Chapter 694 - 253: The Envoy Enters the Capital
Chapter 694: Chapter 253: The Envoy Enters the Capital
Of course, none of this had anything to do with Zhao Jing.
Even though he was the Champion Scholar, a new one was crowned only once every three years. However, since the Emperor ascended the throne, counting the special grace examinations, seven Champion Scholars had already been produced. Inside the Imperial College, there was a surplus of Champion Scholars, runners-up, third-places, as well as editors and compilers promoted from scholars. Those men were all veterans. As the newest Champion Scholar, Zhao Jing was completely inconspicuous when thrown into the mix.
"I haven’t figured out the ins and outs of the rules here yet," he reasoned. "I should wait a bit longer to understand the hidden rules before doing anything."
He wasn’t trying to stand out right now. His only goal was to avoid accidentally stepping into a trap set by someone else and getting himself into trouble.
It was worth noting that when Zhao Jing entered the Hanlin Academy, no one in his family passed down any confidential advice to him. In the Xu family, Mr. Xu and Xu Shiniang had both started their careers in the Hanlin Academy in their early years. Even Xu Yanlin had once spent two years there. By all accounts, they had plenty of guidance and warnings to offer, but none of them said a word. This was meant as a test.
Zhao Jing was wise and perceptive. Since he understood his elders’ underlying intentions, he felt no anxiety. He patiently explored and adapted, grasping every crucial detail and thoroughly understanding all the elements of surviving in the bureaucracy.
While Zhao Jing adapted to life in the Hanlin Academy and Chen Wanqing peacefully rested during her pregnancy day by day, time slipped into May. The fifteenth of May was the day of the Emperor’s capping ceremony, and the twentieth of May marked the Empress Dowager’s fortieth birthday. By this time, the ministers from various tribes and vassal states who came to the Capital City to pay tribute and seek an audience had already arrived.
Not to mention Mr. Xu, who was so busy his feet barely touched the ground, or Xu Shiniang, who hadn’t been home for days, or Xu Yanlin, who practically moved into the government office—even Zhao Jing, a newcomer to officialdom, was assigned a multitude of errands. He was first tasked with writing a congratulatory text for the Empress Dowager’s birthday. Immediately after, he was ordered to draft a document of edicts for the vassal states of the Western Regions. Once he finished these two tasks, he was appointed as a Transmission Officer. In this role, he was responsible for leading the envoys to stand behind the civil officials during the court audiences of the vassal states and guiding them through their ceremonial bows.
The tasks were not complex, but for any of them, a single moment of carelessness could result in a reprimand. If he violated any taboos, he could be dismissed from his post or demoted. Whether this was a test arranged by his elders or a deliberate difficulty created by the Empress Dowager’s faction, Zhao Jing handled everything flawlessly, giving no one a chance to find fault.
However, exceptions always occurred.
For instance, the many vassal states from the Western Regions were inherently unwilling to bow in submission. Ten years ago, they had suffered consecutive natural disasters. Plundering the Wei Dynasty on several occasions failed to alleviate their plight. Devastated by the countless deaths of their livestock and young children, they were forced to submit to the Wei Dynasty to ensure the survival of their tribes in exchange for aid.
They harbored no good intentions to begin with, and their arrival this time was a deliberate attempt to cause trouble. Just because Zhao Jing wanted to guide them properly didn’t mean they were willing to cooperate. Sure enough, although one of them stumbled during the court assembly at the Taihe Palace and narrowly missed crashing into Zhao Jing, they pulled another stunt when they left the palace together with Zhao Jing to settle in at the courier station.
They constantly sneered in their speech, using the phrase "beautiful as a woman" to insult him, and stared Zhao Jing up and down with filthy, lecherous gazes. Afterward, Zhao Jing flicked his sleeves and left in disgust, while those burly men from the Western Regions slung their arms around each other’s shoulders, laughing uproariously.
This incident was not deliberately concealed, and countless people secretly kept an eye out for the fallout. They were curious whether the Xu family’s grandson-in-law was a soft target who could be easily manipulated. As it turned out, he was no soft target; he was as prickly and unyielding as an iron hedgehog.
That night, as those burly men from the Western Regions were returning from a brothel, they were inexplicably struck by falling stones from the sky. Three of them died on the spot.
Three dead! Killed instantly!
And the stones that killed them were none other than Outer Heaven Meteorites, revered by the Western Regions as Divine Stones. These stones had two very common characteristics: first, they were covered in a thin black crust; second, upon closer inspection, one could find small indentations on their surface, resembling thumbprints pressed into dough. These were the legendary "fingerprints."
The states of the Western Regions preferred to call these fingerprints "the marks of a Heavenly God’s touch."
Crushed to death by a miracle handed down by a Heavenly God—the remaining burly men from the Western Regions at the scene were completely dumbfounded! After the initial shock wore off, they began screaming in sheer panic, as if their very lair had been invaded. Their cries woke the nearby residents, constables, and envoys from other tribes and tribute countries.
In the dead of night, the area was illuminated by countless torches, blazing as brightly as day. When the Capital Governor was alerted and rushed to the scene, the news had already sprouted wings, spreading at lightspeed through the dark night.