Chapter 497: Wind and Clouds from Our Generation

Ningrong Street, Rongguo Mansion.

The bright sun was charming, the shadows of the eaves were deep, the flower trees swayed, the water pavilions and mountain rocks were leisurely and interesting, and the pavilions and buildings were magnificent.

The imperial-built mansion of the Rongguo Mansion, which had been managed and repaired for nearly a hundred years, was truly beautiful.

It was just that the ups and downs of the world, victory and defeat were common sense. No matter how magnificent and brilliant things were, there was always a day of darkness and decay.

Jia Cong and Daiyu left Rongqing Hall, passed the small door of the two mansions, and returned to the East Mansion all the way, followed by Xichun, who was walking and jumping.

Daiyu said: "Third Brother, why did you just say that Baoyu and Brother Huan could both inherit the family business? Grandmother was fine after hearing it, but Second Aunt was extremely unhappy."

Jia Cong replied: "People often love to indulge in illusions, avoid the important and dwell on the trivial, and always think in a good direction. Now that the elder branch is decaying, Auntie talks about inheriting the title every day. I am afraid she may not be able to get her wish."

Although Daiyu was a young girl in the boudoir and her thoughts and experience were not as deep as Lady Wang's, she was a smart and sensible person after all. As soon as she heard Jia Cong's words, she thought of the matter.

She asked: "Third Brother, what you meant in the hall just now was that Baoyu will not be able to inherit Second Uncle's title and family business in the future?"

The two walked across a stone bridge in the garden and sat leisurely on a stone bench by the bridge. Xichun picked willow branches and wild flowers by the water and squatted on the side to weave a flower crown to play.

Jia Cong said: "In those days, the Retired Emperor abdicated in his prime, and the Emperor was able to ascend the throne. Therefore, the Emperor is destined to be a monarch who puts filial piety first.

That time when Baoyu spoke without thinking in the inner mansion and insulted the Retired Emperor, the Imperial Clan Court found out about the private words in the Jia family's inner mansion within a few days, and even specially issued a document to reprimand him.

This could only be done with the Emperor's authorization.

In order to maintain the dignity of filial piety of the royal family, the Emperor would mostly not let Baoyu become the heir to the title. Otherwise, where would the face of the father and son monarchs be?

Grandmother and Auntie doted on Baoyu too much. The elder branch failed, and they felt that it was only natural for Baoyu to inherit the family business in the future.

Under deep doting, they would always cover their ears and eyes. In their view, the storm in the Imperial Clan Court that day was just Baoyu being ignorant and receiving a beating from the Master, but they never delved into the root cause.

The failure of the Jia family's elder branch is a misfortune for the family, but Auntie talked about inheriting the title in front of everyone in the family, and Second Sister-in-law and I were both in the hall. It was too disrespectful to everyone's face."

Jia Cong smiled disdainfully and said: "I was a bit unaccustomed to it, so I said that Baoyu and Huan'er could both inherit the family business.

However, I will not say the inner words in front of them. Not only would it be boring, but they would also feel that I don't like my brothers, which is not worth it."

Daiyu looked at Jia Cong and smiled, saying: "It's just Third Brother's ability. You have your own title, otherwise, if Second Brother Lian suffered, Third Brother would be the most justified."

Jia Cong said: "It's better to have your own title. Why bother with the hot potato of the hereditary title of the West Mansion? If it were really like this, there would definitely be a pile of trouble, nowhere near as refreshing as it is now."

……

Jia Cong submitted a memorial to Emperor Emperor Jia Zhao to plead for Jia Lian. More than ten days passed, and the memorial entered the palace like a stone sinking into the sea, without any response.

Wang Xifeng worried about this day and night, and would let Ping'er come to the East Mansion to ask for news every other day. After five or six days, even Jia Mu began to pay attention to this matter, after all, it involved the life of her eldest grandson.

Li Wan and Seeing Tan Chun managed the West Mansion's household affairs, and when they encountered difficult things, they would come to Wang Xifeng to discuss a few words.

Li Wan had always valued Ping'er, perhaps because of her appreciation for Wang Xifeng's arrangement of Ping'er, and also because she knew the bitterness of losing a husband, she always comforted Wang Xifeng a few words whenever she came.

Among the women in the West Mansion, probably only Lady Wang did not take Jia Lian's matter to heart. Her thoughts were all on her son Baoyu.

Baoyu was not lightly injured by Jia Zheng last time, but after a month of care, he could barely walk on the ground, and Jia Mu and Lady Wang were both happy in their hearts.

Lady Wang even instructed maids like Sister Xi Ren to serve him well, because the end of the year was approaching, and there would definitely be many old relatives and friends coming and going.

Lady Wang felt that this year was different from previous years. Baoyu could not be as idle in the back mansion as before. He had to learn to socialize with the old relatives and nobles in the family. After all, Baoyu would inherit the Rongguo family business in the future.

For Lady Wang's ambitious thoughts, Jia Mu rarely expressed approval. Although Baoyu did not like to hear these secular social topics, Jia Mu still persuaded him by the bed several times.

……

And in these ten-odd days, not to mention the worries in Wang Xifeng's heart and the infinite longing in Lady Wang's heart, the situation outside the Jia Mansion was also quite restless, almost having a trend of wind and clouds.

Since Datong Regional Commander Qian Shaoyang returned to Shenjing to report on his duties under the protection of the Embroidered Uniform Guard.

Originally, this Datong Regional Commander still had some luck in his heart, but he did not expect that as soon as he arrived in Shenjing, he would be ordered by the palace to be removed from his military post and thrown into the Embroidered Uniform Guard's Zhao Prison for interrogation.

I don't know if this Regional Commander Qian knew that his crime was unavoidable, or if he really couldn't withstand the torture of the Embroidered Uniform Guard.

He had only been in the Zhao Prison for a few days before he confessed everything about his shielding of the Sun family in Datong, his collusion, and his acceptance of huge bribes of gold and silver.

In the end, he also confessed another matter. When Gu Yankui, the Controller of the Nine Provinces, inspected the Nine Borders, he had discovered a deputy commander in Datong who was involved in corruption and malpractice in the army, and had arrested him and put him in prison.

But after this deputy commander was imprisoned, he died mysteriously in prison in less than a day, before he had time to be interrogated.

According to Qian Shaoyang's confession, this deputy commander's malpractice was related to Sun Zhanying's smuggling of salt and iron. Sun Zhanying was worried that the matter would be exposed, so he used means to silence him overnight.

At that time, Qian Shaoyang, who was the Datong Regional Commander, not only knew about this but also shielded and facilitated it. Otherwise, with Sun Zhanying's power in the army, he would never have been able to kill people cleanly in the border army prison.

Because as long as that deputy commander confessed, not only would Sun Zhanying be in great trouble, but Qian Shaoyang would also be unable to escape involvement.

Because of this matter, Xu Kun, the Commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, realized Qian Shaoyang's value and dug deeper and investigated Qian Shaoyang more strictly.

He was like a hyena that smelled blood, using all kinds of means without hesitation, torturing Qian Shaoyang until he was no longer human.

With the Embroidered Uniform Guard's bloody squeezing of Qian Shaoyang, the corruption crimes hidden in the Datong army were revealed one after another, reaching a terrifying level.

In the past seven or eight days, Xu Kun, the Commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, had entered and left the palace almost every day to report the latest confession of Qian Shaoyang to Emperor Emperor Jia Zhao.

Qianyang Palace, the hall representing the supreme authority of Da Zhou, seemed to be shrouded in gloomy clouds at all times these days.

In the past five or six days, every day, a large number of Embroidered Uniform Guard red-clothed cavalry, carrying yellow silk packages, galloped through the city and rushed north out of the Hongde Gate of Shenjing.

……

As the time entered November, the late autumn in Shenjing City was coming to an end, and all things were desolate.

Jia Cong still reviewed his studies every day, and from time to time he would go to Mount Luocang to receive teachings from his mentor Liu Jingan. The master and apprentice often discussed and analyzed the current situation. It is said that understanding the world is learning.

When Jia Cong's memorial pleading for Jia Lian was submitted to the palace for ten days without any movement, even his heart felt a little uneasy.

After some thought, he asked someone to invite Liu Shizhen, the Deputy Supervisor of the Firearm Office, to the mansion for a talk.

After the two met, Jia Cong asked about the development progress of the breech-loading gun.

Although Jia Cong resigned from the position of Supervisor of the Firearm Office due to mourning, the Firearm Office was currently acting on behalf of Deputy Supervisor Liu Shizhen.

But Liu Shizhen did not have this reason to have the slightest slack toward this superior who was much younger than himself.

Liu Shizhen was also a successful candidate in the imperial examination and was keen on the method of firearm forging. Jia Cong had dazzling and peerless talent in both literary talent and firearm construction.

He had to admire him to the ground. He knew that the various shocking things Jia Cong had done were heights that he could not reach in his entire life.

Therefore, in front of this young man who was much younger than himself, he had always regarded himself as a disciple and subordinate.

When Jia Cong asked about the research and development progress of the breech-loading gun in the firearm workshop, it was exactly the same as he had expected.

With the current firearm construction skills of Da Zhou, starting to build a breech-loading gun now would still have a long way to go.

It was the appearance of himself, a latecomer, that was like cheating, pulling up the seedlings to help them grow, and the progress was difficult in the actual research and development process, which was almost inevitable.

After Liu Shizhen left, Jia Cong made partial modifications to the original breech-loading gun drawings.

He changed the original copper shell to a paper-wrapped shell and changed the extremely difficult percussion primer to a needle-fired thunder arch ignition, which greatly reduced the difficulty of building the breech-loading gun.

The reason why he made improvements to the original breech-loading gun drawings at this time was also a step he had reserved in advance.

He wrote to Emperor Emperor Jia Zhao to plead for Jia Lian, but more than ten days had passed, and there was no response from the palace. It must be because Emperor Emperor Jia Zhao had been weighing this matter for some reason. At this time, Jia Cong also heard the news that Datong Commander Sun Zhanying had defected to the enemy and Datong Regional Commander Qian Shaoyang had been arrested and imprisoned.

The occurrence of these things was inextricably linked to Jia Lian's involvement in Datong salt and iron smuggling, and was also a kind of extension and escalation of Jia Lian's matter.

Jia Cong could not predict whether Jia Lian would be severely punished by the imperial court as the situation worsened, thus completely losing the chance to survive.

And whether the East and West Mansions of the Jia family, including himself, would suffer greater impact and damage in this unclear situation, which contained unpredictable risks.

In such an unclear situation, if one wants to be invincible, one must increase one's right to speak and weight in the Emperor's heart.

And this simplified and improved breech-loading gun drawing was a bargaining chip he had planned in advance to occupy more initiative when the situation changed drastically.

With his understanding of the current firearm construction skills, how could he not know that the first version of the breech-loading gun drawing, which depicted all-copper primer bullets, would be so difficult to reach for the current construction level.

……

Just as Jia Cong was modifying and simplifying the breech-loading gun drawings, news began to spread in the city that Datong Regional Commander Qian Shaoyang had committed a crime and confessed to the corruption of the border army in the Zhao Prison.

More than 30 middle and lower-level military officers in the Datong border army were implicated and convicted because of this.

The imperial court had sent a large number of Embroidered Uniform Guard cavalry to go north to pass the order to arrest them.

And among these convicted Datong military officers, there were also four sons of the noble families of Shenjing who were raising military assets in the army…….

The method of granting noble titles by the imperial court has a saying that noble titles are precious and cannot be granted without military merit.

For the noble military families of Da Zhou, although there is no strict regulation that descendants must have military merit to inherit titles.

But for noble families, if they want to continue the wealth of the family, they must maintain their status in the army, and the cultivation of direct descendants is the top priority.

Therefore, every noble family will send direct descendants to the army to practice, commonly known as raising military assets.

One is to cultivate the military talent of the descendants, and the other is to accumulate qualifications to make the inheritance of the title more logical.

Jia Rong and Jia Lian of the Ningrong Mansions of the Jia family were not arranged by the family to enter the army to raise military assets after they passed the age of dancing, and they were all extremely decadent and did not know how to make progress. People like Baoyu were even less worth mentioning.

The reason for this may be that the Jia family descendants were too playboy and lazy.

It may also be that Jia Daishan and Jia Daihua experienced changes such as the Wu King Rebellion and the new Emperor's ascension, and they were wary, deliberately letting their descendants either give up the army or take the imperial examination to become civil officials, so as to protect themselves…….

……

And those four noble descendants involved in the case were arranged to enter the Datong border army to raise military assets through their respective family connections.

This major case of salt and iron smuggling in Datong, from the beginning of Jia Lian's incident, to the involvement of three noble families including Xie Jing, a second-class male and Jingying Mobile Corps Commander, Qi Jianhui, a second-class male, and Qiu Liang, the Wucheng Military and Horse Division.

Now, because of the confession of Datong Regional Commander Qian Shaoyang, four more direct descendants of the Shenjing nobles were involved.

From beginning to end, because of this major case, eight noble families in Shenjing have been involved, which sounds very sensational.

This news spread, and the court and public of Shenjing were shocked. The major noble families were even more panicked, because the noble descendants who were raising military assets in the Nine Borders were not just those four families.

Any noble descendant who mixes military assets in the Nine Borders, because they are far away in the border and have a weak force, often has the habit of hugging and connecting with each other.

Therefore, no one knows whether that damn Qian Shaoyang in the Embroidered Uniform Guard's Zhao Prison will bite out their family descendants.

……

Just when the major families in Shenjing City were either harboring ghosts, or watching coldly, or running around to save their family descendants, it was chaotic, you sang and I appeared.

At the right time, a shocking piece of news vaguely spread from the Embroidered Uniform Guard's office.

The three people who were involved in the salt and iron smuggling case earliest, Xie Jing, a second-class male, Qi Jianhui, a second-class male, and Qiu Liang, the Wucheng Military and Horse Division, were all confessed by Jia Lian of the Rongguo Mansion after he was imprisoned.

After the news spread, the families of these three people could not help but hate the Rongguo Mansion to the bone. It was because of Jia Lian's betrayal that the titles of the three families were abolished, and now they are still in prison, life and death unknown.

And these three noble families were hit by this, I am afraid they will never recover from now on, and they will inevitably have deep hatred for Jia Lian and the Rongguo Mansion.

And the news related to this continued to ferment in the market, all saying that Jia Lian not only confessed the heads of these three noble families, but was actually the root cause of the whole thing.

It was because Jia Lian and Sun Zhanying's three sons were smuggling salt and iron, and after the incident, Sun Zhanying went out of the pass to defect to the enemy to save his life, involving Datong Regional Commander Qian Shaoyang in the crime.

After Qian Shaoyang was thrown into the Zhao Prison, because he could not withstand the torture, he bit out more than 30 military officers involved in the Datong border army, including four noble descendants who were raising military assets…….

As the saying goes, good things don't go out, bad things spread thousands of miles.

Jia Lian of the elder branch of the Rongguo Mansion is the root cause of the Datong salt and iron case and the culprit of the eight noble families involved in the disaster.

This explosive news spread crazily in every corner of Shenjing like it had wings.

The families that used to be the pillars of the Four Kings and Eight Dukes, the luxurious and majestic families, were scolded and abandoned by the nobles of Shenjing almost overnight. It is no exaggeration to say that their reputation stinks in the street.

And this news naturally reached the Rongguo Mansion. After Jia Mu, Jia Zheng, Lady Wang, and others knew, they could not help but be terrified day and night.

At this juncture, it happened to be the 65th birthday of the old lady of the Xie Mansion of the Shanguo Mansion, and the nobles of Shenjing went to the mansion to celebrate the birthday.

The Shanguo Mansion and the Rongguo Mansion were both among the Eight Dukes. Jia Mu and the old lady of the Xie Mansion also had several contacts. In the past, when Jia Mu celebrated her birthday, the Shanguo Mansion was also very polite.

This time, the old lady of the Xie Mansion celebrated her 65th birthday, and the Rongguo Mansion naturally had to pay a gift. To show the closeness of the two families, Jia Mu even let Jia Zheng go to the mansion to celebrate the birthday in person.

As a result, Jia Zheng entered the Shanguo Mansion to celebrate the birthday and received unprecedented cold treatment. Not only did he not see the old lady of the Xie Mansion, but no one from the Xie family came out to receive Jia Zheng.

In the end, the person who came to receive Jia Zheng was just a smiling second steward of the Shanguo Mansion, who served a cup of fragrant tea and exchanged a few polite words, and then sent the head of the dignified Rongguo Mansion away.

After Jia Zheng returned to the Rongguo Mansion, he sighed and talked about this matter. Jia Mu, Lady Wang, and others were furious when they heard it, and could not help but feel that they had suffered a great humiliation.

Finally, Lin Zhixiao was asked to go out to inquire about the reason, only to know that the old lady of the Xie Mansion was born in a noble family, and Xie Jing, a second-class male, was the only nephew of the old lady of the Xie Mansion, and he had been doted on by the old lady of the Xie Mansion since he was a child.

It is said that Xie Jing was convicted and his title was abolished. The old lady of the Xie Mansion was heartbroken that her maiden family would decline from now on, so she hated the Rongguo Mansion to the bone…….

Moreover, things went far beyond this, and several noble families had jointly submitted a memorial to Emperor Emperor Jia Zhao.

Saying that Jia Lian of Rongguo, as the heir, dared to defy the world, colluded with traitors, smuggled salt and iron, and committed heinous crimes, and should be executed to warn others…….

The Dali Temple heard the wind outside, and even strengthened the guard of the three shifts of jailers in the prison where Jia Lian was held, for fear that irrational nobles would do something stupid.

……

Ningrong Street, Count Mansion.

Early this morning, Zhen Ying Lian entered the study and saw Jia Cong bowing his head to draw pictures. On the table were several drawings with wet ink, on which were drawn several objects with complex lines and strange shapes.

Zhen Ying Lian never went out of the Count Mansion, and Jia Cong rarely mentioned firearms in the mansion. The little girl naturally could not recognize that these drawings were the improved and simplified breech-loading gun drawings.

Jia Cong got up early to trim and trace the drawings. The ink he ground had been used up. Seeing Zhen Ying Lian enter the study, he said: "Zhen Ying Lian, help me grind the ink."

Zhen Ying Lian listened and washed the inkstone, added water, and ground it in a familiar way, but saw Jia Cong take out a blank memorial from the drawer.

She could not help but ask curiously: "Young Master is not an official now. Didn't you just write a memorial a few days ago? Why do you want to write it again now?"

In the past few days, Jia Cong naturally heard the rumors about Jia Lian outside, and also knew that Jia Zheng went to the Shanguo Mansion to celebrate the birthday and was humiliated, and even knew that nobles had submitted memorials to the Emperor, seeking revenge for personal grudges and fueling the flames.

Ten days ago, he had already submitted a memorial to the palace to plead for Jia Lian. Now that things had reached this point, he naturally could not stay out of it.

The only way at the moment is to use this simplified breech-loading gun drawing to pry open a turning point for the situation that is gradually entering a deadlock.

Jia Cong said: "There have been too many things recently, so I have to write another one. I have to enter the palace to ask to see the Emperor once again……." (End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 498 =====