Chapter 65

Chapter 65

Zhou Bingjun's actions were completely caught Xu Yong off guard.

They had long known that the Minister of War was an expendable pawn, and the Imperial Guard had used the case of the Minister of War to rock the court and the country at large. Those old foxes at court, to protect themselves, the turmoil at court gradually escalated. If the Imperial Guard's purpose were not exposed, the turmoil would only allow the Eldest Prince Faction to trample the Crown Prince Faction mercilessly. The Xu family could not fall yet; that would ruin their plan.

If the Imperial Guard's intent were revealed, those old foxes would naturally understand that the Imperial Guard was laying a trap to probe the Ministry of Works, and the people at court would assess the situation and quiet down.

His informants were all waiting outside, ready for the Imperial Guard to take the bait and follow their plan. Who would have thought it would be Zhou Bingjun instead of Qi Hanzhou?

Why? Did the Imperial Guard understand their arrangement?

No, did the Imperial Guard know that much?

Xu Yong had no time to dwell on that. He had to get away quickly and send word out so that the informants of that lord would know.

"Lord Zhou, this matter is extremely serious," Xu Yong explained hastily.

Zhou Bingjun immediately ordered his men to seize Xu Yong, ignoring all his protests. Just as Xu Yong tried to resist, Zhou Bingjun's men pinned him to the ground. Catching the look on Zhou Bingjun's face, he suddenly realized the Imperial Guard's true intention, but before he could utter a word, an official from the Ministry of Works knocked him unconscious.

"Use inside channels of the Ministry of Works to take him away secretly and lock him up. Keep this quiet."

Officials from the Ministry of Works quickly found a farm carriage, stuffed Xu Yong inside, and mixed it in with the ministry's daily wagons.

After all this was done, Zhou Bingjun said viciously, "Investigate! Investigate every official in the ministry who had close dealings with him!"

As he walked back, he suddenly thought of something: "Wait! Find every scroll Xu Yong touched today in the Ministry of Works—even those he casually handled. Bring them all out, not a single one can be missed!"

The Xu family and the Ministry of Works had recently been internally investigating the spies involved in the artisan case. Now, with the Imperial Guard watching the Ministry of Works closely, any misstep could lead to political enemies framing them. Zhou Bingjun was already at a sensitive juncture. The officials he had sent out were all captured by the Imperial Guard, leaving only Xu Yong unharmed. No amount of explanation mattered to him as much as the result.

He had to immediately confirm whether Xu Yong had leaked key scroll contents; otherwise, tomorrow's morning court would mark the beginning of the Ministry of Works' destruction.

Zhou Bingjun strode quickly to the scroll repository of the Ministry of Works, his sharp eyes scanning every seal.

He finally stopped at a certain spot. The scroll delivered by the officials had yellowed traces from a special powder.

"Records of Materials for the Huzhou River Works in the Twelfth Year of the Taiyuan Dynasty..." Zhou Bingjun opened it and his expression changed slightly. This project had not been tampered with by them, yet several details in the scroll seemed unfamiliar—someone had altered it beforehand, and judging by the ink, the alteration dated back several years.

If this scroll fell into the hands of the Imperial Guard, it would be the end.

This was the final scroll. Were there other traces left in other archives?

"Act covertly. Don't tip them off," Zhou Bingjun ordered. Then, thinking of his subordinates who had just been captured by the Imperial Guard, he said, "Forget it. None of you should move."

Xu Yong from the Ministry of Works was taken away quietly by Zhou Bingjun. The informants hiding outside the Ministry of Works, waiting for a signal, sensed something was wrong, but Xu Yong had vanished without a trace. Not only that, but everyone in the ministry connected to Xu Yong was placed under control by Zhou Bingjun's order. This was no longer a matter of losing a mere informant or two—the entire Xu Yong line had been compromised!

The Xu family had made a move against their people!

"Xu Yong is gone. This will likely be discovered by the Xu family."

This matter had to stop with the Xu family...

The lamps in the Xu mansion burned all night. When news of the Ministry of Works affair arrived, Grand Secretary Xu's eyes were filled with malice.

The Ministry of Works had been infiltrated without his knowledge.

After reading the scroll, he looked at Zhou Bingjun.

Zhou Bingjun already understood: no one who had entered or left the repository today could be spared. "Your Servant will handle it."

Outside the Xu mansion, as Zhou Bingjun left in secret, he was unaware that the real spies were already tailing him.

Ye Xuanjiu, leading two elite operatives disguised as ordinary officials, quietly followed him for several days.

In those days, the Xu family purged the hidden agents within the Ministry of Works, nearly annihilating Xu Yong's entire faction.

Grand Secretary Xu carried out the purge, and the informants who had wanted to stir up trouble were now likely too busy dealing with the Xu family's affairs to pay attention to the Imperial Guard.

If the mastermind behind the scenes wanted to break the scheme of the Minister of War case, they would need to let the court know that everything was a front by the Imperial Guard. As long as the Imperial Guard did not fall into their trap, they could seize the initiative. If they had gone to arrest Xu Yong just now, everything done so far would have been wasted.

Searching for clues about the military pay case was like looking for a needle in a haystack. The mastermind's shady dealings were all concealed behind the Xu family's influence.

The fastest way to investigate was to let the Xu family and the Ministry of Works investigate themselves. If Xu Yong had indeed tampered with something, Zhou Bingjun would act immediately! They didn't need to do anything else—just follow Zhou Bingjun and see what he moved!

"Junior General, the clues are in hand." Ye Xuanjiu handed over a detailed list.

The Ministry of Works' shady affairs were now written in black and white on paper. Qi Hanzhou's eyes darkened.

Ying Fusheng quietly poured tea, listening to Ye Xuanjiu's report as if it had nothing to do with him. Yet the clues to the military pay case, which the Qi family had searched for far and wide, were now obtained through a plot within a plot. Ye Xuanjiu looked at him differently now. How old was the Sixth Prince, and already able to stir up the court like this?

Ying Fusheng seemed oblivious to Ye Xuanjiu's gaze. He wasn't even interested in the scroll of clues. He simply slid the tea over to Qi Hanzhou.

Qi Hanzhou downed it in one gulp, then stood up.

He entered the palace to meet the emperor.

...

On the nineteenth day of the Minister of War case, after several days of thorough investigation, the Imperial Guard entered the palace to meet the emperor and submitted the investigation results of the military pay case.

Before the Xu family and the mastermind could react, what was first placed before all the civil and military officials were several work-project records from the Ministry of Works. The records clearly stated how much materials were needed for the construction of river works and how many carts and horses the Ministry of War and the Court of the Imperial Stud needed to dispatch for transport.

These were fixed amounts. But if the number of carts leaving the capital did not match the Ministry of Works' recorded materials, what were the extra carts transporting? It could only be the military pay!

"Your Majesty, I have already retrieved relevant post station records, which do not match the Ministry of Works' records," Hu Buyu stepped forward and submitted the scrolls.

With these records presented, the court officials no longer cared what the Imperial Guard had actually found in the Minister of War's mansion. What the Imperial Guard uncovered was shocking—they were not investigating the true culprit behind this particular military pay case. Instead, they were using it to dig into old cases.

Did the emperor care about just one military pay case?

If one military pay case could occur, there must be more behind it.

How much military pay had been embezzled during the emperor's campaign, how it had vanished, and where it had gone—that was what truly mattered.

But the evidence now presented showed that the Ministry of Works had used carts meant to transport river work materials to smuggle military pay, colluding with the Vice Minister of Imperial Stud, who later killed himself in guilt, to embezzle the military pay dispatched by the court during the emperor's campaign and secretly transport it out of the capital.

"Zhou Bingjun!" The emperor looked coldly at him. "What do you have to say to that?"

This was no longer something that could be dismissed like the Ministry of Works case. The one who would take the fall was Zhou Bingjun, the Minister of Works. Even if he were to explain, he could not say where the military pay had gone. From the moment they uncovered this matter, the military pay case had spiraled completely out of control!

"Your Majesty, I am wronged. This matter is related to Xu Yong, the Chief Attendant of the Ministry of Works. I discovered that he had secretly tampered with the ministry's scrolls. I beg Your Majesty to see into this!" Zhou Bingjun had no other evidence. He could only throw away Xu Yong and others as scapegoats, pinning the blame for the internal alterations on Xu Yong. Xu Yong was missing, but the officials connected to him, seeing this situation, desperately tried to defend themselves, turning the Ministry into a dog-eat-dog mess.

But these denials couldn't stand up to hard evidence. In the emperor's eyes, whether it was Zhou Bingjun or the missing Xu Yong, they had already touched the emperor's untouchable nerve.

The military pay case was the emperor's sore spot. The emperor moved like thunder and lightning, directly ordering the confiscation of the Minister of Works' mansion!

And there, they discovered hidden engineering drawings. When he saw those drawings, Zhou Bingjun was speechless. He knew that when this item inexplicably appeared in his mansion, he had already become a pawn sacrificed in this power struggle.

When the Minister of Works was taken to the imperial prison for interrogation, he revealed the secrets of Xu Yong and other officials. The hidden agents that the Xu family and the Ministry of Works had uncovered during this period all confessed in the Embroidered Uniform Guard's imperial prison. For the Xu family, all this was a deliberate frame-up by someone with ulterior motives; officials like Xu Yong had to pin the military pay scandal on the Minister of Works.

"Is Xu Yong dead?" Ying Fusheng asked.

"Yes," Qi Hanzhou replied. "By the time the Embroidered Uniform Guard arrived, he was already gone."

Ying Fusheng was not surprised. The moment Xu Yong failed to lure out the Embroidered Uniform Guard, he was already a discarded pawn.

The Xu family would deal with him, and the mastermind would not let him off either.

"What a pity," Ying Fusheng mused. "But it doesn't matter. From him, we got everything we wanted."

Qi Hanzhou watched his nonchalant demeanor. He was always like this, but the current advantage came entirely from that day's spur-of-the-moment decision.

If the Embroidered Uniform Guard moved against Xu Yong, the situation would be reversed by the mastermind.

But by shifting the conflict onto the Xu family and pitting Zhou Bingjun against Xu Yong, the situation would fall back into the hands of the Embroidered Uniform Guard.

As long as the Guard struck first before Zhou Bingjun could, the military pay case would end in nothing but a dog-eat-dog scenario.

The Xu family would do their utmost to use this incident to uproot hidden agents, while the hidden agents behind the scenes would try every means to shift blame onto the Minister of Works. But for someone outside the chessboard like him, exploiting a single military pay case easily disposed of Zhou Bingjun, whom the Xu family had painstakingly kept in place, and also eliminated hidden agents like Xu Yong.

What was submitted to the emperor was the result that should have been reported after staging the incident at the Minister of War's residence. This whole affair had been carried out with the emperor's tacit approval. The greatest gain from this incident was uncovering the hidden thread behind the mastermind's military pay case—how the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Works were connected to smuggle the embezzled military pay out of the capital. That was the line they used.

Breaking this line undoubtedly meant cleansing both the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Works thoroughly.

The dossier revealed not only this hidden thread but also the destination of the military pay that had been embezzled in earlier years. To transport such pay, official courier stations had to be used, hidden within the Ministry of Works' carts. These could be shipped to various locations in Dayuan, so the transfer of the military pay would occur along the routes the Ministry of Works passed through.

Thus, a specific area could be identified.

This confirms our earlier speculation.

Ying Fusheng's tone lightened slightly. "The mastermind is not in the capital."

Qi Hanzhou met his gaze. Not in the capital, yet possessing the ability to infiltrate the capital.

Thinking further, this was almost like a vast net silently spread under the Qi family's noses.

Such erosion had happened more than once. During the emperor's years of campaigning, the court had undoubtedly fallen under the control of these civil officials, especially with Grand Secretary Xu still around. The continuous embezzlement of military pay leaving no trace could only have one possible explanation.

Ying Fusheng looked into Qi Hanzhou's eyes and stated the only possibility: "This person is raising private troops."

The military power of Dayuan was entirely in the hands of the emperor and the Qi family, and the Qi family was an impregnable fortress that obeyed only the emperor's orders. Even if the mastermind could infiltrate the court, without military power, it would be difficult for him to contend with the emperor and the Qi family. Even if he seized power, as long as the emperor lived, a military takeover would not be impossible.

So in his previous life, he had pushed for a new emperor to take the throne.

Once a new emperor took over, the Qi family's military power would fall into the new emperor's hands… but the Qi family rebelled.

Ying Fusheng died, so he never found out in that life whether Qi Hanzhou had rooted out the mastermind… But in this life, he would give the mastermind no opportunity to push for a new emperor.

Because the Crown Prince would soon be deposed.