knife

Chapter 32 One Leaf Tells of Autumn

Zhang Qingyun knew she had fallen into a huge trap.

Moreover, you can't blame anyone else.

They walked right into the trap.

No wonder Li Kaixin, that fatso, had such a sly smile on his face when I said I wanted to join this department called Zhi Qiu Yuan.

Looking back now, it was filled with schadenfreude and the satisfaction of watching someone fall into a pit.

The Zhi Qiu Courtyard at Li Dachui's Supermarket was just a public trading venue for them. The real headquarters of Zhi Qiu Courtyard looked like an ordinary courtyard house on the outside, but the key thing was that the important buildings of this courtyard house were all underground.

Zhang Qingyun had been here for more than ten days, but she had not yet seen Qian Jia, the head of Zhi Qiu Academy.

This name sounds incredibly fake.

The person in charge of receiving and settling him in was Zhou Yi, the deputy head of the academy.

Qian Jia and Zhou Yi—these names are truly perfunctory.

According to Zhou Yi, the Dean has been away on very important business and will probably not be back for some time. Before the Dean returns, he doesn't want to presume to assign Zhang Qingyun any specific tasks, so he asks Zhang Qingyun to familiarize herself with the situation first, and everything will be discussed when the Dean returns.

Knowing that the situation was not good, Zhang Qingyun was naturally extremely willing.

I'll take this opportunity to familiarize myself with the situation.

Zhou Yi gave Zhang Qingyun a gold medal.

With this gold medal, Zhang Qingyun was able to access most parts of this massive underground structure.

The observant girl noticed that, apart from the yet-to-be-revealed headmaster Qian Jia, only the deputy headmaster Zhou Yi and she herself had a gold medal hanging from their waists.

Of the remaining medals, there were only a handful of silver medals, most were bronze medals, and a small number were iron medals.

The only places that people wearing these signs can go are their work areas and some places where they live in their daily lives.

It seems I really did receive preferential treatment.

According to Zhou Yi's self-introduction, Zhi Qiu Academy was established ten years ago, and he has worked there for ten years, making him a founding member. Before that, he had been working with Li Dachui for many years.

I'm a newcomer, yet I have the same privileges as him. No wonder he looks at me strangely.

Even though he was his superior, he treated him with great politeness.

Thinking of the rumors that have probably already spread outside, Zhang Qingyun couldn't help but blush and feel flustered.

Public opinion can melt away metal, and accumulated slander can destroy bones.

Li Dachui is no ordinary person.

As for myself, my identity is also far removed from that of ordinary people.
If rumors about these two people go on for too long, they'll become so entangled that you'll never be able to clear your name.

But what can we do?

I'm currently in a situation where I have no choice but to bow my head under someone else's roof. Besides, the reasons Li Dachui gave are still plausible.

One must not be ungrateful.

Zhou Yi was very busy; he only accompanied Zhang Qingyun for a short while on the first day, and then he disappeared from sight.

Zhang Qingyun could only explore the building on her own.

Now, her only interaction with the other people in this building is that when they bump into each other, people will bow to her.

It's probably because of the gold medal around her waist.

In the past ten days or so, Zhang Qingyun did only one thing: understand the entire system of Zhi Qiu Academy.

I don’t know, I’m scared.

The so-called Zhiqiu Academy was actually a massive intelligence system; in the Qin Empire, this thing would be called the Black Ice Guard.

As someone from an official family, Zhang Qingyun was naturally well aware of the power of the Black Ice Platform.

Zhang Qingyun didn't know what departments were inside the Black Ice Guard, but now she knew the general structure of the Zhi Qiu Academy. The Zhi Qiu Academy had five departments under its jurisdiction.

The Department of Intelligence is responsible for intelligence gathering. It is further divided into different offices based on different categories. This department has the most people, with more than 30 core members who are called the head manager. Under them are second managers, junior managers, and assistants. Each head manager has five second managers, twenty-five junior managers, and a number of assistants and a sufficient number of peripheral members.

The Action Division is a typical violent organization; killing is their specialty, and they primarily cooperate with the Bureau of Military Affairs. The Action Division has four large action teams, belonging to the Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Black Tortoise factions. Each of these four teams contains several smaller teams of varying sizes, ranging from as few as two or three people to dozens.

However, many of the names in these teams are just numbers, which clearly indicates that these people are kept secret and will not appear in these documents.

The Logistics Department is a logistics unit, the most common type of organization, nothing special. However, when she opened the file, she was still quite shocked. This department actually had more than a dozen caravans, with hundreds of shops in major cities outside the Great Wall. Their influence had even spread into the interior of the Great Wall, because Zhang Qingyun saw a familiar shop in the catalog below.

This shop is in Chang'an City; Zhang Qingyun even patronized it! It specializes in the fur business in Chang'an.

Their annual turnover reached millions of taels of silver, and they supported the entire Zhi Qiu Courtyard's expenses.
Even so, we still lost 120,000 taels of silver.

This shows just how incredibly expensive Chi Qiu Yuan was.

The Statistical Analysis Division specializes in analyzing intelligence. The intelligence collected by the Division includes secret, public, and much hearsay information. It is a mixture of truth and falsehood, and much of it is even used specifically to deceive people. This department is used to verify the authenticity of intelligence and extract the true intelligence from countless pieces of information.

The Department of Geography was a completely new and interesting department for Zhang Qingyun, because its sole function was mapmaking. The Qin Dynasty court also had a dedicated department for this task. However, the fact that Li Dachui, a mere bandit, was doing this work showed just how restless he was.

When Zhang Qingyun saw the rows of maps on the bookshelves in the archives, he was truly taken aback. Opening one at random, the level of detail inside sent chills down his spine, even though he already knew how powerful those maps were.

Zhang Qingyun had seen military maps in his father's study. But compared to the map spread out in front of him, it was completely crudely made.

If all the maps on these rows of bookshelves look like this, then the work done by this geography department over the years is truly terrifying.

I just don't know which areas these maps cover.

In just over ten days, Zhang Qingyun had a good grasp of the intricacies of Zhi Qiu Courtyard. At this point, she finally realized how naive she had been when she told Li Kaixin that she wanted to turn the department around.

The saying "ignorance is bliss" perfectly describes my earlier self.

I imagine that Li Dachui will be laughing so hard he'll fall over when he hears about this.

Just thinking about how that guy was making fun of him made Zhang Qingyun a little annoyed.

He silently retrieved a file, walked to the table in the outer room, and began to read it by candlelight.

This archive turned out to be all the official reports sent by the imperial court to the areas outside the Great Wall over the years.

A lot can actually be analyzed from this publicly available information.

Zhang Qingyun was quite adept at handling these obscure and incomprehensible texts, easily discerning the changes in the imperial court's attitude towards the area beyond the Great Wall over the years.

In addition, considering the policy changes over the years, analyzing these official reports now makes the entire situation even clearer.

There was a knock on the door. Zhang Qingyun looked up and immediately stood up.

An old man was standing at the door.

He had a jade pendant hanging from his waist.

"Headmaster Qian, you're back?" Zhang Qingyun bowed slightly.

Qian Jia walked in and sat down directly opposite Zhang Qingyun. He smiled at her and said, "I just got back to the city. I heard from Fatty Li that there is a young hero who is determined to turn around the long-term losses of my Zhi Qiu Academy. I was very happy, so I came back immediately to see who this hero is!"

Zhang Qingyun blushed to her ears and lowered her head, saying, "It was Qingyun who was ignorant of her own limitations. Dean Qian, just take it as a joke."

Qian Jia laughed heartily: "It seems you've done some research these past few days. Hmm, that's good. I was worried you'd take this seriously! If you insist on doing it, I can't stop you. But I was just worrying unnecessarily. Young Master, you're a man of great stature; your judgment of people is definitely not bad. That fat guy just likes to play pranks on people."

Zhang Qingyun was a little annoyed: "Dean, don't listen to those rumors outside. Li Dachui's judgment is not much better to begin with!"

Qian Jia coughed a few times and said, "Alright, let's not talk about these things. Although we're a loss-making unit here, everyone is very busy. Now that you're here, you can't just be idle. So, what do you want to do?"

Zhang Qingyun nodded and said, "I've thought about it carefully these past few days. The most suitable position for me in Zhi Qiu Academy right now is the Statistical Analysis Department. Back in Chang'an, I always followed my father in the study and did some auxiliary work, such as statistical analysis of financial and tax reports from various places. Finding bugs in them is what I'm best at."

Qian Jia said, “Good, that’s exactly what I was thinking. The Statistical Analysis Department may seem like a boring place, but it’s the place that truly hones people. The things you get to do there are on a completely different level compared to other departments. If you can stand out in the Statistical Analysis Department, you’ll definitely be qualified for any position in the Zhi Qiu Academy. Zhou Yi and I have both worked in the Statistical Analysis Department.”

"These really are your and Vice Dean Zhou's real names!" Zhang Qingyun exclaimed, covering her mouth.

"A name is just a label, something people call out to all the time, it doesn't matter," Qian Jia said with a smile.

(End of this chapter)