gnovel Chapter 056: Preparations
Chapter 056: Preparations
Qin Keqing remembered that when she was a child in Jiaozhou, she didn't really like celebrating festivals.
At that time, there were no mooncakes on the riverbank in Jiaozhou; all that was available were glutinous rice balls, which the porters at the dock often ate.
Later, Lady Wang brought her back to Lin'an. Although every Mid-Autumn Festival, the Qin family would fill the house with all kinds of exquisite mooncakes, none of them were for her to eat.
This was the first Mid-Autumn Festival she had spent outside the Qin residence.
"Thanks."
Qin Keqing held the mooncake in her hand and looked at it for a long time. Zhao Bozong did not get up and leave, but instead took out a folded piece of paper from his pocket.
Gently place it next to the mooncake plate.
Although Qin Keqing was somewhat surprised, she still opened it.
It is a land deed.
It says "Chengxi Shunhe Tea Shop" on it, and her name is listed as the owner.
"Miss Qin hasn't received a single penny of pay in over three months," Zhao Bozong said casually. "You can't just risk your life for intelligence work; you have to prepare some escape routes for yourself."
Zhao Bocong knew that Qin Keqing had been taking care of him all these days, and he didn't really know how to express his gratitude, even though what they were doing now wasn't a matter of one helping the other.
Girls in later generations all like real estate, so perhaps Qin Keqing would like these gifts.
Zhao Bocong looked at Qin Keqing and continued, "The old storefront of Shunhe Tea Shop has been bought by the Imperial Clan Court under the pretext of sorting out the old property of the imperial clan. The shop will not be opened. It is now only used as a document and archive office in the west of the city."
You are now a clerk in the document archives, and you can withdraw three hundred coins from the old camp funds in the southern suburbs every month.
If the shop is successfully opened, you'll collect the rent.
"If the business fails, the shop is yours. You've been running around under a dangerous wall for four years; you deserve a place of your own."
Zhao Bozong said everything he wanted to say in one breath, perhaps this time from the perspective of a friend.
Qin Keqing kept her head down and didn't speak. After a while, she folded the land deed and put it into her sleeve.
She didn't refuse, nor did she say "How can this be?", and her eyes weren't red when she looked up.
He folded the land deed into a tiny, tiny piece and tucked it into the deepest lining of his sleeve before looking up at Zhao Bocong and saying two words.
"Keep accounts."
Zhao Bozong smiled, then stood up and walked out of the small house.
......
In August, the temperature in Lin'an gradually cooled down.
In the old camp in the southern suburbs, Xin Qizong's soldiers had been copying the manuals for more than half a month.
These veterans, long out of battle, felt sleepy looking at the words on the first page of the manual for the first few days.
But Xin Qizong put the stack of drill manuals that Zhao Bozong had sent on the drill ground and pointed to a line of words engraved on the back of the cover, saying: "Archived in the Imperial Clan Court and filed according to law. If you copy it wrong, you have to go to the Imperial Clan Court to correct it yourself."
From then on, no one dared to doze off anymore.
However, Xin Qizong knew in his heart that he could not learn to use a knife to save people in alleys simply by copying manuals.
The fifth year of the Shaoxing reign, the Shenwu Deputy Army's Manual included a volume called "Night Battle Formations," which discussed the essentials of night raids, ambushes, and street fighting.
The veteran took out that volume separately, called over the two military academy students who had broken out of Xihe with him years ago, and began to secretly train them on the abandoned horse path outside the back gate of the old camp.
The additional training content is not in any manual.
How to identify the footsteps of pursuers in narrow alleys, how to create an echo by tapping the wall with the back of a knife at a corner to mislead the pursuers' positioning, and how to use hand gestures to pass flanking signals between three-person teams.
The trainees were all veterans personally selected by Xin Qizong, mostly over forty years old, seasoned veterans who were taciturn.
During the day, they worked as "archive movers" in the southern suburbs, and at night they practiced "night battle formations" on the horse track. No one complained, and no one asked a question.
These soldiers had drunk that night in the eleventh year of Shaoxing, and now Xin Qizong was making them hold their swords again; they knew it was time.
At the same time, Qin Keqing began preparing for her trip out of the city.
She told the people in the mansion that she was going to Xiuzhou to purchase a batch of embroidery for Consort Zhang, and that the round trip would take about half a month.
Liu An was responsible for her overt cover during her departure from the city.
Three days before her departure, she reorganized the contact list for all the dead letter drop-off points in Lin'an City, making two copies.
The duplicate register was given to Liu An for emergency use, while the original register was sealed directly in a copper box in Xin Qizong's barracks, with the key kept by the deputy commander of the Imperial Guard.
Then she wrote a letter to Jinbao, using the coded language of the pharmacy's ledger: "Sister went out to collect Sichuan fritillary bulbs and old prescriptions along the way. There is saposhnikovia root in Zhenjiang; do not decoct it, wait for me. Also, someone in Jiaozhou wants to eat fish."
In the code, "Fangfeng" refers to Li Bao, and "Wujian" is a euphemism for waiting for orders.
As for the last sentence, "I want to eat fish."
That was one of the few times she spoke without any coded meaning.
On August 19th, Qin Keqing arrived at the back gate of the Prince's mansion carrying a bamboo basket before dawn. Liu An was already waiting there, leading a horse.
"His Highness asked me to give you this." Liu An handed over a cloth bag. Qin Keqing opened it, and inside was a pair of new cloth shoes, with very dense stitches and thick soles.
"His Highness said that the road to Xiuzhou is longer than that to Lin'an."
Qin Keqing looked down at the shoes and remained silent for a very short moment. Then she closed the cloth bag, stuffed it into the bottom of the bamboo basket, and placed it together with the land deed.
"Keep it in the books," she said.
Liu An didn't understand, but he didn't ask.
He went to the Houchaomen outpost half an hour in advance to confirm the shift change time of the city gate guards that day, and reserved a seat facing the street in the teahouse closest to the outpost.
If Qin Keqing is stopped when she passes through Houchao Gate, he only needs to put down his teacup and walk a few steps to the sentry post to get her out of the checkpoint with the Zongzheng Temple token.
But no one stopped them.
Qin Keqing, dressed in the coarse cloth clothes of a laundry worker, carrying a bamboo basket, squeezed into a group of merchants going to Xiuzhou to sell cloth, walked past the checkpoint with her head down, like an ordinary citizen leaving the city.
After leaving the city gate, she paused for a moment at the bridgehead of the moat.
A porter with a sweat towel wrapped around his head and an empty birdcage hanging from his carrying pole brushed past her, and the clothes in the bamboo basket were gently touched and fell back down.
At that very moment, the last verbal instruction that the deputy commander of the Imperial Guard had repeated to him accurately reached Qin Keqing's ears.
"Next to Shopkeeper Wang's tea shop in Xiuzhou is a coffin shop. Look for the door of the coffin shop so you don't go to the wrong one."
Qin Keqing pursed her lips slightly upon hearing this admonition that only she could understand.
Then she continued walking forward without looking back.
Qin Keqing stayed in Xiuzhou for five days.
For the past five days, she worked as a helper in Wang's newly opened tea shop every morning, greeting customers. In the afternoon, she would go out through the back door of the tea shop, walk through a narrow alley, and enter the backyard of the coffin shop next door.
There, she met the local clan representatives of Xiuzhou, whom Manager Wang and the deputy commander of the Imperial Guard had arranged for her.
These people were not close relatives of the imperial family from prominent clans; they were descendants of collateral branches of the Taizu lineage scattered throughout various villages in Xiuzhou. They were not of high status and did not own much land, but they were all willing to do some work for the Prince of Puan's mansion.
Qin Keqing registered in her public capacity as a clerk in the Imperial Clan Court and first handed over a "Letter of Verification of the Imperial Clan's Land in Xiuzhou" bearing the official seal of the Imperial Clan Court to Zhao Bocong.
Then, under a private name, several boxes of medicinal herbs transported from Zhenjiang by Jinbao were distributed. The whole process was completely legal, and not a single penny of the accounts could be used to find fault.
The only thing that wasn't within the legal scope was the late-night verification she did with Manager Wang in the woodshed in the backyard of the tea shop.
"Your Highness has asked me to give you a new identity—"
Shopkeeper Wang pushed the seven sets of guides in front of her, "They all come from the household registration of the imperial relatives in Xiuzhou. There are five men and two women, and their ages and places of origin are different. Each one has an official record from the Court of Imperial Clan Affairs."
"These identities," Qin Keqing read through each travel permit page by page, "were the individuals themselves aware of them?"
"I am aware of this. His Highness personally wrote to each household, saying that the Court of Imperial Clan Affairs needs to establish an independent liaison system for the imperial clan of the Taizu lineage, in order to verify the records."
"When people heard that they could work for the imperial family, they agreed without hesitation." Manager Wang smiled.
"Your Highness's move is truly brilliant. Before, when you used a false identity to gather intelligence in Lin'an, every time you crossed the city gate, you were gambling with your life."
These identities are all genuine, real people, and the individuals themselves are aware of them. Even if Qin Hui investigates all the way to Xiuzhou, he won't find any flaws.
Qin Keqing put away the seven sets of guidebooks and placed them in the bottom compartment of the bamboo basket, but her fingers paused for a moment at the edge of the guidebooks.
During her four years working as an intelligence agent for the Qin family, she used three different false identities.
Each time, she had to memorize the place of origin, accent, kinship, and social interactions of each identity; any oversight could lead to utter ruin.
Now Zhao Bozong has given her seven real identities, identities that seven people willingly lent her.