Chapter 241

"What the Left Arms Section Clerk said is exactly what worries me…"

Li You deeply agreed with Heifu's suggestion, because when it came to using spies, their family was among the best in the business.

Over a decade ago, his father Li Si first entered Xianyang and became a retainer-guest under Wenxin Marquis Lü Buwei, then was appointed a 'Gentleman' — an attendant official to the king. Besides the Gentlemen Guards, there were also Advisory Gentlemen, Palace Gentlemen, Attendant Gentlemen, Gentlemen of the Interior, and many other types. Li Si served as an Advisory Gentleman, mainly staying by the ruler's side to provide counsel.

It was in this post that Li Si was able to glimpse King of Qin's temperament, cater to his preferences, and lobby him with the words 'swiftly annex the six states,' displaying his talent for the first time.

The King of Qin was overjoyed, believing he had found a talent whose mind matched his own. He appointed him Chief Clerk of the Chancellor and had Li Si personally take charge, dispatching strategists bearing gold and jade to lobby the feudal lords. Famous men of the lords who could be bought with wealth were given generous gifts to befriend; those who could not be bought were stabbed with sharp swords! At the same time, he was also responsible for sowing discord among the rulers and ministers of the six states, and once their governance had decayed, they would be attacked with fine generals and great armies.

Later generations would use this matter to imagine the 'Black Ice Platform' spy agency.

So now, Chu sending assassins to kill Commandery Governor Teng is really nothing more than repeating what Qin, and all the feudal lords over these past several centuries, have often done — nothing new at all.

Li You had once heard his father mention that after doing this job for a few years, he was promoted to Guest Minister, his future bright and boundless, until the tenth year of King Zheng of Qin's reign, when he encountered a great crisis…

That year was truly a season of troubles. First, Chancellor of State Lü Buwei was dismissed for being implicated in the Lao Ai case. At the same time, under the investigation of the strategists and spies Li Si oversaw, the scheme of Zheng Guo, a man of Han, who had lobbied Qin to build massive canals to exhaust its strength, was also exposed! According to Qin law, Zheng Guo deserved death, and the King of Qin, under the lobbying of the royal kin, grew distrustful of scholars from the six states and thereupon expelled all guest officers!

Li Si, being a man of Shangcai in Chu, was among those to be expelled. But unlike the other guest officers who were dejectedly preparing to leave Qin, he treated this crisis as an opportunity. A single essay, 'Petition Against the Expulsion of Guests,' made the King of Qin change his mind and begin promoting Li Si further. At the same time, Li Si also became the benefactor and leader of the six-state scholars then in Qin, and from then on he soared upward, taking his place in the court…

Incidentally, Li Si also brought his family to Xianyang, and the Li family began to completely cast aside their past identity and become loyal subjects of the King of Qin.

That year, arriving in Qin at roughly the same time as Li You and his family, there was also a man from Daliang in Wei called Wei Liao…

Wei Liao studied the military school, belonging to the 'Military Power-Strategist' branch. He took the strategy Li Si had once proposed — using spies against the six states, disrupting their horizontal alliances, recruiting their talents, and sowing discord among their rulers and ministers — refined it, and proposed to the King of Qin one step further:

"With Qin's strength, the lords of the six states are like the rulers of commanderies and counties. However, your servant only fears that the feudal lords may once again form a vertical alliance and, with the momentum of surprise, jointly attack Qin — this is how Zhi Bo, Fuchai, and King Min met their ruin. May Your Majesty not begrudge wealth and goods; bribe their powerful ministers to disrupt their plans. At the cost of no more than three hundred thousand gold, the feudal lords can be completely destroyed!"

To gain the world for three hundred thousand taels of gold — this deal was even more profitable than Lü Buwei's ventures. So the King of Qin instructed Li Si and Wei Liao to jointly oversee this matter, cultivating internal spies within the six states.

What are 'internal spies'? Sunzi's Art of War says: "Internal spies are those we use from among their officials." It means bribing the enemy's powerful nobles and officials to serve as spies, either using them to gather intelligence or inducing them to surrender and defect.

Because 'internal spies' are primarily the enemy's 'officials,' these people often hold core secrets, have a deeper understanding of the enemy's political and military affairs, and even control a certain degree of military command authority. Once they are turned to our use, they can inflict enormous, even fatal, damage upon the enemy!

Guo Kai of Zhao and Hou Sheng of Qi were both internal spies for Qin. Guo Kai helped Qin eliminate its greatest nemesis, Li Mu, while the Qi Chancellor Hou Sheng, when Qin was destroying Han and Wei and sweeping through Yan and Zhao, made the King of Qi, Tian Jian, doggedly pursue isolationism. While the fighting raged fiercely outside, Qi was like an ostrich, burying its head deep in the sand, muttering: "As long as I do not resist Qin, the King of Qin will not destroy me…"

Under the direction of Wei Liao and Li Si, Qin's internal spies spread throughout the six states, and they tasted the full sweetness of this strategy. So when Heifu said that Chu might also have left behind many internal spies in Nan Commandery, Li You, the son of Qin's former spymaster, immediately grew vigilant.

If one were to say the other commanderies and counties had Chu internal spies, Li You would absolutely not believe it, because he had great confidence in Qin's legal and administrative systems. But Nan Commandery was an exception.

As the former inner domain of the Chu state, Nan Commandery was still called 'Western Chu' by some, and the language, culture, and customs of its people were identical to those north of the Huai.

What was even more fatal was that, apart from the three chief officials — the Governor, Commandant, and Assistant — both in the commandery and in the counties, there were many former Chu nobles. After surrendering to Qin, these people had transformed overnight into Qin officials, holding real power in every section and township. Although after two or three generations they had come to see themselves as Qin people and took Qin law as their doctrine, as could be seen from the events of the Shangsi Festival, the Songs of Chu and the Verse of Qu Yuan were popular among the local scholars. The officials took wearing Chu-style tall caps as a mark of honor, and many even cherished the old Chu in their hearts, feeling that had been the golden age of the nobility!

"This lowly official also thinks so."

Heifu continued to prod: "Last year Qin was defeated by Chu. Those who do not understand the greater situation may well develop treacherous intentions because of it, accept Chu bribes, and become its internal spies…"

With this, Li You, who had been steeped in the dangers of internal spies from his father's side, finally made up his mind: "Bandit Section Head, you and the Prison Section shall together continue to thoroughly investigate the assassination case. You must follow the vine to find the melon and root out the internal spies behind it!"

Then Li You looked again at Heifu: "If those internal spies rely on their guests and clansmen to resist, Left Arms Section Clerk, you shall lead the commandery troops to exterminate them!"

…

The Bandit Section was in charge of robbery and banditry matters, similar to a later-era provincial public security department. Tang Qian was precisely the father of Tang Jue — the one who had been dumped on the spot by the yellow-robed woman at the Shangsi Festival matchmaking assembly. Tang Jue had now joined the medical and emergency rescue corps, making him a subordinate of Heifu's, so Tang Qian had some rapport with him. After leaving the Commandant's office, he complained to Heifu:

"Left Arms Section Clerk, these internal spies are not easy to catch."

Tang Qian had his own difficulties. At present, seven or eight out of ten of the chief and subordinate officials in the commandery's various sections were descendants of Chu scholar-officials. The networks and accumulated influence left behind by their families could not be easily erased. Someone of commoner origin like Heifu was, on the contrary, a rarity.

So Tang Qian believed that if they launched a massive hunt for internal spies, it would instead trigger new unrest. Then the officials of every section in Jiangling City would feel endangered, the local clans would grow uneasy, and the order of Nan Commandery — would it not collapse into chaos?

Heifu's true goal had never been 'hunting internal spies' anyway. Once Chu was destroyed, none of it would matter. The original internal spies would have to content themselves with being Qin officials, until over a decade later, when the new storm and blazing fire at the end of Qin would erupt, and they would have a chance to show their heads again…

So Heifu reassured Tang Qian: "The majority of officials are of course good officials of Qin. It is only a small handful of internal spies who cherish Chu in their hearts who are causing trouble. Didn't the Commandant just say so too? While handling the assassination case, follow the clues and investigate secretly. Do not make a big show of it and alert the snake."

At this point, seeing no one around, Heifu lowered his voice and said: "I, however, do have a clue here that might be of use to the Bandit Section Head…"

Tang Qian was somewhat surprised: "Oh? What has the Left Arms Section Clerk discovered?"

Heifu smiled: "It is unrelated to the Jiangling case. It concerns my hometown, Anlu. I suspect that in Anlu County, there is also an internal spy! One who has been secretly communicating with Chu all along!"

Tang Qian was overjoyed. He urgently needed results he could present to Li You, so he pressed: "Please, Left Arms Section Clerk, tell me in detail."

"This clue involves a key witness — the captured Chu Duke of Hu, Dou Ran, from last year. He once mentioned that there was a former retainer of the Ruo'ao clan in Anlu County with whom he had exchanged letters, but he did not say who! Thinking of it now, that person is very likely a Chu internal spy, who has been leaking the true situation in Anlu to Chu all along."

"Such a thing happened!" Tang Qian was somewhat astonished and pressed further: "May I ask where Dou Ran is now?"

Heifu said: "Two months ago, I requested the Prison Section to send a dispatch to Nanyang Commandery, to transfer Dou Ran to Nan Commandery to thoroughly investigate this matter. Just today, after I left the Commandery Governor's office, I went to the Prison Section again and discovered that Dou Ran has already been escorted here and locked in the commandery prison, prepared for interrogation tomorrow! I will be there as a witness to confront Dou Ran and force him to reveal the name of that internal spy! Once it is confirmed, I hope the Bandit Section Head can assist me in arresting him and bringing him to justice!"

…

PS: Recently I've been researching the salaries of various posts in the Qin and Han dynasties, and I'm re-setting the dan-rankings for the commandery posts: Commandery Governor, 2000 dan; Commandery Commandant, Equivalent to 2000 dan; Commandery Assistant, 600 dan; heads of the various sections, Equivalent to 300 dan; Left and Right Clerks of the various sections, Equivalent to 200 dan. Heifu is currently at this rank as well. The previous setting was too high.

(End of Chapter)