Chapter 18 Encountering the 'Immortal Killing Sword' on the Road
After staying one night at Fengjiazhuang's inn, Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai set off in a hurry and continued on their way to the southwest.
The next day, they came to Jining from Yanzhou.
Jining, as a place, was still a "prefecture" in the first year of Emperor Taizu's reign. Yanzhou was affiliated to Jining Prefecture at that time. However, later Taizu named his tenth son King of Lu and vassalized Yanzhou, so Yanzhou was promoted to
Jining was demoted to a prefecture.
Anyway, these two places are right next to each other. Administratively, anyone can trick the other. You can understand this by looking at the map, so I won’t dwell on it.
Here we still have to talk about this "King Lu".
Don't get me wrong. The King of Lu whom Taizu Zhao personally conferred and the King of Lu who we are going to mention now are not the same person. There is a difference of more than three hundred years between the two.
"Lu" is a title.
When emperors grant vassal kings, they basically do so based on place names (most dynasties do this, but there are exceptions. For example, the Song Dynasty has names with auspicious characters). Those whose fiefdoms are in Shandong are called King of Lu, those in Sichuan are called King of Shu, and those in Liaodong are called King of Shu.
King of Liao; some are also named directly after counties and counties, such as King Huainan, King Chenliu...
The title of prince is hereditary and is usually inherited by the eldest son.
In other words, the crown prince of King Lu will still be called King Lu after he succeeds him. As long as this line of incense continues, the "King of Lu" will always exist, but the person with this title may have changed dozens of times.
.
So what's up with names like "King Lu Huang" and "King Lu Ai"?
Those are all names given to dead people. The character in their names is "posthumous name". Posthumous names are summed up by others based on the virtues or experiences of the person's life after death, such as "civil and military success", "Jie Zhou"
"Youyang"...these words were added after death, not when he was alive.
If you dare to call a living prince King Lu Yang, then he will most likely kill you on the spot.
To sum up, the King of Lu in our story does not have the middle character, let alone his son Zhu Xu.
If Zhu Xu can officially succeed King Lu in the future, he may really be called "Huang" after his death. However, whether this "if" will happen, I believe you all know in your heart...
Let's go back to King Lu. His surname is Zhu Mingcheng. He is already seventy-three this year. According to the saying, he is "living on a rough patch."
Seeing this, some people may want to say, why do all the descendants of the Zhu family in your book have single names? This is not in line with the etiquette of the Ming Dynasty.
I have to reply to you. What I am writing about is the Da Ming of a certain parallel universe, not the Ming Dynasty we are familiar with.
I know that in the Ming Dynasty, only Zhu Yuanzhang's twenty-six sons had single names, and all of them had the character "木" next to them; I also knew that the Lu family should follow the principle of "Zhao Taiyang should be healthy, watch longevity and longevity, and promote hope and prosperity."
The twenty characters "Da, Kangzhuang meets Benning" are named after the cyclic layout of the radical characters "Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood".
But every time I write about a person from the Lao Zhu family, I have to look up the generation and name... Isn't this too troublesome? I'm not talking about the prince, so why should I worry about it?
Therefore, in the Dazao in our book, the rules of "Twenty-Six Generations" no longer exist, and the rules of fire, earth, metal, water, and wood are retained.
Let’s get back to business…
The King of Lu, Zhu Huo, and the current emperor, Zhu Fu, were of the same generation, but there was an age difference of more than 20 years.
Zhu Hao is a man who has survived in this life - he has a good life and is the eldest son.
Prince Dashu's rule of recognizing the legitimate son rather than the concubine made the fate of the legitimate son and the concubine completely different.
No matter how unmotivated Zhu Hao is, he doesn't have to worry about his future livelihood. Therefore, in his whole life... apart from eating, drinking and having fun, he has done almost nothing else.
Of course, you can't say how miserable he is. If it were you...if you knew from the time you were sensible that you would be financially free in your life, would you still work hard?
Anyway, I won't.
Because I am the same as everyone here, even if I don’t have financial freedom now, I am not working very hard.
He also said that Zhu Hao, he has been living in this way for more than seventy years. If there is anything that has worried him in these years, it should be - before the age of forty-eight, he only had a daughter, no "
son".
This matter is a big deal in the prince's family, because the prince's position is passed down from male to female. Even his legitimate daughter can only inherit part of his fief and the title of a princess. If the remaining fief and royal palace do not
If a son comes to inherit, the court will take it back.
However, Zhu Hao married so many wives and concubines, and by chance, all of them gave birth to daughters.
And because Zhu Hao started to indulge in drinking and sex at a very young age, after the age of forty, he completely lost his fertility. In today's terms, he was infertile.
Therefore, when Zhu Alo was forty to forty-six years old, none of his wives had any more children. Needless to say, Zhu Aler should understand this... There must be something wrong with him.
Unexpectedly, when Zhu Hao was forty-seven, his third concubine, who was more than ten years younger than him, actually got pregnant again.
How did you get pregnant? Then you can refer to the traditional cross talk "Tie the Doll".
I won’t go into details about this sloppy traditional art passage here, because our book is obviously in an even more sloppy state.
As for Zhu Hao...he's not stupid either. He naturally doubts that the child is not his.
However, firstly, he had no evidence to prove that the third aunt had committed adultery with an outsider, and secondly, people at that time did not have a full understanding of infertility, so they still took a chance.
Therefore, he pretended to be confused about this matter for now...
Until the day when the third aunt gave birth, Zhu Aler stood outside the room and waited for several hours, and finally waited for a cry.
The midwife took the baby out and showed him, hey, it’s a boy, and he does look a bit like him.
Zhu Hao thought about it: Could it be that God really has the foresight to allow me to have a child in my old age (people's life span was short at that time, and I was already called an old man at the age of 48)?
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! That day, after he handed the child to the wet nurse, he immediately ordered someone to strangle his third aunt to death and bury him quietly.
What kind of logic is this?
It's simple: he has many concubines, and if he kills one, he won't feel too distressed. But on the contrary, if he lets this woman who may have cuckolded him alive, it will make him continue to doubt, struggle, and feel aggrieved...
Therefore, even if he could not confirm whether the third aunt had stolen someone, he would rather kill him by mistake than release him by mistake.
As for children, he has another standard...
Although he is also not sure whether the child is his, he can keep the child for now and wait until the baby grows up to see if it looks like him before making a decision. He should try his best to avoid killing by mistake.
Double standards? Vicious? Callous?
Yes, but this is real human nature. In a specific era and under a specific environment, you may have the same logic as him.
To make a long story short, seven years passed in the blink of an eye.
The baby boy that the third concubine gave birth to at that time, namely Zhu Huo, had been fostered by Zhu Huo's wife. He hardly left the house and saw no one else. The whole palace was silent about the existence of this child.
This... means that we have made two preparations: first, if Zhu Huo really looks like Zhu Hao when he grows up, then he will naturally declare that this is the eldest son born to his wife; second hand, if Zhu Huo grows up and looks like Zhu Hao
If it doesn't look like him at all, then he will be killed and it will be treated as if there has never been such a person in the palace.
Zhu Xu was very lucky. Although he had no blood relationship with Zhu Hao, he inexplicably looked like Zhu Hao when he was a child.
Zhu Hao watched Zhu Huo grow up year by year, and he really looked like himself, and gradually he believed that this was really his son.
Only then did he feel a little sorry for his third aunt in his heart. Of course...it was just a little bit.
All in all, it was only when Zhu Huo was seven years old that Zhu Hao suddenly and officially announced that he had a son, who was already seven years old, and that he was born to his first wife.
He had also thought about it. If the court asked him why he did not report the birth of a son, he would pretend to be confused and say that he had forgotten because he was old.
But how could the imperial court not know about his naughty tricks? Which palace doesn’t have meticulous work arranged by the imperial court? How can it be that he gets paid for free?
However, precisely because they knew the details of the child, the court turned a blind eye; because the person responsible for monitoring also felt that the child did look like Zhu Aler and should be his biological son. According to the "nothing"
According to the principle of "concubine", no matter which mother gave birth to him, Zhu Hao's heir will always be him, and there is no need to bring out the incident of killing the third concubine back then.
In this way, at the age of seven, Zhu Huo finally had a legal identity and reported to the court to confirm the name "Zhu Huo".
Of course... Zhu He himself was still young at the time. He didn't know about the roosters and dog robbers of the previous generation. He also always thought that his own mother was Zhu He's wife.
Time flies and years pass by.
In the blink of an eye, the little prince has grown up, and Zhu Alder has grown old.
Although Zhu Hao is not dead yet, the real power of the Lu Palace has already fallen into Zhu Xu's hands.
The sphere of influence of Prince Lu's Mansion has continued to increase over the years. According to our geographical understanding today, it has expanded to the entire Jining area and surrounding areas.
Among all the surviving princes of Dazuo, King Lu can be considered a very powerful one. As the actual person in charge of Prince Lu's palace, Zhu Huo can undoubtedly call the wind and rain and do whatever he wants in the land of Jining.
The Fire Lotus Sect, which relied on him as its backer, was also rampant in the countryside and was lawless.
No, right before their eyes, when Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai were queuing up to enter the city gate, they encountered the Fire Lotus Sect's "Seka".
This group of Fire Lotus cult members were dressed in black uniforms, with a fire lotus embroidered on the chest and back. They either carried knives or swords on their bodies. Most of them walked with their nostrils pointed in the sky, swaggering and domineering... If we don't say that they
Being a religious person, I thought they were uniformed bandits.
Today they set up a card here, and the excuse they used was - last night a thief broke into the palace at night with evil intentions. Fortunately, there was a Fire Lotus Immortal stationed in the palace. As soon as the thief entered the courtyard, he was frightened by the Immortal's power. He vomited three liters of blood and held his head.
After escaping, the Great Immortal did not chase the bandit in order to protect the safety of the palace. However, the bandit must not have escaped from the Jining area. Therefore, from now on, the Fire Lotus Sect will search travelers coming and going at various city gates in order to capture the bandit. If
Anyone who disobeys will be punished as a traitor.
"Come on, come on, come on, come on! Don't wait too long. Take out everything in the bag yourself. Don't let me do it!"
But he said that among the seven or eight Fire Lotus Cultists at the city gate, the leader was standing under the city gate with an unsheathed sword in his hand, shouting and gesturing for the people behind to follow them.
This group of people said they were "searching for thieves," and they pretended to be holding a portrait in their hands. In fact, they didn't even think about catching thieves. They were just searching for oil and water like a "flying geese plucking their feathers."
The rich scrape some money, the poor scrape some things, and when they meet a pretty girl or daughter-in-law, they still have to do something...
If anyone "doesn't cooperate" with them, they will bluff, yell, beat, and surround you, saying that you are an accomplice of the bandits. Who dares to resist?
The common people nearby also know what happens if they offend the Fire Lotus Sect. They have long been used to being bullied by these gangsters. They dare to be angry but dare not speak out. They can't tolerate this "toll".
It's over.
"Hey! Those two at the back, let's talk about you! What are you two doing sneakily? Come here quickly!"
After queuing for a long time, finally...it was Sun Yixie and Huang Dong's turn.
The two of them obviously cannot accept a body search easily, because they have too many shady things on their bodies and in their bags...
Leaving aside the pile of gadgets used by Taoist priests for practicing magic, the key point is that they still have a large amount of gold, silver, banknotes, poisons, hidden weapons, lime powder...
If only 30% of these things were found, the other side would be shocked. If all of them were found, they would definitely call for reinforcements and arrest the two of them.
So Sun and Huang were queuing up, observing, and muttering quietly... just discussing how to pass through the city gate.
"Hmph!" Sure enough, when faced with the Fire Lotus Cultist's shouts and questions, Sun Yixie put on a completely different attitude from ordinary people, "Who do you think you are? Sir, what are we talking about? I need to report to a guy like you.
?"
"Huh?" The brother holding the knife was stunned at that time.
He had been standing at the city gate for a long time, and no one dared to talk to him like this. Even the dignitaries who entered the city in sedan chairs ordered their servants to offer them money respectfully, saying
After a few kind words, I was allowed to go.
"Hey~ Are you crazy?" The Fire Lotus Cultist holding the knife said, raising the knife and shaking it in front of Sun and Huang, "Do you know who you are talking to?"
"I don't know, you should tell me." Huang Donglai choked back.
When they said these two sentences, the surrounding Fire Lotus cultists also felt that something was wrong, so they all gathered around.
"Haha...hahahaha!" When the little leader with the knife saw that his accomplices were coming over, he became more courageous. He sneered for a while and said to Shuangxi, "Okay, Xiaosha, grandpa, I will let you
I understand, you two should stand firm for me!" As he spoke, he straightened his back, hit the bridge of his nose, raised his chin, and proudly continued, "Sir, I am the Green Lotus Hall of the Fire Lotus Sect.
The fifth seat - 'Immortal Killing Sword' Peng Er!"