Chapter 1350 Intelligence Source
Of course, Chen Yixin was not the only one in the room. Zheng Ai glanced over and saw that there were at least twenty Haihan soldiers with guns and live ammunition in the room. In addition, there was another person wearing women's clothing, the figure who Zheng Ai saw entering the room from the corridor before taking action. At that time, Tie Pingjiang said that this person was Ma Yuling, Chen Yixin's wife, but when Zheng Ai saw this person's face, he knew that he had been deceived by Tie Pingjiang, because this person could never be Ma Yuling - even if Chen Yixin was blind No, it is impossible to marry a guy with a beard as his wife.
Zheng Ai figured out the reason in an instant. The Haihan people had long known the purpose of his coming here. They were afraid that he would not take action when the situation was about to happen. They even asked someone to pretend to be Ma Yuling to mislead him, making him think that he had a chance to kill Chen Yixin and his wife. They were all trapped in this room and captured alive.
When Zheng Ai saw Ma Yuling entering the house, he thought that there was probably only Chen Yixin and his wife in the house, so he launched the charge according to the original plan despite the unknown situation. However, he never expected that what was waiting for them in the house was They were a group of Haihan soldiers who had been prepared for battle. Not only did they have muskets, they even had a cannon.
Even if the downstairs was undefended and Zheng Ai and his group were allowed to rush to the second floor, they might not be able to reach the door of this room alive. The shields and steel knives in the hands of the assassins were like toys in front of these fully armed Haihan soldiers. This corridor, which was only a few feet long, was no different to them than a mountain of swords and a sea of fire.
Zheng Ai noticed that there was a unique-looking weapon on the desk in front of Chen Yixin. It seemed to be a musket, but it was obviously different from the Haihan musket that he knew. Zheng Ai had also heard that the Haihan people had many powerful weapons that were not installed in the army. This weapon must have been the musket that he fired three times inside the door and killed three of his companions. If he had launched a charge desperately just now, he might have become the dead soul of this gun.
As if sensing where Zheng Ai's gaze was, Chen Yixin patted the gun on the table and said, "This gun can fire thirty rounds in a row. The shields you use can be hit even if two of them are stacked on top of each other." Wear it. You can’t break into this room with your flesh and blood.”
Although Zheng Ai had already guessed that the weapon was extremely powerful, the look on his face darkened a bit when Chen Yixin said it so directly. The gap in combat effectiveness between the two sides was too great and could not be made up by manpower. Unfortunately, it was too late when we realized this.
"Now that everyone has been honest with each other, I won't talk in circles with you." Chen Yixin fixed his sharp eyes on Zheng Ai's face, and finally spoke about the business: "Zheng Ai, tell me, who sent you here? Who? ”
Zheng Ai was silent for a moment before she responded: "My movements are all under your control, so you should have known about this for a long time, right?"
Chen Yixin said: "I'm leaving you alive, not for you to talk nonsense with me. If I ask you anything, answer it honestly, and you can leave this place alive after you answer it."
Zheng Aidao: "Zheng is not a person who is greedy for life and afraid of death..."
Chen Yixin didn't give him a chance to finish his words. He shook his head and interrupted him: "If you wanted to die, you wouldn't have surrendered just now. I gave you the chance to live, but I can take it back again."
Chen Yixin's words had no tone, but there was an irrefutable flavor in them. This condescending aura made Zheng Ai find it difficult to breathe. He had dealt with Chen Yixin before, but his impression was not that powerful. Perhaps it was the shooting of three people at the door just now, which aroused Chen Yixin's long-awaited bloody temper.
The smell of blood in the air has not dissipated. Of course, Zheng Ai knew that Chen Yixin's words were not false threats. If the other party lost patience, it would not be surprising to order him to be dragged out and shot in the next moment. But he still couldn't figure out why the other party would spend time questioning him about these details since he already knew about the assassination.
Chen Yixin did not intend to explain the inside story to the prisoners. His purpose was actually very simple. He just wanted to verify the accuracy of the current information through Zheng Ai's confession.
Regarding Zheng Ai's assassination, Haihan's intelligence sources were not limited to Tiepingjiang. What Hao Wanqing did after coming to Shandong was not just behind-the-scenes planning on Zhifu Island, but also gradually setting up a large intelligence network in the Dengzhou area with Zhifu Island and Fushan County as the center.
Although Zheng Ai and others planned this matter in an extremely secretive manner and took a long time to prepare, leaving almost no loopholes to the outside world, Haihan's intelligence network still discovered some clues when he mobilized manpower through the Dengzhou military. .
The people Zheng Ai wanted were all good soldiers in the army, but these people disappeared from the army almost at the same time in the name of retiring, and they all went through formal resignation registration procedures, so this situation still attracted the attention of interested people. Although it was unclear what the disappearance of these people meant, this information was eventually sold to Haihan's intelligence officers for a hundred taels of silver.
Haihan's intelligence strategy in the Dengzhou area can be described as simple and crude, which is to directly use money to buy useful information. A certain pawnshop in Dengzhou City can not only exchange common items for money, but also military and political intelligence, and the price is expensive. Of course, it is impossible for ordinary people to know this routine. Only a very small number of officials who have secretly received benefits from Haihan know about the special projects operated by this pawn shop.
Haihan people can afford the price and pay readily, so they often receive a lot of seemingly useless information. The news that many military veterans were discharged at the same time did not attract special attention from the intelligence personnel at the beginning. In fact, more than half of the reason why they paid this money to buy the information was just to maintain business relationships with certain officials. That’s all. The Ministry of Security doesn't care about the money given away. As long as a market is formed, sooner or later, it can rely on this information to make back all the expenses.
Although this piece of information bought with a hundred taels of silver seemed to have nothing special about it, the pawnshop still followed the standard workflow and promptly sent it back to Zhifu Island for filing and summary.
As the residence of Hao Wanqing, the second-in-command of the Ministry of Security, the intelligence center on Zhifu Island is also of considerable scale, with dozens of personnel responsible for analyzing, classifying, and recording various intelligence. Even seemingly insignificant news, when combined with other aspects of intelligence, will have a different taste in the eyes of these professionals. At the beginning, due to the extremely limited intelligence content, analysts did not draw any clear conclusions, nor were they able to connect the incident with Haihan. However, a certain analyst believed that the news was strange and warranted follow-up investigation. As a result, a steady stream of intelligence was sent back from all over Dengzhou. The names, ages, places of origin, past performance in the military, etc. of these veterans were all identified one by one. Many of them were born in Dengzhou, but the strange thing is that after these people were discharged from the army, they did not return to their place of origin, but disappeared on the spot.
It can be said that the disappearance of one or two people is a coincidence, maybe they went to make a living elsewhere, but if none of this group of retired soldiers can be found, this matter will become less common. But at this time, intelligence analysts still had no evidence to link it to Haihan's local interests, and they just continued to conduct regular investigations.
These investigations may seem complicated, but in fact, there is no need for Haihan intelligence personnel to do any errands at all, because there are no military secrets involved at all, so basically you can collect the required information just by spending money. Although the Ministry of Security did not know what tricks the Dengzhou military was playing, as the intelligence they obtained gradually increased, analysts gradually noticed this case and reported it to Hao Wanqing.
By this time, the Ministry of Security had been investigating this incident intermittently for nearly a month, and the money spent had reached several times that of the initial purchase of this piece of information, but in fact, no substantive results had been obtained. result. Hao Wanqing believed that this group of people were in their prime years, and they were all veterans who had served in the army for many years and had made many meritorious deeds. Their collective discharge was most likely because the top brass of the Ming Army deliberately arranged for these people to retire and then engage in some sensitive and sensitive work as civilians. Tasks that should not be made public.
Normally speaking, it is much easier to do things if you have a military identity and military background, but the Ming army did the opposite, which further deepened Hao Wanqing's doubts. The Shandong military's biggest fear at present is probably the Haihan army that has occupied part of Fushan County. Apart from going against Haihan, Hao Wanqing couldn't think of anything else that could make the Ming army so fearful that the soldiers need to be secretly replaced. As a civilian to perform tasks.
As a result, this incident that was originally out of reach of Haihan was once again upgraded to an investigation level, and Hao Wanqing personally took over the supervision. This means that Haihan's local intelligence resources will be significantly tilted towards this incident, and the Ministry of Security will pay more attention to it.
After tracking the identities of these people, intelligence analysts found that most of them had stayed in the same army for a period of time, but their former commanders had disappeared during the Denlay Rebellion— —Just the way they disappeared, discharged from the army, and then disappeared without a trace.
After analysis, the Ministry of Security believed that this officer might be a key element in this mysterious incident, so they continued to dig deeper into this clue. Money can make a fool of himself, and after paying hundreds of taels of silver, the Ministry of Security finally learned that this man was actually lurking among the people after he was discharged from the army to investigate the whereabouts of the remnants of the rebels from the Denglai Rebellion.
At this point, it is not difficult to deduce more truth. Those soldiers who were discharged collectively for no apparent reason may also carry out the same operation as their former commanders to capture the remnants of the rebels. Removing the military position first may be just to avoid alerting the enemy. Although this matter is a bit strange, it is also reasonable and has no obvious conflict with Haihan's interests.
However, out of caution, the Ministry of Security decided to further investigate the current situation of this retired officer. As a result, investigators suddenly discovered that this retired officer who was temporarily living in Guxian Town as a businessman had actually become a businessman in the past six months. He became one of Haihan's designated local suppliers and prospered in trade, earning a lot of money from Haihan.
If the previous investigation work did not find that this incident could be related to Haihan, then from this time on, the Ministry of Security realized that there was actually an interest entanglement between the two that had not been discovered before. And this retired Ming Dynasty officer named Zheng Ai has also officially entered the Ministry of Security's sight.
The next thing happened in the rhythm of the Security Department. Zheng Ai didn't know that he had been listed as a surveillance target by the Haihan Security Department, but he still implemented it step by step according to his established plan. However, he found someone to modify the flatbed trailer and frequently came into contact with unidentified people. These actions were observed by the Haihan Security Department.
Zheng Ai came to Majiazhuang a few days ago and had a private meeting with the quartermaster Tie Pingjiang. People from the Ministry of Security immediately approached Tie Pingjiang and asked him to cooperate with the investigation. In fact, at this time, the investigators did not expect that Tie Pingjiang and Zheng Ai were colluding. They just planned to obtain more information about Zheng Ai from Tie Pingjiang in order to continue the investigation.
But Tie Pingjiang did not expect the real reason for the sudden appearance of the Security Department. He was originally guilty because of Zheng Ai's threat. As soon as Zheng Ai left, the Security Department and the Gendarmerie came to the door together and asked him to cooperate with the investigation, so he thought it was When the incident came to light, he didn't put up any resistance at all. He poured beans into a bamboo tube and vomited out the whole story.
This investigation also uncovered a corruption case, which the investigators did not expect beforehand. However, we did get useful information from Tie Pingjiang. Zheng Ai's purpose of blackmailing Tie Pingjiang was just to ask him to cooperate in applying for a pass order for the Haihan occupied area, and to escort the goods to Zhifu Island as an escort.
Zheng Ai claimed to Tie Pingjiang that the goods he was transporting were to be delivered to a certain big shot on Zhifu Island. Tie Pingjiang had no way to confirm the authenticity of this statement, so he was frightened by him, but the Ministry of Security asked for proof of this. But it's not difficult. Hao Wanqing directly contacted several other time-travelers stationed locally and asked them if any secret cargo had been handed over to Zheng Ai for escort recently. After receiving the answer, Hao Wanqing was basically certain that what Zheng Ai said to Tie Pingjiang were all lies, and he should have had another agenda.
Zhifu Island is Haihan's base camp in Shandong. The security is very tight, and the private convoy cannot get to the island at all. Even if they arrive at Zhifu Island, they can only hand over the goods to the Haihan military for transfer to the island. Zheng Ai probably has no chance to meet the senior officials of Haihan. Therefore, Hao Wanqing believes that Zheng Ai's purpose may not be on Zhifu Island, and this is just a smoke screen he put out.
Among the places along the way from Guxian Town to Zhifu Island, only Majiazhuang has a senior Haihan official, Chen Yixin, stationed there. Judging from the scope of activities that Zheng Ai obtained when he obtained the pass order, this was probably the only high-ranking Haihan official he had the opportunity to meet. Could it be that the person he wanted to deliver the goods to was Chen Yixin?
(End of chapter)