Chapter 34: Dancing Girl Banquet

Li Heng was slightly stunned when he heard this.

Gao Xianzhi was considered a first-rate general during the reign of Li Longji, but unfortunately he did not have a good ending.

Now, he is under Gai Jiayun, who does not use him much. It is precisely because of this that he lets him escort the envoys from Bukhara.

Li Ying pondered for a moment and glanced at the soldiers following Gao Xianzhi. One of them looked particularly conspicuous.

At first glance, you can see that he is thin, has eye problems, short legs and is a little lame.

Li Heng glanced at the soldier and asked, "You are Feng Changqing, right?"

The soldier was horrified when he heard this, and asked hurriedly, "How do you know my position, Your Highness?"

"How dare you!" Gao Xianzhi shouted at Feng Changqing without waiting for Li Heng to speak, "Your Highness is asking you questions, just answer truthfully."

Gao Xianzhi's words seemed to be a scolding to Feng Changqing, but in fact they were for Feng Changqing's sake, because he was not clear about Li Heng's temper at that time.

Although there were rumors that Li Heng was weak and incompetent, in the Lanzhou case, Li Heng single-handedly investigated and prosecuted Huangfu Weiming. He was ruthless to the landlords and even implicated Zhang Jiuling. With this style of doing things, no one dared to say that he was weak and incompetent.

After hearing what Gao Xianzhi said, Feng Changqing quickly said to Li Heng: "I am Feng Changqing."

Li Heng naturally knew that Gao Xianzhi was protecting Feng Changqing.

Historically, these two men were true iron brothers.

When the two met for the first time, Gao Xianzhi looked down on Feng Changqing because of his bad image. Feng Changqing said, "Changqing admires your noble character and is willing to serve you, so I came here without a matchmaker. Why do you reject me so much? If you choose people based on their integrity, then they will be what the scholars and officials want; if you choose people based on their appearance, you may lose Ziyu!"

Then the two of them were mixed together, until the end, when they were both wrongly killed and died together.

After a brief moment of stunned silence, Li Heng smiled and said, "It's okay. As a soldier, it's okay to speak frankly. There's no need to be so restrained."

Gao Xianzhi said: "Thank you for your generosity, Your Highness."

After asking these two questions, Li Heng spoke a few words to the prince of Bactria, and then went to the banquet together.

At the banquet, Li Heng and Yang Yuhuan sat in the middle, headed by the prince of Bactria, on the left, and on the right were Xin Yunjing, Gao Xianzhi, and several officials from Lanzhou.

During the banquet, the prince of Bactria said a lot of things in a babble. Gao Xianzhi translated, "Your Highness, he said he wanted to invite you to appreciate their dance."

"Oh?" Li Heng became interested and said, "Exotic customs must be good. General Xin likes this kind the most."

Xin Yunjing, who was sitting at the bottom, heard this and muttered to himself, "When did I say I like this?"

Li Ying ignored Xin Yunjing's expression and said to him with a smile: "General Xin, you have to take a good look."

"Yes." Although Xin Yunjing didn't know what Li Heng meant, he still obeyed the order politely.

After a while, eight dancers from Bactria came and danced the national dance of Bactria.

If the dance of the Tang Dynasty is more majestic and luxurious, the dance of Bactria is more charming.

Li Ying asked Yang Yuhuan beside him with a smile, "Madam, how do you think they dance?"

"Very good." Yang Yuhuan smiled.

Li Ying said, "If I hadn't seen your dancing, I would have thought it was pretty good." Yang Yuhuan smiled and said, "Each of us has our own style. My dear, you just love me because I love my wife."

Li Ying was about to say something else when the prince of Bactria who was sitting below him suddenly stood up, bowed to Li Ying, and started talking a lot again.

Gao Xianzhi translated again, saying, "Your Highness, he said that if Your Highness likes these dancers, he will give them to Your Highness. In addition, he asked Your Highness to help Bukhara and make the Arab army withdraw from their territory..."

As Gao Xianzhi was speaking, a dancer came to Li Ying's table. Before Gao Xianzhi finished speaking, a dagger suddenly slipped out of the dancer's sleeve and stabbed Li Ying.

In a hurry, Li Heng stretched out his hands to protect Yang Yuhuan and retreated. When he was about to dodge further, Xin Yunjing rushed up, kicked the dagger out of the dancer's hand, and subdued the dancer with two moves.

Gao Xianzhi reacted before he finished speaking and shouted, "There's an assassin!"

As he spoke, he ran to Li Heng and protected Li Heng and Yang Yuhuan behind him.

Feng Changqing took the opportunity to step forward and subdue the prince of Bactria.

Outside the door, General Lu, who heard the news, rushed in with his soldiers and captured all the people from the Kingdom of Bahan in a moment.

The incident happened suddenly, but was resolved in an instant.

Xin Yunjing escorted the dancer and said to Li Ying, "So this is what Your Highness meant when he asked me to watch the dance carefully."

In fact, Li Heng didn't really know that he was going to be assassinated. He just reminded Xin Yunjing out of habit for safety reasons. Who would have thought that such a thing would actually happen.

Li Heng nodded at Xin Yunjing, as a response to Xin Yunjing's words, and then turned to ask the prince of Bukhara, "Now, how do you want me to deal with the affairs of Bukhara and the Arabs?"

The prince of Bactria was completely shocked by the assassination. He only reacted after hearing Li Heng's words. He quickly knelt on the ground, mumbling something in an anxious tone.

This time, before Gao Xianzhi could translate, a woman dressed as a man behind the prince of Bakhtinana said, "Your Highness Prince Shou, my brother said that this matter has nothing to do with us and he knows nothing about it."

Although the woman spoke Tang dialect, her accent still had a hint of Eastern Iran. Judging from her age, she was only seventeen or eighteen years old, and had a unique exotic beauty.

"Your brother?" Li Ying frowned, "Are you the princess of Bukhara?"

"Yes." The princess of Bactria admitted it, looked at the two soldiers who were holding her, and said, "Your Highness Prince Shou, can you ask them to let me go first and let me report back slowly."

Upon hearing this, Li Heng signaled the two soldiers to let go of the Princess of Bactria and asked, "What do you want to say?"

The princess of Bactria said: "We came to the Tang Dynasty to seek help. How could we assassinate His Highness? Isn't this asking for trouble?"

"Self-destruction." Li Heng corrected.

"Self-destruction..." The princess of Bukhara tried to correct her pronunciation and continued, "This dancer must be a spy of the Arabs, trying to frame our Bukhara."

"You have a point." Li Heng looked at the princess of Bactria, then glanced at the dancer, and then turned to the princess of Bactria and said, "But she is someone you brought with you. Don't you know whether she is a secret agent or not?"

"Hmm..." The princess of Bukhanna thought for a moment and said, "She was selected by our officials from Bukhanna. If she hadn't hidden herself very well, she would have been one of our officials..."

When the Princess of Bakhchisarai said this, she realized that there might be something wrong with their officials, so she stopped talking.

Because if there really was something wrong with their officials, they would not be able to escape the responsibility if Li Heng held them accountable.

However, Li Heng did not ask any further questions. Instead, he walked up to the dancer and asked, "Is Princess Bhanna right?"

(End of this chapter)