"Go get it done, and keep your hands clean."
Before Lei Zhen's words had fully dissipated into the air above Tongjin Pier, the news had already traveled along the waterways back to the capital.
It was just past the hour of Chen.
In the Grand Secretariat's duty room, Xu Jie was reviewing a memorial regarding sacrifices submitted by the Ministry of Rites. His brush hovered in mid-air, hesitating to fall.
The urgent courier from the Office of Transmission had just left, leaving a thin situational report spread out at the corner of his desk.
Three grain ships were stranded at the Tongjin lock, completely blocking the channel.
The northern and southern sections of the capital's waterways were paralyzed.
Xu Jie picked up the report and read it again, chewing over those few lines thoroughly.
Three ships, at the exact same hour, at the exact same lock, all simultaneously caught on submerged pilings and turned sideways.
If you called that a coincidence, not even a ghost would believe it!
But the report was written flawlessly: sudden winds caused a loss of steering, the hulls hit reefs and ran aground—an act of nature, not man.
Even the wording followed the old routine of the Water Transport Yamen, so clean you couldn't pick a single flaw.
Xu Jie put down the report, picked up his teacup, scraped away the floating leaves, but didn't drink.
Shang Qitai was getting desperate. With Xu Youde relentlessly digging into the old accounts of the Yi-Mao year, and the Emperor setting a strict one-month deadline, the old fox had finally shed all pretense and started making moves on the waterways.
The method wasn't brilliant, but it was ruthless enough.
Once the waterways were blocked, military rations couldn't be transported, and urgent memorials from the northern borders would fly into the capital like snowflakes. When that happened, all the civil and military officials would demand to know who was responsible, and the auditing of accounts would naturally have to be delayed.
If Xu Youde lost his composure and stepped forward to defend himself, it would perfectly confirm the charge of "ruining the state through auditing."
If he didn't defend himself, the heavy blame for delaying military rations would fall squarely on the head of the Earl of Chengyi's estate.
The beauty of it was that the Tongji Transport Guild's hand wasn't directly exposed. Just three broken ships, just a grounding, just a natural disaster. Even if the Imperial City Department investigated, they would only trace it back to a few unlucky old boatmen.
Xu Jie placed the teacup back on the table.
No rush.
This fire was burning the Xu and Shang families; it had nothing to do with the Grand Secretariat. A blocked waterway for a few days didn't matter. The Emperor would be more anxious than anyone and would naturally take action. The only thing Xu Jie needed to do right now was—sit still.
Hurried footsteps echoed outside the duty room, and someone reported in a low voice from the corridor that Xu Youde, the Earl of Chengyi, had already left his estate and was heading toward the Ministry of Revenue.
Xu Jie set down his brush.
This old fox was remarkably composed. The waterways were paralyzed, yet instead of going to the palace to file an imperial complaint, he went to the Ministry of Revenue?
Xu Jie pondered for a moment, picked up his brush again to review memorials, and didn't utter a single word about it.
At the exact same hour, at the back door of the Earl of Chengyi's estate.
Xu Youde hadn't gone to the Ministry of Revenue.
He sat in his study, the news Xu Fu had just brought back from the pier spread out before him. He had received word of the blockage at the Tongjin lock half an hour ago, even earlier than the Grand Secretariat.
Xu Fu stood before the desk, the sweat on his forehead not yet fully wiped away.
"Master, three ships are sideways at the Tongjin lock, completely cutting off north-south traffic. The pier has descended into chaos; porters and laborers are all scrambling to hoard grain, and the price of rice has doubled since this morning."
Xu Youde didn't address that.
"How long has the waterway been cut off?"
"It was cut off at the hour of Yin this morning, nearly two hours ago."
"How are the boatmen at the pier reacting?"
Xu Fu wiped away some sweat.
"They are in a severe panic. Many boatmen heard the lock was blocked and simply untied their moorings to run downstream, claiming they needed to seek shelter from the wind. There are also people spreading rumors..."
He paused, a grim expression on his face.
"Spreading what?"
"Spreading that the Earl of Chengyi's estate is auditing the accounts too ruthlessly, angering the Ministry of Revenue, so the Ministry has withheld the silver for the northern border's military rations, preventing the rations from being transported. If boatmen take the order for military rations, the court will default and not pay them. Who would dare run north under those circumstances?"
Xu Youde didn't move.
The study remained quiet for a long time, only the annoying chirping of cicadas outside the window disrupting the silence.
"Who started saying this?"
Xu Fu shook his head.
"We can't trace the source. It's being spread everywhere on the pier—in tea stalls, at the doors of brokerage houses, under the awnings where porters rest. They all use the exact same rhetoric. It sounds incredibly plausible; they've even fabricated the exact amount of the military ration silver."
Xu Youde picked up the teacup on his desk, lifted the lid, put it back, and didn't drink.
Shang Qitai was moving faster than he had anticipated.
Blocking the lock was only the first move; the truly fatal blow was this set of rumors. A paralyzed waterway could be cleared, but once the phrase "the Xu family's auditing has left boatmen starving" spread, all those on the pier who relied on the water for their livelihood would direct their fury entirely at the Earl of Chengyi's estate.
When that happened, Shang Qitai wouldn't even need to strike; the boatmen themselves would band together to boycott the Xu family.
The little prestige Xu Wuyou had painstakingly built up on the pier over the past few months would be completely destroyed in three days.
This wasn't simply muddying the waters.
This was cutting the Xu family off at the roots.
Xu Youde stood up and walked to the window. The sun outside was fiercely hot, bleaching the stone slabs in the courtyard white; not even a bird could be seen.
Shang Qitai wasn't stupid. He wasn't blocking the waterway; he was blocking the hearts of the people on the pier against the Xu family. Waterways could be repaired, ships could be salvaged, but once the hearts of the people scattered, gathering them again would be difficult.
"Send word to Wuyou."
Xu Youde said, his hands clasped behind his back.
"Tell him to ignore the lock, ignore the blocked ships, and go investigate the rumors first."
"Which pier spread it first, which tea stall mentioned it first, who was the first person to open their mouth, who provided the money, and where the money came from."
"I want every single thread untangled."
Xu Fu acknowledged the order and was about to leave when Xu Youde called him back.
"One more thing. Tell him that after he catches the people spreading the rumors, he shouldn't intimidate them."
"Instead, he must have someone write down the exact words of the rumors on paper, detailing the time, the place, and how many people were present to hear it. Once it's recorded, he must make those few people affix their fingerprints."
Xu Fu was taken aback.
"Master, we're not going to interrogate them?"
"Interrogate them for what?" Xu Youde turned around. "These people are just brokers running errands for silver; the ones pulling the strings behind them are what matters. If you beat the brokers into a panic and they bite their tongues and die, the trail goes cold."
"Keeping their confessions is more effective than beating a hundred brokers to death."
Southern Pier of the Capital.
When Xu Wuyou received the letter from home, he was squatting by the edge of a berth, gnawing on a hard, dry flatbread.
Pang Yu ran up, completely out of breath, his muddy soles leaving a trail of footprints on the wooden boardwalk.
"Hall Master!"
Xu Wuyou didn't look up. He stuffed the last bite of flatbread into his mouth and brushed the crumbs off his hands.
"I already know about the Tongjin lock being blocked."
"It's not that!" Pang Yu bent over, panting twice, and pulled a dirty handkerchief from his belt, which contained two copper coins and half a torn slip of paper.
"I staked out the tea stalls at the East Berth all morning and caught two brokers. These two bastards were sneaking into every tea stall, telling anyone they saw that the Xu family's auditing caused the court to cut off the military ration silver, and that boatmen wouldn't get paid for taking jobs and would all starve."
Xu Wuyou took the handkerchief and unfolded the half slip of paper. There were no words on it, only a blurred ink stamp, resembling some kind of merchant house's accounting seal.
"Where are they?"
"Tied up behind the fish shed, with their mouths gagged. Do you want me to drag them over for you to interrogate?"
Xu Wuyou didn't answer. He held the ink stamp up to the sun, squinting to examine it closely.
The edge of the stamp had a ring of extremely fine serrated patterns; this wasn't a mark from an ordinary merchant house.
Having mingled on the pier for over half a year, he had seen thousands of accounting stamps. This kind of serrated edge was an anti-counterfeiting pattern exclusively used by silver accounting houses; ordinary shops simply couldn't carve it.
And on the waterways around the capital, there were no more than five silver accounting houses that used a jagged-edged chop.
One of them was registered under the Qinghe branch of the Tongji Transport Guild.
Xu Wuyou wrapped the handkerchief back up and tucked it into his robes.
"Find someone who can read. Write down every single word of the rumors these two are spreading, character by character."
"Record exactly what time they said it, at which dock, and how many people were standing around. Make it crystal clear. Once it's written, have them sign it with their fingerprints."
Pang Yu scratched the back of his head.
"That's it? No interrogation?"
"What would they know even if we interrogated them?" Xu Wuyou stood up, dusting the dirt off his backside. "Runners like these brokers probably don't even remember what the person who paid them looked like. But the ink stamp on that half-piece of paper is worth ten times more than their mouths."
Pang Yu accepted the task and turned to leave, but after taking two steps, he doubled back.
"Hall Master, there's one more thing."
His usual cheeky grin faded, replaced by a rare look of seriousness.
"From dawn until now, a total of thirty-seven grain ships have submitted 'seeking shelter from the wind' suspension plaques."
Xu Wuyou's foot, which had just stepped forward, froze.
Thirty-seven ships.
The sun was scorching, and there was neither wind nor waves.
Thirty-seven grain ships, all submitting suspension plaques to seek shelter from the wind on the exact same day.
Pang Yu handed over a stack of papers filled with ship numbers. The ink on the pages wasn't even fully dry, and the ship names were densely packed one after another.
Xu Wuyou took the papers, scanned them from top to bottom, and his gaze paused on the twelfth line.
The owner of that ship had been smiling apologetically in front of him just three days ago, begging the Waterway Hall to assign them a good berth.
"These thirty-seven ship owners," Xu Wuyou said, folding the papers. "Investigate them one by one. Find out who they owe debts to, and which silver house the money went through."
Pang Yu opened his mouth to say something but was silenced by a single look from Xu Wuyou.
"Go quickly."
Pang Yu turned and ran off.
The porters, brokers, and sailors coming and going on the docks were all whispering the same story to each other.
He heard it loud and clear.
"The Xu family's audit pissed off the imperial court, and all the military grain silver has been frozen!"
"Who dares to take on jobs anymore? Even if you take them, you won't get paid!"
Xu Wuyou turned his head, watching the backs of the people who had spoken disappear into the crowd.
He suddenly felt that the hardest thing to manage on the docks wasn't the ships or the people, but their mouths.
Thirty-seven suspension plaques stacked together felt heavier than those three broken ships at the Tongjin Lock.
