Extreme Frontier Army: Starting from the bottom ranks, conquering the chaotic world

Lu Jing walked behind the princess and grinned.

"Your Highness, the sword has been examined, and the accounts have been matched."

"Now let's talk about how much of the profits your Lanyue Pavilion has made in this chain."

Ji Ruxue raised her eyelids, a cold glint flashing in her phoenix eyes.

"Lu Jing, watch your words."

"The Lan Yue Pavilion oversees all officials and is directly under the Imperial Household. When did it become the place you call a haven for stolen goods?"

"Can't things be corrupt if they're directly under the royal family's control?"

Lu Jing pulled over a broken chair, straddled it, and sat down with his arms draped over the back of the chair.

"No matter how white the walls of the palace are painted, rats will still crawl inside. When the scrap from the Jingji Armory leaves the warehouse, someone in the Ministry of Revenue changes its name, someone at the checkpoints along the way covers up the approval numbers, and when it reaches Yanmen Pass, Gu Changfeng finds buyers for it."

He reached out and tapped the tattered page of the secret document on the table.

"Such a long line, if it weren't for the people from Lanyue Pavilion helping to clean up the mess, the censor would have already caught wind of it."

Lu Jing's words were crude, but his reasoning was sound.

The weapons were transported from the capital region to the north, passing through seven checkpoints along the way.

The document was checked three times and the sealant was verified twice.

If any part doesn't match, the entire batch of goods will be confiscated.

However, this batch of discarded Yichou swords not only left the capital, but also successfully entered the territory of the Northern Xuan Army.

The Ministry of Revenue's accounts were clean, and the Bureau of Armory's inventory was perfectly balanced.

It's impossible for an ordinary official to erase all traces so cleanly.

Unless someone knows in advance which day the accounts will be audited, who will be auditing them, and which page of the ledger will be removed.

These messages were precisely in the hands of Lan Yue Pavilion.

Ji Ruxue is in charge of the Great Yan intelligence network and boasts that she has a thorough understanding of the undercurrents of the world.

Now, however, a low-level soldier with a broken half-sword has ripped open the mud beneath the Moon-Viewing Pavilion.

But she couldn't afford to turn against him.

This arms smuggling route is very likely related to the mole who leaked her border patrol route.

"Lan Yue Pavilion will not directly interfere with the transport of military equipment."

Ji Ruxue finally spoke.

Her voice remained indifferent, but it lacked some of the previous arrogance.

"When border troops bring their weapons into the pass, the authorities check the fire-lacquer from the Bureau of Armory, the official documents from the Ministry of Revenue, and the transfer documents from the Privy Council. There's only one thing the Lan Yue Pavilion can do."

Lu Jing narrowed his eyes.

"Tell them in advance which roads are not being checked."

Ji Ruxue glanced at him.

"good."

"There are seven military roads south of Yanmen Pass. Three of them are permanently guarded, two are used by supply convoys, and one is directly supervised by the Privy Council. The remaining old post road is officially closed whenever heavy snow closes the mountain pass."

"But that road was not actually abandoned."

She raised her hand and drew a curved line on the dusty surface of the table.

"In order to transmit secret reports from the northern border, Lan Yue Pavilion left six hidden agents along the old post road. The agents usually only recognize the tokens from the pavilion, and do not check the goods or ask where they came from."

Lu Jing's gaze fell on that gray line.

"Someone borrowed your way."

"It's not just about borrowing."

Ji Ruxue said, word by word, "If it weren't for someone inside the Lanyue Pavilion giving instructions, those six hidden agents wouldn't have pretended to be deaf and dumb at the same time."

The tent fell silent again.

Shen Qingqiu stood by the table, looking down at the old post road, and suddenly stretched out a finger and pointed at the end of the route.

"Where does the old post road enter Yanmen Pass?"

Ji Ruxue looked up at her.

"Deer Horn Slope, southwest of Beixuan Town".

Shen Qingqiu's eyes flickered slightly.

"At the foot of Deer Horn Slope, there is an abandoned salt warehouse."

Ji Ruxue's gaze suddenly sharpened.

How did you know?

Shen Qingqiu's face was still covered with black mud to conceal her appearance, and her gray cloth servant's skirt was so worn that its original color could not be seen, but her eyes were too calm.

She doesn't seem like a sinner who can be bullied by everyone at all.

"Because the Ministry of Revenue allocates silver every year to repair that salt warehouse."

Shen Qingqiu said softly, "The account book says it's for salt storage on the border, to prepare for the supply line to be cut off in wartime. But since the twelfth year of Zhaowu, the military salt from Yanmen Pass has been diverted to the eastern route, so that salt warehouse should have been abandoned long ago."

"A salt warehouse that has been abandoned for six years still costs the Ministry of Revenue four thousand taels of silver for repairs every year."

She gave a slight, mocking smile.

"Now it seems that what was built was not a salt warehouse, but a place to store other goods."

Ji Ruxue stared at her, remaining silent for a long time.

She had known all along that Shen Qingqiu was no ordinary criminal.

An ordinary female criminal wouldn't be able to discern people's true intentions when a knife is at her throat.

They certainly wouldn't distribute every single grain of the looted food to Lu Jing amidst the starving corpses in the camp.

But she didn't expect that this woman would remember even the military salt routes that the Ministry of Revenue had changed six years ago.

This cannot be explained simply by reading a few account books.

Unless her family once stood at the very top of the lifeline of the Great Yan's finances.

"In the twelfth year of Zhaowu's reign, the military salt route was changed, and the Ministry of Revenue only issued three archives."

Ji Ruxue coldly said, "One copy was sent to the palace, one was kept in the Ministry of Revenue, and one was sent to Beixuan Town. Even Lanyue Pavilion only received the copy half a year after the route was changed."

Shen Qingqiu remained expressionless.

"What does Her Highness the Princess wish to say?"

"What I'm trying to say is that the daughter of an ordinary minor official in the Ministry of Revenue wouldn't know these things."

Two pairs of eyes met across the table.

One is proud and aloof, the other is calm and profound.

Lu Jing looked to the left, then to the right, and felt the tension growing stronger.

That's enough.

He tapped on the table.

"One wants to find out who sold their patrol route, and the other wants to find out who smothered the Shen family. If you both find the other an eyesore, wait until you've killed Gu Changfeng, then find an open space to slowly whittle each other down."

Shen Qingqiu was the first to look away.

Ji Ruxue snorted coldly and withdrew her gaze.

Lu Jing looked down at the route on the table.

"The abandoned salt warehouses at Lujiaopo were the storage sites for this batch of goods before they entered the customs."

"Gu Changfeng was just the receiver. The Jingji Armory was responsible for shipping the goods, the Ministry of Revenue was responsible for laundering the accounts, and the people inside Lanyue Pavilion were responsible for clearing the way."

His finger traced a path, finally stopping at the location of Yanmen Pass.

"Here's the problem."

"If the discarded knife was intended to be sold to the Northern Barbarians, why is it still in Gu Changfeng's hands?"

Shen Qingqiu pondered for a moment.

"The transaction was not completed."

"No."

Ji Ruxue suddenly said, "It must be that the Northern Barbarians didn't accept the goods."

Lu Jing looked up at her.

Ji Ruxue reached out and picked up the broken blade on the table, gently rubbing her fingertips across the surface of the blade.

"The northern barbarians lack iron, but they have no shortage of people to inspect the goods. If they dare to buy weapons from the border army, they must know the difference between quenching and sharpening. These useless knives that can't even cut hardwood can fool the soldiers who are eager to get their weapons, but they can't fool the blacksmiths of the northern barbarians."

"So this batch of goods ended up stuck with Gu Changfeng."

Lu Jing took over the conversation.

"They couldn't sell them, and they were just sitting there as evidence. Then, the Eighth Battalion started causing trouble, so he dumped the discarded knives on us."

"When the Eighth Battalion dies with these knives at the hands of the Northern Barbarian cavalry, and the knives rot into the snow along with the corpses, Gu Changfeng can still report that the Eighth Battalion died in battle."

He chuckled, but there was no hint of amusement in his eyes.

"A batch of unsold stolen goods served both to silence witnesses and to add to our war merits."

"General Gu's plan is so clever that even the accountants in the capital would have to kowtow to him if they heard it."

Shen Qingqiu gritted her teeth.

"He won't give us much time."

"Of course not."

Lu Jing picked up the tattered page of the dark curtain, held it up to the brazier and waved it, but didn't actually burn it.

"Since he dared to send the knife, he must be convinced that the Eighth Battalion can't turn the tide. But that old bastard is suspicious by nature, and he'll definitely send someone to test our reaction in the next day or two."

Ji Ruxue narrowed her phoenix eyes.

"You want to use these knives as bait?"

"clever."

Lu Jing pressed the curtain back onto the table.

"What Gu Changfeng fears most right now is not that we will rebel with these discarded knives, but that we will discover where these knives came from."

"The five hundred knives have been sealed in their boxes. Tomorrow I will have someone deliberately spread the word that the Eighth Battalion is grateful for General Gu's great kindness and is sharpening their knives in preparation for battle."

Shen Qingqiu immediately understood what he meant.

"Let him think we haven't noticed."

"Not enough."

Lu Jing grinned, revealing a set of white teeth.

"We need to let him see with his own eyes that we're using it."