The palace has always been a place where people want to see it.

The storybook boasts about the palace especially, such as jade buildings and jade palaces, and the double-eaved golden halls. You can see women in palace clothes wearing pearls and jade on their heads, holding incense burners and jade plates in their hands, giving them delicious food on earth.

In fact, this is not the case in the palace.

Inside the ochre-red palace walls, the double-eaved palace is indeed majestic, but it is far from the fairyland of the Heavenly Palace. A house is a house, and it does not contain its own clouds and mists. It is not built with jade and white jade.

The beautiful women in high buns are even more disgusted. The eunuchs wear crow green and brown robes, and the palace maids wear stone green and indigo clothes. None of them is conspicuous. They stand on the palace wall or corner of the palace and almost blend with the decorations.

Now that the palace is full of martial law, even those who walk with their heads buried can’t be seen.

The Imperial Guards patrolled everywhere, and each palace gate was tightly closed, and there was no movement inside.

Mo Li glanced at him a few moments.

He found that Meng Qi was following the eunuchs who dug holes and hid things, but dug out groundwater veins.

"What's wrong with these people?"

"It's not a big deal, but they happen to be in the same direction as the place we were going. I saw that they knew how to take a small path to avoid the guards, so I took advantage of it." Meng Qi is not unfamiliar with the layout of the imperial city. Although they have changed several dynasties, the general orientation of the building has not changed much.

Meng Qi said as he walked: "Princes usually live nearer to the previous dynasty, with the Imperial Garden as the boundary, and behind it is the residence of the concubines."

His steps suddenly stopped, and his expression was hesitant.

“Something is wrong.”

Mo Li looked up and saw that a nearby palace was disrepaired for a long time and seemed a little dilapidated. Although he had not seen any weeds, he did not look like he was inhabited.

Meng Qi frowned and said, "From forward, there is the East Palace, which should be the residence of other princes nearby. This Chunhua Palace is the largest, with a total of seven halls. During the Chu Dynasty, it was a place where the princes lived and studied. Was it abandoned in the Qi Dynasty?"

He just said that he knew where the second prince lived, and was soon slapped by the facts.

There are imperial guards coming and going in and out in this Chunhua Palace. Seeing that they have no scruples and no concerns, they are obviously an empty palace. The search for martial law is just to prevent rebels from hiding it.

Mo Li looked at the mottled red palace walls outside Chunhua Palace and suddenly said, "Sixteen years ago, Lu Zhang led his army into the imperial city. Where was the place where the Chu royal family was massacred?"

Meng Qi pursed her lips and woke up.

"You mean..."

Because there were too many people dead in Chunhua Palace, shortly after the founding of Qi Dynasty, the palace needed repairs everywhere, and repairs required money. A "unlucky" place like Chunhua Palace was naturally abandoned.

"In fact, people died in the palaces everywhere, and many people are not just Chunhua Palace."

It seems unreasonable to just avoid this, but this is people's usual logic.

The royal family was renowned when they were alive, and even if they died, they seemed to be more powerful than others.

As long as people think something is unlucky, they can always find hundreds of reasons.

"I didn't expect this." Meng Qi said unexpectedly, "I thought Lu Zhang would not care about this. Qi Dynasty called the king of the former dynasty unjust, so he replaced it. Could it be that Lu Zhang was also afraid that the Chu Dynasty would not be able to stop his will?"

"The palace is so big, where should I go to find the second prince?"

Mo Li found a hidden eaves, which were covered by a pear tree. He looked around and found that many imperial guards were heading towards the palace where the water column had just been sprayed out.

"If the second prince has been taken down, in addition to being imprisoned in the residence, it may also be sent to other places for house arrest." Meng Qi pondered, "We will go wherever we are in strict defense. If we cannot meet the second prince, we can find Lu Zhang. However, such a place may also be a trap... If the person trying to rebel or assassinate, he can only see an empty hall and a lot of ambush."

Just be able to enjoy this kind of ambush for the ancestor Qingwu, and they don’t have to go and experience it.

"Further forward is the East Palace."

"The prince of the Eastern Palace is terminally ill, but someone hides something in a remote courtyard. Do you think this matter has something to do with rebellion?" Mo Li thought about it.

"It's hard to say that even if no one wants to rebel, there are always things that people in the palace don't want others to know."

Meng Qi finally finished his hair, changed from an adult to a child, and then from a child to an adult. In addition to clothes, hair was also very troublesome.

When he and Mo Li came out of the secret passage, they were all disheveled. No, it would affect their appearance!

"It's not difficult for the doctor to know... Look, they stopped."

The group of eunuchs found that there were more imperial guards near the East Palace. Their clothes were stained with sludge and water stains, and they had no way to get away with them.

"What should I do!" The eunuch in the lead was anxious.

He was still holding a box in his hand, and the eunuchs followed him, as if they wanted to find a place and hide their things.

When Meng Qi and Mo Li came over, they saw them finding a tree, climbing up and stuffing the box into the hole of the tree, covering it with branches and leaves, and then they fled in all directions.

Meng Qi is already very accustomed to this kind of secret that is sent to his nose.

Gerry can always hear all kinds of secrets, and it is not surprising that they encounter one more.

"Doctor, why not guess what will be inside?"

"It will be buried, not something that is easy to decay. Silver notes and documents are impossible... The box is not big, but it is not small. If it is a small object like a jade pendant and a gold hairpin, you can wrap it in a certain gap with a veil, and it is extremely hidden and you don't have to take risks. Since you have to dig a hole to fill it in the box, it means that the things inside may be more expensive, cannot be damaged, or even disguised, and you can find problems by looking at others."

Mo Li analyzed one by one, and when he finished speaking, Meng Qi suddenly thought of a possibility.

"Can it be the Jade Seal of the Nation?"

"What?"

Mo Li was very surprised. The imperial seal that Qi Chao had been searching for a long time could not be found, but was in the hands of the prince of Qi Chao. This seemed like a huge joke.

Judging from the words of those eunuchs, they were ordered to hide things, and if the things were not hidden well, they would let the prince down if they were discovered.

"You will know if it is a jade seal?"

The thing that someone else had hidden for a long time, Meng Qi raised his hand and took it.

Meng Qi touched all sides of the box and shook it again to confirm that there was no mechanism inside.

"This is the Nine-Eyed Qijie Lock. This lock alone is worth hundreds of gold." Meng Qi fiddled with the lock hanging on the box.

Then he stretched out his hand and twisted it off.

The box opened, revealing a square thing wrapped in red silk.

Meng Qi confirmed just by looking at the appearance, and he nodded to Mo Li.

When the red silk was untied, the jade seal that appeared in front of me was indeed the one engraved with the words "I will live forever and prosper in heaven."

The jade is shiny and radiant, and the tentacles are warm and cool, without any flaws. There are wavy patterns under the jade seal, and there are squatting dragons on the upper side, which are carved lifelike, with their eyes like torches, as if they can roar at any time.

"There was such a magical craftsman in the Qin Emperor era?" Mo Li almost said that the jade seal was fake.

The jade carving style was even worse than that of a thousand five hundred years ago.

"I don't know if this is the Heshi Bi that Emperor Qin got. But this is indeed the one I have seen before, and the jade seal I handed over to Emperor Yuan of Chu from the Qingjiang Dixie."

Mo Li nodded and said in a deep voice: "Then this is indeed the imperial seal, and things are becoming more and more strange."

Let’s sort out what happened these days and the rumors I heard: the prince was seriously ill and was about to die. Someone in the palace colluded with the ancestor Qingwu to prepare for rebellion, but was discovered by Emperor Lu Zhang in advance. The gate of Taijing was blocked and the imperial guards searched everywhere. Lu Zhang thought he had controlled the situation and began to eliminate the rebellion. At this time, the prince sent his confidants to secretly bury the jade seal...

"The person who plotted against the enemy was indeed the second prince, not the prince?"

No matter how Mo Li thought about it, he felt that the prince was more suspicious.

Judging from the whereabouts of Meng Qi, Lu Zhang sent the Jinyiwei to investigate Meng Qi, the Qi Dynasty did not have a jade seal. How did the prince get it? How did he hide it from the emperor? The prince is about to die, so why is it for burying the jade seal? Who is he going to leave the jade seal to?

The Imperial Guard serves the emperor. If the imperial guards find the imperial seal, they probably dare not hide it privately, and they will still offer it to the emperor.

So the prince guarded Lu Zhang.

"This prince is very different from the emperor." Meng Qi said to himself.

Although there is no easy prince in all dynasties, the relationship between the prince and the emperor is always subtle, called father and son, and they turn against each other into enemies and plot against each other. There are quite a few rebellions. However, it is rare for the relationship to be so subtle.

This is not as simple as hiding the jade seal. The actions of the eunuchs and the unfinished meaning in their words clearly proved that they were loyal to the prince and were hostile to the emperor.

How could a prince who was about to die let these eunuchs not be glorious and wealthy, and hide the imperial seal without hesitation, rather than handing over the imperial seal?

"If you can't figure it out, you can ask me." Meng Qi hinted.

"Go to find the prince? Where is Lu Zhang, don't care?"

Meng Qi did not answer, but waved his hand casually, not knowing whether he meant "it was too late" or "not dead".

The Eastern Palace is so close that the Imperial Guards are closely guarded. Compared to the second prince who is not sure where he is locked up and the emperor Lu Zhang who is not sure where he is hiding, the prince is indeed easier to find.

"who?"

An imperial guard vaguely saw a black shadow flashing and immediately shouted.

His companions all looked over, but there was no one there.

"Can you read it wrong?"

"No, the commander said that there may be a rebel with high martial arts skills sneaking into the palace, search!"

The Imperial Guards immediately gathered around, and Meng Qi and Mo Li had already climbed over the palace wall, lowered their bodies slightly, climbed up the eaves lightly, and crossed the two palaces at an extremely fast speed. In a blink of an eye, they arrived near the palace where the prince was studying.

The palace uses glazed tiles, which are slippery and are very easy to be trampled.

However, in front of the top masters, this is not a problem. After all, in addition to tiles, there are also solid wood and bricks as the main structure of the palace, and there are squatting beasts on the eaves to borrow power.

If it was not during the day, but at night, Meng Qi could be faster.

Now we can only try to get close to the bracket at the bottom of the eaves to prevent our body from being exposed.

However, an accident happened.
To be continued...