The battle for the throne that Xue Yao was prepared to face did not happen immediately.
State mourning for three years, the actual mourning is 27 months, but the country can't be without a king for a day, Daqi is to replace the month with the day, usually after 27 days, the new emperor will be held to ascend the throne ceremony.
There is a difference between being crowned and being enthroned. After the death of the previous emperor, the Crown Prince is considered to be crowned, while the enthronement ceremony will be held a month later.
Now the situation in the dynasty is in the stage of rain, no one dares to make trouble during the twenty-seven days of national mourning, the third prince was also Tong Fei pressured to stay put.
The Prince's clique had already directly addressed the Prince as the Emperor, and decided that the Prince should be crowned the Emperor.
Tong's party is very low profile, the posthumous edict is now pinched in the hands of the third prince, the throne should be the king of Ning, and the king of Ning is currently nowhere to be found.
Who made the King of Ning disappear? Of course, it is the "re-instated" Crown Prince who is the most suspicious.
Half a month has passed, the seventh prince actually has not been escorted back, the crown prince five internal burning, repeatedly sent people to the border to urge.
Consort Shio also burned within five, all the imperial sons returned safely to the capital, only her son did not come back.
Xue Yao comforted her, because Father Bintian was stimulated, and His Highness refused to return to the palace because he was at the border.
Shi Fei is still full of sadness, Xue Yao guesses that most of this sadness is due to her son's disappearance, and a small portion is due to the loss of the Emperor's blessing, worrying about the future of herself and her child, Shi Fei didn't feel sad because of the Emperor's death.
In the entire harem, it seemed that only the Empress had aged ten years at once because of the Emperor's death.
A month later, the border sent an expedited letter stamped by the Seventh Prince, but the letter was not written by the Seventh Prince, but written by the Sword Saint himself.
The Sword Saint said that Lu Qian has been found back by him, this kid does not know what way, actually mixed out of the pass, good thing that the Khitan army has no trace of the Khitan king, this kid did not find the Khitan king, he and Xu Palm tracking three days, only to capture the seventh prince back.
The letter said that Lu Qian's temperament had become a bit eccentric and difficult to communicate with, and that he was bent on killing the King of Khitan.
The Sword Saint and Sect Master Xu were worried that the boy was suffocating some disease, so they planned to teach some introductory kung fu first to help him avenge his father's death, so that he could untie this knot in his heart.
This caused Xue Yao to breathe a sigh of relief, but Princess Shih could not understand what jianghu warrior wanted to take his son as a disciple and teach him the art of martial arts, and went around begging the Empress to beg the Crown Prince to go to the frontier for him to retrieve his son.
However, without the emperor's sole favor, who had the time to take care of this once-favored concubine? Consort Shih begged every day, only Xue Yao always patiently persuaded and comforted, and promised that as soon as he had the chance, he would go to the border to find the Sword Saint to bring the little fat cub back.
Meanwhile, the inevitable battle for the throne finally began.
Xue Yao, as a member of the Crown Prince's faction, went to the court to confirm the details of the Third Prince's house arrest of the Seventh Prince and the subsequent sending of troops after the Seventh Prince.
The Third Prince argued that he had listened to the posthumous edict, and then urgently protected his seventh brother and took precautions to prevent "someone with an ulterior motive" from plotting against the new Crown Prince.
He also said that if he wanted to send troops after the Seventh Prince, why didn't he do it during his house arrest, so it was clear that the group of pursuers was instructed by someone else!
After exonerated, the third prince bit back, rebuked the crown prince disregarded the safety of the father and the king, privately left the camp, the same as desertion, not only no qualification for the throne, but also should be subjected to the military justice, if not, the crown prince's crimes, the world will be notified.
The Second Prince was unable to keep his composure and wanted to come forward to say that he had summoned the Crown Prince back to the court to deal with political affairs, but he was stopped by the Crown Prince.
Now that the crown prince has lost his power due to the crime, he may not be able to coalesce the forces outside the court again, and the third prince, who holds the three military talismans of the late emperor and the posthumous edict, has a slight upper hand.
If the Second Prince were to get involved in this mess, he would most likely be considered a co-conspirator and lose his position as Supervisor, and the Crown Prince would have even less ground to stand on.
The two factions stalemate, the court affairs seem to be the same as before, by the Cabinet vote, the Secretary of the red, in fact, is not under the control of the supervision of the second prince.
Cabinet is basically the Prince's people, the Prince was opposed to eunuchs interfere in politics, and therefore offended a lot of power eunuchs, the Secretary Secretary of the pen eunuchs is naturally Tong's party.
The eunuchs all knew that their good days would come to an end when the Crown Prince came to power, and now that it was hard to seize the Crown Prince's handle, this group of eunuchs were even more desperate than the Third Prince, and did their best to suppress the Crown Prince's power.
There was no smoke to be seen in this battle for the throne, just a change in the positions of many court officials, with both sides pushing their people into important positions.
The apparent calm was maintained for more than two months, and it was not until the poisoning of the Supervisor's second prince that the silent battle truly lit up the blade.
Fortunately, the poisoning was discovered in time, Xue Yao was deliberating in the Crown Prince's Palace, rushed to the Yangxin Hall, immediately carried out gastric lavage treatment, the second prince was not seriously hurt.
All of the palace staff involved in meal production and delivery were caught and interrogated, but the charges were claimed by the scapegoat arranged by the Third Prince.
This incident, let Xue remote to the Ming Dynasty Wei Zhongxian in power during the reign of the just reigning Chongzhen Emperor in the clothes hidden full of their own bring big cake, refused to eat the palace, afraid of poisoning, but also do not dare to sleep in the bedchamber for fear of being assassinated by Wei Zhongxian's people.
In that case, Wei Zhongxian killed Chongzhen also can not be the emperor himself, can only then set up a young emperor as their own puppet, and now, if the second prince suffered an accident, the third prince does not need a puppet, can be on their own.
This gave Xue Yao the creeps.
If the Seventh Prince were to return to the court at this moment and become the Crown Prince's puppet, would he be able to hold back from eating anything in the palace? Can he deal with traitors and assassins from all sides at all times?
Little fat cub's triangular cat kung fu, against some ordinary practitioners, it is still acceptable, facing Zhang Si type of experts, there is no chance of winning.
Therefore, Xue Yao selfishly didn't want Little Fatty Pup to face the present danger, and even felt that Little Fatty Pup's choice to stay by the Sword Saint's side at this time was a wise decision.
Like in the original, if the little fat cub can practice an out-of-this-world sword skill in two years, ensure his own safety, and in monitoring the governors of the provinces through the disciples under the Sword Sect, turn against the forces outside the Third Prince's dynasty, and grasp the military power, he can only launch the final confrontation, and return to the dynasty with the identity of the orthodox Crown Prince.
After that, Xue Yao followed the men sent by the Crown Prince and went out of the capital to look for the Seventh Prince, not to get the man back, but to personally urge the little fat cub to learn and practice hard.
The Prince's people didn't know where the Sword Saint was, and Xue Yao didn't reveal it to outsiders; he traveled alone to the White Row Mountains, and searched for three days according to the map drawn by Zhang Si, before he found a piece of bamboo forest that was similar to the location in the map.
Just go here, Zhang Si told him that he can't go deeper into the bamboo forest or he will keep ghosting until he dies of hunger or exhaustion.
Xue Yao followed Zhang Si's instructions and circled around the bamboo forest to find two mahogany pillars, between which there was a plaque with the words "Chaoyi Forest" on it, which looked like a bamboo forest named after one of the words in the names of the Sword Saint and Old Man Xu, and I wondered if these two seniors lived here, as they seemed to have a good relationship.
After finding the plaque, Xue Yao sat down by the pillar and patiently waited for the Sword Saint to show himself.
The temperature in the northwest in early fall was still mild, Xue Yao just sat outside the bamboo forest and waited for a day, and froze without waiting for the Sword Saint to show up.
You can't wait in the mountains at night, you'll wait yourself into the belly of the beasts, you can only go down to the inn to sleep for the night, and then go back up to the mountains to wait when it's light.
Seven days later, there was still no wait for the Sword Saint to show up.
It was time for Xue Yao to return to the group, or else the men and horses sent by the Crown Prince would take the news of his disappearance as news of his death and bring it back to the capital to report to the Crown Prince.
The Crown Prince can't afford any more bad news, and now that there aren't many of his "own people" left to support him, Xue Yao is still able to work with him privately to think of ways to relieve his stress.
The Empress and the bedridden Crown Princess were both heavy burdens weighing on the Crown Prince's shoulders, and if he collapsed, these two women would be finished as well.
The Crown Prince had not dared to tell the Crown Princess so far that he had lost his position as Crown Prince because he had come back to see her, fearing that she would aggravate her condition because of her self-reproach.
Half a month later, Xue Yao returned without any success.
Shortly after returning to the palace, the second prince ascended to the throne and became the puppet emperor that should have been held by the missing seventh prince.
The Crown Prince was renamed King Rui, and the struggle with the Third Prince intensified.
Xue Yao often had nightmares that the little fat cub had actually died under the sword of the King of Khitan.
He began to worry that the letter was written by Sword Saint to comfort him, and that's why Sword Saint deliberately refused to show up because he couldn't hand over the little fat cub.
The system's security hadn't had a single ebb and flow since it had been cleared, and the last trace of Xue Yao's connection with the little fat cub had just been severed.
No circle is immune to the law of bad money driving out good money, and the longer the infighting goes on, the more the Prince's incorruptible qualities put him at a disadvantage.
After a year, half of the Prince's men in the Cabinet-cum-Six Ministries had fallen on their sword.
Xue Yao's grandfather, Zhou Chong, is the second minister of the Cabinet, and also holds the post of Minister of Works, and is one of the only two remaining princelings in the Cabinet.
At the end of the year the Ministry of households of the Dazi account book reconciliation records, to Zhou Chong Ministry of Industry's account, recorded a deficit of two million taels of a huge sum.
This silver should have been allocated to the Ministry of Industry to repair the garden of the transportation costs, the garden is the first emperor to build during his lifetime, the first emperor after the death of not much to catch up with the schedule, this silver was the Ministry of War request to call for the construction of warships.
The Ministry of Industry did not dare to nonsense, when the Secretary was approved red, but the end of the reconciliation of the Ministry of the Army does not recognize the account, the Secretary also does not recognize the joint, swung the Zhou Chong together.
Zhou Chong, who had a bumpy official career, was nearly dismissed from his post for the second time, and was defended by the Emperor and the Crown Prince, and dismissed from his post pending trial.
The Third Prince's hand has reached the center of the court, and both parties know that the day of the decisive battle is coming.
Before Zhou Chong was arrested, he asked his daughter to take his grandson back to the Xue family for refuge. Xue Yao, who originally thought he could get out of this struggle by not becoming an official, is also swept into the center of the maelstrom because of his grandfather's crime.