novelAbuy Chapter 102: Countermeasures
Chapter 102: Countermeasures
Qin Keqing sat opposite the desk, holding a charcoal pencil but not writing.
In front of her was a timeline and event correspondence table of all external communications of the Cining Palace over the past three months.
From the winter solstice sacrifice to the confrontation at Dali Temple on the 28th day of the twelfth lunar month, and from the first day of the first lunar month when he claimed to be ill to the end of February when he sent out broken porcelain pieces.
Each entry is marked with the date and Consort Wei's original words at the time.
Her gaze fell on the record from the end of February.
"The Empress Dowager entrusted Zhang Qu to deliver the broken porcelain shards to His Highness."
Then the new record for the fifth day of the third month reads: "The Empress Dowager moved the ebony box to her bedchamber and said to the air, 'It will be soon.'"
"Your Highness, I suspect that the Empress Dowager is waiting for a specific time, and that time is neither something she can decide, nor something we can decide."
Qin Keqing tapped her fingers lightly twice on the booklet, her speech unconsciously quickening by half a beat.
This is her habit whenever she gets close to the core of the deduction.
"What time?"
Qin Keqing thought for a moment to verify her guess. She looked down at the lines of records in the booklet, and suddenly remembered something. She flipped the booklet several pages forward and stopped at the record of the 28th day of the twelfth lunar month last year.
After the standoff at the Dali Temple that day, Consort Wei said to Wan Qixie in the main hall of the Dali Temple, "Why don't you transfer the verification order to the Dali Temple and investigate Qin Hui first?"
This was the first time the Empress Dowager had publicly directed her criticism at Qin Hui himself.
"Your Highness, the Empress Dowager was just one step away from publicly exposing Qin Hui last December, but she didn't go all the way. She returned to the palace after saying those words, and the ebony box was never opened."
She endured it for three months, from December to March. Instead of becoming depressed, she moved the box to her pillow.
This meant she felt her days of forbearance were numbered, and she was waiting for a signal—a signal far more devastating: Qin Hui himself had made a fatal mistake.
Looking at Qin Keqing, Zhao Bocong suddenly understood the direction of her deduction.
"You mean the Empress Dowager is waiting for Qin Hui to make his move, waiting for him to commit a mistake that would give her a legitimate reason to open the ebony box?"
"Yes, the destructive power of the letter in the Empress Dowager's hands depends on how she opens it."
If she were to open the letter in public at the Imperial Ancestral Temple, the officials would assume that she was targeting the Emperor, since the letter was in the Emperor's own handwriting.
However, if she opened the letter after Qin Hui had committed a serious offense—for example, if Qin Hui had privately mobilized the Imperial City Guard to surround the residence of a member of the imperial family, or if Qin Hui had caused a major miscarriage of justice in the Xiangyang area—then opening the letter would not be directed at the Emperor, but at Qin Hui.
Qin Keqing's voice grew faster and faster.
"She is weaving a net for Qin Hui. On the surface, she has done nothing for the past three months, but in reality, everything she has done is leading Qin Hui in a more radical direction."
The Empress Dowager's feigned illness and absence from court led Qin Hui to believe that she had begun to fear and back down, while the gift of broken porcelain shards made Qin Hui believe that she had made a desperate gamble.
All of this led Qin Hui to misjudge the Empress Dowager's true intentions; she wasn't on the defensive, but rather luring the enemy deep into her territory.
Zhao Bocong stood up and walked to the window.
"If that's the case, then the situation will change very quickly. Qin Hui has already posted notices in Ezhou and deployed people in Xiangyang. His net is tightening."
The Empress Dowager is waiting for him to make a 'fatal mistake,' which may not be long before it happens.
We must act swiftly and evacuate our people from Xiangyang before both the Empress Dowager's and Qin Hui's webs collapse simultaneously.
"No." Qin Keqing stood up and walked behind Zhao Bozong.
"Your Highness, we are not withdrawing. We are staying in Xiangyang to wait for Qin Hui to make a mistake. The Empress Dowager is waiting in Cining Palace. We will help her deliver the knife in Xiangyang."
Qin Keqing turned to a new page in the booklet and wrote down the first new action record of the day.
"In the Xiangyang direction, increase the frequency of code rotation at the Baimasi liaison point and maintain daily contact."
The tighter the Imperial City Guard's control over Xiangyang, the easier it is for them to make mistakes that we can use against them.
It is recommended that Yue Yinping upgrade the Baima Temple liaison point to a three-tiered early warning system: the first tier is the sound of the bell tower's bell, the second tier is the sound of Zhao Tieqiang's crossbow, and the third tier is the smoke signal from the Dragon King Temple.
Zhao Bocong nodded and added, "Send this order out using the fastest messenger."
In addition, Zhu Fei should confirm the transfer status of those former subordinates on the list as soon as possible.
Qin Hui posted a notice in Ezhou stating that Xiao Bieli and Dong Xian's faces were no longer safe.
"Have everyone still traveling between Ezhou and Xiangyang change to new aliases and travel permits."
Qin Keqing wrote down all the plans, closed the booklet, and was about to leave when she suddenly stopped. She remembered something.
"Your Highness, Xiao Bieli's sister spent the whole day in the kitchen weaving rabbits out of straw."
She said her brother had promised her something before he left. She asked if he could take her with him when he went to Xiangyang this time. Xiao Bieli said two words: "Next time."
She wrote those two words on the oil paper from the osmanthus cake shop and pasted it on the kitchen wall.
Zhao Bozong did not ask, "How did you know?"
He knew that Qin Keqing would always see and hear these trivial matters when she moved around the mansion, and he also knew that Qin Keqing never wrote anything unimportant in the register.
"Next time," he repeated the two words softly.
Outside the window, Xiao Jinluo was running out of the kitchen, holding two newly woven straw rabbits, one big and one small.
As she ran through the corridor, Shen Qingci stopped her—"A'Luo, your shoe! You lost a shoe!"
Xiao Jinluo looked down at her bare foot, smiled shyly, revealing two shallow dimples.
......
On the seventh day of the third lunar month, in the study of the Prince of Puan's residence.
Zhao Bozong sat alone at his desk, with a map of Lin'an city that had never been used before spread out in front of him. This map depicted the network of the Imperial City Guard.
Every fixed sentry post of the scouts, every regular patrol route, and every newly added hidden sentry post at every city gate was marked with a fine cinnabar pen.
This was the way of thinking he learned before he traveled through time. History books say that Qin Hui "ordered hundreds of inspectors to roam the market, and if they heard of anyone's treachery, they would arrest them and send them to the Dali Temple prison to be executed." That was the conclusion, the result.
But as a time traveler, he understood one thing better than anyone else in this era.
No matter how large and sophisticated a surveillance system is, it is impossible to achieve coverage without any blind spots.
The Imperial City Guard's 300 patrolmen were distributed throughout the wards of Lin'an, which sounds intimidating. However, the 300 men were divided into three shifts of 100 each, and then dispersed to fixed outposts and patrol routes throughout the city. In reality, no more than three people could cover each alley at the same time.
The handover times, patrol routes, and overlapping jurisdictions of these three individuals with the patrolmen of the Palace Guard were the "gap" he had been searching for.
Zhao Bocong spent nearly ten months observing these gaps.
Initially, it was thanks to Qin Keqing's intelligence that she would pay attention to the number of scouts on the street every time she went out to deliver laundry and make a simple diagram in her booklet.
Later, Feng Yi joined and brought out the duty roster system of the Imperial City Guard from the Inner Palace Attendants Department.
Later, Yuwen Xu set up a secret network using copper bells, and the location of each watchtower was deduced by referring to the map of the Imperial City Guard's sentry posts.
By March of the thirteenth year of Shaoxing, the Imperial City Guard's control map in Zhao Bocong's hands was so precise that it showed the changing times of each sentry post, the names of the captains of each patrol team, and the time periods when there would be gaps in the control of each alley.
This was a reverse intelligence system that he, Qin Keqing, Feng Yi, and Yuwen Xu had built brick by brick over ten months.
Use the Imperial City Guard's own deployment patterns to counter the Imperial City Guard.