18, protection

With a long sigh, the old prince continued, "Seventh prince, you must understand a truth that the country can't be without a king, and you can't have a good minister for a day. You are blessed to have the king of Qi, a brother who cares about you so much. It is because of the attitude of the king of Qi that I decided to hold you to the throne of the crown prince.

"But I was not born tall. Even if I have worked very hard, my father still looks down on me." The seventh prince said sadly.

"You don't have to worry about this. As long as you marry Yuanjia, the problem of your birth will no longer be a problem." The old prince didn't care and said, "I don't stop you from dating Yuanjia. I just hope you can get her heart, and then use the huge influence brought by Yuanjia to help you and make you a crown prince smoothly."

"Speaking of this Qinrou Junjun..." Zhou Huan, who had been silent for a long time, suddenly said, "Have you noticed that this girl is a little strange."

"Can you call the girl, too? You should honor her as Your Highness. The old prince was a little unhappy, he said.

"Yes, yes, I see, Your Highness, right?" Zhou Huan hurriedly followed the kindness and said, "Just now, I listened to the statement of the seventh prince on the attack and found that His Royal Highness was not very simple. She actually found the trace before the assassin appeared, and reminded the seventh prince to escape in time. If it hadn't been for her timely discovery, I'm afraid that no matter how fast I am, I can only help you collect the body of the seventh prince.

"I can't figure this out. She seems to be able to predict the danger in advance, and she can also judge the way to escape in a very short time." The seventh prince feels the same way.

"What makes me more curious is her appearance." Zhou Huan continued, "I was really shocked when I saw His Royal Highness. This face has been familiar since I was a child. It can be said that everyone in our Zhou family is extremely familiar with this face."

"How to say this?" The old prince was puzzled.

"The reason why my Zhou family has stood for thousands of years is that my Zhou family has always been guarded by a fairy family. At that time, the ancestors of my Zhou family fell in love with a fairy. Although he finally failed to marry the fairy and died, the fairy missed her deep affection for her ancestors and took good care of our Zhou family, and even my Zhou family appeared. The Sword Soul Valley where we live and the practice of swordsmanship are all left to us by the fairies in those years. Therefore, our Zhou family has shaped the fairy into a golden body, which has been worshipped devoutly for all generations. And the appearance of His Royal Highness is exactly the same as the statue of a fairy, which surprised me.

"I also know some allusions about your Zhou family and that fairy, but I really haven't seen a fairy statue." The old prince said curiously, "What's the name of the fairy?"

"It's called Su Ling. We call her Su Xianzi." Zhou Huan replied.

The old prince smiled and said, "There are similarities between people. There is nothing to be surprised about. It can only show that the vegetarian fairy who guards your home and Yuanjia, who guards your family, are both beautiful women. As for Yuan Jia's prediction of the assassin, ask her again when you have a chance in the future.

"Bear by the way, Yuanjia will be all right. She cried so sadly just now. If I hadn't known that she did it on purpose, I might have really thought that the assassin had made a special trip to kill her. The seventh prince smiled bitterly and said, "Why don't you usually see that she is so good at acting?"

As soon as the old prince talked about his granddaughter, he had a lot of smiles on his face and said, "She was coaxed back by the empress dowager. If the empress dowager protects her, no one can do anything to her. As for a girl, she cries, makes a fuss and hangs. She is supposed to be a good at home. If she doesn't cry or make trouble, it will be strange.

As he was talking, the curtain was picked up. King Qi came in from the outside and saw that several of them were there. Zhan Yan smiled and said, "Meet, why don't you call me?"

"You didn't go to trial the assassin. Why did you come back?" The old prince called him to sit down and said.

The king of Qi picked up the teacup of the seventh prince, took a rude breath, and said, "What's the trial? All three of them bit their tongues alive and committed suicide. Damn it, it's really cruel that they actually trained the dead."

The old prince also looked cold and said, "It seems to be more troublesome than I expected, but no matter what, you can't change the plan to depose the prince. The king of Qi should also prepare quickly and pull him down in one fell swoop."

The king of Qi was also rarely serious and said cautiously, "The prince is not worried. The key is that he is from the lineage of Xiang Shangshu of his uncle's Ministry of Ceremonies. If he wants to depose the prince, he will definitely have a head-on conflict with these people, and these people all hold real power, so it's a little tricky."

"Of course, these minions should be pulled out first." The old prince sneered and said, "When the former emperor gave the woman of the Xiang family to the emperor, I had a problem, but the former emperor still did this in order to win over the stubborn old man of the Xiang family. At that time, the emperor was not the crown prince, and I did not insist on my opinion. I didn't expect that the momentary compromise at that time left such a big hidden danger that it had to be eliminated.

He turned back and said to the seventh prince, "You did a good job this time. Even if all the assassins are dead, the emperor and the empress dowager know that you are fighting to protect Yuan Jia. We won't talk about it for the emperor, but at least the empress do will help you. You should know that because you are not born tall, the Empress Dowager has some opinions about you. After this, I'm afraid she will also fully support you.

"Protecting the county is what I should do. In any case, I won't leave her to run for her life alone." The seventh prince is serious.

"Anyway, although this is an unexpected event, the result is good for us." The old prince smiled and said, "Zhou Shaoxia, for the time being, the safety of the seventh prince is up to you. With your skills, there should be no problem."

"Of course it's no problem." Zhou Huan nodded and said, "But after that, my lord, you have to arrange a good position for me in the army."

"This is natural. Which of you Zhou family has experienced in the world is not a heroic and invincible general? Just because you are the Zhou family, the army will welcome you. Speaking of which, your sword soul valley is really a different kind. Mingli is a Jianghu family, but it is clearly bounded from the rivers and lakes. Every time you enter the world, you have to go to the army. The old prince looked at Zhou Huan and said happily.

"This is also the ancestral precept." Zhou Huan said helplessly, "My Zhou family was a general family thousands of years ago. Although it is no longer glorious after thousands of years, it still leaves the ancestral motto, so that our son of the Zhou family can join the army and experience the courage of our ancestors to fight in the battlefield. Therefore, while practicing swordsmanship and martial arts, the men of our Zhou family should also learn the strategy of war.

The old prince did not pester the strange ancestral motto of the Zhou family, but carefully took care of the preparation for the deposed of the prince to the king of Qi and let him arrange it. What the seventh prince had to do was to get the emperor's attention as soon as possible and let the emperor look at him with new eyes.

This opportunity came very fast. It was so fast that they were caught off guard. Before they finished discussing, the Empress Dowager sent someone to invite the seventh prince, saying that Qinrou Junjun would use the water brought back today to make a pot of the world's first tea.

Hearing this, Qian Wang and others, who had not finished discussing some things, were also completely aroused and went to the residence of the empress dowager with the seventh prince.

Shanglin Bieyuan is not big. The largest main hall is the emperor's residence. The east wing is inhabited by the empress dowager. When the seventh princes and others arrive, the emperor was sitting on the right side of the empress dowager and whispering to the empress dowager.

In addition to the emperor and the empress dowager sitting in the hall, there are three seats on the left. Because I didn't expect so many people to come, the seats are obviously not enough. At the order of the empress dowager, the palace maids are adding chairs here. On the other side, there is a wide tea table, and there are four or five tea stoves on one side, boiling water at this moment.

The footsteps sounded softly, and Cheng Yuanjia, who was wearing a white gauze wide-sleeved long skirt, turned out of the back hall, carefully holding a green jade carved bottle in her hand. Although her face looked a little pale, it was much better than when she first came back.

The people present are all people who know the goods. At a glance, you can see that this green bottle is carved out of a whole piece of good jade. What's more rare is that this bottle still emits a soft light. This bottle alone is already worth a lot of value.

In fact, this bottle is made by Cheng Yuanjia with a medium-grade wooden spirit stone. You should know that this kind of spirit stone full of aura is very rare in the secular world. The degree of rarity is definitely higher than the best jadeite, so the people present can't find the difference. The tea in the bottle is the tea she planted on several tea trees next to the spiritual spring in the Nine Star Ring of Qiankun. This kind of spiritual tea is hard to find in the world of cultivation, and it is also made by herself. After it is made, it has been kept warm in this kind of spiritual stone carved bottle. It can be said that even if the emperor wants to buy this tea, there is absolutely nowhere to sell it. .