I traveled back to the Southern Song Dynasty and was actually outmaneuvered by Yue Fei.

Mid-February of the twelfth year of the Shaoxing era.

In the evening, Zhao Bozong looked out of his study window.

As usual, Liu An was standing in the corner of the back door, but today there was a man in gray beside him.

The man in gray was younger, beardless, and thin. The two talked for about ten breaths.

Qin Hui has been replaced, and his contact person has been changed. What does this mean?

The original gray-clad man was dead, and Qin Hui sent a younger, presumably more capable, replacement. While expanding his power and purging the Dali Temple, Qin Hui was also strengthening the encirclement of Zhao Bocong.

He needed to remind Yue Yinping that Qin Hui's surveillance network was expanding, and Xiangyang needed to be careful.

After seeing Liu An leave the corner of the back door, Zhao Bozong returned to his desk and sat down again.

Qin Hui is expanding, which means that the time he has to calmly make arrangements may be shorter than he estimated.

He needs to sort something out as soon as possible.

What kind of scheme did Yue Fei actually devise?

He now has four things: Zhou Sanwei's blueprints of the Dali Temple, the list of Zhijia's intelligence network that Li Yanxian brought back, the list that was lightly smeared with ink, and this wooden bird.

These four items are not four separate relics; they are related, and he needs to find out these connections.

Zhao Bozong laid out the four items in a row on his desk, then picked up a pen and wrote down everything he could deduce on the paper.

Of the twenty-three names on the list he received, only Feng Yi and Zhang Qu were truly identifiable, out of the twenty-two names that had been crossed out.

The rest are all pseudonyms fabricated by Zhou Sanwei. The pseudonyms were used to mislead Qin Hui, and the alterations were used to protect the real people. So, if we remove the pseudonyms, what is the real number of people on this list?

Zhou Sanwei, Wei Shun, Feng Yi, Zhang Quwei, that's five. Niu Gao was told to him by Yue Yinping, and there's also Zhi Jia.

Seven people.

This number left Zhao Bocong speechless for a long time. Seven people, Zhou Sanwei had disguised it as twenty-three.

He wrote down the names of the seven people on a piece of paper, and then marked their positions next to each name.

I am from the Prince of Pu'an's Mansion in Lin'an, while the others are in Dali Temple, the Forbidden City, Empress Dowager Wei's Palace, and Xiangyang.

The imperial court, the judiciary, the prison, and the palace are four nails driven into the four vital points of Lin'an City.

Niu Gao in Xiangyang was the main contact, responsible for drawing Qin Hui's attention.

This is a net, not large but extremely efficient, with every nail driven into the most crucial position.

But Zhao Bocong also realized that these seven people might not be all of them.

Zhijia's intelligence network also includes a string of names: Shunhe Tea Shop, the back gate of the Qin Mansion, and the unnamed contact person at the North Wa Brothel.

These people were not on his list of seven.

Are they peripheral nodes in the development of Zhijia, or another list that Yue Fei couldn't leave behind?

If it's the latter, then the actual number of people on the list is likely far more than seven.

Zhou Sanwei has one list, while Zhijia may have another. The two lists are independent of each other and neither knows the other's information.

He wrote down this conjecture and added a question mark next to it.

The second question is: what is the relationship between the intelligence network and the list?

Zhao Bozong opened Zhijia's two albums and compared them one by one.

The book about Jingci Temple, five key locations in Lin'an: Shunhe Tea Shop, dock porters, Qin Mansion cook, Imperial Guard deputy, and Puan Prince's Mansion.

The contact person at the Prince of Puan's residence was not specified, and the code word was "wooden bird".

The book about Lingyin Temple, the nodes between Jiankang and Zhenjiang: three in Jiankang, two in Zhenjiang.

Then he looked at the list.

Can the corresponding nodes for the seven people on the list be found in the roster?

Feng Yi's name is not on the list, but the list does have the name of Manager Wang of Shunhe Tea Shop. How did the news about Feng Yi get out?

That day outside the imperial court, he slipped the note into Zhao Bocong's sleeve.

Later, Feng Yi relayed a message through Manager Wang of Shunhe Tea House: the secret code for contacting Shunhe Tea House on the intelligence network's roster was a copper coin with a missing corner.

This means that Feng Yi did not contact Zhao Bocong directly; he contacted Wang Zhanggui as an intermediary.

Feng Yi was on the list, and Manager Wang was a node in the intelligence network. Feng Yi passed the message to Manager Wang, who then used the missing corner of the copper coin to identify the contact person and pass the message on.

This involves the collaboration of two systems.

The people on the list are the points, and the intelligence network is the line. The line first connects the points, allowing information to flow between them.

But why didn't Feng Yi contact Zhao Bocong directly?

Because he couldn't, Qin Hui's spies were everywhere in the palace, and Feng Yi was watched closely every time he left the palace.

He needed a clean line to get the message out of the palace and into Zhao Bocong's hands.

Zhijia's intelligence network is this clean line.

The people on the list are responsible for decision-making and action, while the intelligence network is responsible for transmitting information.

The two systems each perform their own functions and communicate with each other through coded messages, avoiding direct personnel overlap.

This way, even if one system is damaged, the other system can still function.

Zhao Bocong drew two lines on the paper.

One line is the list: himself—Zhou Sanwei—Wei Shun—Feng Yi—Zhang Quwei—Niu Gao—Li Bao.

Another line of communication is the intelligence network: Shunhe Tea Shop—Dock porters—Qin Mansion cook—Imperial Guard deputy—Puan County Prince's Mansion.

The two lines intersect at only one point.

The third thing is, what exactly is the wooden bird?

He drew a circle on the paper, marking the intersection of the two lines.

This intersection is the Prince Puan's Mansion.

The contact person for the Prince of Puan's residence was not listed on the intelligence network's roster, and the code name was "wooden bird."

And the wooden bird was in his hands.

On Wednesday, Wei put the wooden bird under the pillow in the Duke of Jianguo's mansion, and Zhijia wrote the wooden bird into the roster of the intelligence network.

Two people did the same thing at different times and in different places.

They turned the wooden bird into a nail.

Zhou Sanwei nailed it into the transmission chain of the Dali Temple's secret network, and Zhijia nailed it into the node list of the intelligence network.

But they don't know each other.

Yue Fei entrusted the wooden bird to Zhou Sanwei for safekeeping and the intelligence network to Zhi Jia for management.

The two advisors each hold half of the chessboard; they don't need to know each other, they only need to guard their own half.

One day, the two halves of the chessboard will be joined together in the hands of the same person.

And that person was him.

The wooden bird is the only connector between the two systems and is the activation key for the Puan Prince's Mansion node.

It connected two independent systems, and Zhao Bocong was the only point of intersection between these two systems.

He was both on the list and in the intelligence network.

This discovery startled Zhao Bozong, and it took him a long time to calm down before he sat down at his desk to think about it again.

Fourthly, do these people know each other?

Zhao Bocong drew a more detailed relationship diagram on the paper.

He connected the connections he knew with solid lines.

Feng Yihe and Wang, the owner of the tea shop, were connected through a missing-corner copper coin.

There are connections between Zhou Sanwei and Jiang Shixiong, and between Wei Shun and Zhou Sanwei, but these are the only lines he can draw.

He began to mark the connections he didn't know with dashed lines.

Did Feng Yi know Zhang Quwei? Both of them were in the palace, but one was in front of the emperor, and the other was by Empress Dowager Wei's side.

Feng Yi was not on the roster, nor was Zhang Quwei; they were two parallel lines, each operating independently.

Did Niu Gao know Li Bao? Niu Gao was in Xiangyang, and Li Bao was in Zhenjiang. Niu Gao was a cavalry general, and Li Bao was a naval commander.

They knew they were comrades in Yue Fei's army, but did Niu Gao know that Li Bao had three thousand naval troops hidden in his hands? Most likely not.

Did Li Bao know that Niu Gao's mission was to publicly call for a Northern Expedition to attract Qin Hui's attention? He probably didn't.

Each person only knows their own task; they are all independent pawns.