SWDnovel Chapter 34 A Night of Indiscriminate Pursuit! Cleansing Suzhou Prefecture!
Chapter 34 A Night of Indiscriminate Pursuit! Cleansing Suzhou Prefecture!
Inside the hall, the people were still clinking glasses and exchanging toasts.
Completely unaware that the world outside had been turned upside down.
"Huh? Why hasn't Old Gu come back yet after so long?" Boss Wang asked, his eyes glazed with drunkenness.
"Mr. Gu is quite old, perhaps he had a few too many drinks, he's probably gone back to his room to rest," someone nearby said casually.
As they were talking, the door to the hall was suddenly pushed open from the outside.
Everyone turned around and looked, thinking that Gu Xiancheng had returned.
However, what walked in was a row of masked men dressed in black night clothes and carrying embroidered spring knives.
"Who...who are you?!"
Boss Wang stood up abruptly, instantly sobering up considerably.
He pointed at the masked men and shouted, "Do you know where you are? This is the Gu family home! How dare you barge in here!"
He had barely finished speaking.
The man in the lead moved.
His figure appeared in front of Boss Wang in the next moment.
Boss Wang didn't even see how he got there.
"Snapped!"
A crisp, loud slap landed heavily on Boss Wang's fat face.
The immense force sent his 200-pound body spinning three times before he crashed to the ground, knocking over a table and spitting out a mouthful of teeth mixed with blood.
The entire hall fell into a deathly silence in an instant.
Everyone was stunned by this sudden turn of events.
"Noisy."
The tall man shook his hand, as if he had touched something dirty.
His voice was hoarse and deep, yet it carried an undeniable air of authority.
It was Zhu Di who had rushed here overnight.
"All of you... attack! Kill them! Kill these thugs!"
One of the gentry members, realizing what was happening, screamed in terror and directed the few personal servants he had with him.
The servants, mustering their courage, drew their swords and tried to rush forward.
Zhu Di didn't even bother to glance at them.
The Imperial Guards behind him flashed out.
A flash of light.
"Pfft!"
Several human heads shot into the sky.
Before the servants could even utter a scream, they became headless corpses and collapsed limply to the ground.
"ah--!"
Terrified screams erupted from inside the hall.
Those pampered and aloof gentry and wealthy merchants had never witnessed such a bloody scene before. They were so terrified that they ran away in panic, crawling under the table. On the ground, excrement and urine flowed together.
"No...don't kill me! I'll give you money! I'll give you money!"
"Heroes, spare my life! I'll give you all my possessions!"
They mistook these suddenly appearing men in black for deadly bandits.
Zhu Di looked at this group of "Jiangnan elites" who were behaving so disgracefully, his eyes filled with contempt and disgust.
With such little courage, you dare to rebel like others?
He ignored these terrified cowards and instead said calmly to the door, "Bring them in."
No sooner had the words been spoken than two Imperial Guards escorted in an old man whose face was ashen and who was trembling all over.
It was Gu Xiancheng, who had just been arrested.
"Mr. Gu...Mr. Gu!"
"Mr. Gu!"
When the people in the hall saw that Gu Xiancheng had also been arrested, their last glimmer of hope was completely extinguished.
Gu Xiancheng looked at the chaotic scene in the hall, his old face turning a deep shade of liver as he gazed at his "allies" sprawled on the ground, displaying their grotesque behavior. (The online novel "The Ming Dynasty: I Helped Emperor Chengzu Cultivate Immortality, Driving Emperor Jiajing Crazy," a work by Xiao K Ya, is available on Kele Novels.)
He knew he had lost.
A crushing defeat.
He couldn't understand who the other party was, how they could sneak into his heavily guarded mansion so stealthily, and how they could so accurately capture them all.
"Who...who exactly are you?"
Gu Xiancheng raised his head, stared intently at Zhu Di, and squeezed out these words through gritted teeth.
Zhu Di slowly walked up to him, reached out, and removed the black cloth from his face.
A square, dignified face, weathered by time, yet strangely familiar to Gu Xiancheng, appeared before him.
Although Gu Xiancheng had never been to the capital and had never seen the portraits in the Imperial Ancestral Temple.
However, as the leader of the Jiangnan literati, he had read more history books than anyone else present.
He had read countless written records about the Yongle Emperor and seen countless portraits drawn by folk painters based on legends.
When Zhu Di's true face appeared before him.
His mind went blank with a "buzz".
An absurd idea, so ridiculous that even he found it laughable, uncontrollably emerged from the deepest part of his heart.
impossible.
It is absolutely impossible.
That person has been dead for over a hundred years!
"You..." Gu Xiancheng's lips began to tremble violently, and he pointed at Zhu Di, but could not utter a single word.
"It seems you recognize me."
Zhu Di looked at his astonished expression and nodded in satisfaction.
This is exactly the effect he wanted.
He wanted to make these self-righteous gentry from Jiangnan know, in their most desperate and fearful moment, who was judging them.
"No...no...you're a sorcerer! You used sorcery to impersonate the Emperor Emeritus!"
"A sorcerer?" Zhu Di laughed.
He stopped wasting words with Gu Xiancheng and instead took something out of his pocket.
A paper.
A piece of paper covered with names.
It was the "visit" list that Zhu Zaiyi gave him.
He threw the list in front of Gu Xiancheng.
"Open your dog eyes and look clearly."
"This is the list you discussed with them last night regarding the 'military remonstrance'."
"Wang Defa, a wealthy merchant from Hangzhou, offered 100,000 taels of silver to buy Qi Jiguang's head."
"Xu Maocai, a local gentry from Songjiang, possessed three hundred sets of armor in private possession."
"And you, Gu Xiancheng."
Zhu Di gently stepped on Gu Xiancheng's shoulder, knocking him to the ground.
"They contacted remnants of the White Lotus Sect, colluded with bandits on Taihu Lake, and plotted to ambush the imperial army and murder high-ranking officials."
"Am I right, what I'm saying?"
Gu Xiancheng looked at the list and listened as Zhu Di read out their conspiracy word for word.
His face, which was liver-colored, turned ashen.
His eyes, which had been filled with terror, turned into utter despair.
He got it.
From the very beginning, they were not fighting against Zhang Juzheng, nor against that young regent.
They are fighting against a god who is all-knowing and all-powerful!
Their schemes and plots, in the face of the other side, all seem like a circus, a laughable clown performance.
"puff--!"
A mouthful of blood spurted from Gu Xiancheng's mouth.
This old fox, who had dominated the Jiangnan region his entire life, was so enraged that his heart ruptured and he fainted on the spot.