I am Emperor Shizu of Song

Chapter 12: A small trial, a fruitful harvest

"Pfft!"

As Zhao Zicheng struggled to draw out his sword, a private salt dealer fell to death with blood spurting out. This short and fierce fight finally came to an end.

Zhao Zicheng, who had just practiced martial arts for four days, relied on chain mail and a sword to personally kill two ordinary thieves, which marked the beginning of his military career.

The enemy's martial arts were not very strong. They were forced to move by Yang Zhi, and then Zhao Zicheng seized the opportunity to go up and grab the kill.

It was already pretty good to be able to do this for the first time killing someone. Zhao Zi said that he did not feel nauseous or vomit like those protagonists in novels, but he just felt a little emotional and agitated.

After wiping the blood off the sword, Yang Zhi tied up Shi Yu, whose tendons had been broken, and then asked the soldiers to search the cellar.

Sure enough, a large number of precious books printed on Fujian bamboo paper and pine soot ink were found.

Zhao Zicheng personally looked through the contents and it was obvious that these books were the carved sample books of the Wanshou Daozang that Huang Shang wanted to present as tribute to the emperor.

There were also some half-burned fragments in the cellar. It was probably because the thieves found that the quality of these books was too good and it was difficult to burn them, so they gave up after burning half of them and just piled them up.

Finally, Zhao Zicheng's men also found some handwritten manuscripts, which should have been copied by the Shi family in the past few days and not yet finished.

Zhao Zicheng picked it up and took a look. Sure enough, it contained some Taoist health-preserving and cultivation methods, as well as some specious and general things that sounded like martial arts theories.

He couldn't understand it yet, but he guessed that this was the health-preserving experience that Huang Shang wanted to present to the emperor along with the Daozang.

Now that the stolen goods have been found, the evidence collection process is no longer important.

Who could have imagined that in a flawless manor, there was a pile of books hidden in the cellar that had not been sold yet, and would eventually be found by soldiers who came to search the house.

This cannot be blamed on them, because it was Zhao Zicheng who came to them with a perspective cheat.

At first, he didn't expect to find any bombshell information. He just looked for faults with Shi Sheng based on "The Remaining Stories of the Xuanhe Period of the Song Dynasty" and wanted to find an excuse to kill this future Fang La traitor.

Who knew that during the investigation, they found out that he had defected to the Yingfeng Bureau, knew Duan Ming before, had been a private salt dealer, and was suspected of having experience as a pirate, but was currently temporarily under the amnesty of Zhu Jie.

With so many BUFFs stacked up, it would be a shame for Zhao Zicheng's limited historical knowledge if he didn't check them out.

The final harvest was so great that it saved Zhao Zicheng a lot of energy.

Although Zhao Zi said that there were other ways to slowly solve the case without relying on this trick, it would definitely take a lot of time. It was also good to just kill these small enemies in seconds.

……

Half a minute later, the evidence collection process was over, and Zhao Zicheng had roughly pried out the confession he wanted from Shi Yu's mouth.

Shi Sheng himself had been hiding in the pirate stronghold on the eastern mountain of Taihu Lake for some time, not at the manor. He had also moved some of his copied manuscripts out of the village. Because the area was crisscrossed with inlets and tributaries, and Taihu Lake had numerous islands for relocation, Zhu Zhen had been unable to eliminate the pirates on Taihu Lake for years.

What Shi Sheng really wanted were indeed those boxes of Huang Shang's own notes.

The Shi family's status in Zoroastrianism is not very high. According to Shi Yu's confession, his father was just the leader of the Zoroastrianism in Suzhou. After he got these books, he originally needed to share them with other fellow believers, but Shi Sheng wanted to copy one for himself first, so the things have been in his hands all these days.

There are not many pirates who are literate and can copy books quickly, so it is impossible to divide the work on a large scale.

It had only been four or five days since the incident. The Shi family had only just obtained the scriptures from Duan Ming the day before the incident, stealing and replacing them. Therefore, they hadn't yet finished copying them.

After thoroughly understanding the situation, Yang Zhi, who was accompanying them, was the first to breathe a sigh of relief. This meant that this rash action was absolutely meritorious and without fault. Even if the evidence collection process was rough and flawed, it didn't matter.

He used his military position as a commander to gamble with his savior, Master Zhao, and it was a successful gamble.

Yang Zhi then immediately asked, "What should we do next? Are we going to go to Dongshan Water Stronghold and wipe out those pirates who are colluding with Shi Sheng? That won't happen overnight."

Zhao Zicheng was very calm. "It doesn't matter. We just report it and the case will be solved. Let Zhu Jie find the garrison troops or the militia to suppress the bandits. It has nothing to do with me. Anyway, we have recovered all the books we can find. For the damaged ones, we can only ask Huang Shang to write another copy. Zhu Jie sent a fast horse to Fujian to inform Huang Shang yesterday."

Zhao Zi said he has always been very open-minded about the issue of "secret manuals," which is completely different from the protagonists in martial arts novels.

In his opinion, a copy of the manual was still a manual; the key was the content; whether it was the "original" or not was irrelevant. Huang Shang was still alive, and the contents were memorized in his mind, ready to be rewritten whenever he wanted. He would pay as much as he could for the time being; even if some fragments of the manuscript were circulated, it was none of his business.

Huang Shang's current reputation in the martial arts world is probably not so great that everyone would flock to learn from him. It is probably only those forces that have suffered losses at his hands who know how powerful he is.

Zhao Zi said that he only hoped to eventually eliminate this group of Taihu pirates. As for whether he could do it before the flowers and stones were transported to Tokyo again, it was actually not important.

Yang Zhi thought about it and finally felt relieved. He, a northerner, probably wouldn't be the one leading the troops to eliminate the pirates. After he finished his mission, he could just escort the goods back to Tokyo. The follow-up would have nothing to do with him.

Zhao Zicheng was right. He wasn't even an official yet. By helping Zhu Jie solve the case, his deal with Zhu Jie was complete. Zhu Jie wouldn't be able to find him if he needed to deploy troops later.

……

After finishing the Shijiazhuang incident, securing the evidence and arresting the suspects, Zhao Zicheng left with Yang Zhi, preparing to report to the Yingfeng Bureau. Unexpectedly, as they left Shijiazhuang, they encountered a group of Xiangjun soldiers and Yingfeng Bureau officers rushing over on the long street, blocking their way.

When the people of Suzhou nearby saw this, they all ran away in panic, fearing that they would be affected by the fight between the gods.

"Is this an internal conflict within the Yingfeng Bureau?" The onlookers who did not know the truth were all worried, but at the same time they were also a little expectant.

Everyone knows how much harm the Yingfeng Bureau has done to good people in recent years. It's rare that the people in the Yingfeng Bureau start fighting among themselves.

The people watching from a distance hoped that they would kill each other and cause more deaths.

Seeing this, Yang Zhi narrowed his eyes, as if facing a powerful enemy.

Zhao Zicheng was very calm. After watching for a while, he finally saw an acquaintance, who turned out to be Dong Chao, who was in charge of the militia training.

Dong Chao's face darkened when he saw Zhao Zicheng. "What are you doing? Someone reported to Prime Minister Zhu that you suddenly brought Yang Zhi to arrest our family for no apparent reason! This is a rebellion! If you don't give me an explanation today, I'll have no choice but to have my brothers arrest you!"

Zhao Zicheng understood as soon as he heard it. It must be that when he took action against the Shi family, there must have been an outsider who slipped through the net and went to Yingfeng Bureau to report the news.

The Shi family's conspiracy certainly couldn't be made known to all of their subordinates. Perhaps quite a few of their lackeys still believed that they were eating the emperor's food and hanging around with Prime Minister Zhu.

If you are suddenly bullied by outsiders, of course you have to report it and ask for help.

Zhao Zi claimed that he had irrefutable evidence in his hands, which was absolutely true. He waved his hand behind him, and two of Yang Zhi's personal soldiers carried several large boxes of scriptures and placed them in front of Dong Chao on the road.

"I dared to come and search suddenly, so I must have a clue. From Shijiazhuangzi, I found these tribute documents from Huang Fuzhou. The evidence is there. What else can I say?"

Dong Chao was furious just now. When Zhu Zhen asked him to investigate the matter, he thought that Zhao Zicheng was getting too arrogant and dared to do something to his own people and try to blackmail them.

Seeing the physical evidence at this moment, his entire demeanor suddenly subsided.

Dong Chao had it checked, but couldn't quite make sense of it. Zhao Zicheng patiently explained it to him briefly, explaining the Fujian bamboo paper and pine soot ink used in the imperial Daoist sutras.

After confirming that these materials were all high-quality goods for imperial use, Dong Chao dared not be presumptuous anymore. He immediately put on a smile and congratulated: "Young Master Zhao is truly a man of great foresight. He has already made great achievements before he was officially appointed to the position. He will definitely be a favorite of your Excellency in the future."

Then he immediately joined Zhao Zicheng and Yang Zhi's team and escorted the thieves back to Yingfeng Bureau.

The Suzhou people who were watching from a distance were confused and disappointed that no fighting broke out.

But some people found out that the Shi family's former private salt dealers had been arrested, and they were quite happy to see Dong Chao suffer a setback.

"Weren't the Shi family already granted amnesty by imperial decree? How come they were suddenly captured by the master again? They really deserve it."

"Humph, maybe he's just a perpetrator who hasn't changed his mind and has done something bad again. Anyway, they're all dogs of the Yingfeng Bureau. We'd be happy if they killed a few more of our own people."

……

A quarter of an hour later, he should be in the office.

Zhao Zicheng, Dong Chao and Yang Zhi took the recovered part of Huang Shang's scriptures to report their achievement to Zhu Jie.

Zhu Jie originally had a gloomy face and had already thought of countless charges to punish Zhao Zicheng.

But when he saw Dong Chao excitedly coming in with the scriptures, he was still dumbfounded.

How did they solve this case? How did they find these books? This mission only took three days, didn't it? That's incredibly efficient!

Impossible, this is definitely not something that can be achieved by strength alone, it definitely depends on luck, maybe there is a high possibility that a blind cat will catch a dead mouse!
"You only searched once and found these stolen scriptures?" Zhu Jie's face was full of disbelief when asking Zhao Zicheng.

"It is just as my husband said, but I was just lucky and stumbled upon some clues. I just wanted to search and try, but I didn't expect the thieves from the Shi family to directly resist with force." Zhao Zicheng reported calmly.

Zhu Jie picked up the scripture and read it again and again. He knew that there must be a lot of tricks in it, but he himself did not follow the rules. Since the hard evidence had been obtained and the stolen goods had been recovered, he didn't care about Zhao Zicheng's process of solving the case.

He just wants results.

He looked again and again, put down the scriptures, and asked again: "Did you find anything else in Shijiazhuang?"

Zhao Zicheng didn't dare to hide anything, so he selectively reported: "There are also some gold and silver jewelry, weapons and valuables..."

Zhu Zhen waved his hand and said, "Hand in your weapons, money and grain, and register them. I will give you the gold, silver and valuables as a reward. You don't have to worry about the subsequent suppression of the pirates."

If you need to go back to Xiuzhou to visit your family, go quickly and return soon. Once the case is closed and the Flower and Stone Gang and the Daozang are ready to be shipped again, you can go to the capital with Yang Zhi and help me submit the memorial. When the time comes, I will find a way to arrange an official position for you."

(End of this chapter)