Zhang Hefeng left the capital a few days later, and was not kept by the emperor as Li Ling thought before, and continued to be the Minister of Rites.

This is because he is indeed old and cannot deal with the heavy official duties in the court as before, but more importantly, it is because he did not obey the emperor's intentions, but instead used rhetoric to make the emperor express his opinion and did not intend to abolish the crown prince. In this way, the emperor did not want to keep him in the court again.

When Zhang Hefeng left Beijing, many of his disciples and former officials came to see him off. However, the officials of the prince rarely showed up. I don’t know if they were dissatisfied with his previous actions or to avoid suspicion. Li Ling and Xu Cang gave the great scholar the last journey. In the long pavilion next to the city, he even toasted the old man with a glass of water and wine.

After drinking the toasts between them with a smile, the old man looked at Xu Cang, then Li Ling, and suddenly said, "Zhuo Wu is my disciple. I have already understood his character and character. As long as I do things well in the future, I think his future will not be too bad. As for you, to be honest, even with my eyesight and experience, I cannot truly see through your character."

"Mr. Confucianism really made students panic..." Li Ling said with a smile and bowed, "I have no ambitions, I just want to make myself and my family live a better life and don't have to worry about my livelihood."

"If it were just that, you have achieved your goal now, but obviously, your ambition is much greater than this. I asked myself some knowledge, and this confidence is still there. But..." Speaking of this, Zhang Hefeng's face turned solemn, "I still hope that you will be more concerned about the people of the world in the future and do not make any decisions that will make you regret. For example, although you saved me this time, you still did something wrong."

Seeing that Li Ling was a little puzzled, he said again: "The Imperial City Office has taken this opportunity to start again. This is not a righteous yamen after all. We are a Confucian scholar and we never want the disasters that happened in the late Han and Tang dynasties to come again. Do you understand what I mean?"

Li Ling looked at the old man with some admiration. He didn't expect that he could see so far, and immediately noticed the huge impact that the Imperial City Secretary might have. He could only smile bitterly and said, "The Confucian Master's concerns are of course reasonable, but this matter cannot be controlled by me, Li Ling, alone."

"Yes, but it is because of you that they have found a chance to make a new happen. I just hope that you will not only care about your own goals in the future, and that you should think more about the long-term. Although you are not my disciple, you and me have some friendship after all. I don't want what I heard in the future is the end of you that you will harm the country and the people and be despised by thousands of people."

"The Confucian teacher is so serious that students ask themselves that they cannot have such an impact."

"Hope." Zhang Hefeng only sighed softly and quickly ended the brief conversation. Afterwards, he said some encouragement words to some disciples, then went out of the pavilion to get on the bus, and followed the endless official road toward the south.

After watching him leave, Li Ling looked at Xu Cang again, and then returned to the city together. Zhang Hefeng's affairs were settled, but their life in the capital had to continue.

What is also continuing is the turmoil and officials in the court have been fluctuating.

Affected by this incident, the prince's party was indeed quite implicated. Not only Fan Meisheng, but also many officials with great positions were also exiled or demoted for various reasons. For a time, the prince's party's power was greatly reduced, and everyone else was in danger.

The opponent is so devastated, and it is reasonable that the Yongwang Party should be happy. They should take this opportunity to put their own personnel into the camp that should belong to the prince. But in fact, their situation at this time has become extremely bad.

This naturally caused the emperor to express his opinion in public that he would not have a desire to dethrone and establish a great blow to them. But more importantly, in the next few days, the Ministry of Justice where King Yong was also under great pressure, and no less than twenty censors and censors directly impeached many of the Ministry of Justice.

At this time, the Imperial City Department suddenly took action and threw out an amazing case - the Jiangyang thief "Heluo Sanhu" who should have been sentenced by the Ming Zhengdian two years ago died two days ago due to assassination of the imperial court official.

This caused a complete uproar. This case is enough to prove that there are indeed great disadvantages in the Ministry of Justice and must be investigated to the end.

With the matter of the Ministry of Justice, the Imperial City Department directly inserted its hands into the other yamen under the control of King Yong, and began another cleanup and settlement. For a time, dozens of Yongwang Party members were dismissed, and everyone else was in danger. How could they expand and compete with the princelings again?

When these news reached Li Ling through various channels, he couldn't help but admire the emperor's thunderous means. The emperor has really understood this way of checks and balances. In order to maintain a balance between the two forces, he actually thought of ways to weaken them all.

The next series of new appointments also allowed Li Ling to vaguely see some tricks. These officials who were constantly filled with vacancies were almost all young officials with no background. This was obviously the emperor's cultivation of a new force that was completely loyal to him.

In addition, the Imperial City Department, which has been revived quickly and has the power to independently interrogate officials through several cases, has finally completely mastered a force that can compete with the officials in the court. The most important thing is that the emperor did not use his own power without any advantage in all this. Most of them were taking advantage of the situation and then sent the officials on legitimate reasons. In this way, even the officials in the court could not come up with reasons for opposition, and could only acknowledge such a result.

Perhaps, this is the real purpose of the emperor's acquiesce to the prince and King Yong to cultivate their own power. It's like raising pigs, until the time is right, he will take the lead in harvesting.

However, the court storm that happened in the past half month had almost no impact on Li Ling, and he had solved the problem in time. As for the benefits, he had been in charge of the Qingsi Department of the Ministry of Revenue in just half a year before entering the court, and it was impossible for him to be promoted again. Therefore, when it comes to the truth, the big problem before him still exists.

Fortunately, he was not in a hurry, so he did not completely make up his mind to take the risk to southern Yunnan, but wanted to see if there was a better way - after all, going to southern Yunnan, thousands of miles away, is really going to bet on success or failure with his life.

As a result, Li Ling's part became a little leisurely and free in the yamen, and there was not much official business to deal with every day. He just followed the rules and looked at the documents and drank tea, or looked at the official newspapers that the court would send every other period to learn about the world's major events in one or two months.

If you want to talk about this mansion newspaper, it is much less than the Zongheng Monthly newspaper founded by Li Ling. It is always only available in two or three months to be distributed to the capital and local governments. However, the content above is much more detailed and important than that of the folk newspapers. The court policies, local disasters, or some mobilizations of important officials are all included.

This time, the mansion newspaper that Li Ling recently received was a thick stack. It was said that it was a newspaper, but many of the contents on it were known to Li Ling long ago, such as the transfer of many officials in the court, including Fan Meisheng, and the practice of thoroughly investigating the ills of the Ministry of Justice... Li Ling naturally glanced at these things and quickly flipped over them.

When he saw some local affairs, Li Ling was suddenly stunned because he suddenly saw a news from Huaibei - on the ninth day of the ninth month, some Luotian traitors gathered tens of thousands of rioters and suddenly attacked Xiajiangbei County, Hengzhou Prefecture. On the day of the city, the people were injured and killed, and some four or five rich families in the local area were destroyed, and none of them survived!

When Li Ling saw this news, he was stunned for a moment before his body trembled violently. An extremely terrible thought could not stop coming out of his mind: "Jiangbei, a rich family... Isn't my sister still being detained by the Wei family? She... No, no, she will definitely not be in trouble!"

He kept comforting himself in his heart. Li Ling's hand had clenched with all his strength out of control, and for a moment he had already pinched the paper. The extremely strong uneasiness in his heart made him unable to sit still anymore. He immediately stood up and walked out directly. Someone greeted him on the road, but Li Ling ignored him and left the yamen and turned around and ran towards the Ministry of War not far away.

In such local changes, the first news was naturally the Political Affairs Hall and the Privy Council, but immediately, in order to dispatch troops to quell the chaos, the news would be sent to the Ministry of War as soon as possible. So if he wanted to confirm that terrible guess, he would just go to the Ministry of War to ask.

The Ministry of War and the Ministry of Revenue were not far away, and soon he entered the door. The guards there saw him wearing an official robe and looking solemn, and they did not dare to stop him. Li Ling also grabbed him and asked where some officials who were dealing with the Huaibei Rebellion.

Li Ling rushed all the way and soon walked into a public housing unit. He asked loudly at a distracted War officer Wailang, "Do you know the casualties in Jiangbei County, this lord, do you know the casualties in Jiangbei County?"

"Hmm? What does this have to do with you?" The man glared at him with some dissatisfaction. He was about to rebuke him, but was interrupted by Li Ling rudely: "Answer me, there is a Wei family in Jiangbei, is he also injured by the thieves? Is anyone in their family escaped?" As he spoke, Li Ling rushed to the front of the plan, and half of his body was approached, as if he was about to drag him out of the case at any time.

This behavior scared the other party very much. He didn't care about putting on an official airs anymore. He just hesitated and said, "It's true that this matter is true, I'll take a look..." He said, quickly checking the desk, finding a document to read it quickly, and then looking up at Li Ling, "That, the Wei family in Jiangbei is one of the five wealthy families that were destroyed, with seventy-two families, including slaves, and none of them survived..."

"Boom--!"
Chapter completed!