gnovel Chapter 106: Finding the Complete List
Chapter 106: Finding the Complete List
Deshou Palace in Lin'an.
Feng Yi had already relayed the information he obtained from Zhang Quwei to Liu An, who then promptly delivered it to the study of the Prince of Puan's residence.
After reading the message from Cining Palace, Zhao Bozong did not speak immediately. Instead, he put the note that said "soon" into the copper box on his desk, along with all the other encrypted intelligence.
Qin Keqing walked in from outside the study, holding the list of arrested veterans that she had just obtained from Feng Youyi.
The names of the four people and the time and place of their arrest were written on it, provided by Feng Yi.
"Your Highness, Zhao Siqing's urgent verification letter has been delivered to the Dali Temple. No matter how insidious Tian Ruyi's blank confession is, it must be explained at two stages."
Is there any other evidence to support the accusation of instigation? Is there any connection between these four individuals and members of the royal family?
Zhao Shiyi has already retrieved the Shen family's employment records from that year in the name of the Court of Imperial Clan Affairs. Tomorrow, during the verification process, these records will be compared with the files of the Court of Judicial Review.
Zhao Bocong nodded and proceeded to arrange the next steps.
"Let Feng Yi continue to observe Qin Hui's movements. This arrest is a change of direction for Tian Ruyi after he ran into setbacks in Xiuzhou and Ezhou."
Instead of launching a direct attack on our intelligence network, he went around to the perimeter and started by taking down the veterans at the bottom.
This tactic is more dangerous than before because it doesn't require evidence, only a list, and the list he has may be more complete than we think.
After writing down the final instruction, Qin Keqing looked up at the window.
The March sunlight fell on the corridor, making Shen Qingci's newly washed bed sheets appear snow-white.
It took Qin Keqing quite a while to come to her senses.
......
March 17th, north of Xiangyang City, an abandoned granary.
Old Xu poled his dilapidated fishing boat to the old dock behind the granary, the bow of the boat making a dull echo on the stone steps.
There were three people sitting in the cabin: Old Xu, who was steering the ship; Xiao Bieli, who was holding an account book wrapped in oilcloth; and a thin old man wearing an old Taoist robe with a slight limp in his left leg.
It was Zhu Fu who set off from Jiangxi at the end of February, starting from the broken Taoist temple at Yezhuling, and traveled along a tributary of the Han River for a full twenty-one days.
During the day, they hid in the hold of fishing boats, and at night they traveled in the dark, waiting for the Imperial City Guard's patrol boat to leave each time they crossed a ferry before they could continue.
Old Xu used the guise of selling fish to cover up the smell of ointment emanating from the man, piling baskets of live fish at the bottom of the hold.
Zhu Fu's left leg was lame for twelve years. In the twelfth month of the eleventh year of Shaoxing, the day before Yue Shaobao died, he asked someone to take out the last copy of the Transport Office's account book from the Dali Temple. Zhu Fu took advantage of the night to pull the account book out of the sealed archives of the Transport Office. When he climbed over the wall, he fell into a dry ditch.
He dragged his broken leg for three miles and hid in a mortuary outside the city for three days.
Without a doctor or bone setter, he had to use a wooden stick and rags to fix his knee, and from then on, his left leg was lame.
The granary has been abandoned for many years, with the plaster peeling off to reveal the rammed earth underneath, but the underground cellar beneath the foundation remains.
This was dug up when the Xiangyang garrison stored grain in the fifth year of Shaoxing. After the eleventh year of Shaoxing, Yue Yinping transformed it into a secret handover point.
Xiao Bieli pushed open a rusty iron gate and led Zhu Fu down the stone steps.
A small oil lamp was lit in the dark cellar, where Yue Yinping was already waiting.
Zhu Fu placed the dark, oil-stained transport office ledger on the table.
Next to the ledger were several other books: one buried in the cellar of the old residence in Liulin Lane, Ezhou; one sealed in the wall of the Dragon King Temple across the Han River; and the last one pressed under the foundation of this abandoned granary outside Xiangyang City.
All four account books arrived, their covers well-preserved under oilcloth wrappings, and each book's title page bore Yue Fei's handwritten signature – "Fei".
"On the 28th day of the twelfth month of the eleventh year of Shaoxing, Yue Shaobao entrusted someone to take out the last book. I hid the remaining books in four different places to prevent them from being seized by the Imperial City Guard."
Zhu Fu's withered fingers turned the pages of the ledger in the granary, displaying the list of military personnel coded with numbers page by page.
"The number, date, and transportation route of each batch of military equipment allocation are recorded in the code, which corresponds to the names, aliases, military ranks, and current residences of the former Yue Family Army members. I have kept these ledgers for twelve years, and today I am handing them all over to you."
Yue Yinping picked up the account book from Ezhou, turned to the title page, and when she saw her father's familiar signature, her hand finally trembled slightly.
Yue Yinping tried hard to hold back her tears, and after a while she gently closed the account book and placed it on the table, saying to Zhu Fu, "Mr. Zhu, you've worked hard."
Zhu Fu waved his hand, his voice carrying a sense of relief.
"I have only been keeping things safe for Young Master Yue for twelve years, and I have never lost a single page."
Why did Yue Shaobao split the list into two lines back then? The list of military officers was in Zhou Sanwei's hands, while the list of military personnel in the Transport Department was in my hands. I don't know either.
But now it seems that he separated the military commanders' faction from the army's faction to prevent Qin Hui from wiping them all out in one fell swoop.
Yue Yinping looked up. "Where is Zhou Sanwei's list now?"
"When Zhou Sanwei, the Chief Justice of the Court of Judicial Review, presided over the trial of Yue Fei in the eleventh year of the Shaoxing era, he secretly protected a group of Yue Fei's army generals."
He compiled a separate register of these people's names and sealed it in a secret room of the Dali Temple. On it was a note written by Yue Fei himself: "This register is kept until the mandate of Heaven."
Later, Zhou Sanwei passed the list to Zhijia, who hid it somewhere before being arrested in Lin'an; its whereabouts remain unknown to this day.
Zhao Bocong's name was not on the list brought by Zhu Fu.
Yue Fei placed Zhao Bocong at the top of Zhou Sanwei's "military generals" list, managing him separately from the generals.
Zhu Fei said he didn't know the exact whereabouts of Zhou Sanwei's list, only that Zhijia had mentioned it to him before his arrest, "The other one is in Lin'an, someone will find it."
Xiao Bieli stood in the corner of the dark cellar without saying a word, but his gaze was fixed on the stack of account books on the table in the candlelight, and his fingers unconsciously twirled the faded red string on his wrist.
The list contains the names of seventy-nine officers and more than 1,300 soldiers.
He searched for two years on his exile and only found more than sixty, while Zhu Fu preserved the entire military line intact using four account books.
All the lonely searching of the past two years has now been proven to be worthwhile; Zhu Fu has been recording his every step in the dilapidated Taoist temple using a coded system.
Zhu Fu continued flipping to the middle of the list, and after a while, he explained.
"These names are divided into two categories: officers are former Yue Family Army officers scattered in the prefectures and counties along the Jinghu North Road and the Han River, while soldiers are veterans who have been infiltrated under pseudonyms."
At the end of the list, I have listed eight key nodes that need to be activated first. These eight people were the core mid-level commanders of the Northern Expedition during the tenth year of Shaoxing.
Once activated, they can activate the entire chain of officers, who in turn activate their subordinate soldiers in turn.