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

Chapter 044: I am Qin Hui's daughter

This was the first time Zhao Bocong had doubts; this kind of information seemed to be beyond the level that Qin Keqing could obtain.

He looked at Qin Keqing, his face expressionless, but this time he was clearly very serious.

Qin Keqing was not surprised, as if she knew this day would come sooner or later.

He pulled the hollow bamboo hairpin from his sleeve, twisted it open, and poured out three tiny folded pieces of paper.

Unfold one of the sheets and lay it out in front of Zhao Bocong.

The writing on the piece of paper was as small as a grain of rice; it was written with an extremely fine charcoal pencil.

On the fifth day of the fifth month, in the study of the Qin residence, a box containing a secret edict in yellow silk was found, indicating that the matter of Zhenjiang had been tacitly approved by the Emperor.

Zheng Gangzhong's transfer order is expected to be issued within five days. There is a large amount of freshly burned paper ash in the brazier, which smells of sulfur.

Qin Hui is accelerating the destruction of records of his interactions with the Jin envoys.

Zhao Bocong read through the text word by word, his gaze finally settling on the ink blot before the two characters "Qin Hui".

Qin Keqing placed her left hand on her knee, her fingers slightly curled into her palm.

She had almost missed writing it down, and now, as she watched Zhao Bozong read the line of crossed-out words, she felt her jaw clench so tightly that she couldn't look away and had to wait for him to speak first.

"There seems to be some writing in front of Qin Hui's name here," Zhao Bozong said, placing the note on the table in a low voice. "Do you know anyone in Qin Hui's family?"

"I know him."

How deep?

Qin Keqing placed her hands on her knees.

The bamboo hairpin had been tightened again and was held in her palm, causing a slight but real pain.

"Your Highness."

She spoke, her voice soft and steady, but each word seemed to carry a secret, making her hesitate. "I know everyone in the Qin family. Qin Hui's personal page has changed three times, and I know their hometowns and how many people are in their families."

Qin Hui's principal wife, Lady Wang, would go to Jingci Temple to burn incense every three days, and I have witnessed her sedan chair passing through every side gate.

I know everything: the kitchen shopping list, the night watch schedule in the backyard, and how many new locks have been installed in the study.

Qin Keqing's breathing was not disordered, but it paused for a moment.

"But my identity is more than that."

Zhao Bozong looked at her, hesitated for a long time before finally speaking.

"Your surname is Qin."

My surname is Qin.

After saying those words, Qin Keqing closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. Her voice was even softer than before, but she said something that made Zhao Bozong's heart skip a beat.

"I am Qin Hui's daughter."

The study remained quiet for a long time.

The sound of drums from the dragon boat race on the canal drifted in from afar outside the window, boom boom boom, like the sound of drums striking a wall.

Zhao Bozong sat motionless, his gaze fixed on Qin Keqing's face. Qin Keqing's delicate and plain face made it impossible for him to associate her with Qin Hui.

He showed no anger, no questioning, and didn't even say a word; he was waiting for Qin Keqing to finish speaking.

"My birth mother was Wang, a weaver from Mizhou. She died in childbirth and was born out of wedlock. I was raised by my legal wife, Wang, from a young age." Qin Keqing's voice remained calm, a calmness that was an instinct forged by twelve years of high-pressure life in the Qin family.

The more deadly the topic, the more lightly it should be mentioned. "When I was six years old, Qin Hui was captured and taken north. I drifted to Jiaozhou and learned to recognize medicinal herbs by the river."

She returned to Lin'an at the age of thirteen and was taken into the Qin family mansion, where she lived as the daughter of a distant relative of the Wang family.

Three days before Master Zhijia was arrested, he found me and handed me a chipped copper coin and a copy of the register, saying, "The day the wooden bird recognizes its master is the day the wind rises."

Qin Keqing took out the small booklet she always carried with her from her sleeve, opened it, and spread the pages one by one on the table.

Each page was filled with tiny, meticulously written notes: the date, location, and list of participants of Qin Hui's secret meeting with the Jin envoy; the list of confidants planted by the Privy Council in the navy; and the timeline for destroying evidence of collusion with the Jin.

Summary of private correspondence between the principal wife, Lady Wang, and the family of the Jin envoy.

Each character is written neatly, with varying shades of ink, spanning from the eleventh year of Shaoxing to the fifth day of the fifth month of the twelfth year of Shaoxing.

As Zhao Bozong looked at the pages, he felt as if something had struck his chest.

He had once built countless firewalls between her and Qin Hui in his heart, and now those firewalls have become even deeper rifts.

This is not a crack of suspicion, but a crack of misunderstanding.

A time traveler stood in front of the rearview mirror of history for so long and didn't see this point: Qin Hui's blood could grow into Qin Keqing's bones.

Qin Keqing lowered her head, and her voice finally trembled slightly.

She looked up at Zhao Bocong.

"Your Highness," her eyes were not red, "Qin Hui is my father."

Zhao Bocong remained silent for a long time.

He stood up, walked to the window, and turned his back to Qin Keqing.

The drumbeats outside the window were still ringing out, and the festive atmosphere of the Dragon Boat Festival was surging in from the canal.

"Our first meeting was planned by you."

"I arranged for those hooligans in the alley," Zhao Bozong turned to look at her, "to let me meet you. You knew exactly when Liu An would leave the manor with me, and you also calculated who a humiliated orphan girl would be most likely to appeal to."

"Your Highness's suspicions are correct; everything that happened in the alley that day was not a coincidence."

The leader of the hooligans was a layabout I knew from the west side of the city. He was paid to do things and didn't know who I was.

I've rehearsed every detail: the drunkard's gait as he approached, the angle at which Liu An's carriage curtain was lifted, and the clothes scattered from my bundle.

Before Master Zhijia went to prison, he instructed me to make sure I approached His Highness, because the wooden bird had already appeared.

"So you've been carrying out Zhijia's arrangements from beginning to end."

"Master Zhijia gave me a task framework," Qin Keqing said without dodging, "to approach you, gain your trust, and activate the Puan Prince's Mansion node."

But every tear, every bowed head, every sleepless night within that framework was real.

"The first intelligence you sent me indicated that the Jiangbei traveler had left Zhenjiang with three companions, carrying a secret box—were you deliberately holding back a contingency plan?"

Qin Keqing remained silent for a moment.

"Yes, I did not write down Jiangbei Ke's identity."

Because once his identity is exposed, it will immediately implicate all the participants in my father's secret meetings with money, and that list includes my father's most core political allies.

"If Your Highness had decided to hand over this intelligence to Li Bao and rashly intercept the Jiangbei guest, Qin Hui would have immediately realized that the source of the intelligence was within the mansion, and I would have been the first to be investigated."

Zhao Bozong looked at her, his voice turning cold.

"What's the difference between an intelligence provider who doesn't hand over all intelligence to their allies and a double agent?"

"The difference is that I said everything I could say, and I knew who my father was and that every piece of information could become evidence to bring him down, but I still wrote it, and I wrote it for two years."

Qin Keqing's voice did not rise, "The difference is that I could be discovered at any moment. Once discovered, the person who will kill me will not be His Highness, nor Li Bao, but my father."

He didn't hesitate when he killed Yue Fei, and he wouldn't hesitate to kill his own daughter either.

Silence fell again in the study.

"Who else knows your identity?"

"Only Master Zhijia knows," Qin Keqing's voice returned to calm. "Your Highness is now the second person to know."

Zhao Bozong picked up the booklet filled with intelligence from the table and flipped through it page by page.

The characters were written in tiny, neat characters, with varying shades of ink. He closed the booklet and placed it back in front of Qin Keqing.

"Miss Qin, from today onwards, you will continue with everything you have been doing before. Intelligence, networks, liaison, Zhenjiang early warning—everything will remain the same."

I won't ask you any more questions, nor will I ask you to do things that you couldn't do with your father.

But you need to know one thing: I can accommodate someone with the surname Qin in my life.

Qin Keqing put the booklet back into her sleeve, her fingers trembling slightly, but her expression remained calm.

She stood up and bowed slightly.

"Thank you, Your Highness."

As she reached the door, Zhao Bozong called out to her.

"Qin Keqing".

She stopped.