Chapter 815

Three days after the siphon began to flow, the workshop at the Governor's Mansion in Tongwan City received emergency official letters from twelve counties, each containing only one sentence.

Please send craftsmen to repair the pipes.

Chen Yan spread those letters out on the desk and slid his finger in a circle over them.

"Old Zhang, take a look at these."

Zhang Wenqian walked to the desk, lowered his head to scan the wording of the letters, and the corner of his mouth twitched.

"The tone of each county is ten times more respectful than the last batch, and even the wording has changed; before, they wrote 'please have the Governor's Mansion allocate,' now they write 'humbly beg the Zhuguo for mercy.'"

Chen Yan leaned back in his chair and tapped his finger lightly on the armrest.

"It's not respect; it's fear."

He folded the letters and pushed them to the edge of the desk.

"They are afraid that the neighboring county will have water while they don't, afraid that the neighboring county will have a bumper harvest this autumn while they have nothing, afraid that I will think they are unworthy."

Zhang Wenqian folded his fingers in front of him.

"How does the Zhuguo intend to arrange this?"

Chen Yan pulled a silk scroll he had long since drafted from his sleeve and spread it out on the table.

"There are over four hundred craftsmen trained in the first batch in the workshop; according to the technical standards of the Heaven Pool pipeline, divide them into twenty-eight groups, one group for each county."

His finger slid one by one over the distribution table on the silk scroll.

"The materials for the pipes will be sourced locally by each county; iron sheets will be uniformly allocated from the iron warehouse in Tongwan City, wooden pipes will use local pine and fir, tung oil will be boiled by each county itself, and pine resin and animal blood will be uniformly distributed by the military supply camp."

Zhang Wenqian held the silk scroll in his hands and read it twice, his brow smoothing out.

"The Zhuguo was prepared long ago."

The corner of Chen Yan's mouth tugged.

"I watched over the Heaven Pool pipeline personally to verify the craftsmanship and to provide a model for everyone to see."

He stood up, walked to the window, and pushed open the lattice.

"Once the model is established, the rest is just replication."

The sunlight outside the window shone on his face, reflecting what was in his eyes with exceptional clarity.

"Within ten days, all twenty-eight counties will have water."

Zhang Wenqian rolled up the silk scroll, cupped his hands in acknowledgment, turned, and walked quickly out of the study.

Seven days later, Chu Ci sent back the first field inspection report from Qinggui County.

The content of the report made Chen Yan's finger pause on the silk surface for a full five breaths.

Chu Ci wrote that the wheat fields in the six townships of southern Qinggui County began to turn green four days after the siphon began to flow; the mud that had been cracked to the point of powder was moistened by the water and became soft and fertile again, and the roots of the wheat seedlings were frantically taking hold in the moist soil, growing far better than in the same period of previous years.

What made Chu Ci use three exclamation marks at the end of the report was the state of the refugees.

Those commoners who had been scared out of their wits by the white feather letter incident now carried hoes to the fields before dawn every day, working until dark before returning home; when they met yamen runners on the road, they would grab their hands and ask when they could kowtow to the Zhuguo again.

The village heads of several villages spontaneously set up longevity tablets for Chen Yan at the village entrance, offering incense every morning and evening.

Chu Ci wrote one sentence on the last line of the report.

The virtue of the Zhuguo has entered the marrow; the hearts of the Xiazhou people are as solid as a golden soup.

Chen Yan closed the report and covered the silk surface with his palm.

"The hearts of the people are secured."

His gaze passed over the desk and landed on the northeast corner of the military sand table on the wall.

"But there are those who don't want me to have peace."

The sound of Gao Jiong's rapid footsteps came from outside the door, the sound of armor plates colliding three times denser than usual.

When he crossed the threshold, he was clutching a gray carrier pigeon; a copper tube was tied to the pigeon's leg, with remnants of fire wax on the seal.

"Zhuguo."

Gao Jiong placed the pigeon on the desk, pulled a tightly rolled slip of paper from the copper tube, used his fingernail to unfold it, and spread it out in front of Chen Yan.

The characters on the slip were tiny, using the standard encrypted code of the Qi State Shadow Department, but Gao Jiong had already transcribed the deciphered content onto a piece of silk beside the slip using cinnabar.

Chen Yan lowered his head to look at the content on the silk, his finger pausing on one line of text.

"Heaven-grade."

Gao Jiong gritted his teeth, his voice suppressed to the limit.

"My hidden agent intercepted this pigeon on the post road thirty li outside the north gate of Tongwan City; the letter was sent from the Shadow Department headquarters in Yecheng, and the codename of the recipient is 'Crescent Moon.' I checked the old files of the Jingnan Guard; 'Heaven-grade' is the highest-level assassin establishment of the Shadow Department."

His finger pinched heavily on a line of text on the silk.

"The secret text mentions a time node: the Spring Plowing Ceremony."

Chen Yan's finger drew a circle around that line of text, and the curve of his mouth slowly changed shape.

Not heavy, not worried.

It was a smile.

Gao Jiong's brow jumped.

"Zhuguo?"

Chen Yan folded the silk and stuffed it back into the copper tube.

"What was the original scale of the Spring Plowing Ceremony?"

Gao Jiong's answer was extremely fast.

"Deputy Governor Zhang's plan was to hold it at the Royal Field south of the city, with the number of observers controlled within five thousand, all screened in advance by the Mounted Cavalry."

Chen Yan shook his head.

"Five thousand is too few."

Gao Jiong's mouth opened.

Chen Yan stood up, walked to the sand table, and pressed his palm on the location representing Tongwan City.

"No limits; all commoners in Xiazhou, whoever wants to come, can come."

Gao Jiong's complexion changed.

"Zhuguo, Heaven-grade assassins are coming specifically for the ceremony; doing this is equivalent to putting yourself out in the open for them to pick."

Chen Yan turned and looked into Gao Jiong's eyes.

"I want to be out in the open."

His finger withdrew from the sand table and drew a circle in the air.

"It's been less than a month since the white feather letter incident; although the hearts of the commoners have returned, they haven't been completely welded shut."

He walked back behind the desk, supported his body on the desk with one hand, and leaned forward slightly.

"I need an occasion to let one hundred thousand people watch me stand before them, watch me not even touch those who want to kill me."

Gao Jiong's breathing became shallow and fast.

"Is the Zhuguo going to use this assassination to establish his prestige?"

The curve of Chen Yan's mouth stretched to its longest.

"Not to establish prestige."

He spun the copper tube in his hand and then dropped it lightly onto the desk.

"It is to deify myself."

Gao Jiong was silent for three breaths, then hammered his fist against his chest armor.

"This subordinate understands; I will go and arrange it."

Chen Yan called him back.

"Have all two thousand Mounted Cavalry of the Mingjing Si break into small groups and mix into the crowd of observers, one hidden sentry every fifty paces, one group of Embroidered Attire Envoys every hundred paces."

His finger tapped the desk for the last time.

"Within three li of the Royal Field, I want a net that not even an ant can crawl through."

Gao Jiong turned and walked out of the study.

Zhang Wenqian's figure brushed past Gao Jiong at the door; he looked at the expression on Gao Jiong's face, which was a mixture of excitement and tension, and his footsteps slowed by half a beat.

He crossed the threshold, stood before the desk, and folded his hands.

"Zhuguo, this subordinate hears that you are going to expand the scale of the ceremony."

Chen Yan raised his eyelids.

"Are you here to persuade me to cancel the ceremony?"

Zhang Wenqian pursed his lips.

"This subordinate is not here to persuade you to cancel it, but to persuade you to narrow the scope; this subordinate does not know the strength of the Heaven-grade assassins, but the Shadow Department daring to use its highest establishment shows that they are sparing no cost."

His voice lowered by another half.

"The risk is too great."

Chen Yan leaned back in his chair, his finger slowly drawing an arc on the armrest.

"Old Zhang, you have followed me for four years; when have you ever seen me fear risk?"

Zhang Wenqian's fingers tightened by two parts in front of him.

"This subordinate is not saying the Zhuguo fears it, but what if..."

Chen Yan interrupted him.

"There is no 'what if'."

His finger paused on the armrest, his voice lowered, carrying a weight that made the back of Zhang Wenqian's neck numb.

"To truly win the hearts of the people, I must reveal absolute composure and invincibility before them."

He stood up, walked to the window, and his gaze passed over the lattice and landed on the old locust tree in the courtyard that had already sprouted new buds.

"A person who can be scared away by assassins is not worthy of having a million people entrust their lives to him."

Zhang Wenqian stood behind him for five breaths, finally letting out a long breath.

"This subordinate understands."

When he turned and walked out of the study, his footsteps were three parts steadier than when he came in.

Late that night, in the side room of the Governor's Mansion's backyard, Hongye sat on a low stool by the window, the fine steel short sword lying across her knees.

Her right hand held a fine whetstone, pushing it slowly along the curve of the blade, the sound of friction between steel and stone in the silent night as faint as the buzzing of a mosquito's wings.

Chen Yan sat at the desk in the next room, flipping through the preparatory documents for the Spring Plowing Ceremony, his pen tip hooking and drawing on the silk surface.

The door between the two rooms was half-open, and the lamplight spilled over from that side, refracting a shifting light on Hongye's blade.

Hongye's hand paused for a beat.

Her gaze passed over the lattice and landed on the sky outside the courtyard wall that had already turned completely dark.

There was a scent in the wind that she couldn't name.

Not mud, not green grass.

Killing intent.

Meanwhile, in a dilapidated post station four hundred li away from Tongwan City, twelve figures sat around a lamp that was about to go out, each person's face coated with a layer of dark paint made from pot-bottom ash and lard.

The middle-aged man in the lead was using an iron pick to clean the dirt from under his fingernails; the lamplight shone on his face, and what churned in those eyes was colder than the flame in the lamp wick.

He stuck the iron pick into the wood grain of the table and spoke.

"Has the date for the ceremony been set?"

A young man opposite him answered in a suppressed voice.

"The fifteenth of the third month, at the Royal Field south of the city."

The middle-aged man pulled the iron pick from the table and spun it on his fingertip.

"How many can we mix into the farmers' ranks?"

The young man held up three fingers.

The middle-aged man looked at those three fingers, and the curve of his mouth changed slightly.

"Enough."