Chapter 309 The Crown Prince’s Incest Scandal Exposed!

Five days later, the whole Kyoto seemed to be detonated by an invisible force, and everyone was excited!

Unlike the officials, this matter has spread widely among the common people and everyone knows it!
The murder that happened in the Supervisory Council a few days ago at night did not cause any ripples, because a bigger matter was exposed - the crown prince of the current dynasty was lacking in moral character and private ethics, and he actually committed adultery with the eldest princess of the current dynasty!

Such a scandal is truly unheard of!

As the people were excited, endless anger followed!
How could such a person become the crown prince of a country? And would he be the monarch in the future? How could this be possible!
The people of Qing were proud at first. Although they were often called barbarians by Northern Qi, many people joined the army because of the popularity of Wufeng, and no one in the surrounding countries dared to provoke them!
They should be thankful if I don't beat them up!
But what about now?
If this news gets to the ears of people in other countries, we will really be unable to hold our heads up.
The cause of the incident has to start with a maid in the palace:
This maid was a servant of the Eastern Palace, but she died a few days ago. The death of a palace maid is not a rare thing. If the master is suddenly in a bad mood, he may kill a servant at any time.

It is even faster and more efficient than the trial by three courts.

However, this incident happened in the East Palace, which made the suspicious Emperor Qing feel that something was wrong.

Whether it was because the prince had always prided himself on being magnanimous and kind, and there had been no cases of abuse of servants in recent years, or because he had previously strictly ordered the other party to cultivate his character in the East Palace and not cause trouble, such a thing should not have happened during the period when Fan Xian was attacked when he returned to the capital.

This will undoubtedly greatly change Emperor Qing's perception of the Crown Prince and lead him to make other choices.

But this time, not only did someone die, but a jade pendant was also involved.

It was not uncommon for maids and eunuchs to steal and sell valuable items in the palace. Even if Emperor Qing knew about it, he would not care. Someone would make these servants disappear quietly. But this jade was not ordinary, because it was given by the previous emperor to the current queen as an engagement gift for Emperor Qing and her. This matter was not trivial anyway.

The jade beads in the Queen's storeroom could have been piled up to build another East Palace, so losing one or two pieces was not a big deal. But the loss of this jade bead made the Queen furious, so she beat the maid who stole the jade bead to death and announced to the public that she committed suicide out of fear of punishment. After all, killing someone is a small matter, but the collapse of the image of the mother of a country is a big matter.

Emperor Qing found it reasonable to find out the whole story, but the process of investigating the matter was very unreasonable!
When he sent the eunuch in charge to investigate the matter, he discovered two different angles and a suspicious point.

The first was that on the night of the incident, the palace maid had just delivered the cloth shipped from Jiangnan as a reward from the Queen to the Guangxin Palace; and the second was that the Prince was also in the Guangxin Palace that night.

Then the next day, strange things happened one after another. When the eunuch who was most trusted by Emperor Qing investigated the Imperial Hospital, he found that a doctor had died in the hospital. This doctor had previously treated the prince's syphilis, so Emperor Qing naturally knew about this thing that the prince thought he had hidden very well.

When he investigated the clan house, he found that a royal relative had died in the house. This royal relative had a close relationship with the prince and had also given the prince a prescription of unknown effectiveness.

Everything was related to medicine and the prince's illness, so the eunuch found the medicine shop. A fire broke out in the medicine shop called Huichuntang and it was burned down. The eunuch only found a relatively intact pill in the ruins.
The biggest doubt is that this palace maid came from the East Palace and was given to the prince by the queen. She had been with him for a long time.

How could such a person not know the importance and relevance of this jade ring? Even if he wanted to steal treasures from the palace, why would he steal this one when there are so many jade rings to choose from?
When this pill came into the hands of Emperor Qing, how could Emperor Qing, as a master of the time, not be proficient in pharmacology? He knew it was aphrodisiac and kidney-tonifying medicine after just a sniff.

So, when Emperor Qing collected all this information: the prince had recovered from syphilis, taken aphrodisiacs, and appeared in Guangxin Palace
In the end, Emperor Qing came to a conclusion that made him look uneasy: the prince had an affair with Li Yunrui!

Afterwards, he launched a massive purge of the people in the Eastern Palace and Guangxin Palace, killing all the palace maids and eunuchs. Even the eunuch who was investigating for Emperor Qing was not spared. He took sick leave the next day and disappeared.

Emperor Qing wanted to conceal the news, but why did it become known to the whole city in just five days?

Even the matter of Fan Xian sending the Supervisory Council to kill officials was suppressed?

Of course, Li Ang of the Northern Qi Dynasty played a role in this!
Hong Zhu survived. He was not only Fan Xian's man, but also Li An's man. Otherwise, Li An would not have been able to cooperate so quickly in launching a public opinion offensive. The true story of this incident was actually like this:
Fan Xian learned about the affair between Crown Prince Li Chengqian and Princess Li Yunrui through Fei Jie of the Supervisory Office and the office's secret investigation. Before going to the south of the Yangtze River, he developed a spy named Hong Zhu, intending to hide his weapon and wait for the right time to act. He planned to let Emperor Qing or the Queen Mother discover the scandal in the palace in person and thus defeat the Crown Prince.

The President of the Supervisory Yuan, Chen Pingping, had long known about the affair between Crown Prince Li Chengqian and Princess Li Yunrui.

Chen Pingping asked Fei Jie, the master of poison, to cure Crown Prince Li Chengqian's syphilis, and sold a yang-nourishing prescription to Huichuntang through Fei Jie's apprentice. Huichuntang made pills based on this prescription.

What happened afterwards was a natural progression. Not only did Chen Pingping not stop the scandal between the two, he also added fuel to the fire.

He only knew that Hong Zhu was Emperor Qing's confidant, but he didn't know that Hong Zhu was Fan Xian's man.

Hong Zhu was also good at observing people's words and expressions. He placed the jade ring in the room of the palace maids who delivered the embroidered cloth to Guangxin Palace. When the East Palace sent the embroidered cloth to Guangxin Palace, it happened that Crown Prince Li Chengqian was also in Guangxin Palace. Then he subtly reminded the Queen of the jade ring.

Sure enough, the queen suddenly had a whim that day and asked her servants to fetch the jade ring, wanting to recall the past.
Chen Pingping's plan and Fan Xian's precautions were both aimed at bringing down the prince. The two of them coincided with each other and pretended to be unaware but cooperated tacitly for the same goal.

At the same time, no matter how much Emperor Qing wanted to cover up the news, Li An paid the price of sacrificing some of his people who had infiltrated Kyoto, and the news became a hot topic!
News is like a flame. It only needs a hint and then it will be spread by word of mouth among the people. Li An does not need to invest much manpower and material resources. Moreover, Li An later realized that Chen Pingping was behind the scenes fanning the flames.

Over the past few days, countless people died throughout Kyoto.

All the people became panic-stricken.

The Supervisory Council and the Kyoto Garrison Army also frequently appeared on the streets. They received orders and began a major cleanup of the people of Princess Li Yunrui!

The eldest princess Li Yunrui was also banished by Emperor Qing to the royal villa in West City and was imprisoned under the supervision of the Supervisory Council.

The prince was confined to the clan house, awaiting the punishment that would come later!

in the palace.

"Li An?" Emperor Qing smiled coldly, "That's a good move!"

"Have you found any trace of Hong Zhu?"

"The subordinates are incompetent."

"It's not that you are incompetent, but someone is protecting the other party." The words Overwatch Council and Fan Xian flashed through Emperor Qing's mind.

Then, the entire hall fell into silence again.

(End of this chapter)