Chapter 72: The Investigation of Staying and Leaving.
Night fell, and the rain stopped. The withered flowers and leaves, battered by the rain and wind, left behind a mess.
With the help of Jin Lingxi and Yue Nu, Yue Yining and Fu Yao left the mansion again.
This time, their goal is to infiltrate the mint.
The furnaces at the Suyang Mint roared day and night, the fire burning continuously. Craftsmen worked inside, while guards patrolled the gates, maintaining a tight security.
In order to successfully infiltrate the mint for a secret investigation, Yue Yining sent people in advance to check the mint's duty roster and schedule. She also spent a lot of money to get one of the craftsmen to talk, and learned that every night two oxcarts dumping waste would enter and exit the mint's back gate.
Yin Yi, who was squatting on the eaves, silently watched Yue Yining and Fu Yao get into the carriage parked at the side gate.
After confirming that the carriage had left, he turned around and jumped onto the flowering tree in the city lord's mansion. He weaved among the branches, and the branches he stepped on trembled incessantly, with petals falling all over the ground, landing right on the head of the little maid sweeping flowers under the tree.
The maid stopped what she was doing, and in the instant she looked up, the silver figure disappeared into the night and shadows like a shooting star, leaving no trace.
In the blink of an eye, Yin Yi returned to Xie Qingyu's courtyard and leaped down from the door.
He knocked on the door, and after receiving a reply, he pushed the door open and entered, saying respectfully, "Young Master, Lord Yue has already left the manor with his maids."
Inside the room, two rows of guards stood on the east and west sides, while Xie Qingyu sat on a grand chair facing the door. He had been looking up with his eyes half-closed and expressionless, but upon hearing the voice, he said, "Then let's set off."
He spoke calmly, and the guards all nodded in agreement.
Just as the group was about to leave, footsteps sounded again outside the door. A servant came running in from outside the courtyard in a panic, his stumbling appearance drawing attention. The guard by the door saw this and shouted sharply, "What's the matter? Why are you in such a panic?"
To everyone's surprise, the servant was so frightened by the shout that his legs went weak as he stepped over the threshold, and he collapsed to the ground with a thud, looking terrified and on the verge of tears.
Xie Qingyu looked at him, her brows furrowing almost imperceptibly, and said slowly, "Get up. What exactly happened?"
Upon seeing Xie Qingyu, the servant hurriedly scrambled to his feet and knelt down, his hands trembling as he pressed them against the blue brick floor: "...Young Master, something...something has happened!"
"The officials from Qinghuai have sent someone to Yanjing, saying that the master... the master..."
A sudden gust of wind swept through the courtyard, causing the trees and flowers to bend and nearly uproot themselves, with petals falling like a torrential downpour.
After hearing the servant's report, the guards present all showed strange expressions, shocked, dazed, and hesitant to speak... Only Yin Yi was stunned for a moment, then subconsciously looked at Xie Qingyu at the head of the table.
His face was solemn, his eyes were deep and cold, and the tips of his fingers holding the jade pendant were white.
The servant's voice trembled: "Young Master, this news just came back yesterday, and the manor is in complete chaos... You are the eldest son of the legitimate wife and the adopted son, and the Prime Minister's manor urgently needs you to return and take charge of the situation."
Everyone looked at Xie Qingyu in the very center.
Xie Qingyu remained silent for a moment, then slowly stood up: "I understand."
"Pass down the order: depart for the capital tonight."
A guard spoke up and asked, "Young master, what about the case in Suyang..."
"The investigation is almost complete. Have the Seventh Prince send another official to take over my work," Xie Qingyu said in a low voice. "To avoid wasting time, let's find a fast horse now and take the message back."
Upon receiving the order, the guards who had remained inside filed out. The subordinate official in charge of the handover went out of the courtyard to relay a message to the Jin family, while the guard who received Xie Qingyu's handwritten letter immediately left the mansion to return to Yanjing to find the Seventh Prince.
Before long, the Xie family servants who had accompanied them to Suyang were busy, and the courtyard was filled with people tidying up and preparing.
Yin Yi waited beside Xie Qingyu. Seeing that Xie Qingyu hadn't made any move, he couldn't help but look at his expression. He found that Xie Qingyu was quietly gazing at the white pear tree outside the window, seemingly lost in thought.
...
The moonlight is soft and gentle, and the cicadas sing in the breeze.
Outside the mint, an oxcart loaded with waste bins slowly approached from a distance. The driver cracked his whip, yawning repeatedly, his dark circles under his eyes suggesting he hadn't had enough sleep in a long time.
The guards were familiar with the coachman. They had been leaning against the gate, bored, when they saw him, they burst into laughter, "Old Huang, did you just come back from performing? Look at your dark circles, anyone would think you were beaten up by some brat!"
The driver spat at him and cracked his whip against the iron gate. "Laugh again, or I might stuff you into a junkyard and throw you into the dry riverbed one day!"
"Oh, well, I'd like to try. Will you pay me?"
The driver said, "You still want your wages? Have some shame! With your broad shoulders and thick waist, it would be a struggle for me to chop you into eight pieces and put you back into a bucket. I'm already being lenient by not asking you for money!"
After the soldiers had their fill of banter, they laughed wildly as they opened the iron gate. The driver whipped the ox's rump hard, and the oxcart, carrying a load of empty waste barrels, rolled into the mint.
After the car came to a stop, the driver, Lao Huang, went to another room where the workers rested to get a drink of water. As soon as he closed the door, he heard laughter and curses from the crowd inside.
The kerosene lamp hanging in front of the oxcart suddenly swayed, and the lids of the two waste bins at the rear of the cart were quietly lifted.
Fu Yao jumped out of the bucket first, then helped Yue Yining get away. The two moved quickly and soon put the waste bucket back in its original position. They crouched down and went around to the nearest iron gate from the side of the car, and slipped in one after the other.
Having successfully infiltrated, the two people standing in the darkness finally breathed a sigh of relief.
"Finally in..." Fu Yao's voice held a hint of worry. "But Miss, is it really okay for us to wander around like this?"
Yue Yining said, "How could it be wandering around randomly? This vehicle is used to transport waste materials, so it must be parked in the most convenient place for workers to dump the waste generated after smelting."
After closing the door, they were left with a dark passageway. There were no wall lamps, but the passageway led deeper into the darkness, glowing with an orange-red light.
“If I’m not mistaken, this is the area where the smelting furnaces are located.” Yue Yining’s eyes were clear. “I’ve seen the topographical map of the mint, and the copper sheath storage is right behind the smelting furnaces.”
The copper sheath warehouse was a storage facility for metal materials such as copper and lead. Each batch of materials entering the warehouse needed to be registered and stored, so there must have been ledgers in the warehouse recording the actual quantities of each material. This is very strong evidence.
As Yue Yining and Fu Yao passed through the passageway, the casting furnace, shrouded in orange-red light, gradually revealed its full appearance.
Ten towering furnaces, each two zhang high, spewed dark red flames. The crackling sounds of the scorching metal resembled the roars of giant beasts, and the shadows cast by the two women on the ground trembled violently, as if being torn apart by these beasts. Molten copper flowed within the furnaces, like a crimson river traversing the black soil of a thousand mountains.
Yue Yining, with her sharp ears, heard the sound first: "Someone's coming."
The sound of chains dragging on the ground came from the material inspection area dozens of meters away.
Not long after, six night watchmen appeared at the wooden gate at the end of the road, pushing a cart full of lead ingots. The cart slowly passed through the courtyard, and the ruts plowed furrows of varying depths in the muddy ground, as if countless lead snakes were laying eggs on the ground.
Perhaps because it was late at night and most of the craftsmen had already left for home, there weren't many people in each area. The craftsmen didn't suppress their voices and talked loudly about something:
"This job is getting harder and harder, and the pay isn't much. It hasn't been mentioned for years, but prices keep rising! It's really hard to live a good life!"
"Try to look on the bright side. If you left this mint, would you be more comfortable doing something else in Suyang? Life is already tough enough as it is, we've already made the best of it!"
"I've noticed Jinlu always bringing his son to tour the factory. What's the meaning of that? His son always acts so bossy towards us. Does he think he's the master of this place?"
"Jin Lu is really dreaming. Jin Yuanxiu gave him the power to temporarily manage the affairs of the mint. Does he really think he can occupy this mint forever? In the Jin family, he is just a distant and insignificant member of the collateral branch!"
"It's because Jin Yuanxiu can't have a son. The rest of the Jin family are all drooling over his mint and those copper mines."
"Sigh, I heard that his first wife bore him two children in his early years, but his son died young, leaving only his daughter. After his first wife died, he remarried and took many concubines. What good did it do? He still couldn't have a single child!"
"I heard that he did a lot of bad things in order to become the city lord, and the sins he committed were all borne by his children. That's why he took so many concubines, but he still only had one daughter."
"If you ask me, I'd give the factory to his last remaining girl. It's like God is giving him a hint!"
"That's right, what era are we living in? Old Wang's daughter passed the imperial examination two years ago and became a government official in the capital, while his son is causing trouble every day and his father has to apologize to him. Jin Yuanxiu already has a legitimate daughter, but he's desperately trying to have more children, just because he wants a son. I just don't understand, why are girls necessarily inferior to boys?"
Fu Yao, crouching above the roof beam, seized the opportunity and sprinkled a handful of ash from her hand, which landed squarely on the heads of the craftsmen. Two craftsmen, with sand in their eyes, immediately stopped and shouted, "What's wrong with you two!" "Where did this sand come from? It's all in my eyes!" "I can't see the road!"
Seeing the six craftsmen in disarray, Fu Yao gestured to Yue Yining, who was hiding behind the door. Yue Yining immediately strode out and turned to slip into the passageway the craftsmen had come through. The long passageway was dark, with only a faint outline of an iron door at the end, flanked by two dimly lit torches.
The material carts come out from here, so this must be the copper sheath warehouse.
Yue Yining arrived at the iron gate and tentatively pushed it; the gate was not closed. She opened the gate a crack, listened carefully for a while to make sure no one was inside, and then squeezed in sideways.
The copper sheath storeroom was neatly stacked with square wooden crates. It was dark, and there weren't even torches inside, only a few kerosene lamps casually placed on the crates, looking like clusters of will-o'-the-wisps floating in mid-air. Yue Yining closed the door and opened the nearest wooden crate. It was filled with metal ore, its cut surfaces rounded and blunt, gleaming with a cold, sharp light. She recognized it as copper ore.
Lead and copper ore should be the two main materials in the warehouse, Yue Yining pondered. She didn't have much time left; she didn't know when someone would arrive. Although Fu Yao would try her best to stall the craftsmen, she also had to act quickly.
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