Over these past few months, Fan Dahei and Lin Haizheng had assisted Han Qian in instructing the household guard children. They not only witnessed firsthand how Han Qian’s instruction of the guard children encompassed everything, but were also compelled to learn and absorb alongside them.
As for the theory of providing instruction and assigning tasks according to individual temperament, Han Qian could be said to have practiced it directly on Fan Dahei, Lin Haizheng, and the others.
Fan Dahei had a simple and straightforward temperament and exceptional martial prowess. Whether it was initially running errands and delivering messages, purchasing supplies, arranging transportation, or more recently assigning and leading household guard children outside the capital region to train in distant provinces and counties and collect information about local customs and prices—he had made far more trips than Lin Haizheng.
Over these months, Fan Dahei had received no small amount of scolding and punishment from Han Qian, sometimes even being forced to recite military texts from memory. Meanwhile, Lin Haizheng, who initially appeared more clever and capable than other household guards, was mainly assigned the most tedious guard duties and executing disciplinary punishments for the guard children while by Han Qian’s side. But the most direct effect was that both men now possessed a composure and steady bearing they hadn’t had before.
So when they saw this roster that Han Qian had compiled, with its all-encompassing list of people, they weren’t particularly surprised.
This roster itself had been organized with Zhao Ting’er’s help. Initially, she hadn’t understood why Han Qian was registering and cataloging Taoist nuns, Buddhist nuns, fortune tellers, marriage brokers, matchmakers, shamans, procuresses, medicine women, midwives, and other women of disreputable professions.
Only now, when Han Qian said he would have her take charge independently, did Zhao Ting’er suddenly realize that if these “three aunts and six grannies” in the roster were used well, they could still serve a purpose.
The Third Prince and Marquis Xinchang’s mansion had given Han Qian a quota of two hundred people, so Han Qian could only select people according to this number.
Within three days, Han Qian selected seventeen able-bodied women who had previously engaged in professions like the “three aunts and six grannies.”
Han Qian arranged for Zhao Ting’er to search in the city to see if they could first acquire and operate a rouge shop. The first step would be to arrange all these women in the rouge shop for training, then look for opportunities to disperse them for placement elsewhere.
The restrictions on women in this era were still extremely severe. Jinling and the counties of the capital region already had women engaged in professions like the “three aunts and six grannies.” Even if practitioners could be found here, they couldn’t rashly insert themselves.
Women who could engage in professions like the “three aunts and six grannies” could be said to be the most primitive professional women. Almost all were eloquent, good at reading expressions and adapting to complex society—their abilities were actually very hard to fault. Even if they were all arranged in a rouge shop to make contact with female family members of various mansions, they would absolutely be competent.
Fortune tellers, itinerant physicians, street performers, porters, and various craftsmen who went door-to-door mending pots and repairing stoves—thirty-seven people were selected in total. These people could be directly dispersed and placed throughout the streets and alleys of Jinling, and could even disguise themselves as beggars to watch every corner of Jinling and the capital region’s counties.
Those who had served as apprentices in shops, could do accounting and bookkeeping, and had previously worked as assistants or traveling merchants—nineteen people were selected to be placed in Feng Yi’s newly opened warehouse, gradually establishing contact with the stewards from various mansion households who came to purchase quicklime powder.
This was merely the first step Han Qian wanted to take in this direction. If there were opportunities in the future and sufficient time, establishing warehouses in various provinces and counties to sell tea, iron, timber, grain, spices, copper, lacquer, tung oil, and other materials, as well as selling various products from the estate workshops through the warehouses—that was what Han Qian believed would be the Secret Bureau Left Division’s main avenue for raising large sums of money and provisions in the future.
Otherwise, relying solely on the Military Settlement Administration’s annual allocation of three to four million cash, it would be difficult for over two hundred people to eat a few more meat meals, let alone support their families.
These three categories totaled seventy-three people. Han Qian planned to establish a Scout Room under the Secret Bureau Left Division, headed by Fan Dahei and Zhao Ting’er, with Guo Nu’er and thirteen other household guard children dispersed among them to handle infiltration and reconnaissance matters.
Goldsmiths, silversmiths, coppersmiths, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, carpenters, masons, stonemasons—craftsmen of these eight trades totaled sixty-nine people. They would be incorporated into the estate workshops, and Han Qian also planned to establish a dedicated Artisan Room within the Secret Bureau Left Division.
Additionally, this time Han Qian also used the pretext of expanding employment at the estate workshops to ask Shen Yang and others to facilitate connections and hire personnel from the military settlement households.
Besides serving as the Secret Bureau Left Division’s overt cover, in Han Qian’s plan, the Artisan Room would also become, together with the warehouses, the Secret Bureau Left Division’s most core source of funds and provisions.
The Artisan Room itself needed more skilled craftsmen on one hand. After the initial chaos passed, Han Qian also planned to acquire land in Jinling, the capital region’s counties, and even in the strongholds controlled by the consort clan Xu family and Prince Xin—places like Chuzhou, Shouzhou, and Guangling—to establish warehouses, gold and silver shops, and other locations as intelligence gathering points. These craftsmen could then be put to even greater use.
The Scout Room would currently only be responsible for collecting basic intelligence. At most, when possible, they would maintain a certain degree of contact with target subjects through two channels. But more complex matters like coercion and enticement, infiltration and bribery—temporarily, none of this could be done.
Scout Room members largely lacked the corresponding abilities. Rash actions would only alert their targets. They wouldn’t even be told their true identities and missions in the early stages.
Even though routine infiltration and intelligence reconnaissance were extremely ordinary matters, qualified scouts or spies all needed specialized training to be competent.
After collecting basic intelligence, it needed to be compiled and analyzed. Han Qian planned to establish a Military Affairs Room within the Secret Bureau Left Division. Besides household guard children like Guo Nu’er and others, Han Qian also selected six literate people who knew calculations to specialize in this work. This included controlling personnel, paying monthly wages, and managing funds and provisions—all temporarily handled by the Military Affairs Room.
Fan Dahei was responsible for Scout Room and Artisan Room affairs, but the tasks under the Scout Room of managing the “three aunts and six grannies,” making contact with female family members of various mansions, and the Military Affairs Room—all of this was handled with Zhao Ting’er’s assistance.
Besides all this, even if the Secret Bureau Left Division didn’t engage in violent acts like assassinations, Han Qian couldn’t possibly not directly control an elite military force.
Among the over thirty thousand plague-stricken famine refugees, those who had previously belonged to other forces but were scattered and returned home during Emperor Tianyou’s conquest of the Jianghuai provinces, then later fled to Jinling to seek food due to warfare or famine—the number of such veteran soldiers was actually quite substantial, totaling nearly two thousand people.
After excluding those with severe illness, those who had originally been coerced into muddled enlistment by other forces and then muddled into desertion, the physically weak, those who had fled in battle or had cowardly characters—finally, two hundred twenty-seven people were recorded in Han Qian’s roster.
Of course, over the past four or five months, quite a few of these had been discovered by people Marquis Xinchang’s mansion sent to the Military Settlement Administration and assigned as squad leaders, settlement heads, and other low-level military positions. But in the end, fifty-eight people were still recruited by Han Qian.
Han Qian organized these fifty-eight people, six household guards, and eleven household guard children all into the Secret Bureau Left Division’s Military Room, commanded by Lin Haizheng and Zhao Wuji.
…
…
In three days at the estate, Han Qian only had enough time to select the two hundred people, conduct initial assignments according to Scout Room, Military Affairs Room, Artisan Room, and Military Room, compile the roster, then hurriedly rush to Yao Xishui’s courtyard at Wanhong Pavilion the day before the Third Prince Yang Yuanpu’s wedding to Marquis Xinchang Li Pu’s young daughter, to meet with Li Zhigao and the others and hand over a copy of the roster to Li Zhigao.
This was also a condition Han Qian had agreed to with Li Zhigao—honestly reporting the establishment of the Scout Room, Military Affairs Room, Artisan Room, and Military Room under the Secret Bureau Left Division.
With Wanhong Pavilion’s hidden strength beneath the surface, it would be extremely easy for them to thoroughly investigate his side. And Han Qian understood the nature of people like Chai Jian and Yao Xishui—they were already guarding against him, so how could they possibly not secretly probe his operations?
Han Qian called over Fan Dahei, Lin Haizheng, Zhao Ting’er, and Zhao Wuji to meet with Li Zhigao, Chai Jian, Li Chong, Yao Xishui, and Su Hongyu, saying: “The Secret Bureau Left Division has four rooms beneath it. I’m temporarily using these four to handle affairs. In the future, I’ll need everyone’s assistance with many matters—but if the Military Supervisor or Miss Yao have any suitable candidates, I hope you won’t hesitate to recommend them.”
Now that the Secret Bureau Left Division was about to start operations, if they still kept everything about Wanhong Pavilion completely hidden from them, wouldn’t Fan Dahei, Lin Haizheng, Zhao Ting’er, and Zhao Wuji be like blindly fumbling around at the bottom of a river when trying to accomplish anything?
Therefore, one condition Han Qian proposed to Li Zhigao and the others was that his trusted subordinates shouldn’t need to avoid meetings at the level involving him, Li Zhigao, Chai Jian, Yao Xishui, Su Hongyu, and Li Chong.
Of course, to Lin Haizheng and the others, he only claimed that Wanhong Pavilion was a stronghold secretly operated by Marquis Xinchang’s mansion and would serve as the Secret Bureau Right Division’s hidden base in the future.
In fact, Han Qian suspected that Marquis Xinchang’s mansion and Wanhong Pavilion were one entity, so saying this wouldn’t mislead Lin Haizheng and Fan Dahei.
“Would you really use the people we recommend?” Yao Xishui glanced at the exceptionally refined-looking maid beside Han Qian. She didn’t believe that with Han Qian having sole authority over the Secret Bureau Left Division with the Third Prince Yang Yuanpu’s support, he would let them infiltrate people.
“I’m thinking of opening a rouge shop in the city to use it as a means of contacting the female family members of noble and distinguished households in the city. But unfortunately, this maid in my household is naturally beautiful—without applying powder or rouge, her face already glows with luster. Naturally, she doesn’t understand rouge, lead powder, and such things. Wanhong Pavilion’s Chun Niang seems to have recently fallen out of General Kong’s favor. I was thinking that since Chun Niang hasn’t entered the Kong family’s registry, if she could help me manage the rouge shop, it should save a lot of trouble.” Han Qian spread his hands with a smile, seemingly oblivious to Yao Xishui’s sarcasm, directly asking them for someone to demonstrate his openness.
Yao Xishui was stunned and looked at Su Hongyu with some confusion.
Neither Yao Xishui nor Su Hongyu knew what ghostly experiences Han Qian had been through—how could they possibly guess what was in his mind?
Whether it was his personal temperament or planning for the future, Han Qian was unwilling to be completely controlled by Wanhong Pavilion. But he held a certain degree of initiative, and with his father about to take up a local post, the crisis he faced wasn’t that urgent. He still wanted to try to see if it was possible to truly help the Third Prince Yang Yuanpu defy fate and contend for the imperial throne.
Even if he suspected Wanhong Pavilion might be hiding deeper objectives, if he wanted to attempt this possibility, it would inevitably still require making a deal with the tiger.
Feng Yi and Kong Xirong were coerced by Li Chong and others because of the Chun Niang affair, but that didn’t mean Feng Yi and Kong Xirong would truly sit and await their doom.
Of course Feng Yi and Kong Xirong didn’t dare directly expose their involvement with Chun Niang themselves, but Kong Xirong’s father Kong Zhou distancing himself from Chun Niang was most likely because these two had worked some maneuvering behind the scenes.
Han Qian still hoped Zhao Ting’er could stay by his side more to help handle trivial affairs. As for the rouge shop, as a critical node he wanted to establish, at this time only a ruthless character carefully cultivated by Wanhong Pavilion could hold down the fort. This also demonstrated his openness and honesty toward Wanhong Pavilion and Marquis Xinchang’s mansion!