Chapter 19

Wei Tong couldn’t remember where he had come across that book anymore, but a single line from it had flashed through his mind just now.

“Kangxi, however, did not know that even within the Buku Training Ground lurked an enemy secretly watching him, and in the final hour, that person was dragged out at last.”

Who this person was, setting aside for the moment, but if he matched this line of thinking against the information he had gathered, it pointed to something big. There might be a traitor in the Buku Training Ground, one connected to Liu Cheng, which was why Liu Cheng had shown no great fury after losing Wei Tong as a pawn.

He remembered what Zhang Jiu had once said: the person meeting Liu Yu stood a head taller than him and wore an archer ring on his hand. Someone like that could never appear in the Buku Training Ground; after years of daily training, who would carry such an ornament on his body? The man meeting Liu Yu had to be an imperial guard, for only guards could move through the palace late at night.

Wei Tong held his breath. If the threads he had just connected were ever leaked, disaster would land on his head at once. But this much was already effect enough. Then he thought of that account book, and of Zhang Jiu… He really had gone looking for trouble. Still, giving up halfway would deal no real damage to Liu Cheng; after all, everything rested on his speculation alone. Without evidence, Kangxi could never move against Liu Cheng on a whim. On the surface, Liu Cheng represented the Empress Dowager’s face.

Having thought it through, Wei Tong set about preparing for the final step. Nearly two months of building rapport with Liu Yu had yielded more than this; he had even mapped out the patterns of Liu Yu’s and Liu Cheng’s movements. Liu Yu was only a culinary eunuch, and the three daily meals still had to be served on schedule. During this time Wei Tong had already searched his room; aside from learning where the man stashed his private savings, there had been nothing to show for it. As for Liu Cheng…

“What did you say?” Liu Cheng shot up in fury, glaring at Liu Yu kneeling on the ground as if he wanted to spew fire. Whatever trouble Liu Cheng ran into ordinarily, it never made him this angry, but after hearing Liu Yu’s words, he wanted nothing more than to flip the table over right then!

“You told this humble one long ago to stop letting him come, and I passed that on. But during that heavy rain in the middle of last month, he still came, saying he had confirmed the news about the Buku Training Ground and would tell us at the next meeting. But… but this humble one waited two days and he never showed. Only after sending someone to investigate did I learn that some time ago, for reasons unknown, he had been dismissed from his post.” Liu Yu was so frightened he barely dared breathe, not daring to reach for any connection.

“You know full well what that man had in his hands. If the little Emperor’s people have taken him, this Servant will take your worthless life!” Liu Cheng was livid at Liu Yu’s stupidity. The agreed time had been the middle of the month; the moment the man failed to appear, it should have been reported at once, and instead the fool had waited two days before even checking!

Liu Cheng gave Liu Yu a kick, brows knotted tight. No, he had to leave the palace now. That man’s wife, children, and whole family were in his hands, and his mouth was tight; but as the go-between, he knew too much. He even knew about the account book. Liu Cheng had to make certain…

However secretive Liu Cheng’s movements, they were rushed, and quite a few people knew he had left the palace. The news soon reached Wei Tong, whose eyes narrowed slightly. A fine piece of news indeed.

As second-in-command, Liu Cheng’s quarters were nothing people like Wei Tong and Liu Yu could compare to, and a junior eunuch waited on him inside. Even with Liu Cheng away, someone would surely be watching the room.

But the junior eunuch would never dare enter the inner chamber, and its window faced the lakeside. That was why Liu Cheng dared go out: hardly anyone could climb in through that window, and anyone else who dared use the front door would be caught within moments.

Wei Tong had long since scouted the surroundings. As this was the chief eunuch’s quarters, few dared linger here, which suited him perfectly.

The moment he flipped himself over the sill, something terrifying happened: the classic scene of knocking something over while climbing through a window, the sort of thing from TV dramas, played out on him. Whether Liu Cheng had done it deliberately or casually, there was a small table by the window, and on the table a brush holder crammed with ink brushes, its height exactly level with the window frame and nearly invisible from outside. In the instant Wei Tong entered, the hem of his clothes caught the brush holder!

With the thing about to clatter, Wei Tong had no choice but to cover it with one hand, flip over together with it, and land soundlessly on his toes. Only when no sound came did he exhale, set everything back, his heart still pounding from the close call.

Damn it, that guy really has plenty of tricks up his sleeve.

The furnishings inside hadn’t changed much, but everything was exquisite and lavish, hardly what one would expect from a eunuch’s room. If anything, it was even more ostentatious than before. Oboi’s ascendancy had made those who clung to him all the more brazen.

He felt over every decoration and even tried the legendary hidden-door switches, yet found nothing. Liu Cheng’s room was impeccably tidy, as if someone neatened it daily. But then wouldn’t he fear the tidier might carelessly gather up things that shouldn’t be seen?

As Wei Tong speculated, his gaze swept the room. Strange. Something felt slightly off, yet he couldn’t say what. He made another light-footed pass through the room and truly found nothing. Could the thing have been handed to someone else, or carried on his person?

Impossible. Liu Cheng was too wary. According to the intelligence Zhang Jiu had gathered, it was already strange that a third person knew of the account book at all; Liu Cheng would never put his life in another’s hands. And carrying it? A whole book was not a sheet of paper; where could he hide it? Unless Liu Cheng’s brain had addled, the thing had to still be in this room!

And yet he simply could not find it!

Even as he searched, Wei Tong kept an ear on the movement outside. The junior eunuch beyond the wall had been drowsy, and an uncontrollable yawn woke him, drawing a few muttered complaints. “Grandpa Liu’s room is too quiet; even sitting here feels uncomfortable. Sigh, I’d rather have Little San’er’s job. It’s only sweeping, but the work is light. Grandpa Liu won’t let him touch anything close to his person, so he just wipes the porcelain, and there’s no harm in that.”

Stretching, the junior inner attendant leaned back against the wall, a little dazed. Being alone in a room really was boring.

Through the wall, listening to the junior eunuch’s rambling, Wei Tong’s eyes suddenly fell on the neatly made, ordinary bed, and the junior attendant’s words flashed through his mind again. Light work, never touches anything close to his person…

No wonder. While surveying the room, he had kept feeling something out of place. It was the bed. Not that there was anything wrong with a neatly made bed, but this one was too neat and too plain, completely mismatched with the room’s decor.

Where a person lived unconsciously reflected their inner world. Everywhere but the bed, Liu Cheng’s room was lavish to the extreme, and he seemed perfectly at ease with it. The bed was the opposite, utterly without distinction, and precisely because it stood out so little, it was the room’s greatest flaw.

What was Liu Cheng trying to hide?

Wei Tong stepped forward and ran his fingers over the bedboards inch by inch, tapping lightly, his movements slow, terrified of alerting the attendant outside. Having felt along the bedside and the headboard, he worked his way to the board on the bed’s inner side. The moment his fingers found a faint protrusion, Wei Tong lifted the sheets and stared at the square compartment. There would surely be no key, but neither had Wei Tong come empty-handed. Please, he was, after all, someone who had spent his childhood picking locks daily to sneak out and play.

Lifting the board, the first thing he saw was a thick stack of silver banknotes. Beneath them lay a small booklet. After carefully leafing through a few pages, Wei Tong’s heart settled. He left the banknotes, restored everything to its place, tucked the account book into the front of his robe, and slipped out soundlessly. As he left, Liu Cheng happened to return to Qingning Palace with his men; Wei Tong’s heart tightened as he mingled with a crowd of inner attendants and palace maids to bow.

Preoccupied, Liu Cheng walked past without so much as a glance. Wei Tong hurried away with a frown, found a secluded spot, wiped off the dark paint on his face, changed out of the shoes on his feet, and threw everything into the lake.

This was what Wei Tong had learned from Zhang Jiu’s affair: to destroy every trace of a thing, throw it somewhere no one could ever find it. Nothing destroys a discoverable clue like water.

What exactly was written in the account book? Wei Tong hadn’t fully understood it after reading; it contained strange symbols, surely things only they themselves could decipher. But from the string of names alone, along with a few characters of notes, Wei Tong knew these people were dead men walking.

Still… when Liu Cheng discovered it, he was bound to fly into a rage.

Wei Tong mused with interest: with the thing lost, Liu Cheng could hardly conduct an open, sweeping search, and the person Wei Tong had played from start to finish was someone else entirely. There were indeed some careless footprints left in the room, but those were not Wei Tong’s shoe size. That didn’t mean Wei Tong was free of suspicion, but the first ones under scrutiny would certainly not be him.

That night, Xuan received a Wei who was grinning ear to ear, giddy beyond reason. He was baffled for a long while, and deeply uneasy.