Chapter 1282: Counterattack (1)

The courtiers silently put the memorial back into their sleeves and decided to let the matter ferment until he returned. It would be best if they could make the suspicions real. When the time came, even if King Rong’s old injuries relapsed, they would still impeach him!

At this moment, no one knew if King Rong’s family had left. Only upon returning home after court did they hear from the guy they’d sent to keep an eye on King’s Residence that King Rong and his wife had not left their residence for the entire day. To their surprise, King Rong’s twins had not left the residence either. Only then did the courtiers start to pay attention.

It was then that everyone realized that after this incident, King Rong’s residence was exceptionally quiet. Not only did King Rong not go out, but even his four children who usually went out every day did not appear.

Before anyone could figure out the reason, they received news that King Rong had appeared in some other province!

Immediately after, the royal family announced that King Rong had no choice but to leave the capital to seek help from a famous doctor because of his old injuries. They hoped that the famous doctors in the country would treat King Rong on account of his contribution to the country!

As Queen Consort Rong was worried about King Rong, she insisted on accompanying him.

In order not to let King Rong worry about his four children, the Emperor specially asked him to bring his four children along. Only his heir was left in the King’s Residence in the capital.

Officials: ‘Do you think we’re fools? Who would bring four children to visit a famous doctor?’

However, as they were not imperial physicians who had treated Qi Haoran, they could not produce any concrete evidence to refute.

As for Little Bear, he also played the part and acted like his father was seriously injured, looking extremely worried and sad. For the next few days, he appeared extremely haggard, and even seemed to have lost weight after three to four days.

Seeing this, even the courtiers who had been 70% suspicious of Qi Haoran’s condition could not help but believe it.

If even the courtiers were like this, let alone the ordinary people.

By now, Qi Haoran’s reputation among the commoners had soared even higher than General Yuan’s. Therefore, when they found out that his old injuries had relapsed, the commoners took the initiative to pray for him. Many families even paid to install a longevity memorial tablet for him at home or in temples.

This phenomenon quickly spread from the capital to Jiangnan, then to the west, north, and south.

Not only in the south, but almost every family in the west and north began to install longevity memorial tablets in his name when they heard about it.

Especially in the western lands. More than ten years ago, it was Qi Haoran who led the Qi family’s army to chase the West Xia people out of the western regions and save them. On the western territories that had just been reclaimed, Qi Haoran enjoyed high prestige.

It was the same in the north.

The northern region was originally the base of Qi Haoran and his older brother. Last year, they took back the lost territory. As Qi Haoran was a vanguard and a general, his reputation in the north was not low either.

In an instant, longevity memorial tablets worshipping Qi Haoran became popular in Great Qi. If ordinary families did not install one, they would be discriminated against.

As they were traveling on the road, Qi Haoran didn’t know about this at first until one day, when he was staying at a farmer’s house, he accidentally saw his longevity memorial tablet in the hall. Qi Haoran sighed with emotion and said proudly to Mu Yangling, “With such an achievement, I have not lived in vain!”

Mu Yangling was also very proud of this.

However, the courtiers’ understanding was clearly different from the two of them.

The first thing they thought of was that they had finally found an opportunity to sow discord between the Emperor and King Rong.

Hence, almost half of the memorials that Qi Xiuyuan received every day hinted to him that every commoner in Great Qi only knew King Rong and not the Emperor. In that case, was Great Qi under King Rong or the Emperor?

At the same time, the rumors that King Rong had almost forced the Assistant Minister to death, which had just been suppressed two days ago, began to spread around in the capital again.

Even Mu Bowen, who was studying water conservancy in the Ministry of Works, heard the rumors.

He could not help but look for Fan Zijin, who was also troubled over these two matters. There was nothing he could do about the first matter, since there were some things that he could not say or interfere with. Otherwise, it would only have the opposite effect. He only hoped that his cousin could figure it out on his own and not develop resentment against Qi Haoran.

As for the second matter, Fan Zijin had a headache because many courtiers were adding fuel to the fire. Even if he used his power as Prince An to suppress the news, he failed to do so.

Upon hearing this, Mu Bowen was silent for a moment before saying, “Big Brother Fan, let me handle the rumor thing.”

“You?” Fan Zijin looked at him suspiciously.

With a smile, Mu Bowen said, “Speaking of which, it’s a coincidence. My sister helped me seek His Majesty’s permission to allow me to search for non-confidential documents in the six ministries. When I was in the Ministry of Official Personnel Affairs, I saw the resumes of some officials from the previous dynasty and even helped to organize them. I realized that the percentage of officials from the previous dynasty committing suicide was much higher than other dynasties.”

Fan Zijin raised his eyebrows and looked at him.

Mu Bowen continued with a smile. “When I was young, I cried whenever I suffered a blow. My sister would scold me, ‘If you can’t even withstand such a small blow, what can you accomplish when you grow up, let alone become an official?’ From this, it can be seen that being an official requires resilience. Clearly, Assistant Minister Lan’s resilience isn’t that good.”

Fan Zijin was silent for a moment before saying, “Now, I finally feel that you’re your sister’s younger brother.”

Fan Zijin said, “Since you want to do it, go ahead.”

Mu Bowen immediately returned home. He first wrote a letter to discuss the selection process of officials, then wrote another letter proposing to strengthen the resilience of officials and select suitable candidates. The former was sent to the Ministry of Official Personnel Affairs, while the latter was sent to The Great Qi Times’ newspaper office.

Lin Weide and Mu Yangling could be considered old friends, and he had also met Mu Bowen twice. The impression Mu Bowen gave him was that he was gentle and refined, very unlike the smart and capable Mu Yangling.

If it wasn’t made known, no one would think that they were siblings.

After Mu Bowen entered the capital, he was indeed very quiet. In fact, he was so quiet that he did not seem like King Rong’s brother-in-law.

As King Rong’s brother-in-law, Mu Bowen naturally received a lot of attention. However, other than his good relationship with King Rong’s estate, there was really nothing else worth paying attention to.

This was because Mu Bowen was too low-key. Other than attracting attention by staying at King Rong’s Residence at the beginning, he seemed to have hidden himself after that.

Like his sister, Queen Consort Rong, he didn’t like to socialize. He wasn’t interested in drinking or visiting brothels either. Every day, he would go to Pine Mountain Academy or the six ministries to look up information. Otherwise, he would go to the riverside and daydream. His days were incredibly mundane.

If it weren’t for the fact that he had to visit his sister at the King’s Residence every few days and that Queen Consort Rong often invited his wife and children to her house to play, those people in the capital who hated Qi Haoran would have long attacked him.

Lin Weide had always felt that Mu Bowen was a gentle scholar, but now it seemed that his claws and teeth were also very sharp; it was just that they were usually kept away.

To begin with, he had a good impression of Mu Yangling. In addition, not only was Mu Bowen’s essay well-written, it also had good intentions and most importantly, resonated with him. If he did not publish such an essay, he would be letting himself down.

Hence, Mu Bowen’s article was published the next morning. At the same time, Qi Haoran’s family, who had been forced to leave the capital, began their journey to cause trouble for the courtiers. Their counterattack had just begun.

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