The Longest Day in Chang'an

Translator: DragonRider

The indoor layout of the Nestorian temple’s main hall was very different from Central Plain temple. There was a dome, a column in each of the four corners and a consecrated cross in the middle. On the cross was a statue of a suffering man wearing a thistle crown.

“The Nestorian God, Messiah, pitied mortals were suffering in sin, so he descended to this world to lead us to righteousness, but was killed by a Great Qin official. His body was hung on a cross. Three days later, he came back to life, and it was truly a miracle.” Ethan casually talked about his Nestorian scriptures while walking, his voice echoing throughout the dome. 𝗳𝗿𝐞ℯ𝙬𝗲𝗯n𝗼νel.𝒄𝑜𝘮

Suspicious, Zhang Xiaojing said, “A mere official killed him. Why was the Nestorian God so weak?” The smile on Ethan’s face remained unchanged. “Please understand that everything is predestined. The Nestorian God had long ago known that he had to go through this misfortune, so he decided to sacrifice his own life to redeem the sins of the mortals, which was a deed done out of infinite compassion and mercy.”

On hearing this, Tanqi became interested and asked, “Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva (A Buddhist god) swore an oath that he would release all souls from the Underworld, that he wouldn’t ascend to the heaven to become a Buddha unless the Underworld was empty. Isn’t it a similar story?”

“I dare not speculate the doctrines of another religion.”

The three people chatted while they walked. They walked around the main hall to a side room in the corner l. It was narrow and the ceiling was low. A dark ed, wooden wall divided the room into two parts. There was a small window about the size of an inkstone in the wall, which was covered by a wooden board, and the two had no idea what it was meant for.

Ethan said, “This is the confessional. Believers who did something wrong or have evil intentions come here to confess and seek help from an eminent monk. This place is disconnected from both the heaven and the Underworld, and nobody can hear anything from outside, so believers can talk without any concerns over confidentiality.” After saying this, Ethan bowed deeply and said, “Since you came here to find this eminent monk, surely there is something you wish to confess?”

“Of course.”

Ethan made a ushering gesture, saying, “Please take a seat in the confessional. I’ll go and get him right now.”

The confessional was not large, about the same size as a carriage. The two walked in. Before they could appreciate the decorations inside, the door swung shut with a bang and the room instantly fell into darkness.

Zhang Xiaojing reached for the door, only to hear the lock clanking. Ethan had locked the door from outside.

Zhang Xiaojing pushed the door very hard for a couple times, creating loud bangs. At this moment, the small window in the wooden wall was quickly opened and a beam of light shone inside. Ethan’ voice was as mild and calm as always. “Why don’t you just start confessing your sins right now?”

Zhang Xiaojing snapped, “You evil monks! We’re devout believers. Why are you imprisoning us?”

A gemstone-like green pupil crossed the small window. There was heavy sarcasm in his tone. “You two hardly exchanged eye contacts, and you didn’t walk side by side either. As far as I can tell, you’re neither husband and wife, nor devout believers of any kind, probably just some evil impostors coming here to case the joint for your sinister plot. You can’t fool me with a small trick like this.”

After that he closed the small window and the whole confessional fell into total darkness.

Xu Bin was standing in front of the hall of the Jing’an Department watching the busy crowds, his mood fluctuating violently like horse riding in the Joy Plain.

At this moment, in front of the sand table, Li Bi was talking with a couple of curators in a low voice with no particular expression on his face. But the words he had said to Xu Bin at the foot of the wall were still vivid, “As long as the mole is still at large, Jing’an Department will never be safe. But there isn’t a third absolutely trustworthy person in the department, so you’ll have to investigate into this matter yourself.”

Xu Bin had never expected that there would be a mole in the Jing’an Department!

All personnel of the Jing’an Department had been transferred to this department from various other agencies, so their backgrounds were very complicated, but Supervisor He and Li Bi had read résumé of each and every one of them. Xu Bin didn’t believe that any of those savages from a prairie had managed to get through so many screening procedures and infiltrate into their department. If Prime Minister Li was the one behind this, that would be even more horrifying.

Speaking of suspects, Tanqi was the most suspicious one. She was a half-blood. Her mother was from the Gilgit so she had a tall nose and light amber pupils. Fortunately, Tanqi was born and raised in Li Bi’s family, so nobody would be stupid enough to suspect her.

But others might not be so lucky.

Tang Dynasty never discriminated on grounds of people’s blood, and there were a large number of officials, both military ones and civil ones, who were not natives of the Central Plains. There were also plenty of staff members of the Jing’an Department who were of Hu origin. The proportion of natives of the Central Plains to people of Hu origin in the Jing’an Department was about 5:1.

If news of the mole spread, all staff members of Hu origins would feel insecure, and the relaxed atmosphere would probably no longer exist. Now Xu Bin came to understand why Sicheng Li had chosen to tell him this at the foot of the wall.

He had no helpers and no one to consult with, and he couldn’t let this go public either, but he had to identify this mole as soon as possible, which was really a tough nut to crack for Xu Bin. Thinking about this, Xu Bin let out a vexed sigh, paced up and down in the hall with his hands behind his back, occasionally turning his head aside to observe everybody in the hall.

But his sight was not very good, so he would unwittingly move closer to the people he was looking at. In most cases, before he could get a clear view of that person, the latter would have already noticed him and, full of surprise, looked back at this curator who was acting weirdly. After walking aimlessly around the hall a couple of times, Xu Bin suddenly discovered that beside the hour copper in a corners stood a person. He narrowed his eyes trying to distinguish who that was, while unconsciously walking closer. Abruptly, he raised his head and their eyes met.

“Er...Er?”

Surprisingly, this person was Cui Qi!

This thick-skinned traitor of Jing’an Department actually came back?

Cui Qi appeared very embarrassed. Before Xu Bin could ask him anything, he produced his new waist-seal and said, “I have General Gan’s order to inspect the Jing’an Department.”

According to the previous agreement between Li Bi and Gan Shoucheng, the Praetorian Guards Department would no longer hunt Zhang Xiaojing, but he was not allowed to appear in the Jing’an Department. In order to make sure Li Bi kept his end of the agreement, the Praetorian Guards Department would naturally send someone here to supervise the Jing’an Department. But unexpectedly, the one General Gan Shoucheng sent here was Cui Qi. Obviously, he did this deliberately to disgust Li Bi. As for whether or not Cui Qi himself would be disgusted, Gan Shoucheng didn’t care at all.

After returning to the Jing’an Department, Cui Qi had been silently staying in the corner all day long. Anyway, as long as Zhang Xiaojing didn’t show up, nothing concerns him. It was not until this moment that Xu Bin discovered his presence.

Whether a former colleague or an acquaintance, Xu Bin was antipathetic to Cui Qi. He darted a cold look at the traitor, turned around and walked away without even a perfunctory bow.

The corner of Cui Qi’s lips twitched. ‘This guy is just an old low-ranking official. How dare he be so impertinent to a Deputy Xuanjie Officer?’ If this had happened in the past, he would have already swung his sheath at him and sent him flying, but now, he was an enemy of the whole Jing’an Department... When he got up this morning, he was full of high spirits, planning to do something big with his elder brother. How come things ended up like this?

“Elder brother, maybe you shouldn’t have transferred me here from Longshan.”

Watching the bright hall with numerous oil lamps ablaze, Cui Qi breathed a deep sigh and stepped back to hide himself in the dark again.

He chose this path himself, so he had to take the consequences of it. 𝘧𝑟𝘦𝒆w𝚎𝙗nov𝘦𝗹.𝐜o𝓶

Xu Bin neither knew nor cared about Cui Qi’s vexations. He was walking around the hall like a headless chicken, perplexed, not a clue how to identify the mole.

Memorizing numbers was an easy job for Xu Bin, but speculating about people’s thoughts was much harder. With hands behind his back, Xu Bin returned to his desk. Suddenly, he saw the small bamboo knife in front of him which was used for cutting paper.

An idea suddenly dawned on him. ‘If I keep checking these people one by one, wouldn’t it take me years to go through all of them? I’m so stupid. A handy tool makes a handy man. I should come up with a plan first.’ Xu Bin knelt down, returned to his seat and put his writing brush, inkstone, ink stick and paper in order one by one. This was Xu Bin’s habit when he needed to clear his thoughts.

As expected, when everything on his desk was classified and arranged in good order, Xu Bin had a clue. He rang the copper bell and had a servant immediately brought him a detailed map of the Jing’an Department. He picked up a thin piece of crystal and started studying the map.

The whole department was divided into three parts: the main hall, two wings and the rear hall. The main hall was the place where most staff members worked. The wings were where documents and files were stored. The rear hall was a prison. Behind the whole building, there was also a large garden, in which some separate houses and facilities were sparsely located, such as storage rooms, watchtowers, kitchens, latrines, wells, wooden shelves, canals, etc. On the edge was a circle of high wall on the top of which thorns were grown.

‘The whole Jing’an Department has only two exits –the front gate of the main hall leading to the Tenth Street in the neighborhood, and a corner gate facing east, which directly leads to Jingzhao Office beside the department. Oh, by the way, now there’s also a ladder leading to the thatch-roofed hut in Cibei Temple.’

Xu Bin’s deduction was very simple. No matter who this mole was, there was one issue he or she inevitably had to face: how to send the intelligence reports out. Judging from how quick the intelligence was divulged on previous occasions, this channel must be a very quick one. Of all gates marked on the map, only two gates were plausible.

And there was also the matter about sources of intelligence.

The Jing’an Department had specific regulations about which messages could be made public, which messages could only be known by curators, which messages could only be read by Sicheng Li and the Chief of Jing’an Department. For instance, Wolf Guards’ whereabouts was open to all staff members, but news about the abduction of Wang Yunxiu was only delivered to Li Bi at the beginning.

Neither of the two leaks in the Jing’an Department, one about Xifu and the other Changming Fang, involved highly confidential information, which suggested that this mole didn’t have access to intelligence of higher confidentiality levels.

Soon Xu Bin found out some basic facts about this mole: first, he had no trouble going from the front gate and the corner gate; second, he had access to messages about the latest movements of Jing’an Department, but only those of middle or low confidentiality level. By doing this, he screened out a large number of scribes, leaving only curators and office clerks.

Thinking about this, Xu Bin raised his head and flicked a glance in the direction of the corner. Cui Qi had been deliberately hiding in the dark so that nobody would notice him. The irony was that currently he was the only one in this hall who was surely not the mole.

‘Wait. Does Cui Qi by any chance know who the mole is? After all, there must have been a liaison helping him with his traitorous plan.’ But soon Xu Bin ruled out this possibility. The one who turned Cui Qi into a traitor must be someone who openly worked for Prime Minister Li, since only remarks of someone like this were convincing enough. The liaison was responsible for co-opting Cui Qi, and the mole was responsible for passing intelligence. These were two separate lines of work.

Besides, even if Cui Qi knew, under no circumstances would he tell the Jing’an Department.

It seemed that he had to find another way.

Xu Bin took another look at the detailed map and a brilliant idea suddenly struck him, but he still needed the right occasion to carry it out, so he had to wait patiently for the moment.