Chapter 1015: He Didn

Over there they had already begun escorting Wen Tiejun's group out. Wang Zhaojing and Liu Yong would stay behind to settle these surrendered men. Just as Zhao Jin was about to turn his horse and leave, Xie Mingxian shuffled forward two steps on his knees and reported, "Master Jin, the Smelling Incense Sect wreaked havoc across Shandong, and the gold, silver, and jewels they plundered are hidden in several locations. This humble one knows where, and is willing to offer the hiding places to Master Jin."

His words were not quiet. Wen Tiejun over there heard them, and ignoring the difficulty of moving with one bad leg, he struggled desperately to stand. But his mouth was already stuffed with rags, and the moment he tried to move, he was struck viciously several times with the flats of blades and the butts of spears, beaten straight to the ground. His eyes, as if about to spew fire, glared at Xie Mingxian.

"Hidden treasure? Tell Chief Steward Wang about it," Zhao Jin said with a laugh, not particularly concerned. But after a moment's thought, he turned back and added, "The few hundred taels of gold we found on you will be returned. Things here in Xuzhou don't run on so many rotten rules."

Hearing Zhao Jin say this, Xie Mingxian hurriedly knelt again and said, "Consider that gold a greeting gift, offered to Master Jin."

"What use would I have for it?" Zhao Jin said with a laugh, then mused for a moment before continuing, "Still, it's not good to let you carry too much silver on you. Here's what we'll do: this gold will serve as your share capital to establish a trading company in Shandong. Each of you will simply draw dividends from it. It can also serve as a foundation to pass down to your families and build a livelihood."

When he put it that way, Xie Mingxian and the others naturally had no objections. What they were really thinking, anyone could guess—they simply assumed Zhao Jin was finding another pretext to take the gold. To Xie Mingxian and his men, having the gold taken clearly made them happier than not having it taken.

Zhao Jin departed, with Liu Yong and Ma Chonghao following on horseback. After leaving the manor, Zhao Jin slowed his pace and asked from the saddle, "If there are Eastern Depot spies among them, can they be rooted out?"

Liu Yong looked toward Ma Chonghao. Ma Chonghao pondered for a moment before answering, "If there are any, they can be rooted out. It's very unlikely they could slip through."

Seeing the skeptical looks from Liu Yong and Zhao Jin, Ma Chonghao smiled and explained, "Master, Master Yong, the Eastern Depot's name may be imposing, but that's just borrowing the reputations of a few powerful eunuchs to intimidate people. It can scare officials, it can scare law-abiding commoners, but beyond that, there's not much else it can do. They use the Embroidered Uniform Guard's agents, and the ones they recruit on their own are all sorts of scum from the jianghu and the streets. What can people like that accomplish? What's more, infiltrating the Shandong rebel army and then making their way over to our side—that's extremely dangerous. How could those grand lords in the Eastern Depot and the Embroidered Uniform Guard, who enjoy their wealth and peace, ever come here? The ones they can send are all small fry. And those small fry will definitely carry tokens and secret marks on them. Without those, regardless of whether they succeed or fail, they could be killed outright as rebels. So as long as we strip them and search them one by one, we'll definitely uncover their backgrounds."

This line of reasoning struck Zhao Jin and Liu Yong as odd, but it held together. Liu Yong nodded and said with a wry smile, "A body search can find weapons, but it might not necessarily find tokens."

"Master, Master Yong, the Smelling Incense Sect's rebellion started too fiercely and collapsed too quickly. Planting someone inside, and planting them deep enough to be among those who could come here—that's not so easy. Let alone planting capable operatives who could take action. A body search is one method; having them identify each other is another. This subordinate does not believe there is anyone who could evade both methods. If someone could, then how could Xuzhou be so peaceful?" Ma Chonghao spoke with full confidence.

Zhao Jin shook his head, laughing, and said, "Every single thing you say is so absolute. If I didn't know what kind of man you are, I'd almost be worried."

At these words, Ma Chonghao couldn't help but laugh heartily. Liu Yong was also shaking his head and laughing. That reasoning just now had seemed like boasting, like confidence, but in truth it was an analogy. If the Eastern Depot and the Embroidered Uniform Guard truly possessed such operational capability, then operations against Xuzhou would have begun long ago, and all sorts of informants would have long been planted within Xuzhou. The place would surely be unstable everywhere. Yet in reality, there had only been a few assassination attempts; at all other times, there had been no unusual activity whatsoever. Zhao Jin and Liu Yong were quite confident in their top-to-bottom control and surveillance of Xuzhou and Pizhou. From the former yamen runners to the servants of the local gentry, to the common folk and militia, eyes and ears of the Zhao Character Camp were everywhere. In critical places like He Family Village, the inner guard retainers and the peripheral jianghu men were even more densely spread across every location; the slightest stir would be detected. Meanwhile, the various parties from the Zhao Character Camp who had been to the capital had firsthand experience: a man could be killed in broad daylight and the killer could escape as long as the setup was arranged beforehand. As long as one was careful enough, one could hide weapons inside or outside the city. The capital had the Eastern Depot, the Embroidered Uniform Guard, the Five Wards Military Command, and Shuntian Prefecture—a dense net of law—and yet it was still like that. From this, one could infer just how capable the famously fearsome Eastern Depot and Embroidered Uniform Guard really were at planting hidden agents.

Not to mention having someone like Ma Chonghao, a man who had once served as Assistant Commander-in-Chief of the Embroidered Uniform Guard. He had been a high-ranking authority in the Embroidered Uniform Guard, and with his ambitious, action-oriented temperament, he understood the inside and outside workings even more thoroughly. Beyond the analysis just given, back in the day, the capital had exhausted every scheme to plant Candidate Xin as a sleeper agent in Xuzhou, launching an assassination and insurrection under cover of night. According to Ma Chonghao's assessment, that had already been the best operation the Eastern Depot and Embroidered Uniform Guard had carried out in over a hundred years, and they were very fortunate to have found someone like Candidate Xin; otherwise, even that would have failed.

Ma Chonghao described the whole picture from beginning to end, assuring Zhao Jin and Liu Yong that they need not worry about infiltration from the Eastern Depot and Embroidered Uniform Guard. Yet Ma Chonghao did not speak in absolutes: "Still, we cannot afford the slightest relaxation. This time the imperial court suffered a huge loss in Shandong. They can vaguely guess the reasons behind many things, but they can't deploy a large army against our Xuzhou. The harassment from assassins and death warriors will probably be unavoidable."

"However many come, we'll kill that many," Liu Yong said in a deep voice. Zhao Jin smiled and nodded.

When Zhao Jin and his group returned to the council hall at He Family Village and dismounted outside, they saw a richly dressed middle-aged man about to kneel down from a distance. A household retainer standing guard nearby said, "He's already been waiting for an hour."

"Big Brother, he was only momentarily muddled. Besides, he can't stir up any trouble in our hands," Liu Yong said in a low voice.

Zhao Jin made a hand gesture toward the man. The middle-aged man froze when he saw it; his kneeling momentum was too far along to stop, and he ended up sprawled flat on the ground. Immediately he scrambled up in a fluster, reached down to dust off the hem of his long gown, and jogged over in small steps. Zhao Jin answered with a laugh, "He's scaring himself. If we really treated him as an outsider, what business would he still have to run now? He wouldn't even have his life."

They went straight into the study of the council hall without waiting for the middle-aged man. Once they were seated and tea had been served, a man dressed as a household servant outside first handed an iron box to Liu Yong. Liu Yong inspected the palm-sized iron box, then pulled a wooden case from inside his robes and said, "The Seven-Day Report from Qingjiangpu."

The wooden case held keys. Liu Yong took one out and opened the iron box. Just then, someone outside announced, "Wang Ziyang requests an audience."

"Let him come in," Zhao Jin said casually. Niu Jinbao walked to the doorway and stopped the trembling Wang Ziyang for a body search. Meanwhile, Liu Yong pulled several sheets of paper from the iron box and began scanning them. His expression changed the moment he read the first page, and then he looked toward Zhao Jin.

Zhao Jin shot him a glance but did not ask about it. Instead, he spoke directly to Wang Ziyang: "Waiting so long, you must be tired. Sit down and speak."

After the body search was finished, Wang Ziyang had already knelt on the floor. Hearing Zhao Jin speak this way, his body trembled, and then tears streamed uncontrollably down his face. He wiped them while expressing his gratitude for the grace, and only then did he rise and take a seat.

"What have you come for?" Zhao Jin asked this one question. The slightly brusque tone made Wang Ziyang immediately stand up again. Zhao Jin impatiently gestured with his hand for him to sit back down, then continued, "Did you come to beg me to restore your monopoly on the liquor? Or to monopolize the livestock trade here? How much less have you earned these past few months? But you're still earning, aren't you? Your family fortune is still intact, isn't it? So what's the rush?"

Zhao Jin fired off several questions in a row. Wang Ziyang sat there, mouth agape, tongue-tied. It was unclear whether Zhao Jin had hit on things he hadn't considered, or whether he simply hadn't expected Zhao Jin to speak to him this way. In the end, all he could manage was a stammer: "Master Jin… Master Jin… this humble one should not have let greed blind his heart…"

"It's not that greed blinded your heart. It's that you didn't win the bet. If you'd won, wouldn't you be rich enough to rival a kingdom?" Zhao Jin said with a laugh. Wang Ziyang was so discomfited by these words that he squirmed and twisted as if there were nails on the seat beneath him.

At this point, Zhao Jin's smile vanished. He pointed at Wang Ziyang and said, "You thought you made your fortune by daring to gamble. Since you gambled right on my Zhao Character Camp, gambled right on the liquor, you figured you'd gamble on something even bigger, isn't that right? When you were gambling, you must have been thinking, 'I was just a livestock trader driving horses years ago. Everything I've earned these past few years is pure profit. At worst, I just lose it all and go back to where I started,' isn't that right?"

Wang Ziyang moved to stand and kneel, but seeing Zhao Jin's impatient expression, he didn't dare kneel. He stood there, utterly awkward, glanced at Liu Yong, who sat to the side with an indifferent, unmoving expression, and in the end could only put on a smile uglier than a grimace and say, "Master Jin is absolutely right. This humble one was insatiably greedy at the time."

"You fool! Who do you think you relied on to make your fortune shipping and selling liquor? You relied on me. Without the swords and spears of Xuzhou backing you up, what would your fortune even count for? The powerful families of Henan and Shanxi would have snatched it away long ago. Never mind far away—when all your livestock was seized in Guide Prefecture, without the Zhao Character Camp standing up for you, what would your fate have been?" Zhao Jin's tone suddenly turned stern.

But the reprimand was not over: "You've been doing business for so many years—liquor, livestock—Henan and Shanxi all give you face, and out on the steppe you're also a figure of some note. You started thinking that making a fortune was all your own skill. Did you ever stop to think: if Xuzhou were taken by government troops, whose would these distilleries be? And who would they let sell liquor to the steppe? Why would they share the profits with you? What's above your head? What's behind your back? One slash of a blade and you're dead—your family fortune, your women, all become someone else's. And you thought you could get a bargain? With your brain this muddled, how did you ever make a fortune?"

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