Chapter 2028

A port city like Sanya, which mainly operates on international trade, has a large number of people from various countries coming in and out almost every day. In addition, Haihan’s current review of immigrants is relatively loose. Even if the relevant departments take measures to

Many anti-espionage measures have been implemented, but it is still impossible to completely prevent foreign intelligence agents and other people with ulterior motives from sneaking in. Among the cases solved by the Ministry of Security over the years, espionage and intelligence-related cases have always accounted for the highest proportion.

However, this case is different from the counter-espionage cases handled by the security department in the past. It is not controlled by a single force behind the scenes, but a joint operation by multiple parties. This was an extremely rare phenomenon in the past. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Security from Xue Zheng and others

According to the information obtained, the people they assembled in Sanya came from at least four to five different forces. At that time, Xue Zheng could only confirm the identities of these participants through their respective tokens. Among these people, except for him

Apart from several of his subordinates, the only person he knew before the operation, Lu Weng, had already been killed by him in Changhua because of a disagreement.

According to Xue Zheng, this Lu Weng's accent should be from the Central Plains area in the north of the Ming Dynasty, but he didn't know exactly who he was working for. The two had only exchanged some things in person before, and they had never had any deep friendship.

.And other people in the team are also very secretive about their origins. They will never take the initiative to mention their bosses, and they will not inquire about other people's backgrounds to avoid suspicion. Therefore, this leads to a lack of understanding and trust between them.

, most of the reasons for the internal strife that broke out at the last moment were due to this.

The Ministry of Security traced all the clues raised by Xue Zheng and others, but the harvest was very pitiful. Apparently after the plan was launched, the other party decisively cut off contact with Xue Zheng and others, leaving them to fend for themselves.

This also shows that the other party has anticipated the possibility of failure when planning and has taken effective preventive measures.

After Zhang Qianzhi returned to Sanya from Danzhou, he held meetings almost every day with Li Qingyang, who was in charge of counterintelligence work, to discuss the progress of the investigation and compile the latest information. However, except for the Spanish participant, they have been unable to

Confirm other forces involved in this case.

For such an investigation situation, not to mention the Executive Committee and He Xi, even Zhang Qianzhi himself found it unacceptable. There were obviously so many clues, but when they were sorted out in Sanya, they all came to an abrupt end and were cut off in advance.

The investigation gave the investigators a sense of oppression that they were holding in their chests.

Li Qingyang also did a lot of work for this, and even arrested two Jinyiwei spies who had been monitored by the Ministry of Security for a long time in order to find out whether Jinyiwei was related to the case. Originally, the Ministry of Security relied on these two spies.

They came to reversely monitor Jin Yiwei's movements, but the case was too involved. The Ministry of Security was worried that Jin Yiwei was also involved, so they secretly captured the person, but the result was a bit disappointing to them. Jin Yiwei had no idea about it, let alone

Participated in the attack on the crown prince of Joseon.

This is actually somewhat different from the Ministry of Security's previous predictions. They thought that even if the Jinyiwei were not directly involved, considering that the team that attacked the Joseon Crown Prince included people from the Ming Dynasty, the Jinyiwei should have at least received some rumors, but the actual situation was not

Not so.

"Jinyiwei is unusually slow this time. I remember that no matter what happened in the past, Jinyiwei would always have some news." After Zhang Qianzhi read the interrogation records brought by Li Qingyang, he couldn't help but feel a little bit concerned about this situation.

disappointment.

Li Qingyang smiled bitterly and said: "There is nothing we can do about it. The lives of Jinyiwei in Fuzhou and Guangzhou have been too comfortable in recent years, and many of them don't do much at all. Anyway, you can get money just by lying down, so why don't you say you still work hard?

Well?"

Zhang Qianzhi wanted to complain a few words, but when he thought that this situation was not caused by his own yamen, he coughed twice and did not answer Li Qingyang's words.

In recent years, as Haihan has become more and more powerful, its influence in the southern coastal areas of the Ming Dynasty has also grown. Although Jinyiwei is a special yamen that directly works for the Ming emperor, it has great difficulties in terms of funds, equipment, operation methods, organizational structure, etc.

None of them can compare with the more professional Haihan intelligence department. In addition, there are many "insiders" like Li Qingyang who switched camps from Jin Yiwei and joined them, making Jin Yiwei's operations in Haihan's ruling area even more difficult.

Although the Jinyiwei still insists on sending spies to Hainan Island, they basically do not take any more obvious hostile actions and just lurk to collect intelligence. The Ministry of Security is not as full of troops as it was in the past few years. As long as it is a foreign agent,

All the spies who come will be arrested first, and some small fish and shrimps will be deliberately let in as long-term monitoring objects to understand the other party's movements.

But in this way, Jinyiwei's practice of sending spies to Haihan gradually became a mere formality, just to submit regular reports to the court and complete errands. When its task of monitoring Haihan's official movements began to become perfunctory,

Not to mention paying attention to other forces in Haihan. After Li Qingyang brought the two Jinyiwei spies back to the Ministry of Security for interrogation, they did not even know that there was an attack on the Joseon Crown Prince, let alone what happened in Sanya recently.

Underground forces are plotting this.

Li Qingyang continued: "However, Jin Yiwei did not know about it, which is not entirely bad news for us. At least it shows that the Ming Dynasty officials were not directly involved, and the situation we were most worried about did not happen."

Zhang Qianzhi nodded with deep understanding and said: "That's true. If I had to choose, I would rather let Jin Yiwei know nothing about it... Sigh, this is really a contradictory thing!"

Compared with the Spaniards' secret mischief, Haihan was actually more worried that the Ming Dynasty had a hand in it. Haihan had had unclear interests disputes with the Ming Dynasty since the beginning of the incident, and the territorial issue was undoubtedly the most unreasonable one.

It is a solution. Even if the two countries have formally established diplomatic relations and have expressed their attitude of peaceful coexistence in the future, it is still impossible to resolve the differences between the two countries on territorial issues.

And now Haihan has brought Ming's traditional vassal state North Korea to his side. This is also a situation that is difficult for Ming to accept. North Korea gave up the protection of Ming and took refuge with Haihan. The reason is obvious, and it is to rely on the military provided by Haihan.

To help resist the invasion of foreign enemies, and if Ming wants to change this situation and save North Korea, it must prove that it is stronger than Haihan. If Ming tries to weaken Haihan's strength through some secret methods, then Haihan will never do it.

Surprised by this.

But whether from the perspective of emotions or practical interests, Haihan was unwilling to pit his country against the Ming Dynasty, and this attitude spread from top to bottom, from the executive committee in charge of major political affairs to ordinary civilians, more or less.

There will be such a tendency. As senior officials of the intelligence system, Zhang Qianzhi and Li Qingyang naturally have a deeper understanding of this.

However, although Li Qingyang "jumped" from the Ming Dynasty's intelligence department, he had no psychological barriers to arresting his colleagues. He even used his record in this area to prove his determination to be loyal to Haihan. He did not learn from the two Jinyi guards.

After the spies found useful information, Li Qingyang was actually mostly disappointed, but because of his power, he would never show it in front of Zhang Qianzhi.

Haihan's investigation work has made some progress, but he still cannot follow the existing clues to find out the mastermind behind the scenes. Compared with the stagnation of the investigation work in Sanya, the situation in Jiangsu and Zhejiang is relatively clear.

Although Gong Shiqi and Ji Yuanqing's actions in Yangzhou were extremely risky, they also achieved considerable results. In addition to killing more than half of the local musketry team that had not yet fully formed combat effectiveness, they also successfully brought back human and physical evidence, proving that

They discovered the fact that Shanshan salt merchants in Yangzhou colluded with the Spaniards. However, as the investigation progressed, they also discovered that a very important piece of information was missing.

Who was the matchmaker between the Spaniards and the salt merchants from Shanxi and Shaanxi, so that they could establish a cooperative relationship across thousands of miles?

During their stay in Yangzhou, Gong Shiqi and Ji Yuanqing did not find any information about the middleman. The only thing that can be confirmed now is that Lu Kangtai from the Shanxi Salt Merchant Camp is the backstage boss of the Musketeers. He must be one of the insiders. But this time

The commotion created in Yangzhou was too great, and it would be unrealistic to send people to Yangzhou to arrest him in Zhoushan.

According to the subsequent news sent back from Yangzhou, the local area did not return to peace after the all-night fighting, but immediately fell into a new round of salt merchants' battles. The reason was also related to Haihan. This operation had a negative impact on Shan

The armed organizations under the command of the Shaanxi salt merchants caused heavy losses. In addition to the total loss of the musketeers, the elites of the Shanxi and Shaanxi salt merchants all suffered varying degrees of losses in the pursuit that night, especially those who were almost outnumbered.

Lu Kangtai was the most serious, turning into a polished commander almost overnight.

When their old enemy Anhui salt merchants saw this situation, they naturally would not continue to sit idly by and began to take various measures to take advantage of the decline of the Shanxi salt merchants and eradicate their remaining armed forces as much as possible.

power.

As a result, Yangzhou City and large areas of nearby villages and towns began to have frequent armed fights between salt merchants. In the fights within the city, the government could dispatch troops to suppress them. However, in places farther away from the city, it was too late to report to the officials, and the government also

I simply can't care about so many things.

After several small-scale armed fights, the conflict between the two sides quickly escalated, and they even began to gather a large number of men to cross the canal to attack the other party's private estate.

Lu Kangtai was so prosperous at the time, but now he is so miserable. The first manor that was attacked by Huizhou salt merchants was his home. Due to the lack of manpower to protect him, Lu Kangtai could only voluntarily abandon his manor and take his family with him.

After escaping into Yangzhou City, at least for the time being, I didn't dare to open fire and attack my family in the city.

Of course, the Shanshan and Shaanxi salt merchants knew very well who had plotted against them, but they did not have the strength to go to Ningbo to find the Haihan people to settle accounts. After all, they sent two boats and dozens of people over, and they did not even dispatch a large number of naval guns.

The warships and regular troops had already defeated the elites they had at hand. Even if they were not convinced, they could only swallow their anger and first deal with the Anhui salt merchants who were taking advantage of the troubled waters.

The Zhoushan authorities have no intention of further intervening in the chaos in Yangzhou. After all, these two groups of salt merchants are competitors of Haihan Salt Industry. Let them have a dog-eat-dog fight first to weaken each other, and then deal with them later.

It can also save a lot of effort.

At this time, the Spaniards in the South China Sea had just received the secret letter from Manila Chief Executive Qiu Yuan. They believed that overseas cooperation projects including Yangzhou had achieved great success, and were preparing to hand over more arms.

Give it to middlemen and let it be delivered to partners to help these partners further expand their armed forces.

However, the actual situation was completely different from the information the Spaniards received. The disadvantage of information transmission speed was fully exploited by Haihan in this specific environment, and once again defeated the Spanish, who were almost unaware of it, in the field of intelligence.

However, after the situation in Yangzhou was reported to Manila through the channels of the intelligence department, the local people immediately realized that they could not keep Jose and others in Cebu for too long, otherwise in the future, the news from the north would reach Cebu, and the Spaniards would definitely be aware of the letter.

There is something wrong with the information in the secret letter, which leads to suspicion of the true intention of Jose and others in coming to Cebu.

The only ones who did not achieve actual results during this period were probably the Marine Corps who performed reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines in Liaodong. However, by this time, the number of Marines landing near Jinshitan had increased several times, and a full company was stationed there.

In a temporary stronghold near the coast. The size of this stronghold has also been expanded several times in just over half a month, and it has now transformed from a temporary stronghold into a small-scale base.

The reason why additional manpower was assigned to this task was mainly because Sun Bing discovered a musketry team stationed in the Qing army camp nearby. Sun Bing had very limited troops at his disposal, and even if he had the chance, he would not dare to take action, for fear of triggering an attack.

Come to the siege of the Qing army's camp. This place is still several miles away from the coastline. If there is a fight, they will definitely not be able to outrun the Qing army's cavalry when they retreat on foot. Therefore, Sun Bing discovered that the Qing army's musketry team was still only performing surveillance missions. At the same time, he

The situation here was reported to the headquarters.

As soon as Wang Tom heard that he had found the target, he decisively chose to send more troops to this place. If a suitable opportunity arises, more troops will make it easier for the Marines to defeat the opponent.

After the increase in troops, the intensity of Sun Bing's surveillance mission was slightly reduced, and he no longer had to personally guard from dawn to dusk every day. However, the frequency of the enemy's musketry team training every two to three days made Sun Bing feel that they

I probably won't spend the whole winter here peacefully. I will definitely take action at some point, and that time may be my chance to take action.
Chapter completed!