The Sui Dynasty's chess game

Chapter 810 Clues Reappear
After entering December, every household begins to prepare for the New Year, and merchants are also extremely busy, stockpiling goods in preparation for making a good profit at the end of the year.

That morning, just as dawn was breaking, the Inner Guard Office in Xiuzheng Ward opened its gates, and a middle-aged merchant ran forward, knelt down, and burst into tears.

The soldier was startled. After finding out what was going on, he rushed inside to report. Soon after, Shi Xiaozhen came out with a group of internal guard officials.

"Where is the thing?"

The middle-aged merchant opened the bag, which was full of silver coins. Shi Xiaozhen grabbed a handful and examined it closely. She was shocked to find that the silver coins were all counterfeit. The counterfeit silver coins that had disappeared for two months had finally reappeared.

He immediately said, "Take him in to find out what's going on!"

Before long, the money was counted. There were a total of 1,700 coins in the bag, of which 1,400 were counterfeit and only 300 were genuine.

Everyone was excited, which meant that the source of the fraud had been exposed.

Shi Xiaozhen had her men pour the businessman a cup of hot tea and comforted him, saying, "Don't worry, speak slowly. We will treat this as a major case!"

The middle-aged merchant nodded. "My surname is Jiang. I'm a cloth merchant from Taiyuan. I brought three thousand bolts of cloth from Taiyuan to sell in the capital. As of the day before yesterday, I still had seventeen hundred bolts left. The day before yesterday afternoon, a local merchant approached me and offered to buy all my cloth."

Shi Xiaozhen interrupted him, "Is this businessman around forty years old? He's not very tall, and he has a large black mole between his eyebrows!"

"Yes! It's this businessman, he has a large black mole between his eyebrows."

Shi Xiaozhen and Juan exchanged a glance; it was the same middle-aged man who had bought the gemstones last time.

"Keep talking!"

The merchant continued, “Normally, if you buy everything, each bolt of top-quality fine cloth costs nine hundred coins. But he didn’t haggle and insisted on charging one thousand coins per bolt. Of course, I was very happy because that way I could earn an extra one hundred and seventy strings of cash. He offered to give me silver. I had never received silver in Taiyuan, but I had seen others receive silver. I knew that one silver coin was equivalent to one hundred copper coins. That was the official price, so I agreed.”

Yesterday afternoon he came to our door and gave us a bag of silver coins, 1,700 coins in total. My wife and I counted them together, and the quantity was correct, so I let him take the cloth away.

"Last night I examined the coins carefully and found that the weight of the coins in the cups was different. I asked the innkeeper, who had a scale. He weighed them and said that I had received counterfeit money. He told me to come to the Inner Guard to report the case immediately!"

Where does the man who sold the counterfeit money live?

"I don't know, he came to see me both times!"

"Then how did he find you?"

“He said it was introduced by one of my previous customers. I remember it was called Zhang Chun Cloth Shop. Also, the carriage that transported their goods had helped me transport goods before. It was a carriage from Shunfeng Mule and Horse Company.”

Shi Xiaozhen immediately divided his troops into two groups. General Wang Lingfeng led his men to Zhang Chun's cloth shop to inquire, while Shi Xiaozhen personally led a hundred men to Shunfeng Mule and Horse Shop.

Shunfeng Mule and Horse Company is a large mule and horse company that sells and rents mules and donkeys, and stores mules and donkeys for people, but their biggest business is transporting goods for people.

Shunfeng Mule and Horse Shop had more than a dozen branches in Luoyang. A merchant from Taiyuan lived in Dunhoufang, and there was a Shunfeng Mule and Horse Shop in his neighboring Lushunfang.

Before long, Shi Xiaozhen arrived at the mule and horse shop with his men. The shopkeeper dared not delay and quickly brought out the ledger.

Shi Xiaozhen looked twice but didn't see any record of goods being transported from the neighboring Dunhoufang.

The shopkeeper said cautiously, "There are two possibilities. One is that it's another mule and horse company, and the other is that the driver is taking on jobs privately. General, could you tell me the driver's name or what he looks like?"

Shi Xiaozhen ordered someone to bring in the Taiyuan merchant and asked him, "What does that coachman look like?"

"The driver was very tall, like a bamboo pole."

The shopkeeper suddenly realized what was happening and immediately ordered his assistant, "Go and fetch Zhang Laosan!"

The Taiyuan merchant nodded quickly, "Yes! His surname is Zhang."

Before long, a tall, thin driver was brought in; he was indeed as thin as a bamboo pole.

The Taiyuan businessman recognized him at a glance, "That's him!"

Shi Xiaozhen waved her hand, and the soldiers brought up the trembling coachman.

Shi Xiaozhen asked, "You transported a cart of cloth from Dunhoufang yesterday. Where did you take it?" "The cloth! I took it to Luoshui Wharf. There's a warehouse there. I put the cloth into the warehouse."

"Take us to the warehouse!"

Before long, Shi Xiaozhen and the Imperial Guards arrived at Luoshui Wharf. There were hundreds of warehouses of all sizes at Luoshui Wharf. The driver pointed to a warehouse in the second-to-last row and said, "This is it!"

"I'm not mistaken, am I?"

"I've delivered goods for them twice, there's no mistake!"

Shi Xiaozhen waved his hand, and a hundred guards surrounded the warehouse. They pried open the lock, opened the warehouse, and found 1,700 bolts of cloth, as well as four boxes filled with at least 20,000 counterfeit silver coins made of white copper.

However, no one was found. Shi Xiaozhen immediately restored the warehouse to its original state, sent several soldiers to ambush inside the warehouse, and sent others to ambush outside. Under these circumstances, they could only wait for the enemy to come to them.

Shi Xiaozhen returned to the government office, and Wang Lingfeng returned with another detachment of imperial guards, but they found nothing.

“I have inquired carefully, and they did not introduce business to anyone. It is impossible for them to let customers bypass them and buy goods directly from the source merchants. This is a major taboo in the industry.”

According to the shop owner's recollection, they were trading in the shop's main hall when there were many customers. The Taiyuan merchant mentioned he still had 1,700 bolts of cloth, and someone nearby must have overheard this. They must have followed the Taiyuan merchant back to the inn.

The trail to Zhang Chunbu Shop had gone cold, but Shi Xiaozhen didn't care. The key was that they had found the other party's storage location, and the other party would definitely come to the warehouse to pick up the goods.

Night deepened, the city gates were closed, but the ward gates remained open. Now the ward gates were no longer closed, so even if you returned in the middle of the night, you could still go home normally. As the world gradually became more peaceful, the city gates would also open at night.

At midnight, all was quiet. Not a single pedestrian could be seen on the Luoshui Wharf. All the boats were moored on the wharf, and the warehouses surrounded by barricades had their doors closed.

At that moment, a dark figure appeared in front of the camp. He pulled aside a loose wooden stake and crawled inside.

The shadowy figure crept up to a warehouse. Suddenly, he noticed that the lock seemed to be broken. Startled, he quickly pushed the door open to check. Just then, more than a dozen guards rushed up and blocked the shadowy figure inside the warehouse.

Several guards who were lying in ambush inside the warehouse rushed forward, grabbed the dark figure, and pinned him to the ground.

The guard lit the tinderbox; it was the middle-aged man with a black mole on his eyebrow.

The guards tied him up tightly, gagged him, put a black bag over his head, and stuffed him into a carriage. The carriage sped off and soon disappeared into the night.

The following morning, Shi Xiaozhen appeared before Emperor Xiao Xia and presented him with an interrogation record.

Xiao Xia glanced at the interrogation record and frowned. "A Silla person?"

"That's right, this man's name is Jin Shengyun. He insisted he was from Luoyang, but we used severe torture, and he couldn't take it anymore before admitting he was from Silla and gave us his address. We found his school records in his house and learned that his original name was Jin Yunkai. He came to Chang'an from Silla to study at the Imperial Academy in the fifteenth year of the Kaihuang era, and he never returned to Silla, staying in Chang'an instead."
Two years ago, he moved from Chang'an to Luoyang. According to his confession, he had been collecting various intelligence on the Sui Dynasty for Silla for many years. Starting from the eighth year of the Daye era, they began to counterfeit our Daye Tongbao coins.

At this point, Shi Xiaozhen presented a box to Xiao Xia, "Your Majesty, please look at this. This was found at his residence."

Xiao Xia opened the box and found a box of Daye Tongbao coins inside. As soon as he picked it up, he felt something was wrong; it was noticeably lighter. Upon closer inspection of the workmanship, he realized it was too well-made. If the weight were the same, he would have had a hard time distinguishing it from the real thing.

"This is a copy made by Silla?"

“That’s right. Jin Shengyun confessed that they used a large number of counterfeit Daye Tongbao coins in Hebei, Central China, and Sichuan. More than 100,000 strings of cash passed through his hands.”

"He's not the only one?" Xiao Xia sensed something was amiss in his words.

"More than that, they are a group of hundreds of people with a clear division of labor. Some are shopping, and some are transporting. They bought a large amount of bronzeware and old weapons and transported them back to Silla. Moreover, they are very careful and never use the counterfeit Daye Tongbao coins in major cities. They are only used in small towns. They have never circulated in Luoyang or Chang'an, so we can't see any counterfeit money."

Xiao Xia nodded. "How many counterfeit silver coins did Silla mint this time?"

"He didn't know how many were minted in total, but he got 20,000, and Chang'an probably had 20,000 as well. It was a trial deployment. This time, buying cloth was his second time using it, and he didn't expect to fail like this."

Xiao Xia snorted coldly, "I will make Silla pay back the principal and interest sooner or later."

Xiao Xia then added, "Your next task is to wipe out this group of several hundred people in one fell swoop, regardless of whether they live or die!"

"Your humble servant obeys!"

(End of this chapter)