freenovelworld Chapter 1218 Easy to handle
Chapter 1218 Easy to handle
Two days later.
When Gu Siyuan, the imperial physician of the Han Dynasty, stepped into the inn, the porcelain bottles in the medicine box made a slight clinking sound.
He specially selected a brand new peacock blue official robe with the crane pattern of a fifth-rank imperial physician embroidered in gold thread on the cuffs, but he stumbled over the threshold because of the hanging hem of his robe.
The imperial physician, who was over forty years old, wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked up to see Deng Hongwen sitting upright on the armchair, his face blurred by the steam rising from the celadon teacup.
"Master Deng is well."
Gu Siyuan placed the medicine box on the rosewood table, and the smell of mugwort from the medicine sac immediately spread.
He straightened his back deliberately, but his fingertips kept stroking the gold thread on the edge of the pulse pillow: "Your humble servant has been ordered to check your pulse for you, sir."
Deng Hongwen gently scraped the tea foam with the cup lid. The crisp sound of porcelain pieces hitting each other made Gu Siyuan's Adam's apple roll. In the morning light coming in through the window lattice, one could see the fine dust raised by the imperial physician's nostrils.
"I heard that Doctor Gu had a baby boy last month?"
Deng Hongwen suddenly spoke, shocking Gu Siyuan so much that he almost dropped the silver needle box in his hand.
"The third wife was born in Yangzhou. She almost died of hemorrhage during childbirth. Fortunately, the Imperial Hospital used a century-old ginseng to save her life. Was this ginseng bought from the Wei merchant caravan?"
The sound of the copper buckle of the medicine box popping open was particularly harsh. Gu Siyuan pretended to take the pulse pillow, but a few silver needles fell from his sleeve.
He suddenly remembered the day when Wei Shang carried the mahogany box into the backyard. When the lid was opened, the bright light of the South China Sea Pearl illuminated the entire room. At that time, the third wife was holding the baby and humming a Yangzhou tune.
"You are joking, sir." Gu Siyuan laughed dryly, veins throbbing on his forehead: "My family is all in the capital..."
"Your son Gu Mingde was promoted to the position of judge of the Imperial Hospital last month."
Deng Hongwen pulled out a scroll of silk from his sleeve and slowly unfolded it, saying calmly, "Coincidentally, the day after the Wei merchant caravan arrived in Beijing, Judge Gu reported to the Ministry of Revenue for twenty carts of Liaodong medicinal materials."
He pointed his finger at a certain cinnabar annotation: "This batch of medicinal materials eventually entered Sima Yi's military camp."
Cold sweat slid down the imperial physician's spine into his belt. Gu Siyuan vaguely remembered how he had imitated the handwriting on the inventory book in the imperial pharmacy three days ago.
The crabapple blossoms outside the window were in full bloom at that time, and the shadows of the flowers cast on the account book looked like splashes of blood.
With a "bang", the silver needle box fell heavily on the square table.
Gu Siyuan stood up suddenly, and the hem of his official robe knocked over the celadon cup, and the scalding hot tea soup exploded into a brown flower at Deng Hongwen's feet.
"Master Deng, this is slander!"
His voice was so sharp that it broke: "I am loyal to your majesty..."
"In the spring of the third year of Jianyuan, you embezzled the tribute blood bird's nest; in the winter of the fifth year of Jianyuan, you used the plague as an excuse to embezzle disaster relief money..."
Deng Hongwen took a step forward every time he spoke, until he forced the imperial physician into a corner.
"Do you need me to send someone to check the cellar of your West Suburbs Villa? There are 100,000 taels of snowflake silver hidden there."
Gu Siyuan leaned his back against the cold brick wall, and suddenly remembered the day when he was counting the silver ingots in the cellar. The Third Lady's nail-dyed fingertips ran across the silver mountain, and she said with a smile that she wanted to make a gold-thread headpiece.
At this moment, the silver light turned into thousands of steel needles, drilling into the bone marrow as Deng Hongwen whispered.
"If these evidences are presented to the Han Emperor..."
Deng Hongwen suddenly grabbed the doctor's right hand and pressed it on the tea-stained square table, sneering: "The three generations of the Gu family's male offspring were beheaded in the street, the female family members were made into official prostitutes, and the one-month-old baby was thrown into the moat to feed the fish—"
"Your Majesty is not ill!"
When Gu Siyuan roared, there was already a taste of blood in his throat. He slumped to the ground, his official hat rolled off, revealing his graying temples.
"That day, His Majesty was shooting arrows at the martial arts arena, and all ten arrows hit the bull's eye..."
With tears and cold sweat all over his face, he suddenly grabbed the corner of Deng Hongwen's robe and begged, "Please have mercy, sir! I am willing to work like a cow or a horse..."
Deng Hongwen shook off his hand and slammed the tea-stained confession on the table: "Sign it."
As the cinnabar ink spread on the rice paper, Gu Siyuan thought of the longevity lock on his young son's swaddling clothes. The golden lock piece touched the edge of the confession, making a slight "ding" sound.
In the end, he had no choice but to sign his name on the rice paper.
At three quarters past three in the afternoon, when Minister of Rites Zou Huaian stepped into the posthouse, he saw Deng Hongwen playing with a teacup indifferently.
The aroma of tea hits you in the face, and the whole living room is filled with fragrance. It is refreshing.
Next to it, on the desk, there was a piece of rice paper with ink that had not yet dried, and on it were many things written in black and white.
There were all kinds of writing brushes, ink, paper and inkstone on the side, and it seemed that Deng Hongwen was practicing calligraphy in his spare time.
"Master Deng is in a very elegant mood."
Zou Huaian smiled as if in the spring breeze, but the jade pendant on his waist jolted rapidly: "His Majesty heard that you like the tea ceremony, so he specially ordered the Ministry of Internal Affairs..."
"I would like to see His Majesty the Emperor of Han."
Deng Hongwen picked up the teacup and drank it all in one gulp. His tone was firm and it sounded as if there was no room for bargaining.
Zou Huaian's pupils shrank slightly, and his smile deepened: "Your Majesty coughed up blood three times today, it's really..."
"Then Lord Zou, do you know that your country's imperial physician Gu Siyuan diagnosed me with a tight pulse today, indicating that I have a disease of worry and depression?"
Deng Hongwen suddenly threw the teacup in his hand onto the table and said in a cold voice: "He said that this disease is very serious and needs to be presented to His Majesty!"
"By the way, here is a confession from Doctor Gu. Lord Zou may want to take a look at it."
The smile on the purple-robed minister's face finally cracked.
He glanced at the guards in the corridor and saw that there were twice as many as yesterday, and several of the unfamiliar faces had thick calluses on their palms from years of holding knives.
He reached out and picked up the rice paper on the table, took a look at it, and his face suddenly changed.
It's over, it's over!
"Gu Siyuan is a quack doctor!"
Zou Huaian suddenly shouted, and slammed the confession on the table with his right hand, causing the teacup to fall to the ground.
Amid the sound of pottery shattering, veins popped up on his forehead: "How dare you lie that the emperor is ill for money! I will kill him now..."
"Master Zou!"
Deng Hongwen pressed the confession against his chest and said in a gentle voice, "When the Han Emperor sees this confession, will he kill Doctor Gu first, or will he first suspect you of incompetence?"
Zou Huaian froze in place.
The broken pottery pierced his palm, and the pain reminded him of how Liu Che smiled and cut off the fugitive's ear to feed the eagle during the autumn hunt last year.
At the moment when cold sweat soaked through his shirt, he suddenly saw the cold light in Deng Hongwen's eyes - this was not the look of asking for help, but the look of a vicious wolf staring at his throat.
"Three quarters past three in the afternoon." Zou Huaian squeezed out the words from between his teeth: "I will accompany you to the palace."
As dusk fell, a team of carriages and horses ran over the fallen flowers on Guangming Street.
Deng Hongwen lifted the curtain of the car and saw the last ray of blood-red sunset on the palace wall. He knew that the real game had just begun.
Although he got the opportunity to meet with the Emperor of Han, who is he? How could he easily agree to the request of the State of Chu?
Even if he came with sincerity this time, this matter would still have several twists and turns.
However, in order to destroy the Qin State, obtain the Fiery Sun Grass, and rescue the Crown Prince, he must convince the Han Emperor!