Chapter 6: A Gamble on National Destiny
The twenty-eighth day of the first lunar month, the hour of Xu.
Bao Zheng was sitting in the sedan chair with a frown on his face. When he saw the dead pigs, he had guessed that his opponent had taken the lead again in this round of competition. The so-called "corpse cage" in the prophecy poem was obviously not the death row of the Dali Temple Prison or the Imperial Censorate Prison where he sent people to guard, but here; the wronged souls did not refer to the prisoners who confessed under torture, but pigs. They were born to be eaten, so it is not an exaggeration to call them wronged souls. It was really heartbreaking to lose this round. What kind of word game was this?
There is no doubt that the situation will get worse. The whole nursery rhyme is moving from a scattered presentation to a gradually complete context. The curious people in the market must have imagined the whole process of the hat monster's rebirth vividly: it first crawled out of the hero's tomb, then sneaked into the palace to kill the imperial concubine, and after lurking for seven days, it came to the pig slaughtering alley and sucked away the souls of hundreds of pigs here. After collecting so many ghosts, it is getting stronger and bigger. A monster that is bound to shake the foundation of the Song Dynasty is becoming clearer and more ferocious through word of mouth.
Thinking of this, Lao Bao couldn't help but lift the curtain of the sedan chair. Xu Chong, who was listening beside him, was smart and hurried over.
"grown ups."
"This butcher Ah Si is quite brave. This knife must be carefully examined."
"yes!"
"Has the letter from the Imperial City Department been delivered by express horse to Haizhou?"
"Are you asking about Shen Kuo?" Xu Chong was puzzled. Bao Zheng had never even looked at Yang Weide, but now he was eager to see his old friend Yang? Perhaps he was forced into a corner by the reality of the case.
"Sir, judging by the date, it must have just been delivered. Shen Kuo is not like the messenger who changes horses at the post station. It must be even slower for him to get to the capital after receiving the letter. It may be the beginning of February."
"Ah! ... Today I suddenly felt that the case was confusing and I was a little exhausted. I just remembered this person, but I'm afraid that if he really comes, what he has learned is mostly based on astronomical phenomena, which is of no use."
In the city of Bianjing, the first place where emotions exploded was the gambling houses. Those gamblers who firmly believed that the hat monster would live up to their expectations finally won back a game. Before today, Bianjing was still dead in the national mourning, and public opinion was waiting for a certain opportunity to explode. Now the time has finally come, and the surging public sentiment has exploded. In restaurants and various shops that are not restricted by the entertainment ban, everyone is talking about the hat monster, talking about the demonic aura in the sky that is clearly invisible but increasingly strong, even in the palace. The folk interpreters have begun to publish their sensational opinions in street tabloids.
After disappearing for a long time, Wen Yanbo finally took a sedan chair and came to the headquarters of this secret investigation - the Military Introduction Office. It was the first time in his life that he set foot in this cold government office hidden deep in the northwest corner of the city.
After parting at Erying Pavilion, the three officials, encouraged by the emperor and determined to investigate together, gathered together for the first time.
When Wen Yanbo walked into the yard, he saw several wild dogs tied to the pillars nearby and several guards watching them. These dogs looked very ordinary and were not the small dogs with a keen sense of smell that could help in investigating cases.
The three of them exchanged a few pleasantries, then sat around looking at the butcher knife and the folk tabloids piled up nearby.
"The tabloid came out this morning?" Wen Yanbo asked.
Xu rushed in from outside, holding a few newly collected books.
"Your Excellency, I have checked and found that an unscrupulous businessman had already written several stories about the return of the hat monster, and printed them in movable type, without filling them with rosin, leaving only the last few lines blank. As soon as the news came out this morning, he chose the ones that were close to the story, and then made up a few random hearsay sentences at the end, stuffed them in with clay movable type, and printed them out first. You see, the last few sentences of this tabloid are crooked."
"Okay, okay." Wen Yanbo picked up a copy and took a look at it. He couldn't help but become interested: "The evil prophecy has come true again. The corpse cages are actually in the Pig Slaughtering Alley. Well, the three words "Pig Slaughtering Alley" are indeed a bit crooked. I think they were filled in later. Well, if the court bulletin of the Imperial Court could have such foresight, it would be a good thing."
"Lord Wen's words are wrong. If we make a plate in advance for the sake of convenience, wouldn't that be like fortune-telling? How can it be worthy of the word foresight?" Bao Zheng said with a dark face. He really wanted to argue everywhere.
Yang Wei De was about to express his opinion, but was hurt by Bao Zheng's words that belittled divination, and he stopped talking out of anger.
"This morning, the hat monster reappeared in the south city, sucked away the essence of pigs and then fled..." Wen Yanbo grabbed another copy: "The bone monster first sucked the soul of the hero, then took the soul of the imperial concubine, and then took the life of the lowly livestock. It gathered the three souls of humans, ghosts and animals, so it must have . Haha... What a good story, so sensational."
"Such tabloids should be banned."
"Master Bao, if we ban tabloids, wouldn't that be more like trying to stop the people from speaking out than trying to stop the river from flooding?"
"If we cannot stop evil words, I am afraid that they will bring more disaster than a great river."
"How's the inspection of those dead pigs going?" Wen Yanbo didn't want to argue, so he changed the subject.
"Minister Wen, no poison was found. Some testimonies only said that they heard a commotion in the pig cage before the incident."
"The failure to find the poison does not necessarily mean that poisoning did not occur," said Wen Yanbo.
"What the Minister said is absolutely right. According to medical theory, if there is poison, it will accumulate in the liver. I have already asked people to catch a few wild dogs outside, take out the pig livers and feed them to them. I am just waiting for the results."
"Oh, Master Bao, this is very thoughtful. Very good."
Wen Yanbo turned around and looked at the dog outside. It looked alive and well, and didn't look like it was about to die.
"It's been nearly an hour, it seems he won't die." Bao Zheng shook his head. He tried to find every possible trick, as long as he could expose it, the whole conspiracy would collapse, but it didn't happen.
"Since there are still no clues, the next one is the solar eclipse on February 2?"
Wen Yanbo turned to Yang Wei De.
"That's right." Yang Wei De stood up respectfully.
"What will happen?"
“There will indeed be a solar eclipse in Gyeonggi Province on that day, but if there is heavy rain or snow, the sky will be overcast and the eclipse will not be visible.”
Yang Wei De could only find such a slim possibility of winning passively, and as expected, he was given the cold shoulder by Bao Zheng.
"What Yang Chunguan said makes sense. If God blesses the Song Dynasty, there may be thick clouds covering the sky, and the nursery rhyme will be broken by itself."
"Minister Wen, I have checked the weather records of the capital region over the past 200 years since the previous dynasty. The chances of heavy snow and thick clouds in early February are very high, about 30% to 40%. "
"Good, God bless the Song Dynasty, there will be auspicious snow and auspicious clouds. I will now secretly report to the government to set up an altar to pray for auspicious snow."
The two men encouraged each other and seemed to have decided that it would snow heavily on the second day of February. Only Lao Bao shook his head and sighed. He originally wanted to break the enemy's tricks, but he didn't expect that they actually wanted to summon ghosts.
Wen Yanbo sat for a while and then dozed off. After a while, he woke up and made up an excuse that he had a headache to go back home. Yang Wei De also ran away, using the excuse that he had not finished checking the weather data from Emperor Xuanzong's Dazhong period seven years ago. In the end, Bao Zheng was the only one left in the room. He looked outside. Several wild dogs were still jumping around there, not looking like they were poisoned at all.
"Sir," Xu rushed in, "it's better to release these wild dogs. I think they are useless."
"Feed them with pig liver again and see what happens tomorrow."
"yes!"
The twenty-ninth day of the first lunar month, the first quarter of the evening.
While Tokyo Bianliang was in turmoil, Suzhou, downstream of the Bian River, remained peaceful. Sporadic news of the hat monster appearing in the capital had been heard, but it did not cause too much fear. The imperial decree banning entertainment for a month during the national mourning period did not have much restrictions outside the capital, and the people here lived their daily lives as usual.
A magnificent passenger ship is docked by the canal.
It is now the middle of winter and there is only northwest wind. In addition, the water in the Bian River flows to the southeast. As long as the boat can be pulled to Bianliang by trackers, the boat can only be moored on the river bank at night when the trackers rest.
A young man who looked like a scholar stood at the bow with his hands behind his back, watching the stars in the distance.
The scholar frowned and thought, then opened the atlas in his hand and compared it with the star map. A boatman yawned and walked over.
"Mr. Shen, it's windy at night, why don't you go to the cabin and rest."
"Boatman, you've come at the right time. I have something I want to ask you."
"Sir, please don't bother me by asking for advice. Just ask."
"Boatman, when sailing, have you ever used the North Star in the sky to determine the direction?"
"Sir, if you only do inland waterway transportation, you don't need to observe the stars to identify the position. But I beg for food on the boat, and I often go out of the Qiantang River to the sea, south to Guangdong and Guangxi, Annan or north to Dengzhou. I often can't see the coast, so I can identify some stars."
"That's great. Let me ask you, the North Pole I see seems to be a little higher than what I saw in Yuhang before. Am I seeing it wrong?"
"What you saw is correct, sir. It is indeed so. However, Yuhang is too close to here, so it is not very clear. If you go south to Champa, the stars in the northern sky are all an inch lower than what you see here, while the stars in the southern sky are higher."
"Does the boatman know why?"
"I don't know." The boatman smiled and shook his head.
The scholar frowned and said to himself: "If the earth were flat, it wouldn't be like this?"
"Do you think it's because the ground is uneven?"
"Oh, when I said it was uneven, I didn't mean the ups and downs of the mountains and rivers. I just thought that if the stars in the northern sky get higher from south to north, maybe it means that the earth is not flat, but round? In fact, I often observe the shape of the waning moon, and I guess it might be caused by the shadow of the earth blocking the sun." The scholar nodded thoughtfully, as if confirming his judgment, "So, on the surface of the circle, the further north we go, the higher the stars in the northern sky. The further south we go, the lower they are, until they are so low that they are invisible under the ground."
"Sir, if the earth is round, wouldn't the person on the back fall off?"
"Haha, the boatman is wrong. How can the people at the back know that they are at the back? Why don't they think that we are the ones at the back?"
"Sir, your thoughts are too profound. I just can't understand them." The boatman smiled and retreated, thinking to himself: I can't continue to sit here with this nerd, drinking the northwest wind and chatting about these irrelevant things.
