Chapter 668: Locking in the Insider

Chapter 668: Locking in the Insider

Chapter 668: Locking in the Insider
Shi Xiaozhen found Li Luming and bowed, saying, "I have always had a suspicion in my heart. This time, the princess's spirit ship was attacked, and my suspicion has become even stronger."

Li Luming glared at him and said, "You're still beating around the bush in front of me. Just say what you suspect!"

"Reporting to the chief steward, I suspect that there are pirates in Jiangdu who are behind this. I informed them of the news, and that's why they gathered many pirates to act together."

Li Luming nodded, "Your suspicion is reasonable. I have my suspicions too. This is the largest pirate operation in the past ten years. It is said that there are seven or eight hundred people, spanning thousands of miles. The spirit ship set out on the 20th day of the twelfth lunar month and arrived in Jiangxia ten days later. The pirates must have received the news five or six days in advance and then started to organize. So the news was sent to a pirate leader by carrier pigeon around the 20th day of the twelfth lunar month. The pirates used four or five days to gather the thieves and another five or six days to track and deploy. The pirate leader must have an insider in Jiangdu, but the area is too wide, so it is difficult to find this insider."

Shi Xiaozhen said: "I have a way to narrow the scope of the investigation!"

"any solution?"

"Does the chief steward remember the last time the officials of the Ministry of Justice were attacked in Wuhu Town?"

"I remember, keep talking!"

Shi Xiaozhen continued, "The official from the Ministry of Justice was killed by the captain of the ship and two boatmen. Later, I learned that it was the powerful Wang family who paid a large sum of money to bribe He Huailiang, the pirate leader of Pengze County, so that the pirates killed the people from the Ministry of Justice in Wuhu Town. But this is not important. The important thing is how did the official from the Ministry of Justice happen to catch the pirates' ship? This must have been specially arranged by someone."

Li Luming perked up and said with a smile: "That makes sense, keep going!"

"Later, I caught the captain of the ship. He confessed that a man named Hui Dalang arranged for them to pick up six people from the Ministry of Justice. The captain didn't know who Hui Dalang was, but Hui Dalang had a token from the pirate leader, so the captain accepted the order."

Li Luming nodded, "This Hui Dalang is the pirate's accomplice in the Jiangdu government. The news about the spirit ship should have been spread by him."

"That's right. It's impossible for there to be two Jiang bandits as accomplices. Jiang bandits don't have that much power. I have also been looking for this Hui Dalang. There is an office in the Ministry of Justice called the Tongshi Bureau, which is responsible for arranging vehicles, boats, travel expenses, and salary distribution for officials of the Ministry of Justice. There are six people in the Tongshi Bureau, and the chief officer is Wang Cheng. The records show that he arranged the boats of the Ministry of Justice. All the records have been destroyed. I thought Wang Cheng was the pirate spy, but unexpectedly, when I was halfway through the investigation, Wang Cheng suddenly died."

"died?"

Li Luming was startled and asked, "How did he die?"

Shi Xiaozhen shook her head. "The death was unclear. The official verdict was that he fell into the river and drowned because he was drunk. We also did an autopsy and it was confirmed that he drowned in the water. We also found someone to prove that he had drunk a lot of alcohol."

"and then?"

"Then we couldn't investigate further. We can only say that Hui Dalang bribed Wang Cheng with money, and then killed him to silence him."

"Can you find out now?"

Shi Xiaozhen nodded. "The case of the Ministry of Justice is one circle, and the case of the spirit ship is another circle. These two circles should not be related. But this Hui Dalang knew that the Ministry of Justice was going to investigate Jing County, and he also knew that the princess' spirit ship was going to Xiangyang. He must be the intersection of these two circles."

"Where could it be?"

Shi Xiaozhen said slowly: "I have thought about it for a long time, and I can only think of one place, the Ship Department under the Ministry of War."

The Ship Administration was responsible for the management and allocation of military and official ships, while civilian ships were registered and managed by the counties. Yang Lihua's spirit ship was temporarily converted from an official ship and allocated by the Ship Administration.

"its not right!"

Li Luming suddenly realized that there was a loophole here. "The ship carrying the officials of the Ministry of Justice to Jing County is a civilian ship! What does it have to do with the Shipping Bureau?" "That's where the problem lies!"

Shi Xiaozhen said slowly: "I have always believed that the ship was found by Wang Cheng, the director of the Tongshi Bureau of the Ministry of Justice. Later, after Wang Cheng fell into the water and drowned, I went to the Tongshi Bureau to look for the original records, but I couldn't find them. All the records were missing. Wang Cheng said that someone sneaked into the official office.

But some people remember that the Ministry of Justice applied for a 3,000-dan official ship, but the ship that carried the six officials to Jing County was a 2,000-dan civilian ship, which means that the ship was replaced by someone, either Wang Cheng or someone from the Ship Administration. Now there is a ghost ship case, which means that it could not have been Wang Cheng who replaced it. Wang Cheng drowned in early November last year, and the ghost ship set off on December 20th. The pirate's spies could only be someone from the Ship Administration."

Li Luming nodded slowly. "According to your analysis, the Ship Department of the Ministry of War is indeed a suspect. Who could it be? Have you found this person?"

Shi Xiaozhen shook his head. "There are seven officials in the Shipping Department, none of whom have the word hui in their names. I found the official who was in charge of allocating the ship to the Ministry of Justice, but he refused to admit that he had colluded with the pirates or changed the ship."

Li Luming pondered for a moment and said, "The direction of the Ship Administration is right, but you may have made a wrong decision. You just said that the Ministry of Justice applied for a 3,000-stone official ship, but something went wrong in the final delivery link. Think about where the final delivery link is? There are more than seven people in the Ship Administration."

A flash of lightning flashed through Shi Xiaozhen's mind, "Are you talking about the shipyard?"

Li Luming smiled slightly and said, "What do you think?"

Shi Xiaozhen slapped his forehead and said, "I am confused. I will go find the official in charge right away. He should know who is in charge in the end."

The Shipping Bureau consists of two parts: the government office and the shipyard. There are seven officials in the government office, but there are hundreds of people in the shipyard, including managers, boatmen, etc. The government office issues a transfer order, and the handling official runs to the shipyard and hands the transfer order to a manager, who then arranges the ships and boatmen. The problem lies with the manager.

After Shi Xiaozhen asked the official in charge, he immediately targeted a manager named Lu Hui. Although there were ten managers in the shipyard, most of them were in charge of military ships, and Lu Hui happened to be one of the two managers in charge of arranging official ships.

It was not easy to find this person. This Lu Hui had nothing to do with the Ministry of Justice, nor with the Secretariat that arranged Yang Lihua's spirit boat. But he happened to be the intersection of the two cases, as he was responsible for arranging the boat and the boatman.

Lu Hui was not on duty today and was sleeping in the dormitory. Shi Xiaozhen, along with dozens of internal security soldiers, kicked open the dormitory door and rushed in. They pushed Lu Hui down on the bed and found a silver plum blossom medal at the head of his bed. This should be the token of the pirate leader.

Lu Hui was captured by the Internal Guards. Under severe torture, he could not bear it and had to confess everything. He was from Pengze County, Jiujiang Prefecture. One of his cousins ​​was named Lu Jinbiao. He fled to the Yangtze River and became a pirate after killing someone ten years ago. Now he is a big pirate leader. He Huailiang, the pirate leader in Wuhu Town, is Lu Jinbiao's subordinate.

Lu Jinbiao kept losing money to his cousin Lu Hui. After Lu Hui took three thousand strings of money from his cousin, he devoted himself to being his spy.

In the case where six officials from the Ministry of Justice were killed, he arranged three pirates to serve as boatmen.

Wang Cheng, the director of the Communication Bureau of the Ministry of Justice, was also killed by Lu Hui. When Wang Cheng was sorting out the cases of the Ministry of Justice, he found that the ship was wrong. He clearly applied for a 3,000-dan official ship, but in the end it was a 2,000-dan civilian ship.

Wang Cheng immediately suspected Lu Hui. Lu Hui gave him 500 strings of cash to keep his mouth shut. Wang Cheng stopped mentioning the matter and even deliberately destroyed the records. But soon Wang Cheng used the matter to blackmail Lu Hui for money again. Lu Hui decided to go all out and pushed the drunk Wang Cheng into the river to drown him.

Lu Hui finally admitted that it was he who sent a pigeon letter to his cousin Lu Jinbiao, telling him about the spirit ship and mentioning that there were a large number of burial treasures and valuables on the spirit ship.

But finding out the spies in Jiangdu was only the first step for the Internal Guards. The 3,000 Internal Guards were immediately divided into two groups. Li Luming led 2,000 people to cooperate with the navy to eliminate the bandit Lu Jinbiao.

Shi Xiaozhen led a thousand internal guards to search for the scattered bandits who participated in intercepting the spirit ship.

(End of this chapter)