Seeing Qin Shuying silent with an icy expression, Liang Zhe knew she understood.

Then he added another sentence: “Currently, Yue Prefecture dock is under Yun Luoyuan’s management.”

Qin Shuying’s eyes narrowed, cold light flashing.

In other words, the Liu family, Mu family, Lu family (Cao family), and Yun family had joined forces to eliminate Qin Yongzhou, this stumbling block. Subsequently, Yun Luoyuan took over Qin Yongzhou’s position.

Combined with the vague hints in Qin Yongzhou’s notes, Qin Shuying felt there was no doubt about these four families joining forces to eliminate Qin Yongzhou.

These matters were all surface-level affairs, not difficult to investigate at all. Connecting these things together wasn’t difficult either.

The difficulty lay in finding evidence of any of these four families’ crimes—that was the key.

It should be known that even though Liang Zhe had people under him, he couldn’t use them all to investigate this matter.

He couldn’t use the people Emperor Delong gave him to investigate this. His trusted subordinates had recently been mostly assigned to protect Qin Shuying and probe Old Madam Liang’s secrets, so there weren’t spare personnel to investigate this matter.

Moreover, this matter couldn’t alert the enemy. Once the other side discovered something, all previous efforts would be wasted.

Therefore, he could only investigate Qin Yongzhou’s death while using the Blue Eagle matter Emperor Delong had ordered him to investigate.

“Using the Blue Eagle matter to follow clues one by one, I examined many materials from the war that year and discovered something suspicious. Six years ago, Western State’s finances were extremely tight. The most direct manifestation was that the military expenses of their army fighting us suddenly dropped, and the quality of all military supplies decreased significantly. I also found that six years ago, when the Mu family participated in the Jiao family’s jewelry export, three ships capsized at sea, reportedly leaving countless treasures at the bottom of the ocean.”

Emperor Delong’s personal expedition occurred at that time.

Emperor Delong’s personal expedition boosted morale. But the disparity in fighting strength between both sides was too great. Emperor Delong’s personal expedition didn’t immediately give Great Zhou the upper hand, only balancing the situation where the enemy was strong and we were weak.

After Emperor Delong’s personal expedition, the war remained in a stalemate. Western State suffered heavy losses but didn’t immediately retreat, while Great Zhou lacked the strength to pursue victory.

Emperor Delong adopted a series of policies. The confrontational situation between Western State and Great Zhou continued, but large-scale warfare on the surface no longer appeared, and the frontier enjoyed rare peace for several years.

However, during this period, Western State never gave up, constantly making various small moves. This included Blue Eagle activities, various covert attacks, continuously harassing the frontier and creating conflicts, including the incident where Liang Zhe and his comrades nearly were killed by Western State, and so forth.

Qin Shuying caught the word “suspicious” in Liang Zhe’s words. Her delicate eyebrows furrowed slightly as she said, “Ziyu means that at that time, our Great Zhou was able to gain temporary respite during continuous retreat because those ships’ treasure losses caused Western State to lose very important economic support?”

“Not entirely. Those few ships of treasures wouldn’t be enough to make a powerful Western State immediately lose its economic source. I believe either those three ships didn’t carry treasures but black raw stones, or ships carrying black raw stones sank along with those three ships. Shuying, do you know what black raw stones are used for?”

“Father’s notes mentioned that black raw stones can be used to make fireworks and for explosions.”

“Correct. This is people’s general understanding of black raw stones, but I accidentally learned that black raw stones can also be used to make ammunition. From the mouth of a recently captured Blue Eagle leader, I learned that their Western State has particularly skilled weaponsmiths who can craft excellent firearms, much better than our fire guns. These firearms need ammunition made from black raw stones to function. I haven’t mentioned this point to you before, so you probably didn’t know. The reason Western State could crush our Great Zhou over the past ten-plus years was because they had this kind of weapon.”

Speaking to this point, Liang Zhe’s eyes showed some reminiscence and fear. “Our most powerful weapons are fire guns and crossbows, but Western State has firearms with longer range than fire guns. These things are somewhat similar to fire guns, but producing them is extremely difficult, requiring not only many craftsmen but also very sophisticated various machines. Those machines are reportedly very complex and secretive—besides those craftsmen, only the Western State emperor knows about them. Precisely because production is so difficult, it gave us breathing time. Imagine, if they mass-produced and deployed them, Great Zhou would have perished long ago. Shuying, that kind of firearm can kill people from two hundred steps away, hitting the target with one shot. I’ve witnessed the power of those firearms. At that time, every shot hit its mark, and in moments a large number of our people died. It was only because of insufficient follow-up and the fact that Great Zhou soldiers weren’t pushovers that we barely managed to cope until now.”

Qin Shuying immediately understood.

It seemed that because the ships capsized and black raw stone supply was insufficient, Western State’s powerful weapons couldn’t exert their full power, allowing Great Zhou to barely hold on until now.

“The secret of black raw stones was initially unknown to anyone. Later, because the old Western State emperor was anxious and urged repeatedly, some matters gradually became known to Western State ministers, and later Blue Eagle people also learned of it. However, I believe that even today, the Mu family may not necessarily know this secret. Although father-in-law didn’t know about it, he was diligent and hardworking, keeping Yue Prefecture dock tightly controlled, making it increasingly difficult to transport black raw stones out, which made Western State very anxious.”

Then came Qin Yongzhou’s death four years ago.

“After father-in-law’s death, Western State should have made major moves, but the old emperor fell ill. This dragged on for three years before he died. During these three years, their internal strife was severe due to competing for the throne. If not for this, Great Zhou probably couldn’t have enjoyed such peace these years—the border cities would have become gates of hell long ago. But now, although their new emperor is young, since he could ascend to the throne, he’s not someone easy to deal with. This year he’s already fifteen, and will be sixteen after New Year. That he could seize the throne from among many brave and battle-hardened brothers, and suppress dissatisfied brothers while safely passing these two years—I can’t guarantee whether he’ll make new moves next year. So now we must first cut off their black raw stone source, making their firearms completely unsupported.”

Qin Shuying remembered something—the gun Old Madam Qin had given her also seemed capable of taking lives from two hundred steps away.

Although Liang Zhe had taken Qin Shuying and Ziteng to the suburban manor for practice, after Liang Zhe went there he had other matters to handle. He wasn’t present when Ziteng practiced, so he hadn’t seen that firearm.

Later, Ziteng used it to wound the Liang Yuan brothers, but Liang Zhe had been very busy these days and hadn’t had time to look at it.

Thinking of this, Qin Shuying had Ziteng come in, retrieve the firearm, and place it on the table.

Liang Zhe looked at it with a puzzled expression. “This thing is the weapon you mentioned that wounded Liang Yuan?”

“Yes. It’s a hundred times more powerful than the crossbow I told you about before, but it has a flaw—firing one bullet makes noise, louder than a crossbow, and can only fire three times consecutively. Ziteng, you tell him how far it can shoot.”