Chapter 609 Disagreement
As soon as the meeting was underway, Bai Changqing walked out of the palace with a cold face, then got into his own carriage, lowered the curtain and headed back home. I was so upset today that I couldn't read the official documents anymore, so I went home and had a rest.
In the carriage, Bai Changqing clearly felt that the bustling Junhou Street was much quieter than before. Opening the corner of the curtain, you can see that the restaurants, teahouses and other places outside are no longer as prosperous as they used to be.
Speaking of which, there are so many restaurants and teahouses in the upper half of Junhou Street. Most of them are supported by the princes in the temple. Lords who want to be superior in everything like this tune.
Of course, including Bai Changqing, they don't need to pay for the expenses of coming to these places themselves, and some people line up to invite them to sit here.
Recently, this trend has been suppressed by the dark clouds of war. Even the people who like to come out the most try to avoid suspicion, lest they get into trouble.
It's been a long time since Bai Changqing came out to drink tea with his colleagues. He usually either went to court or on business. The rest of the time he didn't want to go anywhere and just stayed at home. Now he is a member of the well-known Gu family in the court.
For others, if Bai Changqing likes to stay at home and no longer socialize, he will definitely be ridiculed, saying that he is afraid of guilt. But no one dared to say anything about Bai Changqing.
He is a dignified secretary of the household department, and he is over seventy years old. How can ordinary people dare to laugh at him? And Bai Changqing herself doesn't care.
On the contrary, the current situation is not good, and Bai Changqing is still happy to be regarded as "Gu family" or "fear of internal affairs", which saves him from bothering to reject those shady private invitations.
What kind of people are they? Bai Changqing felt a little cold in his heart when he still wanted to pull him to stand in line at this time. Especially the few hints given to him by left minister Ye Lansheng before made his heart tremble even more, and he felt that he should have made plans for many things earlier.
Bai Changqing's house is in the west of the imperial city. It is a newly bought house, much larger than the previous one.
As soon as Bai Changqing entered the door, he saw a pair of sisters running towards him with smiles on their faces. The coldness on their faces immediately melted into a smile, and they stretched out their arms, one left and one right, and hugged the sisters in their arms.
This kind of behavior without "manners" cannot be seen in other houses, and it is even less likely to appear on the head of the house. "Dignity" is what a hostess in a high-ranking red wall should look like. But this doesn't work in Bai Changqing's house. At least not after he married the Xu family sisters.
The age gap of more than fifty years made Bai Changqing a lot more tolerant when seeing the Xu family sisters, and it could even be said to be "doting". And he, who is used to Fengyue, also happens to like the agility and romance of the Xu family sisters, even if they are naive, he likes them tightly, because these are things that he once had but have long since passed away.
"Master! It's so early to be back today! May I cook for you today?"
"Master, I've finished sewing the uniform for you. Would you like to try it later?"
The twittering was very lively, and the surrounding servants were used to it, so they didn't take it for granted. They stood at a distance with their heads down, smiling but with different thoughts, and it was inconvenient to approach.
"Hehe, okay, wait for me to wash up and try on clothes first, and then eat, okay?"
"Yeah!" The two girls smiled and took Bai Changqing's arm and went all the way to the bedroom in the backyard. As intimate as a young newlywed.
But Bai Changqing's gray hair is eye-catching no matter how you look at it.
After eating and changing into new uniforms, Bai Changqing chatted with the two girls for a while and then went into the study. He needs to take a good look at what happened at the Great Court Meeting today.
Now the situation in the temple is becoming more and more unpredictable. The ups and downs of the army and the fatigue of the civil servants made Bai Changqing sigh in his heart, but he was different from many civil servants, he could actually accept the current situation in his heart. Because in Bai Changqing's view, faction disputes are only limited to the premise that there will be no external threats within the country. If this kind of war ignites like now, then you have to take it easy, and factions cannot override the national war.
This does not conflict with Bai Changqing's previous strong advocacy of "peace talks". "Peace talk" is his political appeal, but now that the appeal fails, then you can't play tricks. If the emperor wins and the army wins, then follow the winner. This is called being able to afford to lose and let go. So now the undercurrent in the temple made Bai Changqing secretly startled, and even had a cold sweat on his back.
why? Because many key figures in the civil service group, including Ye Lansheng, are still collaborating in private, without acknowledging the loss of their right to speak, and have an idea that makes Bai Changqing shudder: if the battle ahead is not going well, or the battle damage is huge, then there will be Opportunity stood up and accused the army of wasting the treasury and the lives of soldiers, and once again strived for peace talks, so as to regain the right to speak.
Even in order to achieve this goal, Ye Lansheng hinted several times that Bai Changqing would put some pressure on the army in terms of money and food, and even "appropriately relax" in terms of ordnance. How did Bai Changqing respond to these words? How dare you answer?
At this court meeting, the emperor had clarified the strategy of tightening the collection of money and grain, and asked the Ministry of Households to start collecting grain into the warehouse at the end of October and implementing it in batches.
If this is the only way, it will be easy to handle. Although Bai Changqing has not experienced the overall planning and errands during the war, the Ministry of Accounts has detailed records. He has found out the various strategies of the Ministry of Accounts in recent wars, synthesized them, and then changed them to some details. You can pass if you want to. Moreover, Bai Changqing had borrowed these copybooks and read them a long time ago, and he brought some rubbings back from his home study today to study them carefully, so he was prepared.
But the more prepared he was, the more entangled he became. Because once the tightening strategy is implemented, if the war is not over in a few months, they will start to distribute food to the cities in the form of quotas. Bai Changqing does not want this kind of errand that hides great invisible power and is extremely sensitive.
However, Bai Changqing is sure that more people will come to him for a private "tea gathering" or "a banquet at home for a few drinks" on business trips tomorrow.
Bai Changqing despises this huge invisible power, and even regards it as a scourge and avoids it, but there are so many people who want to control it. Although Bai Changqing hasn't thought through the doorway, he still knows about it. The only problem is that Bai Changqing doesn't know who he can throw this matter at for the time being. Will the emperor let him throw it out. Or, does he need to discuss this matter with Ye Lansheng, the left minister?
Thinking of Ye Lansheng, Bai Changqing frowned deeply. I didn't think it before, but some of Ye Lansheng's actions now make Bai Changqing more and more disagree, and even feel very inappropriate. Moreover, following the failure of the counterattack led by Ye Lansheng last time, the voice of the civil servants group plummeted, and Ye Lansheng's prestige among the civil servants was not as good as before.
Now that the situation is changing, Bai Changqing feels that he should have his own plan instead of blindly following Ye Lansheng.