After the whole family was swept away, I lay down flat

Chapter 783 Entrustment
Haitang followed Jin Jiashu into his room.

There was no damage in the room. The men in black did not invade this place, but there were a few scratches on the doors and windows from swords during the fight, which was not a big problem. After returning home tonight, Jin Jiashu did not return to his room, but went directly to Ma Shangyi's room to talk. When the men in black climbed over the wall and entered, he had just come out of Ma Shangyi's place and was about to return to the house, and happened to meet them. However, Guard Lin fought alone against many people, and Haitang arrived in time. He had practiced the skill of escaping these days, and no one really hurt him. It was just that his white robe was torn in several places, and was stained with various blood and dust. It was no longer visible at this time.

Haitang was standing outside the room. She saw the cotton-padded robe that Jin Jiashu usually wore draped over the end of the kang, and said to him, "Brother Jin, your clothes are dirty and torn. You should change into something else. It will be warmer for you and more convenient for you to move around."

Jin Jiashu responded and walked out of the inner room, holding a two-foot square ebony box in both hands and put it on the desk: "These are all letters between me and... me and my aunt, some are encrypted and some are not. It is not convenient for me to take it to the Duke of Zhenguo's Mansion, and it is even more impossible to take it to Beijing. But if outsiders look in and find these letters, it will be a troublesome thing. Although it is better to burn them, so there is no need to worry about the future troubles, but this is my aunt's handwriting after all..." He paused, hesitating to find a reason that sounded more reasonable, but Haitang already understood what he meant.

The letters between the son and his biological mother who had been separated for many years, every word in the letter was the mother's care and concern for her son. No matter how sincere they were, how could the son bear to burn them casually? Jin Jiashu had never seen his biological mother since he could remember. These letters were probably all the thoughts his mother left for him. If possible, he hoped to keep them.

However, there might be some information in the letter that is inconvenient for the Zhenguo Mansion to know. Even though the Zhenguo Mansion has always acted upright and would not peek at other people's letters at will, Jin Jiashu did not dare to take the risk. Although the Hai family also did not know his secret, he trusted Haitang more in his heart. If Haijiao was there, he might entrust the letter to Haijiao, but now, Haitang was his only choice.

Before Jin Jiashu could come up with an excuse, Haitang had already taken the initiative to cover up his lie: "I understand. You only have Madam Xu, your blood relative who truly cares about you. You can't bear to burn the letter she wrote to you."

Jin Jiashu blinked and lowered his head: "Yes...that's right."

"Then leave it to me." Haitang smiled and brought the box in front of her. "I will keep it safe and will not let anyone steal it or burn it. Unless an imperial decree comes, explicitly stating that it must be destroyed, I will never let you down."

Jin Jiashu breathed a sigh of relief and said with a wry smile, "It doesn't have to be an imperial decree. If the old Duke Zhenguo knew about this and asked you to burn it just in case, then Sister Hai, you should do it. Don't let you and your family take risks just to protect this box of old letters." He paused, "Although I cherish the letters, I cherish the fate with the Hai family even more. I don't want to see anyone in the Hai family suffer because of me."

Now that you say so, that's even better.

Haitang smiled and agreed, "I understand. Don't worry, I will handle things in moderation." Then she asked him, "Do you have anything else? If there is anything that is inconvenient to take to the Zhenguo Mansion or to the capital, you can give it to me. I will keep it safe and return it immediately when you come back. If you don't go back to Chang'an, I will bring the things with me when I go to the capital with my family in the second half of the year and hand them over to you."

"I have nothing to worry about if you leave the things to Sister Hai." Jin Jiashu smiled. "This box of letters is the most important. As for the rest... there is nothing to hide. I will take away some valuables and carry-on luggage. As for the common household utensils, books, and study, I plan to leave them in the house and let the mother and son of the Lu family stay to look after them. If there is a need in the future, I will ask the Duke of Zhenguo's Mansion to distribute them to everyone on my behalf, so there will be no need to bother carrying them."

He had come to Chang'an alone, and most of the things in his home were newly purchased in the past few years. They were not precious things, so it was not worth it to trouble others to transport them all the way to Beijing. If he had the money to pay for the shipping, he might as well buy new things in Beijing!

He would always carry the really important things with him. If he couldn't bring them with him, he would ask Ma Shangyi to take care of them. Only this box of letters was a little troublesome. With Haitang's help, he could worry less. Haitang understood what he meant, and after a moment's hesitation, he said, "I understand. Brother Jin, go inside and change your clothes first. Be careful that it's cold at night, and you can't stand wearing ragged clothes."

Jin Jiashu smiled and agreed, then turned back to the inner room. Haitang took the opportunity to take the paper and ruler from the end of his desk and tore off a piece of paper. The box containing the letters had a copper lock, so it should have been locked tightly. Haitang didn't ask where the key was, but just wrapped the paper around the copper lock tightly, and finally melted the ink with candlelight and sealed it.

When Jin Jiashu changed his clothes and walked out from the inner room, she had just applied the ink on it. Seeing this, he couldn't help but show a surprised expression: "Sister Hai, what are you doing..."

Haitang waved at him and said, "Take out your private seal and stamp a mark on the ink pad. When I return the box to you, you only need to see that the seal on it remains unchanged, and you will know that I have not opened the box and read your letter."

Jin Jiashu sighed helplessly, "So what if you read it, Sister Hai? You already know most of the things in the letter. I never hide anything from you and Brother Hai."

But Haitang knew that he was hiding something from her and her brother. Although he and Concubine Xu could not state their relationship in the correspondence to prevent someone from reading it, she had better avoid this suspicion from the beginning just in case.

So she said, "Of course I know that Brother Jin trusts me, otherwise he wouldn't have entrusted this box of letters to me. But others may not understand the friendship between you and me. Put a seal on the box to save others from nagging."

Jin Jiashu pursed his lips, found the small seal he usually used, poked it on the ink pad, and then quickly put it away.

He took out two more books from the bookshelf and handed one to Haitang: "After leaving home, I may write to you, Sister Hai, and I may need to use the code then... I wrote these two books by hand, and the position of each word and sentence is the same, but the handwriting is slightly different. I will leave one for you. If I send you a secret letter, you just need to interpret it with the help of this book. In this way, if I have a secret to tell you, I won't worry about others reading it."

Haitang was surprised and took the book to look through it. She found that the book was filled with tiny characters in official script, which were as small as a fly's head. The content was all analysis of famous quotes from the Four Books and Five Classics. Every page and every line of text had a page number or line number attached. The font was even smaller, but it was clearly legible.

It is much more convenient to use such a book as a code book than to buy books from outside bookstores nowadays. It is hard for Jin Jiashu to be so busy in the past few months, but he still found time to make two code books. How could he be so busy?
Haitang quickly put the book away and said to Jin Jiashu solemnly, "Brother Jin, don't worry. I will keep this book safe and will never let anyone else know the secrets."

Jin Jiashu smiled and said, "I trust my sister." He paused, "There is one more thing... Maybe now is not the most appropriate time, but I still want to... ask my sister for a definite answer."

(End of this chapter)