Dusk drew the curtain on the approaching night, and a carriage slowly drove out of the East Palace. Hua Meng and Mang Zhong sat on each side, while Xia Zhi and Xiao Xue naturally sat in the carriage with His Royal Highness the Crown Prince.
When passing by the Jiafu Gate, Li Hong looked at the Prince's Left Guard General outside and suddenly stopped the carriage.
He opened a window on one side and waved to the left guard general Quan Yi. When Quan Yi came to him, Li Hong looked around and asked, "Yi Yang hasn't looked for you recently, has he? Be careful. Although my father and mother are not here during this period, if you are too blatant, it will easily arouse other people's suspicion."
When Quan Yi heard what Li Hong said, he couldn't help but said with a sad face: "Your Highness, I didn't dare to do it, but the princess... I didn't dare to refuse. She kept threatening me with you, and I didn't want to..."
"Oh my god, can you please behave yourself? It's your good fortune and luck that the royal princess falls in love with you! What's with that expression on your face? What's wrong? Have you been wronged? What's wrong with being three years older than you? Haven't you heard that a woman three years older than you is more likely to bring wealth? Don't always look so sad. Next time you see Yi Yang, be more enthusiastic and proactive, or I'll take care of you!" Li Hong's gossipy look made Xia Zhi and Xiao Xue in the car smile secretly.
Both of them, including Quan Yi, couldn't understand whether you wanted people to be closer to Yi Yang or farther away from Yi Yang.
No one knew when it started, but after His Royal Highness the Crown Prince suddenly recalled Quan Yi from Anxi, Princess Yi Yang seemed to have fallen in love with Quan Yi. She came to see Quan Yi every day, no matter what, under the pretext of visiting His Royal Highness the Crown Prince in the East Palace, an excuse she had used no less than eight hundred times.
If Quan Yi was not at the gate of the Eastern Palace one day, Yi Yang would enter the Eastern Palace and, with a serious tone, whisper in the Crown Prince's ear, scolding him for not paying attention to his own safety.
Quan Yi helplessly looked at the warning eyes of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, but he didn't know how to express the bitterness in his heart. It was Your Royal Highness who told me to be careful and pay attention, and it was You, Your Highness who told me not to neglect the princess. Which way are you asking me to go?
...
...
Seeing the helpless Quan Yi, Li Hong stopped talking nonsense and said, "You have nothing to do these few days, so you can go to Taiyi City and see how the soldiers in the Taiyi City barracks are training. By the way, Yiyang will also go there in a few days to see the perfume workshop with Aunt Lanling."
After saying that, Li Hong gave Quan Yi a look that said "you understand", then closed the car window and drove away, leaving Quan Yi with a depressed look on his face, thinking about the Crown Prince's order.
Xiaoxue and Xiazhi never understood why His Royal Highness the Crown Prince was so determined to bring Princess Yi Yang and Quan Yi together.
Li Hong knew it very clearly. It was last year when he was talking about the war in the Western Regions with his father. Looking at the words "Quan Yi" in the memorial, Li Hong felt that they looked familiar, as if he had heard this name in another life.
After thinking about it for several days, I finally remembered that Quan Yi was the prince consort of Yi Yang who was married in history books!
So, after a long period of planning, Li Hong mobilized Quan Yi and Wang Xu, a lower-level official in Henan Province, to Chang'an.
This is the advantage of Li Hong being a ninth-generation heir. Wang Xu is the prince consort that Princess Gao An will marry in the future, so Li Hong transferred him here in advance to see what his abilities are and whether he is worthy of Gao An's marriage.
The most important thing is that Yi Yang and Gao An are now both famous invisible rich women in Chang'an City, and each of them has a fortune of millions of strings of cash.
As a result, Li Sujie is now an idiot, with a sad face every day, always saying that Li Hong favors his two sisters and completely forgets about him, his royal brother.
From a distance, he could see four horse-drawn carriages parked not far from the Yiyang Restaurant. Under each carriage stood a eunuch looking eagerly, and the four people in the carriages were waiting for Li Hong to appear before going down to greet him.
Li Hong's carriage drove slowly over. The four people, namely, Prince of Ze Li Shangjin, Prince of Xu Li Sujie, Prince of Pei Li Xian and Prince of Ying Li Zhe, hurriedly got out of the carriage, laughing as they watched Li Hong's carriage approach.
Li Zhi had only eight sons in his life. The eldest son, Li Zhong, is still in Liangzhou, living a simple life in seclusion and not caring about worldly affairs.
The second son, Li Xiao, died in Suizhou the year before last. Li Xiao's health had never been very good, so Li Hong and the others could only feel regretful about this matter.
The third prince, Li Shangjin, is twenty years old this year. He was summoned back from his fiefdom, Yizhou, some time ago. If it hadn’t rained in the past two days, he would have gone back.
The fourth prince, Li Sujie, was eighteen years old at the time. Because of his biological mother, Concubine Xiao Shufei, although his fief was in Yuanzhou, he stayed in Chang'an City most of the year.
It would be hard for the fifth brother, Li Hong, not to be in Chang'an.
The sixth brother, Prince of Pei, Li Xian, had just turned twelve years old. Every day he would play in the palace with the seventh brother, Li Zhe, who was one year younger than him, or go to play with Prince Cao.
The eighth child, Li Dan, is still a little kid, just four years old. This time when Li Zhi and Wu Mei went to the Eastern Capital, they naturally took Li Dan and the one-year-old Princess Taiping Li Lingyue with them.
Therefore, there are only these five people left in Chang'an City now, headed by Crown Prince Li Hong. Shangguan Yi and Yang Sijian are now given the title of "Tong Zhongshu Menxia Pingzhangshi". With this title, they can be prime ministers who can truly participate in discussions on state affairs.
Before Li Zhi and Wu Mei went to Chang'an, he naturally reminded them to keep an eye on the prince and not let him do whatever he wanted in Chang'an.
But Li Hong didn't listen at all. Over the years, Shangguan Yi and Yang Sijian had long been worn out by Li Hong's style of doing things, so they usually turned a blind eye. As long as there were no mistakes in the court and his behavior was not too out of line, the two of them would let the prince do what he wanted.
Li Hong got off the carriage and first looked up at the restaurant called "Yang'anlou" in Yiyang, then looked at Li Shangjin and Li Sujie on the left, and Li Xian and Li Zhe on the right, and asked: "How is it? Did Helan Minzhi go in? Did Yiyang leave room for us?"
Li Xian pointed to a carriage in the distance and said with a chuckle, "Look, that's not Duke Zhou's carriage. Someone must be inside."
Li Hong turned around and looked at the four eunuchs. Without waiting for Li Hong to speak, Li Sujie and the other four sent the four eunuchs away, asking them to find a place to find food by themselves and wait at the door for a while.
"Let's go in and take a look at what Duke Zhou is going to show off today." Li Hong rubbed his hands and took the lead to walk inside.
Xia Zhi and Xiao Xue had already asked the shopkeeper to arrange the room that Yi Yang and Gao An had reserved for Li Hong.
The group of five people, plus Li Hong's Xiazhi, Xiaoxue, Huameng and Mangzhong, a total of nine people, quietly ran into their own private rooms.
Needless to say, as for the food and wine, Yi Yang and Gao An had already told the prince what he liked and didn't like to eat. The shopkeeper here was also a eunuch in the palace, and he borrowed it from Li Hong, so he knew what to do without waiting for orders.
The youngest of the five was naturally the Ying Wang Li Zhe, who was now eleven years old. He and Li Xian were standing next to Li Hong, saying, "Fifth brother, you treated Helan so badly back then, why did the Queen Mother want to give him a higher title? A small founding county, Nan, was given the title of Duke of Zhou not long after you treated him badly and returned to Chang'an."
"What can I do? My mother has only this one nephew, and the matter of Cuiwei Palace has not been spread out. With my aunt's flattery, it will be difficult not to confer a higher title on him." Li Hong scratched the fu hat on Li Zhe's head and really wanted to take off the emerald gem on his forehead.
"Wouldn't this make him even more arrogant? Now in Chang'an City, many officials are said to be very close to him. Duke Zhou's reputation is at its peak." Li Sujie said gloomily.
Among the five people, if we talk about who hates Helan Minzhi the most, it would be Li Sujie and Li Shangjin. The illegitimate prince was nothing in Helan Minzhi's eyes back then, and he could only obediently allow Helan Minzhi to bully and ridicule him.
Even Li Xian and Li Zhe were often bullied by Helan Minzhi, but they were helpless. Although Helan Minzhi was hateful, he was not useless in the eyes of his father and mother.
Helan Minzhi was talented, smart, and well-read. He had quite high attainments in both calligraphy and poetry. In the Hongwenguan, he also gathered some people to compile the big book "Spring and Autumn of Thirty Kingdoms", which is still occasionally published by the Imperial College.
In addition, he had been trying hard to please his father and mother in the past two years, so Li Hong couldn't do anything to him for a while, and the two of them rarely met in recent years.
Basically, Helan Minzhi would avoid Li Hong whenever possible, and if he couldn't avoid him, he would just stay there with his neck shrunk. Unless Li Zhi and Wu Mei ordered him to do so, he wouldn't dare to say a word in front of Li Hong.
But as long as Li Hong was not around, Helan Minzhi would drop her obedient appearance in front of Li Zhi and Wu Mei, and immediately become vicious and fierce.
There were several unmarried girls from families in Chang'an City who were all defiled by him and then left. He even ran to the girls' homes and entered the girls' boudoirs in front of their parents!
But every time this happened, Helan Minzhi would use his eloquence, elegant appearance, and his knowledge and erudition to persuade the young ladies he had defiled to give up on reporting to the authorities. With the protection of his mother, Helan Minzhi naturally remained at large!
Helan Minzhi never promised to give status to the women he defiled. He deceived them with sweet words for a month, but after the scandal died down, Helan Minzhi got tired of it and left.
At this time, a clumsy Chinese voice came from the next room: "Duke Zhou, I hope you can convince the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty to send troops for my father. As long as my father can regain the throne, you will definitely benefit from it."
"Haha, this is easy. Ask everyone here, when have I, Duke Zhou, ever cheated anyone? But... this time you came in a hurry, so I reluctantly accepted the few Korean women you sent me as maids, to warm my bed occasionally. **** still has a bright future, haha." Helan Minzhi's triumphant laughter came faintly from the other side.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
