Chapter 59 150 Please enter the urn

After Wu Zetian put down Xu Jingye's rebellion, she was determined to get rid of those Tang clans and ministers who opposed her.But, who is secretly opposing her, and how can we find out? So, she issued an order to launch a national informant.No matter big or small officials, ordinary people, as long as they find someone rebellious, they can directly inform her.Local officials were not allowed to interrogate someone when they encountered an informer. They must prepare chariots and horses for the informer, provide high-quality food, and send escorts to the Empress Dowager's palace, where Wu Zetian summoned him in person.If the whistleblowing material is true, the whistleblower can immediately become an official; if it is found to be inconsistent with the facts, no false accusation will be pursued.

In this way, of course, more and more people are reporting from all directions. Wu Zetian received a lot of informant materials, and someone had to interrogate her for her.Suo Yuanli, a general of the Hu nationality, made his fortune by making informants.Wu Zetian sent him to specialize in treason cases.Suo Yuanli is an extremely cruel guy. When interrogating a case, no matter whether there is evidence or not, he first uses punishment to force the prisoner to confess his accomplice.The prisoner couldn't bear the punishment, so he made some false confessions indiscriminately, so that if he interrogated one person, dozens or hundreds of people would be implicated.The wider the connection, the bigger the case.Suo Yuanli reported to the queen mother, who praised him for his ability.

Some officials saw that Suo Yuanli was appreciated by the Queen Mother, so they imitated Suo Yuanli.The cruelest among them are Zhou Xing and Lai Junchen.Each of them has hundreds of hooligans under their command, who specialize in informers.As long as they think anyone is suspected of treason, they will send people to inform in several places at the same time, fabricating a lot of evidence.What's even more strange is that Lai Junchen also specially compiled a book "The Sutra of Weaving Secrets" to teach how to weave crimes. Zhou Xing and Lai Junchen handled the case more cruelly than Suo Yuanli.They came up with all kinds of cruel and inhuman punishments, with many names and various tricks.When they caught a person, they first put all kinds of instruments of torture in front of the "prisoner", and the "prisoner" was forced to confess after seeing it.

Zhou Xing and Suo Yuanli killed thousands of people, and Lai Junchen destroyed more than a thousand people. Their cruelty became famous. An upright minister said to the Queen Mother: "Most of the treason cases reported below are unjust or false cases. Maybe someone conspired to drive a wedge between His Majesty and the minister. Your Majesty must be cautious!" However, Wu Zetian was unwilling to listen to such advice.The trend of whistleblowing became more and more popular, and even her confidant, Qiu Shenji, the general in charge of the Forbidden Army, was accused of treason and killed by Wu Zetian's order.

One day, the Queen Mother received an informant letter, saying that Zhou Xing had conspired with Qiu Shenji, who had been executed.When the queen mother heard this, she was taken aback, and immediately issued a secret order to Lai Junchen, asking him to be in charge of the trial of the case. It's a coincidence.The eunuch sent the queen mother's secret decree to Lai Junchen's house, and Lai Junchen was with Zhou Xing, drinking and discussing the case.After reading Wu Zetian's secret decree, Lai Junchen kept his composure, put the secret decree in his sleeve, and still turned around to talk to Zhou Xing.

Lai Junchen said: "Recently, a group of prisoners have been arrested, and most of them refuse to confess honestly. What do you think should be done?" Zhou Xing twisted his beard and said with a slight smile: "It's not easy! I recently came up with a new method, taking a big urn (sound weng) and putting it on the charcoal fire. Whoever refuses to confess, he will be put on the big urn." Roasting in an urn. Are you afraid that he won’t recruit?” When Lai Junchen heard this, he praised again and again: "Good way, good way." As he spoke, he asked the tolerance to bring a large urn and a pot of charcoal fire to the hall, and put the urn on the brazier.The charcoal fire in the basin was so hot that everyone in the hall couldn't help sweating.

Zhou Xing was wondering, Lai Junchen stood up, stretched his face and said: "According to the Queen Mother's secret order, someone accused Brother Zhou of treason. If you don't confess honestly, I have no choice but to invite you into this urn." When Zhou Xing heard this, he was frightened out of his wits.He knows Lai Junchen's methods best.He quickly knelt on the ground, kowtowed his head like pounding garlic, and begged for mercy, expressing his willingness to confess.According to Zhou Xing's confession, Lai Junchen sentenced him to death and reported it to the Queen Mother.

Wu Zetian thought, after all, Zhou Xing had done a lot for her; besides, she was a little skeptical about whether Zhou Xing was really rebellious, so she pardoned Zhou Xing's capital crime, dismissed him and exiled him to Lingnan (in today's Guangdong and Guangxi area). )go. Zhou Xing had done many bad things and had many enemies. He was assassinated on the way.Later, Wu Zetian found out that Suo Yuanli had harmed too many people, and the people were very angry, so he killed him as an excuse. The remaining one, Lai Junchen, still gained the trust of Wu Zetian, and continued to frame and murder for five or six years. He did not know how many officials and people were killed. Even the prime minister Di Renjie was falsely accused of treason by him and imprisoned , was almost killed by him.

Lai Junchen's appetite was getting bigger and bigger. He wanted to monopolize the power of the court. He thought Wu Zetian's nephew Wu Sansi and his daughter Princess Taiping were too powerful, so he simply sued them.Of course, these people are not easy to mess with. They pre-emptively exposed Lai Junchen's old background of framing good people and inflicting punishment indiscriminately, and arrested Lai Junchen and sentenced him to death.Wu Zetian still wanted to protect him, but seeing that there were many people who opposed Lai Junchen, she had to approve his execution. On the day Lai Junchen was executed, everyone cheered.Everyone congratulated each other and said, "From now on, you can sleep peacefully at night."