"Our family has more oxen and horses than we could ever need, so there's no need to trouble you generals," Ren Yingying said with a smile. "Men of your great talents are destined to win fame upon the battlefield. If we truly made you serve as oxen and horses, wouldn't we be blind fools?"
Her smile was radiant, and the casual joke did not offend Hua Yue and the others. Instead, it quickly brought both sides closer.
As he spoke with the three men, Song Qingshu gradually grasped the changes in the political situation over this period. After Han Tuozhou had been killed, the Han faction had been left leaderless and suffered severe suppression.
Among the chief ministers, Councilor of State Jing Tang had always been Han Tuozhou's staunch ally. After Han Tuozhou's death, Jia Sidao found an excuse to impeach him and had him demoted to an outlying post.
The other Councilor of State, Wu Qian, had fared even worse. When news of Wu Xi's treason had arrived, the entire Wu family had been stripped of their property. Had many people not spoken in their defense, they might have been exterminated to the ninth degree of kinship. Later, it was proven that Wu Xi had not rebelled, and the court cleared the Wu family's name. But Jia Sidao had already destroyed them with lightning speed. Some members of the Wu family had been killed, others exiled. By the time they were symbolically rehabilitated, the family's former glory had long vanished.
At the mention of this, Hua Yue and the others were filled with righteous indignation. As fellow soldiers, they deeply sympathized with and resented the injustice suffered by the Wu family, a hereditary military household. This was another major reason that had driven them to assassinate Jia Sidao.
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