Chapter 26: Peeling off the cocoon report, a certain overly sophisticated male protagonist seems to be with the female protagonist...
"Sit down." Chen Yu spread his palms upwards, pointing his fingertips at the low couch behind the table, signaling to Qi Xin. He then sat down on the couch opposite, straightened the hem of his outer robe, and then picked up a ball of tea and placed it in a small three-legged golden incense burner to roast. As he did so, he asked, "What do you mean, Xiaojiu?"
Chen Yu was so calm that Qi Xin felt her teasing hadn't caused any ripples, but was actually trapping her. She began to casually watch his every move and said casually, "Literally."
"Oh? Xiaojiu wants to make our conspiracy public?" Chen Yu found it a little funny and looked back.
Qi Xin didn't try to hide his secret interest in him, but instead looked at him directly and asked, "Ah, aren't those people outside yours?"
"So what? How do you know they haven't planted spies?" Chen Yu used a metal clip to move the tea cube around so it heated evenly.
"Ever since people from the Yue Nation disguised themselves as civilians and infiltrated the National Protection Army in Ningbei, I've been extra vigilant. Especially at this stage, a single wrong move could mean a complete loss. Just like when one of your own people inexplicably defect, it's impossible to guard against it."
"Then do you think they will focus their attention on Guyi Piaohao?" Qi Xin asked.
"What you're asking is equivalent to asking, will we focus on the Shicha underground casino?" Chen Yu laughed, put the roasted tea into the clay pot at hand, and said while grinding it:
"Any organization needs a way to operate and survive. Just like it's difficult for us to find the entrance to the underground gambling city of Shicha, then, as a chain of shops, Guyi Piaohao's business of taking money and issuing bills is obviously flawless. But that doesn't mean no one is curious about it."
Qi Xin had heard of this unassuming but well-known "Guyi Piaohao" before, but he had never associated it with the National Protection Army. Therefore, he kept asking in confusion, "Has this always existed, or..."
"It was my father who started this business with the help of a noble person." Chen Yu put the ground tea into the grinder and began to grind it. For a moment, the faint fragrance of tea lingered in Qi Xin's nostrils. He then continued:
"When my father went to war, the military pay was always insufficient, and the National Salvation Army was composed of unknown men. Some young men from certain families not only had to face life-threatening situations on the battlefield, but also were denied the money they were entitled to support their families. As a result, they became discouraged in the army and even threatened to complain to Your Majesty."
Qi Xin had never heard his mother speak of these things, but he always muttered about them after drinking or in his dreams, "The royal family of the Qi clan has let down the Shen family." It seems that what Shen Yu said was just the tip of the iceberg.
Qi Xin asked with a complicated expression: "Did they succeed?"
"Of course not." Chen Yu's expression was calm. He took the filter and sifted the ground tea several times and said:
"Even father, despite submitting petitions thousands of times, has only seen His Majesty constantly providing military pay to the Imperial City Army, or perhaps secretly cultivating the Shadow City Guard. His Majesty has always turned a deaf ear to what father has said, and even using the excuse of a deficit in the national treasury as an excuse, he has openly and covertly forced father to use his salary to cover the cost."
"Then, who is that noble person?" Qi Xin was neither able nor willing to argue for her father, so she had to change the subject for the time being.
Chen Yu took a long-handled teapot, placed it on the stove, boiled water, and began to speak:
"That was a merchant family my father rescued from among the refugees. The head of the family heard of the plight of the National Salvation Army and, to repay his gratitude, used his ancestral business skills to establish this Gu Yi Piao Hao for my father. For a while, bandits were rampant, and all the silver from various places was looted before it could even reach Shengdu. Therefore, the Gu Yi Piao Hao loaned silver to the public, charging interest and allowing people to deposit the silver in exchange for silver notes, thus reducing the risk of transferring the silver back and forth. On weekdays, for convenience, transactions could also be made with silver notes. If you needed silver, you could find a nearby branch to exchange it."
Qi Xin was amazed by this business model, which he had never thoroughly understood before, and then asked, "Has no one ever robbed Guyi Bank?"
"Of course there are." Chen Yu raised his head slightly. "But, as you can see from the layout, the counters are just for show, and they're all locked to confuse the viewer. So criminals can't find the money, and over time, no one's looking for trouble."
"I see." Qi Xin responded sincerely, and then, looking at the man who was over twenty years old but had a calm demeanor, he cast out his long-held doubts, "But, the 'Beacon Rises' you wrote..."
"Xiaojiu actually read that poem? Did Empress Yuan tell you?" Chen Yu glanced at her with a hint of surprise, then smiled politely, "It's just my early work, sorry for the inconvenience."
Qi Xin looked at him, who was wrapped up in a cold state, and asked anxiously, "But you were very different back then than you are now."
This time, Chen Yu paused for a long time without saying a word. He held the long handle and scalded the cup with boiling mountain spring water. Then he put the tea powder into the scalded cup, poured in a little water, and stirred it with a tea whisk to make the tea foam float up.
After a while, he placed the brewed tea on the tea tray in front of Qi Xin, looked at her cracked lips and said, "Have a sip of tea."
After Qi Xin pinched the edge of the cup with his fingers and took a sip, his voice, which had been silent for a long time, slowly sounded again:
"Everyone changes."
Qi Xin's long eyelashes fluttered involuntarily for a long time, and then his tone became a little unstable:
"So... do you hate Father?"
Chen Yu's clear amber eyes were tinged with a hint of turbidity. He looked at her meaningfully and asked, "What about you?"
"Forget it." In fact, after she said this, she was already prepared to accept whatever he said, but she didn't expect him to ask back, so she had to hastily change the subject, "Let's get back to the topic and compare the clues."
"Ever since you said there was something fishy about Murong Fei, I've been sending people to stake out the Dali Temple." Shen Yu said, taking advantage of the situation.
"At first, I discovered that this man was living a life of debauchery and drunkenness in Handanfang, even without a break. I suspected he was putting on a show, but he had no motive and no need. Combined with my covert investigations, I can conclude that he's a glutton and a gambler. To support his unhealthy habits, he's not only embezzling and laundering money, but also working for a prominent figure in exchange for compensation."
Qi Xin concentrated intently, puzzled, and asked, "Then why has no one reported his evil deeds to the heavens in the past few years?"
"People in the Dali Temple are usually so popular that everyone tries to curry favor with them. Why are you asking for trouble?" Chen Yu said coldly without even raising his eyelids.
"Even if someone of integrity and integrity came forward with a petition, Your Majesty would suppress it first in order to expose the mastermind behind the scenes, making Murong Fei and his master think that Your Majesty is truly incompetent, and thus be able to rest easy."
"And then?"
Chen Yu said, "One day after finishing his duties, he went to a desolate wilderness and then disappeared inexplicably. Even though my people went to the place where he disappeared to check, they couldn't find anything unusual."
Qi Xin asked, "Then how do you know where he went?"
Chen Yu brushed off the tea stains on his sleeves and said slowly:
"Murong Fei is an official with a large staff, and he's used to sending people on errands. Why would he go to that deserted place himself? Furthermore, he suddenly vanished from the surface. Excluding the supernatural, he could only have entered the underground through a mechanism. My people described him lifting his sleeve, revealing a part of his wrist, but to the naked eye, there's nothing fishy about it."
"So what do you think about this?"
Chen Yu took the teapot, added some water to the cup in front of her and said:
"At first, I didn't dare to make any rash conclusions. I just had a vague feeling that he was probably connected to the underground gambling city of Shicha, but I had no solid evidence. After Shuangjiang saved the princess, he confirmed that the medicine bag he had brought with him when he met Yuan Shang was the Soul-Seizing Powder. This confirmed my suspicions."
Qi Xin hadn't figured out the connection between the two yet when he asked, "Why does the Soul-Snatching Powder have to come from the Shicha Underground Casino?"
Chen Yu responded calmly:
"The Soul-Snatching Powder might not have been produced in the Shicha underground gambling city, but the news of it must have come from there. The Soul-Snatching Powder is extremely potent, and it's not something that ordinary singing houses can handle. It was once rampant in the harem of the previous dynasty, but it has long since disappeared since Your Majesty ascended the throne. Even the Guyi Bank couldn't find any trace of its origin, and now it appears at the palace banquet. It's truly unusual. Apart from that place, other places must have been willing but unable to do so."
Qi Xin asked, "But how did you know that I would seek the Emperor's uncle's help to escape?"
Chen Yu glanced at her leisurely and said lazily:
"We were in the back garden wing at the time, the situation was critical, and I couldn't stay for long. Since you had the leisure to play along with me, you must have a perfect plan in mind. In that situation, you couldn't defend yourself, and if you were looking for someone who could both drag you down and turn the tables on the Fourth Princess, it would be your uncle, the Emperor of Yuyang."
Qi Xin looked at his relaxed demeanor and unconsciously wanted to retort: "You too, aren't you afraid that I'll make a fool of myself?"
Chen Yu didn't respond, but agreed in a rare, glib way: "If you didn't even have this much courage, wisdom, and strategy, His Majesty wouldn't have come all this way to ask you and me to work together, right, Xiaojiu?"
Qi Xin was not used to his occasional pretentiousness. She was tidying up her dress out of boredom. When she touched something soft wrapped in a handkerchief, she suddenly looked up and asked, "By the way, do you have any vinegar?"
"Wait a minute." Shen Yu went out and came back with a vinegar jar and a small bowl in his hands. He asked, "What are you going to do?"
Qi Xin took the vinegar jar and the small bowl, scooped a few spoonfuls of vinegar into the small bowl, took out a piece of coconut-skin taro paste cake wrapped in a square handkerchief and bitten off from his arms, dipped it in the vinegar jar, and it really turned a light yellow.
"I did it to try the Castanopsis wood powder." Qi Xin wiped off the powder on his fingertips and said lightly:
"Most of the other ingredients in the Soul-Snatching Powder are difficult to find on the market, so if we act rashly, we'll alert them and erase their traces. But this oak wood is a natural dye. They'll just assume that there are countless buyers of this substance on a daily basis, so they won't attract attention while blending in. So, we're going to start from here. Although the investigation is a bit extensive, it's a different approach, and we might even find something unexpected."
Shen Yu sat relaxed, stretched his shoulders, and said with a smile: "Xiao Jiu is really a female Zhuge Liang. Anyone who wants to compete with you should be careful."
"Shao Pin, it seems like what I'm saying is beyond your imagination." Qi Xin had no intention of arguing with him and continued, "It seems that Murong Fei is indeed working for the city lord, so he has his sights set on Qi Ling. But I failed to sneak into this underground gambling city of Shicha last time. Will there be another chance in the future?"
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The author has something to say: ps——
The prototype of the "Guyi Piaohao": Ah ha, my friends, I drew inspiration from the Shanxi merchants' system preserved in the ancient city of Pingyao, Shanxi. I went there many years ago, and it was fascinating! Especially the live-action drama "See Pingyao Again"—I still remember it vividly!
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