Red Mansion: Fuyao River and Mountain

Chapter 149 The final truth
It would be fine for other people, but Jia Yucun was the fourth-rank prefect of Yingtian, so putting him under house arrest was somewhat risky.

Fortunately, Jia Cong explained to him that Jia Yucun was a man with a strong desire for officialdom and was obsessed with his official career. Now, it was heard that the Yingtian Prefecture government suspected him of having an affair with a wanderer.

He was already half frightened out of his wits, fearing that he could not clear himself of suspicion. You must know that Prince Ning was ordered to deal with the matter of Longtan Port in Nanjing, and whenever there was any suspicion, Prince Ning had the power to make arbitrary decisions.

One memorial to the emperor's memorial could cause him to be dismissed from office and return to his original state. By then, no one, whether from the Jia family or the Wang family, would be able to save him.

Now that he heard that he could clear his suspicion by staying at Prince Ning's residence for one night, he would be unwilling to do so. As for the reputation in the officialdom, he didn't care much about it.

However, seeing that Jia Cong acted meticulously and skillfully, even Prince Ning seemed to obey his orders, and he was recently promoted by the emperor, he was deeply shocked by his fortune.

He felt more and more that the young man from the Jia family was a rare treasure, and when he heard that he wanted to deploy archers from the government office, he agreed without hesitation and immediately wrote a warrant to allow him to use the bows with full authority.

Wait until everything at hand is arranged properly and eliminate the possibility of future troubles.

Early this morning, Jia Cong asked Qin Ye to stop work at the construction site for a day, using the excuse that the wood and lime in the warehouse were seriously damp. He also took the opportunity to transfer more than 50 strong craftsmen and some soldiers from the garrison who were guarding the construction site.

On the premise of having sufficient manpower, they piled up stones to block the road in the valley where they set up the ambush.

He also sent people to nearby villages to purchase large quantities of porcelain jars for lamp oil and made them into simple incendiary bottles. This thing became famous in later generations for its simplicity of production and unique lethality.

After everything was ready, Yang Hongbin, along with some of Ning Wang's personal guards and the prisoner rotation documents prepared by Jia Yucun, lured the group of Japanese ronin out of the construction site.

Although they met Huang Youan, who was very familiar with the internal affairs of Yingtian Prefecture, fortunately Yang Hongbin was calm and experienced, and the Yingtian Prefecture documents in his hand were correct, so they escaped without any danger.

……

The past night was so long for everyone in Ning Wang’s group.

After receiving Jia Cong's report, Prince Ning finally found the whereabouts of those Japanese wanderers. He was overjoyed and became more and more impressed by Jia Cong's cleverness and resourcefulness.

His imperial edict requesting Jia Cong to temporarily serve as the Ning Prince's counselor was the wisest decision he made after arriving in Nanjing.

However, if you want to achieve success in one go, the risks involved are quite high.

Because of the Longtan Port case, the Jinling Guards, the Water Supervision Bureau, the Jinyiwei, etc. were all more or less involved. In order to prevent accidents, their personnel could not be mobilized.

They could only rely on the thirty musketeers trained by Prince Ning, more than thirty of Prince Ning's personal guards, more than ten archers from the government office, and the general flag-taker Liu Hai and some of his soldiers who were guarding the construction site.

It seems that there are a lot of people, but facing more than 50 extremely powerful Japanese ronin, the risks are unpredictable.

During the bloody battle at Longtan Port, these Japanese ronin killed more than a hundred garrison officers and soldiers, yet they were able to escape unscathed, which shows how brave and fierce they were.

It was not until the afternoon that King Ning breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Jia Cong and Yang Hongbin return safely, looking exhausted.

Yang Hongbin said: "Your Highness, this time we set up an ambush in the valley on the north side of the Da Ci'en Temple. Four of our men were killed, 47 Japanese wanderers were killed, and five were captured alive. None of them escaped.

The attendant was an outstanding warrior, and he even killed the ronin leader himself."

Prince Ning said excitedly, "Without using any soldiers from the Jinling Guards, we have achieved such a great result with our own men. This is really rare. I will definitely commend you for your achievements in the imperial edict!"

He laughed again and said, "Everyone knows that Cheng Shilang is a scholar, but I didn't expect that he has such military strategy. Not only can he command properly, but he can also kill the fierce and stubborn with his own hands. It's incredible."

After chatting for a while, they invited Jia Yucun to appease him and asked him to return to the government office. However, other people from Yingtian Prefecture who were involved in the Shicaowozi incident were still detained in the Ning Wang residence. This was also what Jia Cong proposed to Ning Wang, to further block the news that a large number of bodies were found in Shicaowozi.

The Japanese wanderers killed the Yingtian Prefecture officials and prisoners on the way. Someone must have provided the information, and this person was familiar with the affairs of the prefecture. No one knew what the connection behind this was.

Therefore, in order to prevent the news from leaking out and avoid unnecessary complications, we had to detain these people first.

The five captured people were taken to the Yingtian Prefecture Prison. In order to avoid the murder of Wang En in the Jinyiwei prison, Prince Ning strictly ordered Jia Yucun to share the responsibility.

Jia Cong and Yang Hongbin were also ordered to move into Yingtian Prefecture with thirty musketeers to guard against any unexpected events and to interrogate the prisoners overnight.

That night, the lights in the Yingtianfu prison were on all night.

The four captured ronin were interrogated separately for half the night.

Although these ronin were ferocious and murderous, the government prison had its own experienced torture experts, so it didn't take much effort to get confessions out of them.

According to the confessions of the ronin, they were crew members of the Ouchi clan's merchant ships on the surface, but secretly they were Japanese ronin samurai who were provoked by others. They not only did business of selling foreign goods for the people behind the scenes.

They even colluded with each other to commit murder and robbery, and then transported the goods back to Nanjing, Ningbo, Fuzhou and other places in the name of Ouchi's merchant ships to dump them for profit.

But only their leader knew the person behind the scenes who recruited them. However, that person wanted to kill Jia Cong in Qixia Mountain, but was seriously injured by Jia Cong's knife and then shot to death.

At that time, the merchant ships of the Ouchi clan and the Asakawa clan, which were ronin from Japan, entered the Longtan Port in Jinling at the same time. The merchant ships of the Asakawa clan bribed the eunuch Wang En, who was in charge of the Maritime Customs, through an interpreter from the Great Zhou Dynasty.

As a result, the Maritime Customs allowed the Asakawa clan's merchant ship to enter the port in advance, and detained the Ouchi clan's merchant ship in the port. Those ronin were always unruly and would not suffer any loss, which resulted in a dispute between the two ships and then a gunfight.

Because the Asakawa family's merchant ships were filled with ordinary Japanese merchants and crew members, compared with the Japanese ronin who made a living by fighting and killing, the disparity in military strength between the two sides was huge.

After a fierce fight, more than 30 people on the Asakawa merchant ship were killed, and the soldiers guarding the port and a captain of the garrison were also killed in the chaos.

Afterwards, the Jinling Guards sent officers and soldiers to encircle and suppress them, but they broke through the encirclement and fled into the city of Jinling, massacring civilians and causing a disaster.

However, according to the confessions of the ronin, there was no other group of ronin when they were confronting the government troops, and it was even more impossible for them to take the opportunity to loot the goods.

Who was it that took advantage of the chaos to steal the goods worth two hundred thousand strings of cash, escaped by boat, and made the officers and soldiers of the Water Surveillance Bureau search for them in vain?

It was not until Jia Cong and Yang Hongbin interrogated the ronin accomplice named Huang Youan that the truth of the matter was revealed, or perhaps this was not the whole truth.

After Jia Cong rushed the confessions of Huang Youan and others to Prince Ning's residence, Prince Ning urgently dispatched twenty personal guards and informed the prefect Jia Yucun. Then the security of the Yingtian Prefecture prison was immediately strengthened.

All personnel in the prison were strictly checked for entry and exit. Ning Wang's personal guards personally guarded Huang Youan and the four ronin captives. Even the jailers of Yingtianfu Prison could not get close.

Even the two torture masters who participated in the interrogation were detained in the prison and were not allowed to leave.

The next morning, in view of the seriousness of the matter, a memorial regarding the results of the interrogation and investigation of the Longtan Port case was sent to the capital via an express mail service of 800 miles.

However, it would take at least seven or eight days to wait for the emperor to issue his decree, so I'm afraid everything would be delayed.

At the same time, Jia Cong and two of Ning Wang's personal guards, carrying Ning Wang's golden seal and letter, went straight to the Yangzhou Salt Inspectorate's Office.

(End of this chapter)