Chapter 17
NATURALLY, JIANG SUIZHOU had no idea what kind of defamatory remarks were being made about him in the confidential letter that Huo Wujiu had received. After happily slacking off for an entire day in the Ministry of Rites, he returned to his residence and immediately holed up in his study.
Because of the brief conversation he had with Ji You the other day, the minister had warmed up to him considerably. He even brought two books to the office today, with the offer to lend them to Jiang Suizhou so he could read them at his leisure.
Of course, those books were on the topic of unofficial history.
Due to his current and rather extensive personal experience, Jiang Suizhou couldn’t exactly say that he was fond of the subject. Still, he couldn’t reject the hand of friendship that Ji You was extending, and so he accepted the books and thanked Ji You for his kindness. Upon returning home, he set them down on the desk in his study as he passed by.
Whoever wanted to read them could read them. He certainly wasn’t going to risk inexplicably transmigrating again just as he was settling into things here.
Moreover, he had other matters to attend to, such as the letter sent to him by the two Ministry of Works officials.
After receiving the letter early in the morning, he’d promptly stashed it away out of an abundance of caution. Only now, when there was no one else around, did he finally open it up.
As he’d more or less expected, though, the letter didn’t offer any particularly useful intel.
The two court officials didn’t have high-ranking positions—they just happened to be in the Ministry of Works. Because of that, however, once the commission was taken over by their department, they were easily able to find out what the budget was, as well as who was in charge, just by asking around a little. They even calculated for Jiang Suizhou how much profit Pang Shao would likely be able to skim off the top.
Sure enough, it was a considerable sum.
The two officials seemed rather worried by this. In the letter, they asked Jiang Suizhou if they should slip a few of their own people into the construction project.
Jiang Suizhou sank into thought.
Based on his current understanding of the original owner of his body, the Prince of Jing would’ve undoubtedly taken action. Even if he knew he wouldn’t receive any recompense for it, even if it would surely result in some sort of loss, he still would’ve had to try.
But Jiang Suizhou also knew that all his efforts would be pointless.
There was no way Pang Shao would allow money to pass through the hands of an official he didn’t trust. Even if the prince sneaked in some officials from his own faction, he wouldn’t be able to touch the money being siphoned from the imperial court. In such circumstances, the only thing that a spy could do was gather evidence of the embezzlement so it could be reported to the court.
But what was Pang Shao’s relationship with the emperor? And what was the Prince of Jing’s relationship with the emperor?
The Prince of Jing was clearly seeking his own destruction if he did such a thing. It was practically asking for the emperor to dig up something to use against him in punishment.
Not only that, the planted officials would also be pushed into the line of fire, and it would be extremely easy for Pang Shao to take shots at them.
Prior to transmigrating, Jiang Suizhou had read many historical accounts where numerous Southern Jing officials met unexpected deaths during certain construction projects—deaths that were never conclusively investigated.
Jiang Suizhou didn’t dare to gamble with someone’s life, especially not for such high risk and so little reward.
After a moment of contemplation, he pored over the letter once more and roughly made note of the figures and names mentioned within. Then he stored the letter in the hidden compartment next to his desk.
It had initially taken Jiang Suizhou a significant amount of effort to find that hidden compartment, which had been stuffed with correspondence the original prince had saved. It wasn’t exactly a gold mine of information, but it’d allowed him to gain a rough estimate of the original prince’s scope of power.
For the most part, the intel collected in the hidden letters was fragmented and disjointed; nothing really worth delving deeper into. Based on the positions held by the officials who’d penned the letters, those people didn’t have much power of their own, and it seemed they had exhausted all of their capabilities just to obtain these few pitiful scraps.
Those officials had scraped together the information before passing it along to the original prince, who hadn’t let their hard work go to waste. Every single letter in the compartment was heavily marked up, dotted with circles and annotations—a clear testament to how diligently the original prince must have read over them.
After putting the new letter away with the rest, Jiang Suizhou carefully locked the compartment and began crafting a reply to the two officials.
He didn’t reject their offer outright. Instead, he instructed them to bide their time, while he would play it by ear. When the opportunity came and he found a chance to slip some of their people in, he would notify them at once.
Luckily, there were a few letters in the study that the original prince had yet to send out. Using those letters as a reference, Jiang Suizhou was able to passably mimic the original prince’s tone and finish writing his response.
Once he was done, Jiang Suizhou read over his reply one more time as he waited for the ink to dry.
He couldn’t stop himself from sighing.
Three years had passed since the emperor of Southern Jing fled across the Yangtze River, and it seemed the people had already accepted the current state of affairs. Southern Jing no longer feared for their imminent destruction. A delicate equilibrium had developed, where each side of the river was governed by a different authority.
That deadlock had lasted until a little over a month ago, when Huo Wujiu shattered the illusion of relative peace by advancing south with his army. However, since his expected reinforcements never arrived, he found himself besieged and taken prisoner as he was crossing the river.
Now that Northern Liang had lost the fearsome General Huo, Southern Jing’s court officials naturally grew even more nonchalant.
That was precisely why Pang Shao felt emboldened enough to engage in unbridled embezzling and monopolizing with absolutely no shame, and why the emperor cared only for indulging in the pleasures of life.
Meanwhile, the original Prince of Jing and his allies were trapped in the crevices of the court. They attempted to light a path out of the darkness by desperately scrabbling for whatever scraps of power they could wrest away from Pang Shao and his faction.
None of them had any idea that their days were numbered. How could they have known that the dynasty of Southern Jing was about to crumble?
They were all desperately trying to climb a tower that was already on the verge of collapse.
Jiang Suizhou looked out the window.
He was slowly starting to accept the reality of his current situation, that he’d somehow been ripped out of the modern day and deposited into this particular period of history. Moreover, he’d been thrown into the turbulent tide that was the final years of a waning nation.
It was becoming harder to fight the urge to try to help.