115: Chapter 115 A Conspiracy Unseen for a Century

What flowed out of the imperial palace was not silk, porcelain, or tea.

It was documents, gunpowder, and letters.

He wasn't sure where they flowed to yet, but the records of the receiving party should be on the other rolls of fabric.

He took the second roll of fabric, spread it out, and began searching again.

The content style of this roll was different from the first; it was closer to a record of correspondence. Some paragraphs seemed like transcriptions of original texts, while others seemed like paraphrases.

There were very few Chinese characters; most of it was in Latin. He entered it into a translation page and processed it paragraph by paragraph.

He found the information on the receiving party.

It wasn't one person, but an organization—or rather, a group of people. Their range of activity involved several ports in Southeast Asia, including Luzon, Batavia, and Malacca. Their activity spanned the entire Yongzheng era and even earlier, tracing back to the Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty.

Who were these people?

He entered these place names and dates back into the search engine and began investigating.

When the results came up, he scanned the screen, and his fingers slowly came to a halt.

The East India Company.

The Dutch East India Company, or perhaps Portuguese forces. In that era, those ports were their primary strongholds. From there, they could extend south and west across all of Southeast Asia and even further.

Hu Tian moved his gaze away from the screen and mentally reorganized the matter.

There was a group of people who, under the guise of missionaries, were active in Fujian Province. They contacted officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties, greased palms, and funneled various types of information from those periods through secret channels to those ports in Southeast Asia, where it ultimately fell into the hands of Western powers.

This wasn't ordinary smuggling.

If it were ordinary smuggling, Hao Yulin wouldn't have used words like "The world must know the gravity of the harm caused by foreign barbarians."

He realized the weight of these items.

This was an intelligence channel targeting the Qing Dynasty—or rather, a conduit for information resources flowing out from within the Qing court. This conduit spanned a considerable amount of time across the Ming and Qing dynasties, with an organized plan behind it and people playing key roles within it.

Those missionaries weren't all there to spread their faith.

At least some of them had deeper motives.

Hao Yulin discovered the existence of this channel, found these documents recording it, organized them into these rolls of fabric, and prepared to present them to Yongzheng.

And then he was assassinated.

The assassin was very likely a Westerner.

Someone within that channel had discovered that Hao Yulin held their secret and sent someone to silence him.

Hu Tian pressed both hands onto the desk, head lowered, tracing this thread from beginning to end in his mind.

For the first time, he felt that what was hidden within these rolls of fabric was even heavier than he had initially anticipated.

This wasn't an ordinary historical relic.

This was a complete record of an unexposed conspiracy that spanned nearly a hundred years across the Ming and Qing dynasties three centuries ago.

If the Yongzheng Emperor had found out about this back then, what would the consequences have been?

He wasn't sure, but he knew Hao Yulin's judgment was correct.

The gravity of the harm caused by foreign barbarians was no empty phrase.

Hu Tian slowly straightened up and looked at the rolls of fabric on the desk.

He understood now why people were murdered to keep these items quiet, why Hao Yulin died in office, and why the assassin was a Westerner.

Because if these rolls of fabric had reached the Yongzheng Emperor's hands, all those missionaries active in Fujian Province and those who had opened the channels and established the intelligence network would have been exposed.

They couldn't let the Emperor know.

So Hao Yulin had to die.

So these rolls of fabric had to disappear.

And that Copper Box and those rolls of fabric had slept in the hands of pirates, at the bottom of a shipwreck's hold, for nearly three hundred years—sleeping until today to reappear in this world.

The light from the desk lamp hit the surface of the Copper Box, its intricate patterns casting fine, dense shadows.

He sat there for a long time without moving.

He thought about many things.

He thought of Hao Yulin, a man who left only the words "governed Fujian Province well" and "died in office" in the history books. In the Fujian Province of the Yongzheng era, he had discovered this matter alone, organized it alone, judged it alone, and then tried to deliver it to the Emperor's hands.

He did not succeed.

He was stabbed to death in office, the Copper Box fell into the hands of pirates and sank to the bottom of the sea, and the Yongzheng Emperor never saw what was written on those rolls of fabric until the day he died.

History thus took a turn and continued on; the secret was buried at the bottom of the sea, known to no one.

And now, this secret was in his hands.

Hu Tian placed his hand on the Copper Box, his fingers gently tracing the patterns.

He knew the value of these items—not a monetary value, but a historical one.

This record, which Hao Yulin had traded his life for, served to prove a piece of history that had been buried for nearly three hundred years.

He still had some questions without answers.

That map—the one he had spent nearly two hours on just to piece together a rough outline—what exactly was it?

He took the fabric out of the Copper Box again and spread out the pieces that formed the outline of a map when put together.

He stared at the map for a long time.

Lines, annotations, and some symbols he hadn't clearly identified yet.

Then he noticed a detail, one he had previously overlooked.

In the bottom right corner of the map, there was a tiny annotation. The handwriting was very faint, almost blending into the color of the fabric; it was impossible to see without looking closely.

He turned up the desk lamp, brought that spot closer to the light, and leaned over to identify it carefully.

It was a place name.

He identified the characters, then stood up straight and ran the place name through his mind.

East of the Matsu Islands, the name of a certain reef. It was an old name from the Qing Dynasty; very few people knew it today.

Beside the place name, there was another line of even smaller characters.

He leaned down again, slowly identifying them under the light.

After identifying them clearly, he stood there for a long time without moving.

Hu Tian moved his gaze away from that line of text, slowly raised his head, and looked at the wall in front of him.

He let out a breath.

After discovering these items, Hao Yulin had hidden them in a place he considered safe enough, then recorded the hiding location in the corner of this map in the tiniest handwriting.

And this map had been locked inside the Copper Box.

He had intended to have the Yongzheng Emperor send troops from the capital to retrieve it via a secret memorial.

But with the sinking of Zhu Bu's ship, it had sunk to the bottom of the sea at Donghu Island.

He lowered his head again, searching carefully along the map, and finally found a line of small characters in the corner.

Left there by Hao Yulin.

It wasn't just the coordinates of the hiding place, but also another half of a sentence.

He recited that half-sentence in his mind once, then again, and the more he thought about it, the more he felt a chill down his spine.

What Hao Yulin had written was: "This object is immense, hidden beneath the islands, awaiting the Imperial Presence."

Awaiting the Imperial Presence.

Hu Tian broke down these words and thought back; it wasn't the Yongzheng Emperor he was awaiting, but the Imperial Presence itself.

Hao Yulin knew this matter was too big. Relying solely on the records on a few rolls of fabric, the Emperor might not believe him—or rather, even if the Emperor believed him, without physical evidence, someone in the imperial court would suppress the matter.

So he had another plan.

The fabric in the Copper Box was the lead-in, intended to let the Emperor see the outline of the situation.

The real physical evidence was hidden elsewhere.

He sent out the Copper Box and wrote the hiding place in the corner of the map. His original plan was: once the Emperor saw the fabric and understood the sequence of events, he would personally go or send a high-ranking official to that reef to retrieve the physical evidence hidden underwater.

With both testimony and physical evidence, those dark hands that had been active along the Fujian Province coast for over a hundred years could be pulled out by the roots.

But the Copper Box sank.

Hao Yulin was assassinated.

The matter was cut short right there.

He thought of something else, something he had previously only kept in his head as historical knowledge and had never thought deeply about.

In the eighth year of Yongzheng, the imperial court launched its first large-scale military campaign to surround and suppress Zhu Bu, mobilizing dozens of naval vessels to close in from both Fujian Province and Guangdong.

But that time didn't go smoothly. Relying on his familiarity with the sea routes, Zhu Bu managed to slip away under the pincer attack of the two government armies.

In the autumn of the eighth year of Yongzheng, troops were used again, but the problem still couldn't be completely resolved.

During Yongzheng's thirteen-year reign, the suppression of the pirate Zhu Bu was brought up more than twice; it was raised almost every six months, with the scale growing larger and the attitude more urgent each time.

This wasn't normal.

Zhu Bu was considered a major pirate at the time, but not to the extent that the Yongzheng Emperor would be so concerned.

Hu Tian had read many historical materials about what kind of emperor Yongzheng was. He was an emperor who focused his energy on rectifying the bureaucracy, implementing the policy of Merging the Poll Tax into the Land Tax, and contending with the Eight Banners nobility. Most of his attention was on internal affairs; he wasn't someone who would spend excessive energy on a single pirate.

And yet, he repeatedly moved troops against Zhu Bu.

Hu Tian knew the reason now.

Perhaps at some point, through some channel, the Yongzheng Emperor learned what Hao Yulin had once discovered and knew that those items had fallen into Zhu Bu's hands. So his desire to suppress Zhu Bu wasn't purely for the sake of maritime stability, but to recover those items.

But Zhu Bu escaped, the ship sank, and until the day he died, the Yongzheng Emperor was unable to recover the Copper Box.

He told this to Emperor Qianlong.

Hu Tian picked up the teacup on the desk, found the water had long since gone cold, and set the cup back down.

Emperor Qianlong.

He began to trace this line in his mind.

After Emperor Qianlong ascended the throne, he did not continue large-scale suppressions of Zhu Bu like his father had. The name Zhu Bu gradually faded from the historical records of the Qianlong era, and military actions against him slowly ceased.

But Emperor Qianlong did something else.

He went on six Inspection Tours to the South.

When Hu Tian read history before, he had seen many theories regarding the reasons for Emperor Qianlong's tours to the South. Some said it was to emulate Emperor Kangxi and showcase a prosperous era; some said it was to observe the people's conditions and inspect river works; some said it was to appease the scholar-gentry of the South and win over hearts.

These theories all made sense, but when put together, it always felt like something was missing.

Now Hu Tian thought of another possibility.

The Yongzheng Emperor told Emperor Qianlong about that matter, but didn't tell him where the Copper Box was—or rather, Yongzheng himself didn't know where the Copper Box was. He only knew it had sunk with Zhu Bu's ship, but no one knew where it had sunk.

But Yongzheng must have told Emperor Qianlong Hao Yulin's name.

The routes Emperor Qianlong took on his tours to the South almost always passed through the coastal areas of Fujian Province and Guangdong. Although he didn't personally step onto those waters, his people certainly did.

He was searching.

He was searching for Zhu Bu's shipwreck, for the items Hao Yulin had left behind, and for that information buried beneath the reef's waters.

But Emperor Qianlong didn't find them either.

Otherwise, given Emperor Qianlong's personality, those people who had been active along the Chinese coast for centuries and established an intelligence network would have been cleared out long ago.

But in history, this never happened.