Chapter 2 Chapter 1 Lurking and Loyalty

On February 6th of the third year of Wei Taihe, Shangyu City, Tianshui County, Wei State. Chen Gong stepped out of the house on time when the clapper rang at Chenshi.He was wearing a bamboo hat on his head, and the navy blue gown he was wearing was a little faded but was washed very clean. There was a cloth bag hanging around his waist, which contained pens, ink, paper and inkstones.Chen Gong checked the equipment carefully, then locked the door, pushed open the courtyard door and went out. "Master Chen, are you going out so early?" Chen Gong's neighbor saw him coming out and greeted him.

"Yes, it's an extraordinary time." Chen Gong also answered with a smile.The two countries of Shu and Wei fought two major battles last year, and wars may break out at any time in the future. This makes Shangyu City, which is on the front line, likely to face the threat of the enemy at any time, and has to actively prepare for war. Very busy. "Are you going to go out in this attire?" the neighbor asked. "Oh, there is a market today, and Ma Taishou sent me to buy a batch of mules and horses for military use." Chen Gong explained.The neighbor said "Oh", and the two exchanged a few more pleasantries, and then took their leave.

There are many people on the street, and a large proportion of them are soldiers of the Wei army in black armor. They lined up in a long line to patrol every move on the street, and their uniform steps seemed to remind passers-by that it is wartime. Shangyu is located in Tianshui County, north of Qishan Mountain. It is the throat from the hinterland of Wei State to Liangzhou. Its strategic location is quite important.In order to cope with the possible attack of the Shu army at any time, the Wei army had to shift the center of gravity of the entire Longxi defense here-currently 12,000 soldiers from Guo Huai, the governor of Yongzhou, are stationed here, and Shangyu itself has only 20,000 residents. That's all.

Chen Gong bypassed these soldiers and went directly to the market in the east of the city where the horse dealers were.Many horse dealers from Xiliang and Shuobei are operating here. They all smell the smell of war and know that their goods can be sold at a good price. As soon as you get close to the mules and horses, you can smell a pungent smell of horse dung. Horses of various breeds are snorting in the wooden fences that are divided into rooms, and hang tags made of bark on the railings. The place of origin, the sex and age of the horses are written on it in ink, and the horse dealers stand aside with folded arms, exclaiming the merits of their horses to everyone passing by; Mule, those places are far less gorgeous than the stables.Most of the horse sellers are Qiang people and Huns, with weird shapes; while the donkey and mule sellers are mainly merchants from the Central Plains.

Facing these horses, Chen Gong seemed a little absent-minded, just walked back and forth between the fences over and over again, unable to make up his mind.Finally, he noticed that the sign hanging on the fence of a donkey seller was a bit strange. The sign was lightly dotted with light ink on the oblique top of the word "donkey", as if it was accidentally spilled on it when writing, and it was impossible to read it carefully. not out.Chen Gong went around a few more times, and asked the price from the fourth shop from the right next to the donkey-selling fence. After asking one by one, he finally came to the fence of this shop.

"This donkey has an owner?" Chen Gong asked loudly, the donkey owner came over in a hurry, nodded and bowed, and said yes again and again.This is a thin and dry Central Plains man, young but wrinkled, and his hair is covered with straw residue. "Master, my donkey sells five dendrobium millet, or two horses of silk." "It's too expensive, can it be cheaper?" The donkey owner quickly put on a bitter face, and spread his hands: "Master, please do me a favor. This is Longxi, and it is not as rich as our old capital." Hearing what the donkey owner said, Chen Gong's eyes flickered A sharp ray of light flashed past, and he slowly replied, "Which one are you talking about, Luoyang or Chang'an?"

"Of course it is Chang'an, the residence of the Red Emperor." "Well……" Hearing what he said, Chen Gong subconsciously looked around and found that no one noticed the conversation between the two of them.So Chen Gong asked the donkey owner to lead the donkey out, and took out five strings of large coins from his pocket and handed them to him.The donkey owner thankfully accepted the money, and graciously put a set of harness on the donkey. The two people looked at each other and nodded knowingly. Chen Gong led the donkey to an empty corner and took off the pack from its back.The shape of this pair of carts is a flat trapezoid. The inside is surrounded by willow wood to form a frame, and the outside is covered with cooked cowhide. It is quite tough and can withstand long-distance travel.Chen Gong stretched out his hand to the base of the pack and stroked it back and forth along the seam, and soon found that one side of the cowhide could be opened; he looked around and carefully lifted a corner of the cowhide, and then put his hand into the pack. Take out a folded piece of hemp paper from the empty stomach of the tool.Chen Gong put the hemp paper into the interlayer of his arms, then covered the cowhide as it was, and walked out leading the donkey as if nothing had happened.

Next, he visited the enclosures of several donkey and horse dealers and bought three donkeys, two mules and two horses.When the sun went down, Chen Gong drove all the livestock he bought to the stables of the prefect's mansion, declined the suggestion of his colleagues to drink together, and went straight back to his home. He is currently single, and his neighbors know that his wife died of illness before moving to Tianshui County, and he has no plans to remarry. Now he only has an old servant who is deaf and dumb to help him with housework. After returning home, the old servant brought Chen Gong a bowl of mutton soup with coriander and kidney beans, and two boiled sweet potatoes.Chen Gong took the bowl, waved him to go down to rest, and walked into the bedroom by himself, closing the door behind him.The bedroom is not big, and both sides of the room are full of bookshelves, on which are placed many volumes of uneven thickness; by the window is a bed, beside the bed is a red lacquered desk, next to it is a painted jumping table. The screen of the seven-pan dancing girl.

After confirming that he was the only one in the room, Chen Gong pulled the screen behind him, then knelt in front of the desks, lit the candles, and took out the hemp paper hidden in the interlayer of his clothes. The hemp paper is densely packed with characters written in teeny-headed script. It lists more than 20 pieces of information on Wei's government affairs and diplomacy, military garrison, economic reform, personnel transfer, fluctuations in public opinion, and many other fields. It is quite detailed, and many of them are Articles are classified as confidential information of a considerable level.And these materials, which are only authorized to be accessed by senior officials of Shangshu, Zhongshu and Xiangfu, are now clearly visible in front of this little chief reporter.

In fact, in addition to the chief secretary of the Tianshui prefect's mansion, Chen Gong also had another secret identity, that is, Si Wencao's spy in the Tianshui area of ​​the Shu Han prime minister's mansion, who was in charge of collecting intelligence about Cao Wei in the Guanlong area. Siwencao is the unique secret intelligence department of the Shu Kingdom, which belongs to the Prime Minister's Mansion and is known for its ability and efficiency; its function is to collect, transmit, sort out and analyze the situation of the enemy country.The Shu Han has always attached great importance to intelligence work, and Prime Minister Zhuge believes that good intelligence work can make up for the absolute numerical disadvantage of the Shu army.Therefore, as early as during the Southern Expedition, Zhuge Liang appointed Ma Di, who joined the army, to personally guide the intelligence work against Wei in Hanzhong.Based on the old team of Liu Zhang and Zhang Lu, Ma Di set up Siwen Cao, and gradually established a set of meticulous intelligence network against Cao Wei.And Chen Gong is engaged in the most dangerous undercover work. Front-line intelligence personnel like him who operate under false identities in enemy countries are called spies.

Chen Gong was born in Anding County, Liangzhou, and moved to Chengdu with his father until he was a teenager.Because of this, he was favored by Ma Di, who was in charge of intelligence affairs at the time; after some rigorous training, he was sent to Yongliang as a spy.Facts have proved that Ma Su's vision was quite accurate. Chen Gong performed very well in this position, not only maintaining the smooth operation of the intelligence network, but also sneaking into the Tianshui prefect's mansion to serve as a secretary under the door; when the first Northern Expedition ended Afterwards, he was promoted to be the chief reporter, and since then he has access to higher-level documents, which undoubtedly greatly increased his value. The piece of information that Chen Gong is holding now was sent from Ye City, where there was a high-ranking spy in the Shu Han, code-named "Red Emperor"; Gong set up a transfer station in Shangyu City to transfer the information to Nanzheng, the capital of Hanzhong, where the prime minister's shogunate is located. When bamboo slips were still commonly used by public agencies in various countries, spies in the Kingdom of Shu had already begun to use hemp paper, a relatively luxurious carrier, to transmit information, because it was soft and easy to fold, easy to hide in various secret places, and cheap Cheaper than Qianbo. Chen Gong read it carefully and classified the more than twenty pieces of information.According to the terminology of Wencao, the governor of Shu State, some information belongs to "hard" information, such as the number of garrison troops in Yecheng, the annual revenue of farmland in Guanzhong area, and the names of envoys to Wu State, etc., which can be reported directly; but some information belongs to "hard" information. "soft" information, such as the transfer of military commanders in the Longxi region, the promotion of court officials, or newly promulgated decrees.Faced with the latter kind of information, Chen Gong could not simply transfer it to Nanzheng, he had to add his own analysis and insights, and pointed out the possible consequences of this information and its impact on the Kingdom of Shu; if it involved important When an official is transferred, the detailed resume, personality traits, and reputation of the person involved must be attached. In fact, theoretically speaking, these tasks do not belong to the scope of the spies' authority. The spies are only the transmitters of information, and the analysis of intelligence is the responsibility of the military adviser under Si Wencao.However, because some soft intelligence can only be valuable if it is analyzed by someone who understands Cao Wei's internal situation, in practice, this kind of information must be reprocessed by Chen Gong, and then sent to Nanzheng after a conclusion is made.This process is called "melting" by spies.After Shu Han's first Northern Expedition failed, the intelligence network in the Longxi area was severely damaged, and many underground personnel were arrested one after another. Therefore, Chen Gong, who was the only one remaining, became more and more important in intelligence analysis. Most of the information this time is hard information, so there is no need to repeat it.Thinking of this, Chen Gong felt a little relieved; every time he reviewed the information, he was a little apprehensive, deeply afraid that his temporary misjudgment would cause huge losses to the Kingdom of Shu.At this time, he noticed the last piece of information on the hemp paper. Compared with the long and eloquent data above, this piece of information is very concise.But Chen Gong knows that brevity often means incompleteness, which requires him to complete it.This piece of information is written like this: "It is believed that Huaizhi recently sent one of the incidents to Longmingque at the request of Huaizhi." This is a shorthand way. Recently, at the request of Guo Huai, the imperial court sent a messenger to the Tianshui area in Longxi, whose name is unknown." Facing this piece of information, Chen Gong frowned.In this case, he was an official of the inner court, and he stayed with the emperor as a consultant. Unless he was accompanying him, he would rarely leave the capital to go to other places, and he had little business dealings with the military; however, the information now shows that there is a To go to Tianshui alone during the incident, and at the special request of Guo Huai, the top military officer in the Tianshui area, this has to make people feel puzzled. "What's the purpose of this? The authority of Shizhong and the military hardly overlap, and there has never been a precedent in Wei State where the emperor appointed Shizhong to inspect the army." Chen Gong said to himself, "It seems that we must try to figure it out. It’s up to whoever is sent to the matter.” His gut told him this was going to be a pretty big deal.Because even the "Red Emperor" lurking in Yecheng could not know the identity of this person, which shows that the degree of secrecy of this trip is quite high, and things with a high degree of secrecy are always very important. Chen Gong read the information carefully again, and then threw the hemp paper into the stove.These twenty or so things have all been printed in his mind, and the files are no longer needed.Minimizing the traces that may reveal one's identity is the criterion for a spy to survive inside the enemy. The next day Chen Gong got up early, did some cleaning and then opened the door and went out.It was supposed to be sunrise at this time, but the sky was still dark, and a layer of gloomy clouds could be seen shrouding Shangyu when I looked up, as if it had completely stagnated. The chief secretary was originally working in a special location in the prefect's mansion, but now the prefect's mansion is requisitioned by Guo Huai's subordinates except for the room of the prefect Ma Zun, so these civilian staff have to borrow the houses of the common people in the city.Chen Gong's main office is in a wooden house next to a forage field. This location is not good. In windy weather, grass clippings often fly into the house; Chen Gong chose this place because it is far away from the collection. The court documents and archives are relatively close to each other.You know, as a spy with analysis work on his shoulders, he must have a huge database. He first went to the main recording room to order.There were not many colleagues present on duty today. Many of them were sent out to raise supplies and hadn’t returned yet, and a few of them hadn’t gotten up yet. The only one in the big room who was leaning over his desk and writing quickly was Sun Ling. "Hey, Zhengqing, you got up so early." "Wen Li, it's very kind of you to come." Sun Ling looked up to see that it was Chen Gong, picked up a white paper full of cursive script and handed it to Chen Gong, saying, "Put the seal on it quickly, I'm in a hurry to go out and pick up the wood Woolen cloth." "Pick up the wood?" Chen Gong asked in surprise as he took the white paper and stamped his own seal, "Why did the superior send you to transport the wood out of Shangbei this time?" According to the military's order, strategic materials—especially timber and grain—must be concentrated in Shangbei to the greatest extent possible. Chen Gong couldn't help being surprised that timber still flows from Shangbei to other places. "Yes. No, no, it's too late. I won't tell you any more. Take care." After completing the formalities, Sun Ling put on his cotton robe, adjusted his scarf, and bid farewell to Chen Gong. After sending Sun Ling away, Chen Gong returned to the case table and began to think about the mysterious giver.The first thing to figure out is who is in the court affairs. Once the list of affairs is clarified, the scope of that person's identity can be narrowed down a lot.Just at this moment, Wei Liang stepped into the door. Wei Liang is the secretary of the prefect's mansion of Tianshui County. He is in his fifties. The most striking thing about his body is his huge rosy nose, so many people suspect that he has Western Region blood.Shu Zuotai, who kept the archives, happened to be his purview.This guy is fond of drinking, and he often gets drunk; seeing the dazed look on his face as soon as he entered the door, he knew that he secretly drank again last night. Chen Gong leaned in front of him and whispered, "Hey, did you steal alcohol again last night?" Wei Liang waved his hands first, shaking his head and said, "How could it be?" Then he hiccupped, Only then did he lower his voice and say, "Wen Li, I had a happy event yesterday, so I drank a few more glasses. Don't tell it. It won't be good if Mr. Guo hears about it." The Master Guo in his mouth refers to Guo Huai, the governor of Yongzhou.Guo Huai is currently the top person in charge of the Wei Army's defense work in the Longxi area. When he was young, he served as a middle-level officer under Xia Houyuan's command. He is a typical soldier. Chen Gong patted him on the shoulder and said with a smile: "Hehe, don't worry, I won't tell the truth, but you have to remember to drink less, because drinking too much will cause trouble." "I'm a secretary under the door. What can I do wrong? At most, it's just that the documents of the secretary are eaten by mice." Wei Liang muttered. Seeing that the time was right, Chen Gong told Wei Liang that he needed to go to the school. Sadai consulted several documents on the status of grain and livestock stocks.Hearing this, Wei Liang agreed, and took out his own seal from his pocket and handed it to Chen Gong to let him go by himself, then lay down on the table and asked the handyman to quickly heat up a hangover soup. Chen Gong took Wei Liang's seal and walked out of the house, feeling a burst of emotion in his heart.Ma Zun has been working as the prefect of Tianshui for more than four years. He is a cowardly and incompetent senior bureaucrat, so most of the officials under him are as mediocre as the prefect.Prime Minister Zhuge's initial opponents in the first Northern Expedition were these people. No wonder the Shu army was so powerful. Shuzuotai is at the end of the right side of the back street of the main recording room. It is not connected to other houses. A very shallow ditch surrounds the house to prevent the fire from spreading here and damaging the documents.It was an old scribe who opened the door for Chen Gong. Chen Gong showed Wei Liang's seal to him. The old clerk nodded, fumbled for a bunch of brass keys from his waist and handed them to Chen Gong, and then retracted them by himself. Go to the concierge and continue to warm the fire. Chen Gong walked through a corridor, took the key to open the file room, pushed the door and walked in.The room was large and well lit, but very cold.A dozen wooden bookshelves lined up, filled with documents, announcements, correspondence and other files from Tianshui County over the years. Dust quietly accumulated on almost all the bamboo slips. It was a bit cold. Chen Gong didn't touch these moldy things, that wasn't his goal.What he was looking for was last year—that is, the second year of Taihe—a congratulatory form for all officials in September.He remembered that in September of the second year of Taihe, the emperor Cao Rui named the prince Cao Mu as the King of Fanyang; according to the custom, after the royal family's children had their own food city for the first time, all the officials would send a congratulatory form to the emperor , to congratulate the royal family's Pingfan for growing stronger.On this congratulatory form, the names of almost all court officials were signed, and copies were sent to all prefectures and counties to show the joy of the world.Therefore, Tianshui County should also keep a copy. Just look up the signature list of the copy of the congratulatory form to know who is in charge of the matter. This job is not difficult, this congratulatory form has just been archived not long ago, not to mention that Qianbo itself was framed with yellow paper in gold, so it is quite eye-catching on the bookshelf, and Chen Gong found it almost immediately. He gathered his hands together to breathe out the heat, stomped his feet again, then reached out and took out the congratulatory watch and unfolded it quickly.Just as he expected, He Biao wrote thousands of words eloquently. On the right side of the scroll, the position, name and hometown of Jin He Baiguan were written in small characters.This congratulatory form was made in September last year, and it has only been less than five months since then. There should not be much change in personnel, so it can be used as a reference. The official title of "Give Shizhong" is mostly used to add officials. Many court officials will be awarded this position by the emperor to show their honor, such as General Cao Zhen, Zhongshu Supervisor Liu Fang, Dr. Su Lin, etc., all of them have A "give things in" name.And these are not the targets that Chen Gong wants to lock on.What he wanted to find was a person who regarded "Gi Shi Zhong" as an official. After investigation, Chen Gong found five incumbents. He memorized their names and places of origin, and then put the congratulatory form back to its original place.This is the only result so far. As for who among the five people is the mysterious giver, we will have to wait for further information to make a judgment. After completing these tasks, Chen Gong couldn't wait to leave the room because it was too cold.He handed the key back to the old scribe, and left the Shu Zuotai.At this time, the cloudy clouds accumulated in the sky did not seem to have any signs of snowfall. Suddenly, Chen Gong felt as if a pair of eyes were watching him from behind. He turned his head, but saw that the street was empty and there was no one there.