gnovel Chapter 014: The People on the List
Chapter 014: The People on the List
"The third person on the list is Kui Shun," Zhao Bocong said.
Li Yanxian raised her head. "Kui Shun is dead."
"I know."
"Before he died, Qin Hui interrogated him for three days."
He revealed the location of the Dali Temple's secret hideouts. "But Lord Zhou had already cleared out the hideouts he mentioned." Li Yanxian lowered his voice.
Zhao Bozong's fingers loosened on the edge of the table, and Wei Shun revealed the hidden point, but what he revealed was empty.
Zhou Sanwei knew that Kui Shun couldn't hold on, so he moved all his belongings in advance.
When Kui Shun made the offering, he probably knew that it was empty.
He endured three days in Qin Hui's torture chamber, finally revealing a useless piece of information before dying.
He endured those three days not to keep the secret, but to buy Zhou Sanwei time to escape.
Zhao Bocong picked up the blueprint from the table, folded it into a small piece, and stuffed it into his sleeve.
Suddenly, a question came to mind: Zhou Sanwei had entered that cell and seen the things left behind by Yue Fei.
The northwest corner of that cell, circled in vermilion, was marked "Pending Collection".
Zhou Sanwei left it there without taking it out, because it wasn't meant for him.
"There are still things in that cell," Zhao Bozong said. "Lord Zhou said there are still things, not that there are."
Li Yanxian's eyes flickered.
He said there were still things. Meaning—some things had already been taken, but some things remained.
Zhao Bozong's voice was low as he murmured to himself, "What was taken away? What remains?"
He stood up, walked to the window, and it was just past Shenshi (3-5 PM), and the courtyard was already dark.
On Wednesday, Wei died in the deepest cell of the Dali Temple, and Wei Shun died in Qin Hui's torture chamber. The second and third people on the list also died.
"Li Yanxian." Zhao Bocong did not turn around.
"exist."
"You are a former member of Yue Fei's army."
Li Yanxian was silent for a moment. "Yes."
"Where were you during the Battle of Yancheng in Shaoxing ten years ago?"
"Under General Yang Zaixing's command, Xiaoshanghe." Li Yanxian's voice suddenly changed, no longer flat, but with a very fine crack.
"Two hundred cavalrymen faced tens of thousands of Jin Wuzhu's troops. General Yang was hit by dozens of arrows and died in battle at Xiaoshang River. I carried his body out of the fray."
Zhao Bozong turned around. Li Yanxian stood still. "Besides the blueprints and that sentence, what else did Lord Zhou say before he died?"
Li Yanxian's eyes reddened, not from crying, but from the instinctive reaction of a soldier when asked about the dying words of the person he respected most—his eyes reddened, his Adam's apple bobbed, and his lips pressed into a line.
"He said—tell my dad, I did what's on the list."
Zhao Bozong lowered his head. "Is Lord Zhou's father still alive?"
"He is gone. He died in Xiangyang in the eighth year of the Shaoxing era."
Zhao Bocong nodded, and Zhou Sanwei said, "Tell my father," but his father had been dead for seven years.
When he said that, he wasn't saying it to Li Yanxian, but to himself.
He carried those words into that cell, and the moment the dagger fell, no one could relay them for him; he knew that.
He just wanted to say it one last time—I did what was on the list.
"I'll go get the things from that cell," Zhao Bozong said.
Li Yanxian knelt on one knee. "This humble general is willing to follow the Duke of Jian Guo."
Zhao Bozong watched him kneel down—the crimson battle robes of the Imperial Guards, the knees of the Yue Family Army.
In Lin'an City during the twelfth year of the Shaoxing reign, there were countless former members of Yue Fei's army.
They were dressed in the uniforms of the Imperial Guards, the black robes of the Lin'an Prefecture, the short tunics of the Dali Temple jailers, and the gray-clad spies of the Qin family.
They took off the battle robes of Yue Fei's army, put on other people's clothes, worked in other people's government offices, and lived under other people's noses.
They waited a year, two years, ten years. Until one day, someone stood at the gate of the Dali Temple and uttered the first cry.
"Get up," Zhao Bocong said.
Li Yanxian stood up.
Have you looked at the annotations on the blueprints?
"I have seen it. I was present when Lord Zhou was drawing the diagram."
"Northwest corner, to be retrieved. Did he say what it was?"
Li Yanxian remained silent for a long time before saying, "He said—that was left by Marshal Yue to the Duke of Jian Guo."
What Yue Fei left for himself.
Zhao Bozong's fingers tightened in his sleeve. In the second year of Shaoxing, when Yue Fei stuffed the wooden bird into his clothes, something was also left in the northwest corner of the deepest prison cell in Dali Temple.
Zhao Bocong walked to the desk, unfolded the drawings, and looked at them again by the last ray of twilight shining through the window paper.
The side gate drainage ditch, below the stone steps at the end of the corridor, the fifth brick of the third row in the corner of the cell, and the northwest corner of the deepest cell.
Of the four annotations, three were made by Zhou Sanwei himself, and he left the last one there. The northwest corner was circled in vermilion ink, with two words written next to it: "To be picked up".
"When can we go?"
Li Yanxian raised her head. "At midnight tonight, Qin Hui's men withdrew the sentry posts around the Dali Temple, leaving only two people at the main gate. You can enter through the drainage ditch at the side gate."
"Who's inside to provide backup?"
"Jiang Shixiong".
Zhao Bozong nodded. Jiang Shixiong was a former subordinate of Yue Fei's army and a low-ranking prison guard at the Dali Temple.
He remained in the Dali Temple, dressed in the short tunic of a jailer, waiting for the next order under Qin Hui's nose.
At 11:45 AM, a very narrow side gate on the courtyard wall of the Prince of Puan's mansion was pushed open from the inside.
Zhao Bozong stepped forward, with Li Yanxian following behind him, keeping a distance of three steps.
There were no lights in the alley. They walked north along the wall. The outer wall of the Qin mansion extended from the right side of the alley. When Zhao Bozong passed the side gate of the Qin mansion, he did not turn his head, but he caught a sliver of candlelight shining through the crack in the door.
It was midnight, and Qin Hui was still awake.
After passing the Qin residence, walk another fifty steps, and at the end of the alley is the west wall of the Dali Temple.
Li Yanxian stopped and raised her right hand; Zhao Bocong also stopped. At the base of the wall, the entrance to the drainage ditch was hidden between two crooked boundary stones.
The canal opening is about two feet square, sealed off by an iron fence, with gaps in the fence just wide enough for one person to squeeze through sideways.
In the lower right corner of the iron fence, an iron bar was sawed off at the base, and the cut was covered with silt, which at first glance looked like a rust mark.
Zhao Bozong squatted down and touched the broken edge with his fingers; the mud was still wet.
"It was sawed off this evening," Li Yanxian said in a very low voice. "Jiang Shixiong was inside to provide backup."
Zhao Bozong squeezed through the gap in the fence. The canal was covered with a thin layer of ice, which was broken by the footsteps in front of him. He bent down and waded into the water.
The ice water went over the boots and poured in through the opening, making my toes feel like they were being pricked by countless tiny needles at once.
He didn't stop. The inner walls of the drainage ditch were covered with moss, which felt slippery to the touch and had a rotten, sweet smell.
The canal stretched deeper and narrower, until the last section required crawling. Zhao Bozong lay prone at the bottom of the canal, his winter clothes soaked through with icy water.
He thought of Zhou Sanwei. Had Zhou Sanwei ever entered this drainage ditch?
Probably not. Zhou Sanwei was the Minister of the Court of Judicial Review. Wearing a scarlet official robe, he entered the Court of Judicial Review through the main gate and exited through the main gate. He did not need to climb the drainage ditch.
But he drew the drainage ditch on the blueprint, circled it with a vermilion pen, and marked it "emptied." What did he empty?
As Zhao Bozong crawled through a depression, his fingers touched a shard of broken porcelain at the bottom of the canal.
He took out the porcelain shard and brought it close to his eyes. It was celadon, with a delicate glaze and a small unglazed foot rim at the bottom; it was from an official kiln.
The original of Qin Hui's secret letter was probably sealed in a porcelain jar like this, hidden somewhere in this drainage ditch.
Zhou Sanwei took it away, smashed the porcelain jar, and the fragments sank to the bottom of the ditch.
He cleared out the hidden spot and moved its contents elsewhere. When Qin Hui's men came to search, there was nothing left.
At the end of the drainage ditch is an upward-facing vertical shaft.
Shallow footprints were carved into the well wall, extending upwards step by step.
Zhao Bozong climbed up, stepping on the footprints. Above him was a wooden plank, which he pushed upwards with his palms.
The wooden plank was moved silently, and the light of an oil lamp shone down from the hole.
Jiang Shixiong's face appeared at the edge of the cave entrance.