“Three shi of wheat, four taels and seven qian of silver.”
Xu Qinghuan held the small, exquisite bronze hand warmer, tapping her fingers lightly against the rim of its lid.
“That’s the old currency standard from the Great Qian Dynasty. Five years ago, on the black market around Yanzhou, that was the rate. Use that number to decode the border defense formation diagram, and the calculation matches—the dropped coordinate is the north gate’s horse path.”
“But that was from over eighteen hundred days ago—an outdated rule.”
“Two years ago, the Ministry of Revenue enacted new policies, and all old grain measures were abolished. Then there was the heavy snow at the start of this year, and the court diverted grain supplies north to stabilize prices.”
“Under the new unified standards, three shi of wheat on the books would barely come to three taels and two qian.”
She tilted her head slightly, her gaze falling on Zhao Cheng, who was drenched in cold sweat.
“If you use today’s new market rates to match that coded diagram, where does the coordinate land?”
Xu Qinghuan didn’t pause.
“Right on the weakest section of the West City Corner—the sector under your command, Garrison Commander Zhao.”
The hall fell into dead silence. A layer of white ash peeled off the charcoal in the brazier and dropped onto its base with a soft crackle.
Tie Lanshan, whose hand had been resting on the hilt of his sword, slowly tightened his grip.
Xu Chengguang, who had been sizing up Zhao Cheng, let his gaze turn cold, wordless.
“You insist you cut ties with Chen Changfeng five years ago. If you were truly estranged, when you received this secret letter today, your first instinct would have been to calculate using the current rates.”
Xu Qinghuan pressed on with her reasoning.
“But you translated it using five-year-old accounts without any hesitation or faltering. That only proves one thing…”
“For the past five years, your private correspondence with that Han strategist never stopped.”
Zhao Cheng was stunned into a heavy sweat. Magistrate Xu was too sharp!
What should he do now?
He shuffled backward on his knees, breathing in ragged gasps.
“Imperial Envoy, please see reason! I am wronged!” he shouted.
“I’m just a crude soldier who knows nothing but killing—I barely recognize a few characters, and I don’t understand new accounts versus old! The old coded system was all Chen Changfeng taught me back then; my mind is dull, and that’s the only thing I’ve remembered all these years!”
He lifted his head, his fleshy face twisted up, trying to bluff his way through with a boorish soldier act.
“Today, I killed that spy and brought his head here to pledge my loyalty. Every word I’ve said comes from the heart—I have no other intentions! If I truly meant to defect, why would I go out of my way to deliver myself to the Commander’s headquarters and beg for death? I beg the Commander and the Imperial Envoy not to believe such groundless speculation!”
He knocked his head hard on the floor.
Zhao Cheng panicked inwardly, thinking: as long as I hold fast to being foolish and slow, they can’t pin this charge of treason on me—yes, that’s the way!
But Xu Qinghuan did not engage him. She didn’t even let her eyelids drop to look at him.
She toyed with the bronze hand warmer in her hands.
She didn’t argue, didn’t interrogate—she completely ignored the man’s rambling bluster.
“If you wanted him dead to silence him, you should have done it cleanly,” Xu Qinghuan said from above.
“But this one slash of yours left the face untouched.”
“You only covered the back of the head and the neck with quicklime—but you kept the whole face clear, making sure the Commander could easily recognize the spy’s features.”
She tapped the bronze lid twice with her fingertip.
“The guide’s folder has red soil from the shady slopes of Yinshan Ridge. He eats with his left hand, and his accent carries a capital-city flavor. Did you really think this man was the Hejian spy sent by Chen Changfeng?”
Zhao Cheng, prostrate on the floor, breathed heavily, his chest heaving wildly.
Xu Qinghuan spoke a single name.
“His name is Wu Liuyi.”
“Eighth-rank officer, clerk of the Great Qian Ministry of Revenue.”
“Three years ago, he was sent north to Yanzhou on ministry orders to investigate the secret smuggling accounts along the border. He vanished—man and horse—beyond the boundary marker, neither dead body nor trace ever found.”
“He was a petty official personally promoted by Shang Qitai.”
She lifted her gaze, sweeping her eyes across the hall.
“Garrison Commander Zhao, that head you’re holding belongs to a bona fide imperial official.”
No sooner were the words out than a coarse porcelain cup on the table shattered with a sharp crack, spilling tea across a military dispatch and staining it a deep brown.
Tie Lanshan didn’t even care about that—he strode down from the dais, staring at the half-rotten head on the ground, breathing heavily.
Xu Chengguang, standing by the side, stepped back silently. He looked at Xu Qinghuan, his throat bobbing slightly, his back damp with cold sweat.
The look in his eyes wasn’t one trained on a person—it was like staring at some kind of vile creature crawling out of an abyss.
Who could have anticipated that a long-missing petty clerk in the Ministry of Revenue, far away in the capital, would have been planted as a hidden piece on the border by Chen Changfeng?
And what chilled the heart most was that this young Miss of the Xu family had recognized the victim of this years-old case just from a lime-covered, mangled face.
Zhao Heng stood gaping, his hand still on the hilt of his sword as if he’d forgotten to draw it.
Xu Qinghuan gave Zhao Cheng no time to catch his breath, picking up her pace.
“Chen Changfeng sent this man to deliver the secret signal, deliberately leaving flaws that Shuntian Prefecture could pick up. He calculated that the soldiers would notice the inconsistencies during their search, calculated that this man would be thrown straight into your prison.”
“He’s counted on you, that fence-sitting turncoat, not daring to open the gate. You feared for your head, so you had to silence him—taking that head to cover up your old, shady dealings of colluding with the enemy.”
“Did you really think your prison was an ironclad barrel?”
“The moment that head hit the ground, word that you killed a Great Qian court official was probably already leaked by the other spies Chen Changfeng has planted in the city.”
“You rush to the General’s Mansion with the head, thinking yourself clever—but before you know it, the capital crime of murdering a state official has already been stamped on your forehead and sent straight back to Helian’s camp.”
“You take a court official’s head to curry favor with the Great Qian General. Garrison Commander Zhao, that takes more nerve than opening the city gates.”
“Did you think you could bet on both sides, inside and outside the pass?” Xu Qinghuan stepped forward, stopping less than three feet from Zhao Cheng.
“If the city falls the day after tomorrow and Helian’s forces enter the pass, Chen Changfeng’s first move will be to use you as a sacrifice—because you know the skeletons he hid back when he swapped grain shipments in the supply route. You know too many of his dirty secrets. You’re a loose end that has to die.”
“If the city doesn’t fall, the crime of rebellion and murder of an official is clear under Great Qian law—extermination of the nine clans, the three clans. Your three-year-old son, your dozen or so family members back in West Pass—all of them will be shackled and thrown into prison. Executed after autumn. Not a single one will escape.”
“Chen Changfeng’s trick of killing with a borrowed blade didn’t just use your hands to probe the truth—it skinned your whole Zhao family alive. He sits comfortably beyond the pass, moving his pieces on the board, while you—inside the pass—are nothing but his stepping stone. A chasm on both sides. Quite a brilliant move you played.”
A roar exploded in Zhao Cheng’s mind. He couldn’t hear anything else.
At last, he saw his situation clearly. In the eyes of that Han strategist, famed for never miscalculating, he wasn’t even a pawn that could cross the river—just a piece of rotten meat used to test the minefield.
That shell of pretending to straddle both sides shattered completely, like a toad whose belly had been stomped flat.
Only now did it dawn on him: the moment he drew his blade and cut off that spy’s head, he had already stepped through the gate of hell that Chen Changfeng had laid out.
His legs turned to mud; every bone in his body felt hollowed out.
He collapsed to the ground, unable even to lift his upper body, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably.
The instinct to survive crushed all dignity.
Zhao Cheng crawled forward like a madman, scrambling on all fours, throwing himself at Xu Qinghuan’s feet.
He didn’t even dare to touch the hem of Xu Qinghuan’s robe. He just knocked his head against the floor frantically in front of her.
His skin split, and bright red blood ran down the bridge of his nose, smearing half his face.
“Imperial Envoy, save my life!”
His voice was hoarse to the extreme, thick with tears, with none of the dignity expected of a garrison commander.
“This officer’s mind was clouded by greed! I was deceived by that villain! I don’twant to die!”
He turned and began kowtowing to Tie Lanshan’s military boots.
“Marshal! Marshal, spare this humble dog’s life! I can still lead troops, still guard the city for you! I beg you, sir, in light of my being able still to serve as a watchdog, grant the Zhao family a way to live!”
“I’m willing to be a suicide soldier, to charge the enemy’s ranks! Just let me live—tell me who to bite, and I’ll bite them!”
The once-overbearing military commander of West Pass had groveled to the dirt, begging only to be deemed worth a scrap of use.
Xu Qinghuan turned around, looking at the old Marshal Tie Lanshan seated in the main chair.
The trap was sprung, the threads untangled. The finishing blow had to fall from the hand of the true master here.
Tie Lanshan’s gaze was like a blade as he looked at Zhao Cheng, now a mud-covered wreck on the floor. From his nose came a deep, cold snort.
