surrendered?
That person was the puppet emperor who was considered cowardly and incompetent by the world! ?
How could Qi Mingxu dare to believe this?
At this time, another subordinate opened the tent and told Qi Mingxu and others that a raging fire had started in the direction of the palace, and the flames were very obvious in the dark night.
Qi Mingxu looked at Liang Guangyu suddenly, but saw Liang Guangyu with tears streaming down his face, lying on the ground for a long time without saying a word.
"That fire..."
Qi Mingxu said four words and couldn't say anything anymore.
Liang Guangyu choked up and said, "Your Majesty said that he didn't want the soldiers to make unnecessary sacrifices, nor did he need his ministers to commit suicide to preserve their integrity. He arranged a way out for the people, soldiers, and ministers, but chose a way to die for himself. If I'm not mistaken, the fire was set by your majesty."
The fire that started in the Zhaixing Palace burned for three days and three nights.
Because the area around the Zhaixing Palace was too desolate, and there were no other buildings nearby except this palace, the fire did not affect other parts of the palace at all, but only burned down this newly built palace.
Even in death, he chose a restrained way and did not cause greater losses.
Three days later, Qi Mingxu officially entered the palace.
Then, Liang Guangyu asked to see him again and handed a long-prepared imperial edict to Qi Mingxu.
"What is this?" Qi Mingxu asked.
"Your Majesty... No, it was the late emperor who told me before his death that if the rebels could really do nothing to the people in the city after entering the city, I would give this imperial edict to General Qi as your coronation gift."
Qi Mingxu slowly unfolded the imperial edict. When he saw the handwriting in the imperial edict that was uglier than his own, he tried to laugh, but after reading the words on the imperial edict, he fell into a long shock and silence.
"...This great gift is really too heavy."
After a long time, Qi Mingxu closed the imperial edict. His hands, which could lift a hundred-jin boulder, were almost unable to hold this light imperial edict.
"...I have never met him before. Why did he give me this gift?"
Liang Guangyu said, "Because the late emperor knew that General Qi could realize his ambitions that could no longer be realized. So he was willing to clear some obstacles for General Qi in advance."
Qi Mingxu was silent again.
Later, Qi Mingxu ordered people to collect the remains of this young king who died young and buried this young man, whom he had never met but could be regarded as his lifelong confidant, in the Daye Imperial Mausoleum.
On the day of the boy's burial, Qi Mingxu asked Liang Guangyu if he was willing to stay by his side and work: "If you are willing, you can continue to stay in the Imperial Guard as the deputy commander."
But Liang Guangyu smiled and declined: "From the reign of Emperor Yongqing to the reign of the previous emperor, I am a little tired and don't want to stay in this deep palace anymore."
Qi Mingxu felt a little regretful, but did not force it.