Chapter 273 272 Leaving the water

Hearing the shouting in the distance, Wei Guangde didn't hear clearly what was said, so he turned to ask Chen Ju out of curiosity.

However, Chen Ju did not answer, but listened carefully to the seemingly noisy sound.

"Fire will give way to water."

Several more exclamations came. At this time, Chen Ju just said, "No, it's gone wrong."

In fact, at this time, Wei Guangde also heard that there was a fire somewhere in the palace, and the eunuchs outside were calling for people to put out the fire.

Seeing that Chen Ju had turned around and ran out, Wei Guangde also hurriedly put down the book in his hand, closed the bookcase and ran out.

Standing in front of Wenyuan Pavilion, Wei Guangde saw thick smoke rising from the northwest. It was obvious that there was indeed a fire there.

Just northwest, where is that place?

There is no layout map of the Forbidden City these days, and even Wei Guangde was not qualified to see it.

But Wei Guangde knew that his current location was in the Forbidden City.

There is a road in front of him. If he goes east, he will reach Donghua Gate. If he goes west, he will reach the road he came from, which is naturally Zuoshun Gate.

What you can see after passing through Zuoshun Gate is naturally Fengtian Gate, and behind Fengtian Gate are Fengtian Hall, Huagai Hall and Shunxin Hall, which are commonly known as the "Three Main Halls".

To the northwest of the thick smoke, the natural location of the fire is the three main halls.

Of course, it is also possible that the fire was not in the three main halls, but in the harem behind the three main halls.

But if a fire breaks out there, will the cry for help reach here?

"Quick, go and see what happened and what the situation is. Go and come back quickly."

Chen Ju gave instructions to the chamberlain who had led the way before, and then urged him to quickly explore the fire.

The little chamberlain had to go no matter whether he wanted to go or not. The chamberlain who was higher than him had given orders, so what else could he do?

Towards the left door, the little waiter spread his legs and ran forward. After a while, he was out of sight, and the thick smoke in the distance became bigger, with billowing smoke and dust rising straight into the sky.

"It seems that the fire is not under control."

Wei Guangde said incredulously.

Here and there, in the Forbidden City, there are so many eunuchs and guards inside and outside the palace, how can it be that even a little fire can't be controlled?

Wei Guangde didn't believe it. It would be okay if it was night, but if it were daytime, there would be a lot of people. Logically speaking, the fire could be easily controlled.

But judging from the thick smoke, it doesn't seem optimistic.

Chen Ju looked serious at this moment, "Water leakage in the palace is a big trouble. There is little water here. If it is discovered too late and it starts to burn, it will be a big disaster."

"Forehead?"

Hearing this, Wei Guangde was a little surprised. How could such a big palace have no water source? It would be easy to drill a well.

Seeing Wei Guangde's surprise, Chen Ju just whispered: "There were dozens of wells built in the palace, but none of them were usable, so most of them were sealed, leaving only a few wells to draw water for cleaning.

What we eat and drink is the water from Yuquan Mountain."

"Why seal it? It's also good to keep it for fire prevention."

Wei Guangde was still puzzled.

"Things in the palace are complicated. Those wells are small and slow to lift water. Anyway, you just don't have to worry about it."

Chen Ju didn't want to talk too much about the affairs in the palace.

He didn't say it, but Wei Guangde could really make a guess. Thinking about the life of the people in the palace, he unconsciously said: "The wind of pear blossoms stirs the fragrance of jade, and the spring color is heavy and the seal is locked. Only the red official can't help it,

The teachings fly out of the palace wall."

This is a "Gong Ci" written by a poet named Wu Yan in the Song Dynasty. He writes about the imprisoned, repressed and trampled youth. Wu Yan's Gong Ci depicts the story of people locked in a deep palace.

The living conditions of the palace maids and their desire for freedom.

However, there are only a few people who can actually come out of the palace. They all say that the palace is magnificent and magnificent, but secretly it harbors filth and evil. They don't know how many unbearable things happened inside, but the outer court doesn't know about it.

Later Wei Guangde also heard rumors that a concubine was thrown into a well in the palace in the late Qing Dynasty, and the well was sealed after that. Thinking about what Chen Ju said about how many wells in the palace were sealed, I didn't dare to think about it. I didn't dare to think about it.

However, they lost interest in talking at this moment, because the thick smoke in the distance was not controlled at all, and seemed to be still burning, and even the area where the smoke started was expanding rapidly.

At this time, the thick smoke they saw was no longer the black smoke they saw before, but a plume of thick smoke rising into the sky.

"No, the fire is probably starting to spread. What did these chamberlains and guards do?"

Wei Guangde couldn't help but muttered at such a scene.

"Don't let anything happen to the three main halls, otherwise it will be really troublesome."

Chen Ju had already determined the location of the fire because it was near the three main halls, but it was not something that human power could resist.

In ancient China, fires in the palace were regarded as divine punishment. Although they organized rescue operations to put out the fire, they believed that the fire sent down from heaven was caused by supernatural forces. This was a manifestation of the anger of the God of Fire.

Whether in the palace or among the people, most people use "water" instead when a fire breaks out. That is to say, Wei Guangde is used to the saying of later generations and does not have much respect for the word "fire".

The ancients also believed that water in the five elements can suppress fire, so the word "water" should be used to suppress fire. "Water" means to make water "walk" to the place where fire is.

Today seems to be a day of thunder and no rain. Although there are clouds in the sky, they don't look like rain, and the wind is very strong.

The people here were anxiously waiting for news from the young eunuch. At this time, the three main halls in the center of the imperial city had begun to collapse one after another in the raging fire. Huge amounts of property were piled up and the magnificent three halls of the Forbidden City, which had been built with painstaking efforts by countless skilled craftsmen, were burned to the ground.

As Wei Guangde and the others saw, the fire was not under control. Due to the strong wind, the fire started burning somewhere in the three main halls, and continued to expand along the corridors between the main halls until the three main halls were surrounded by flames, and then continued along the way. The corridor spreads in all directions.

In fact, Wei Guangde discovered during his first imperial examination that the Golden Palace he saw was different from what he saw later when he visited the Forbidden City.

Corridors are built on both sides of Fengtian Hall and Jinshen Hall, and the corridors will eventually extend forward and back along the palace wall.

At this moment, the place that represented the supreme authority of the Ming Emperor had been completely devoured by fire, and the fire had already burned down the corridor to the Wen Building and Wu Building.

In order to prevent rain, the Daming Palace built corridors on both sides of the palace wall, and the corridors were all connected. This also caused the fire to spread along the wooden corridors if the fire could not be controlled.

Today's windy weather seemed to have accelerated the spread of the fire. Although many people rushed to the fire in response to the screams of the chamberlains and guards, and started to put out the fire under the organization of the eunuchs on duty and Qianhu of the Jinyi Guards, the effect was very limited.

When the little eunuch who was investigating the news rushed back to Wenyuan Pavilion after a long journey, Chen Ju and Wei Guangde were just looking at the thick smoke of the feature film in the distance.

"Eunuch Chen, the Fengtian Palace was ignited by thunder, and then burned down the three main halls. Now it has passed the Wen Tower and the Wu Tower, and is about to reach the Fengtian Gate."

"It's good, it's bad, it's bad."

At this moment, Chen Ju said in a panic.

Wei Guangde was shocked at first. The north wind today was really weird, and it caused the fire to burn outside the palace. Fortunately, it was not a south wind, otherwise it would have burned directly into the harem. The consequences would be unimaginable.

"Has it been controlled?"

Wei Guangde calmed down and stared at the chamberlain and asked.

Naturally, he was asking about the intensity of the fire, but he also discovered that the eunuchs and chamberlains in the palace seemed to be very taboo about using the word "fire". When talking to Chen Ju, and in the report just given by the chamberlain, they did not mention "fire". Just say burn, burn.

"When I went out to look, the fire had already reached the west corner door, and the east corner door was about to catch fire. The entire corridor was burning, and there was no way to stop it."

Wei Guangde recalled it carefully now, and it was true that the corridors extending from the three main halls led along the palace wall to Fengtian Gate, and then connected from Fengtian Gate to Meridian Gate.

"hiss"

Wei Guangde took a breath of cold air. If the fire had burned through Fengtian Gate and continued to burn along the corridor, it would not immediately reach Zuoshun Gate and Youshun Gate, where there are also corridors connecting Dongge and Wenyuan Pavilion.

The palace has corridors extending in all directions to ensure that it is convenient to travel even on rainy days. As long as it doesn't rain, no one walks in the corridors on weekdays.

But now the situation is different. There is a fire. This corridor is made of wood, which is naturally the best flammable material to start a fire. If the wind blows it, it will burn here in the blink of an eye.

Wei Guangde inadvertently looked back at the Wenyuan Pavilion behind him. The collection of books inside was so vast that it would be too late to rush to transport them. There were only a few eunuchs here, and they couldn't carry the books in the bookcases.

There are people in the East Pavilion, but those people may not be able to rush to transport the memorials in time, and they will not care about Wenyuan Pavilion. It is not within their scope of authority. Their duty is only to ensure the safety of the memorials. If the palace is burned, it will be burned.

"Do you have any tools? Break down the corridor on the side of Zuoshun Gate to prevent the fire from burning here. There are Dong Pavilion and Wenyuan Pavilion here, and the contents inside cannot be damaged at all."

Wei Guangde had no authority when speaking here, so he could only speak to Chen Ju.

Although Chen Ju is not of high rank at the moment, he has a godfather, a powerful godfather, and he is a chamberlain in front of the imperial family. The weight of his words is even greater than that of some low-level eunuchs.

"Quick, quick, quick, go find tools, hammers or axes, and tear down the corridor to avoid burning it."

Wei Guangde's words reminded Chen Ju that the only way to prevent the fire from spreading here and burning down the East Pavilion and Wenyuan Pavilion was to destroy the corridor.

The little chamberlain also said just now that the fire spread along the corridor.

After hearing Chen Ju's instructions, several chamberlains immediately spread out to look for tools.

"Go to the East Pavilion and call the people over there to help dismantle the corridor."

Wei Guangde said to Chen Ju again.

"Okay, that's exactly what it should be."

Chen Ju was panicking at the moment, but he still felt that Wei Guangde's words were right, and it would definitely be right to find more people to demolish the corridor.

They quickly ran to the East Pavilion. At this time, there were more than a dozen people standing in front of the East Pavilion door. There were several chamberlains and some people from the Cabinet Secretariat. They were the cabinet secretaries, but they were all standing at the moment. Outside the temple, I looked at the thick smoke rising not far away and pointed.

When Chen Ju saw them, he became angry and shouted at the servants in a bad temper: "You bastards, get up and find a hammer and ax to tear down the corridor through the Zuoshun door. Do you want to burn it down?" Come here?"

"Um, yes."

Several chamberlains, including Chen Ju, remained silent even when they shouted. They were assigned to the cabinet to serve tea and water and deliver some official documents. They had no status in the first place.
To be continued...