Chapter 217: The marriage incident

At the end of the song, people dispersed. Li Qing helped Li Jingyan onto the carriage. The coachman picked up a whip flower. The whip exploded in the air. The carriage started and rushed towards the place quickly.

"Li Lang, I escaped!" Li Jingyan suddenly covered her face, and tears flowed out from her fingers.

"Don't cry! Don't cry!"

Li Qing was suddenly panicked and hugged her tightly, "Tell me quickly, what happened?"

The hard work and fear along the way finally gave Li Jingyan the safest protection. She turned around and threw herself into her lover's arms, hugged his waist desperately, and couldn't help crying loudly.

Li Qing stroked her thin shoulders and turned around to look out the window. He saw Wu Xingsu, who was escorting Li Jingyan to Yangzhou, looking at him, suddenly sighed and shook his head helplessly.

Wu Xingsu has returned, so I guess Nanzhao must have been in vain. Li Qing has no time to take care of Nanzhao now. Since Li Jingyan escaped from Chang'an, something big must have happened.

He was even more confused and did not urge Li Jingyan, just waiting for her to vent her heart. After half a day, Li Jingyan calmed down slightly, but she still refused to leave Li Qing's arms, snuggled up to him, and sobbed: "Do you know? The day after you left, the Tubo envoy asked the emperor for their new Zanpu, and King Qing immediately wrote a letter to the emperor, proposing to marry me and Tubo."

"What!"

Two terrifying lights shot out from Li Qing's eyes, and he said word by word: "Do they want you to have sex with Tubo?"

"Yes! The emperor immediately summoned my father to the palace to discuss this matter. My father refused and said that I had already had a engagement with you."

"What about Li Linfu? Did he show any of his performance?"

Li Jingyan shook her head, "He didn't move."

"What then?" Li Qing asked again with a blue face.

"Then I heard that King Yong and Yang Guozhong entered the palace one after another. Seeing that the situation was not good, my father discussed with Sister Lian'er and decided to let me escape overnight and come to Yangzhou to find you."

She hugged Li Qing's neck and couldn't help crying, "Li Lang, what should I do? I don't want to go to Tubo!"

At this moment, Li Jingyan was extremely weak and helpless, as if the tender buds had just spit out from the willow branches.

Li Qing hugged Jingyan tightly and decisively: "You don't have to think about this matter. Since we have already had a marriage contract, I will solve this matter."

Li Qing took a long breath and forced himself to calm down first. He had heard some clues from Li Jingyan's words. This was by no means a coincidence. The Tubo envoy had been in the capital for more than two months. He left for himself and proposed to the back, and then King Qing wrote a letter. This was definitely a conspiracy, and he wanted to disrupt his plan in Yangzhou.

‘And Yang Guozhong!’ Li Qing sneered coldly, and unexpectedly he actually colluded with King Qing.

Li Qing quickly thought about various possible results in his mind. Logically, since Li Longji knew about himself and Jingyan, he could not ignore the implementation of the new salt law, nor did he not consider his own feelings. In the face of personal interests, he should not agree, at least he would not immediately apply Jingyan to marry him.

Since that's the case, the most urgent task now is to make some achievements and exchange money for Li Longji's silence.

The sudden marriage incident led Li Qing to decide to give up his original plan to implement the salt law using flexible means.

He lowered his head and kissed Jingyan's cheek, "You have a good rest. With me, I will protect you, and you don't have to be afraid of anything."

The next morning, Li Qing immediately found Di Wuqi. Yesterday, dozens of them were sorting out their account books for the whole night, so they should have some clues.

"Mr., come quickly, I'll show you something." Despite the hard work of the night, Di Wuqi was still energetic and without any fatigue.

Li Qing and he entered the room and saw that the whole room was full of books, placed in dozens of areas. It seemed that they were distinguished by year.

"These account books only started in the second year of Kaiyuan, and there were no ones before."

Wuqi walked to a corner where more than a dozen books were placed. He picked up one casually, turned to a page with a corner, pointed to one of the lines and smiled: "Look at this place, what clues can you find?"

Li Qing looked closely and suddenly found that some of the ink marks were unique and obviously new, "This is just changed!" Li Qing blurted out.

"Yes!" Di Wuqi smiled proudly and said, "Look at the seven characters, it is obviously added with the word "one". In this way, the inventory will be uneven, with 60,000 stones missing. We first discovered that the inventory was uneven before we traced it back. The other dozen books are the same. As far as the accounts we have found now, we found that there were 550,000 stones of salt missing."

"Yes, you are indeed experts in accounting checking."

Li Qing patted his shoulder and comforted him with a smile: "Thank you for your hard work!"

He looked through other accounts, and there were indeed fresh traces of alteration, and some of them were still in the fragrance of ink.

“Which time period are these books?”

"There were mainly concentrated in the ten years from the 23rd year of Kaiyuan to the 4th year of Tianbao. There were some before, but the amount was not large, only a few thousand stones."

Li Qing sneered coldly. If there was no share of King Qing in this large-scale concentrated salt stolen, he would not believe it even if he was beaten to death. Since he already had the handle, he could take action.

He walked around the room with his hands behind his back, and suddenly turned around and said to Di Wuqi: "I am now officially appointing you as the Jianghuai Salt Iron Branch and the Judge of Yangzhou's Grain Transportation. You should do three things now. First, arrest the official in charge of the salt administration first, and then release the wind of finding false accounts. Second, I will send troops to cooperate with you to seize all the officials of Yangzhou's government salt warehouses, salt fields and account books. Third, I will post notices in Jianghuai prefectures, which are limited to three days locally and five days outside the country. All private salt fields, salt warehouses, and salt merchants will come to me to file. Those who fail to come within the deadline will be punished for selling private salt!"

The murderous aura emitted by Li Qing made Di Wuqi shudder involuntarily. He took one by one and turned around and rushed to handle it. Li Qing thought for a while, then called Liu Yan and said to him: "You should first drive away all the people in the mansion who do things in the mansion, then buy some servants to replace it, and then hang out the sign of the Tang Dynasty's Salt and Iron Envoy, and use this mansion as the official office. I will appoint you as the master of the salt and Iron Envoy, responsible for all the book management and daily internal affairs in the official office."

Afterwards, Li Qing found several backbones, appointed officials, and allocated all the matters that sold salt one by one. Then he went to the back house to visit Li Jingyan.

Li Jingyan lived in a single courtyard, and she had several personal maids she brought to serve. Li Qing transferred more than a dozen personal guards and walked past the intermediate courtyard. Li Qing suddenly saw Wu Xingsu and Li Fei talking in the room. He remembered the result of his trip to Nanzhao before he could ask him, and then walked into the room and said with a smile: "You are quite lively here!"

When the three of them saw Li Qing coming in, they stood up quickly. Li Qing first said to Li Fei brothers: "We are going to Huaiyang Restaurant later. You two will go to find Mr. Gao to prepare."

Li Fei Shouyu understood and dragged Li Fei Yuanli out with one hand. Seeing the two of them going far away, Li Qing turned around and waved his hand to Wu Xingsu and smiled, "Sit down and talk first."

Wu Xingsu's face had a complicated expression. He suddenly knelt in front of Li Qing and said guiltily: "I am in charge of Nanzhao, but I will apologize for the regent!"

"Get up quickly!"

Li Qing quickly helped him up, pinched his shoulder and smiled, "I am no longer the governor, you have to change your words!"

Seeing that Li Qing had no intention of blaming him, Wu Xingsu felt relieved. He sighed and said, "We had just arrived in Taihe City and were experiencing internal strife in Nanzhao. The third prince and the fourth prince each led a group of supporters to fight. Many people died in Taihe City, with corpses everywhere, blood flowing into rivers, and the palace was even more vigilant. We could not send a message at all. After five days, the two princes died almost. The palace's army suddenly dispatched, arrested the two princes and killed them, and then controlled the whole city. After two days, we heard that the Nanzhao army and civilians unanimously supported Miss Awan ascended the throne, and she became the queen."

"Then have you met Queen Yinan?"

Wu Xingsu nodded, "I saw you, I gave her your letter, but there was no news again."

Li Qing was silent. It seemed that it must be that Queen Yinan did not intend to let Awan know about this. He suddenly remembered something again and asked anxiously: "Where is Awan's child? Do you know the news?"

"It is a prince, who has been named crown prince. I heard that he is called Feng Siqing, and all the people of Nanzhao are praying for him."

The name "Feng Siqing" clearly means his son Li Qing. Li Qing's heart is mixed with all kinds of feelings. He didn't know whether to be happy or sad, but his son actually wanted to become the king of Nanzhao.

Li Qing couldn't help but shout in his heart: "Awan, since you have this heart, why do you have no news?"

"Governor!"

Wu Xingsu secretly glanced at Li Qing and said, "According to the convention, after the King of Nanzhao ascended the throne, he would go to Chang'an to pay homage and accept the enthronement. Perhaps Miss Awan just wanted to come to see you at that time!"

"Not bad!" Li Qing was excited. He really forgot about this matter. Perhaps it was because of the many things that had to be sorted out, so she couldn't come for a while. He suddenly saw hope again.

After putting aside the Nanzhao incident, Li Qing's thoughts came back to his eyes. He took out a letter from his arms and apologized to Wu Xing: "I think about it, it's the most suitable for you. I'll feel at ease when doing things. Thank you for your hard work and you will go back to Chang'an and send me a letter."

Wu Xingsu took the letter and stood up suddenly and said, "I will definitely do it!"

"Thank you!" Li Qing smiled and patted his shoulder, and carefully reminded him: "You go to Xingdaofang, Chang'an to find the old house of Princess Taiping. Now you should live with the concubine's siblings. You hand over this letter to the concubine's younger brother Yang Mo. Remember, this letter must be handed over to Yang Mo himself, especially beware of his sister Yang Huahua. Do you remember?"

Wu Xingsu saluted and said in a deep voice: "Please rest assured, the governor, my subordinates will definitely do this!"
Chapter completed!