"What are we supposed to do now? Just stand by and let Qiu Yan arrest members of the Xu Clan and Cai Household, then charge them with treason and colluding with the enemy? The funniest part is that this enemy has clearly already surrendered and become one of our own. Colluding with our own people is called rebellion? What a colossal joke!"
Meanwhile, within a prosperous residence in the Imperial City's inner district, more than a dozen finely dressed men were conversing. Most were around forty years old, each bearing an extraordinary demeanor and an air of nobility.
Zhang Xiping, son of the old prime minister Zhang Lian, was among them.
Since Zhang Lian had retired, Zhang Xiping had become the Zhang Residence's public steward and held the highest official rank. He had originally occupied a Ministerial post, but had later been sent north as an Observation Commissioner, a powerful frontier official. He had only been transferred back to the capital because of the upheaval in heaven and earth.
Since he was present here, the standing of the others naturally could not be lower than his. All were helmsmen and decision-makers of great noble clans. They had gathered for the sake of a major case that had shaken the Imperial City—
The rebellion case of two families!
The two families implicated were precisely the Xu Clan and the Cai Household!
These two families were the home clans of the current two Grand Ministers. The Grand Ministers wielded towering power, so their families naturally rose with the tide. Yet both had already been great noble clans, powerful and influential, with Prime Ministers among their ancestors. Their current elevation was merely icing on the cake.
But a few days earlier, the two Grand Ministers who served as their pillars had suddenly been