gnovel Chapter 031: She Didn't Come Here to Make a Living
Chapter 031: She Didn't Come Here to Make a Living
Zhao Bocong quickened his pace as he walked over.
Without giving it much thought, regardless of whether the woman's background was suspicious, he couldn't bear to watch a vulnerable woman be humiliated by a drunkard in a deep alley.
It was an instinctive reaction; he stepped forward, pulled the drunk man away, and shoved him aside.
Upon seeing that the newcomer was dressed like a noble young master, the drunkards sobered up a bit and dared not cause any more trouble. They helped each other along, cursing and swearing as they left.
Qin Keqing leaned against the door frame, a faint red mark appearing on her wrist from being gripped so tightly.
She looked up at Zhao Bozong, her eyes still wet with tears, but she didn't say anything about being grateful. She simply put the clothes and basin inside the door, turned around and poured him a bowl of water.
The water was cold, the bowl was made of coarse pottery, and there was a small notch on the rim.
When Zhao Bozong took the bowl, he noticed that the furnishings in her room were extremely simple.
A wooden bed, a square table, and two benches.
Several pieces of clothing were stacked on the table, waiting to be starched. Each piece was folded neatly, with even the creases at the corners aligned.
There was nothing hanging on the wall except a calligraphy copybook written on old paper, also in the style of Chu Suiliang.
There were several books on my pillow, the top one with curled edges, clearly having been read many times.
Her life was simple, but her upbringing showed a refusal to follow the crowd.
Zhao Bozong recalled her shadow as she practiced calligraphy on the muddy ground, a down-on-her-luck daughter of a medicinal herb merchant, maintaining her inherent dignity despite her poverty.
She was indeed a pitiful girl, and his doubts lessened somewhat.
In the following days, Zhao Gou held a small banquet in the palace, where Zhao Bocong and several members of the imperial clan sat together.
After the banquet, he passed by the Imperial Garden and inadvertently saw several eunuchs carrying several boxes of old books out.
The head eunuch said these were old collections discarded from various palaces and were intended to be sold at a discount in bookstores outside the palace.
Zhao Bozong casually flipped through the box, which contained mostly old books in poor condition. At the bottom of the box, he saw a rubbing of Chu Suiliang's "Preface to the Sacred Teachings of the Wild Goose Pagoda". The cover was worn, the corners were worn, and several pages were torn.
He thought of the calligraphy Qin Keqing had pasted on the wall and the old books with curled pages, so he casually bought a few that were still readable and asked someone to deliver them to the small house in the west of the city.
When the deliveryman returned, he told Qin Keqing that she was stunned for a long time when she received the book, and then asked, "Did the deliveryman leave his name?" The deliveryman said no.
She was silent for a moment, then hugged the book to her chest and said, "Thank you."
Zhao Bozong didn't take it to heart. A few old books were nothing to worry about.
He simply felt that the woman was all alone in Lin'an, with no relatives or friends, and that as long as she could maintain the habit of reading and writing in adversity, she deserved some kindness.
One evening in early April, Zhao Bozong went to Shunhe Tea Shop to check an abnormal information about the purchase of ingredients from the Qin family's cook.
Zhao Bocong speculated that this might be related to the fact that Li Bao's navy was being targeted by the Privy Council.
When he pushed the door open, he was surprised to see Qin Keqing there as well. She was sitting on a bench in the corner, with a bowl of tea that hadn't been touched in front of her.
What are you doing here?
"Manager Wang asked me to help copy the account books." Qin Keqing stood up and bowed, explaining that Manager Wang had injured his wrist a few days ago, and she happened to be delivering laundry nearby, so she came over to help out.
She came every day these past few days. On the small table behind the shop was a stack of old account books wrapped in cloth. She sat there upright, copying them word by word in small regular script. The ink was clean and the strokes were neat.
Zhao Bozong took the page she had copied and flipped through it. The characters were written in tiny, neat characters, elegant and upright.
There was a small patch of ink bleeding on the edge of the page, caused by her pausing for too long after writing the four characters of Shunhe Tea Shop.
It seemed that she was distracted for a moment, and her fingertips unconsciously pressed down on the pen, not noticing until the ink had seeped through the paper.
"Miss Qin has beautiful handwriting," Zhao Bocong said.
"I learned it from my father when I was a child," Qin Keqing replied with the same answer.
Zhao Bozong didn't ask any further questions; he simply placed the page on the table.
A medicinal herb merchant from Zhenjiang, with a family tradition of learning, who drifted to Lin'an and made a living by copying account books in a tea shop. Every piece of this life story seems to fit together perfectly.
But he always felt that something was not quite right, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.
After returning to the Prince's Mansion, Zhao Bozong placed the page of the account book that Qin Keqing had copied on his desk and looked at it several times.
The handwriting is neat and legible, with no problems whatsoever.
She helped out at the tea shop, but it was at Manager Wang's invitation; there was no trace of her actively approaching the tea shop.
He never let her be present when he contacted the intelligence network, and he always went to the teahouse after she had left.
Moreover, Qin Keqing seemed to have no extra curiosity about his whereabouts, and never asked him why he often came to the teahouse or why he would lower his voice in front of Manager Wang.
This woman's fate was too pure, and this purity itself was perhaps the greatest unusual thing.
However, if Qin Hui wanted to place someone by his side, he would have done it more carefully and would never have devised a flawed scheme involving the daughter of a herbal medicine merchant to get close to him.
A more skilled adversary would choose a completely different approach, rather than appearing before him with a pitiful demeanor.
This gesture was so eye-catching that it actually showed she wasn't one of Qin Hui's men.
In mid-April, Feng Yi sent word that Qin Hui had been meeting frequently with officials of the Privy Council, possibly related to naval troop movements in the Zhenjiang area.
The sailor hid the message in a hidden compartment in the ship's cabin. The message traveled a full circle along the network left by Zhijia, and half a month later, Li Bao's reply came from Zhenjiang with only one word: "Know".
It was at this moment that Zhao Bocong finally confirmed his long-held suspicion: Yue Fei's plan was that everyone on the list was a stranger to each other, fighting their own battles from their own positions.
He now stands at the only intersection of these two nets, where Yue Fei carefully placed each chess piece before his death, leaving the chessboard to him.
Mid-April, Lin'an, Shunhe Tea Shop.
When Zhao Bozong pushed open the door, Qin Keqing was sitting on a bench in the corner copying account books.
He had seen her calligraphy before; it was tiny, neat, and elegant, reminiscent of the style of Chu Suiliang.
As usual, Qin Keqing packed up her writing brush and ink to leave at 5:15 PM. The two stood side by side at the door. As she let him pass, a faint scent of ink lingered on her clothes.
But today, when she reached the door, she paused slightly.
Zhao Bozong noticed that her gaze was fixed on his cuffs.
She glanced at it only once before looking away, bowing slightly, and carrying the account book, her white-clad figure disappearing at the end of the alley.
Zhao Bozong sat down, and Manager Wang handed him a rough pottery teacup with two pages of account book paper pressed down at the bottom.
"Qin Hui has recently been frequently summoning the Privy Council's Naval Commander to discuss matters concerning the mobilization of warships in Zhenjiang. The guest's name is unknown, but he is from Jiangbei."
Zhao Bocong looked up at Manager Wang.
Shopkeeper Wang shook his head and whispered, "It wasn't written by this old servant."
This morning, when Miss Keqing came to copy the account book, she slipped this page under the last page of the book before leaving, saying, "Uncle Wang, this seems to be in the wrong place."
Zhao Bozong looked down at the page again; the handwriting was exactly the same as the account book that Qin Keqing had copied for him.
Only the ending strokes of the two characters "Jiangbei" show a slight hesitation, a mark left by someone who has practiced calligraphy for a long time.
Her handwriting revealed her true nature.
Qin Keqing copied the account books at Shunhe Tea Shop for two months and never once wondered why he came.
Zhao Bozong thought she was just there to make a living.
Now we know she isn't.