I traveled back to the Southern Song Dynasty and was actually outmaneuvered by Yue Fei.

Chapter 015: Yue Fei's Legacy

It was the face of a young man, in his early twenties.

Jiang Shixiong wore a short, bluish-gray tunic worn by a prison guard of the Dali Temple, with a black belt around his waist and the cuffs rolled up to his elbows, revealing his lean forearms.

Zhao Bozong climbed up from the cave entrance, and Jiang Shixiong reached out and pulled him up. That hand had a strong grip, rough fingers, and thick calluses on the base of the thumb.

"Duke Jian Guo," Jiang Shixiong said in a low voice, "Lord Zhou said you would come."

He handed the oil lamp to Zhao Bocong. The flame was only the size of a bean, illuminating an area of ​​no more than three steps.

"The last person Lord Zhou saw before he died was you," Zhao Bozong said.

Jiang Shixiong swallowed subconsciously. "It was me. After Qin Hui's men took him to the cell, they asked me to bring in a pot of water."

Lord Zhou sat in the corner where Commander Yue had once sat. His hands were not shackled; Qin Hui's men hadn't locked him up. A dagger lay on the table.

"What did he say to you when you brought the water in?"

He said the items were still in the usual place, and the Jian Guo Association would come to pick them up, and told me to wait.

"and then?"

"Then I went out, and the cell door wasn't locked. When I reached the end of the corridor, I heard the sound of a dagger falling to the ground."

Jiang Shixiong's voice was flat. "I went back and saw that Lord Zhou was lying on the ground, a dagger stuck in his chest. His hand was still gripping the hilt of the knife, and his eyes were open, staring at the northwest corner."

Zhao Bozong's fingers tightened on the handle of the oil lamp.

"He looked at me. His lips were moving, but he couldn't make a sound." Jiang Shixiong paused. "I squatted down and put my ear close to his mouth. He said four words."

Which four?

"To be taken, Northwest."

Zhou Sanwei used his last strength on these four words. Before the blood gushed out, he pulled the blueprint out of his clothes and stuffed it into Li Yanxian's hand, who was waiting outside the cell.

Then, with his last breath, he told Jiang Shixiong—the item is still there, go to the northwest corner to retrieve it. He died with his eyes fixed on the northwest corner.

Zhao Bozong raised the oil lamp a little higher.

A halo of light swept across the stone wall, and the long corridor stretched out in front of them.

The four routes marked on Zhou Sanwei's drawings appeared in his mind one by one: the side gate drainage ditch, which had been cleared.

The fifth brick in the third row of the corner of the cell has been moved and is now sealed. The brick in the northwest corner of the deepest cell is awaiting retrieval.

The first three points were cleared up by Zhou Sanwei himself, and he left the last one there.

"lead the way."

Jiang Shixiong turned and walked deeper into the corridor. His steps were light, the hem of the jailer's short brown robe swayed slightly with each step, and his cloth shoes made almost no sound on the stone slabs.

Zhao Bocong followed behind him. On both sides of the corridor were tightly closed wooden doors with small windows on them, and sounds could be heard coming from the cracks in the doors.

At the end of the long corridor were the downward stone steps. The steps were narrow, allowing only one person to pass at a time. Water seeped from the walls on both sides, and the air was filled with a damp, musty smell, mixed with another odor.

Zhao Bozong smelled it last time he came, but this time it was even stronger; it was the smell of blood.

At the end of the stone steps was the iron gate. Deep inside was the prison cell, the place where Yue Fei had been imprisoned.

The iron gate was unlocked. Jiang Shixiong pushed the gate open and stepped aside.

Zhao Bocong stepped across the threshold. The glow of the oil lamp spilled in through the doorway, dispelling a small patch of darkness in the cell.

There was a pile of blackened straw in the corner, and the water stain on the wall was still there. Zhou Sanwei stayed there for half an hour.

He sat in the corner as Qin Hui's men interrogated him. When they finished, they left, leaving a dagger on the table. The cell door was unlocked. It was here that he made his choice.

In the northwest corner, Zhao Bozong squatted down.

He held the oil lamp close to the corner of the wall, counting the third row from the bottom and the fifth brick from the left. It was in the exact same position as the brick in the prison cell.

Zhou Sanwei hid the items in the same location on Wednesday.

Zhao Bozong inserted his fingers into the brick joint. The mortar was loose; as he dug his fingernail in, bits of mortar fell off. He then pulled the entire brick out, and it moved.

The hole in the wall was about a foot square, lined with a piece of yellowish coarse cloth, on which lay a roll of paper. It was the same cloth used to line the wax pellet in the cell.

Zhao Bozong took out the scroll of paper. It was tied with a very thin hemp rope, the knot being a slipknot commonly used in the army for transmitting messages.

He unfolded the scroll. The first page was covered with densely packed small characters, not Zhou Sanwei's handwriting.

Zhou Sanwei's calligraphy is neat and orderly, but the calligraphy on this paper is not. The horizontal strokes tremble, the vertical strokes are crooked, and the strokes at the end of the strokes often drag out an uncontrolled long tail. It was written by someone with an injury on their wrist, or when they were being hung up.

It is Kui Shun's handwriting.

Zhao Bozong held the oil lamp close to the paper. The first line of characters started from the upper left corner of the paper, extending to the right, and then slanted downwards as he wrote, making the whole line look like a snake swimming downwards.

"In March of the second year of Shaoxing, Yue Fei recruited thirteen assassins in Xiangyang." (False name)

Zhao Bocong continued reading. "In June of the fourth year of Shaoxing, Yue Fei recovered Xiangyang and planted seven spies in the Xiangyang government office." This too is false.

The statement, "In August of the sixth year of Shaoxing, Yue Fei launched a northern expedition, leaving eleven spies in Ezhou," is entirely false.

Every name was fabricated by Wei Shun, and his identity couldn't stand scrutiny. He came up with all the details word by word during the breaks in the torture chamber.

He compiled twenty-three names, corresponding to the twenty-three people on Yue Fei's list.

But he changed all his real names—Zhou Sanwei became "Zhang Cheng", Niu Gao became "Wang Jin", and Li Bao became "Zhao Xing".

He assigned a fake identity, a fake position, and a fake task to everyone on the real list.

He compiled the list with such meticulous detail that every single detail was self-consistent, and so meticulous that it took Qin Hui's men two whole days to verify it.

Those two days were the time when Zhou Sanwei transferred the evidence.

Zhao Bocong turned to the last page.

On the last page of the fake list, in the bottom right corner, there is a line of extremely small characters, the ink is the lightest, and the strokes are the lightest, as if the ink on the pen tip was almost used up when it was written here, and the writer was reluctant to dip the pen in ink, squeezing out the last bit of ink from the tip of the pen to finish writing this line.

"Lord Zhou: I have already confessed to the secret point; it is a fake. Quickly move the real item. Now, my last words."

This was his final writing. When Kui Shun wrote these two characters, he knew he would die.

He knew that by the time the fake list reached Zhou Sanwei, his life was already in danger.

So he made up a lie in the last three days.

Qin Hui's men would beat him every time they interrogated him. After they finished beating him, they would ask him for a list of names. He would say part of it, then they would beat him again, and he would say another part.

Kui Shun controlled the speed at which he revealed his secrets, neither too fast nor too slow, just enough to make Qin Hui's men think that he was breaking down little by little, and just enough to make Qin Hui's men believe that every name he gave was true.

He endured three days of torture, not because he could withstand it, but because he remained lucid amidst the excruciating pain, carefully calculating the weight of each revelation and the time it would take for Qin Hui's men to verify the list.

He bought Zhou Sanwei two days. Two days was enough to move everything out of the Dali Temple's secret hideout.

Zhao Bozong rolled the paper up again. His fingers were steady, but his heartbeat was not.

Jiang Shixiong's voice came from behind, so low that it was almost drowned out by the dripping sound of water seeping from the stone wall.

"Before Wei Shun died, Qin Hui's men asked him one last question. They asked him—who is the first person on the list?"

Zhao Bozong didn't turn around. "What did he say?"

He said—it was myself.

The cell remained quiet for a long time.

Zhao Bozong stared at the coarse cloth mat in the hole in the wall. Kui Shun had put the fake list here. Zhou Sanwei came to pick it up, looked at it, and then put the fake list back. He placed his real blueprints next to it, using the same cloth as a mat.

Two people, two lists, one fake, one real. The fake one was used to deceive Qin Hui, the real one was used to wait for Zhao Bocong.

When Kui Shun wrote "Shun's last words" on the last page of the false list, Zhou Sanwei was probably waiting in the corridor.

Kui Shun handed over the fake list, and Qin Hui's men took it to verify it. They found it was fake and brought it back for further interrogation.

This time they didn't ask for the list—they asked, "Who told you to do this?" Kui Shun said, "It was myself."

He cut all the threads on his own body. After he died, Qin Hui's men searched his corpse one last time.

There was nothing there.

They threw his body into the mortuary behind the Dali Temple.

Jiang Shixiong went to collect the body in the middle of the night and buried it next to the Jiuqu Congci Temple, not far from the place where Yue Fei was carried away and buried by Kui Shun.

Zhao Bozong stuffed the fake list of Kui Shun into his sleeve. He stood up, his knees covered in dust and straw scraps from the cell floor.

"Where is Kui Shun buried?"

"Nine-Bend Temple Cluster".

Zhao Bocong nodded. Historically, Kui Shun carried Yue Fei's body out and buried it next to the Jiuqu Congci Temple.

Twenty years later, Emperor Xiaozong will find those two orange trees and relocate Yue Fei's remains to the shore of West Lake.

Now, Kui Shun himself is buried there. He doesn't know if anyone will come looking for him in twenty years, and he probably doesn't care.

He replaced that name with his own.

In Qin Hui's case file, on the confessions in the torture chamber, on the first list of victims of this purge—the first person was named Wei Shun.

Zhao Bocong turned to Jiang Shixiong. "Did Lord Zhou tell you what was taken from this cell?"

Jiang Shixiong remained silent for a moment.

"Marshal Yue's last words".