Zuo Maodi was very happy to hear Dolgon accept his opinion, and he was one step closer to Ma Cheng's goal.

Zuo Maodi came out of Prince Rui's Mansion and looked at the sky, it was already dusk at this time, although it was the season of spring flowers in May, but there was no one on Nanchizi Street in front of Prince Rui's Mansion.

Seeing this, Zuo Maodi remembered that after the Manchu Qing Dynasty occupied Beijing, they immediately moved all the Han people in the inner city to the southern city, and the entire inner city became a Manchu settlement. In the past, Nanchizi Street was located in a downtown area, and people came and went very prosperously, but now it has become this ghost.

Zuo Maodi sighed, got into a sedan chair and went back to his home in Nancheng, although he was a Han minister close to Dolgon, but he did not have the right to live in the inner city.

Sitting on the sedan chair, Zuo Maodi recalled what happened just now, he already knew that the Manchu army was besieging Nanjing, but now he heard that Duoduo was in difficulty, probably Nanjing was still in the hands of his own people. When I think of Nanjing, I think of my hard-working daughter, I only have two sons and one daughter, and now that damn Ma Cheng snatched his daughter Zuo Shuying as a concubine in order to hold him hostage. Thinking of this, Zuo Maodi gritted his teeth angrily, but for the sake of the country's righteousness, he could only endure it.

Zuo Maodi returned home with a full stomach, and as soon as he sat down, his family came to report: "The shopkeeper of Sibaozhai in the south of the city is here, saying that they have newly entered a batch of good rice paper!" ”

Zuo Maodi heard that the shopkeeper of Sibaozhai was coming, and hurriedly told his family to invite him.

This Sibaozhai shopkeeper is not an outsider, he is the person in charge of the Military Intelligence Department in Beijing, and he is also Zuo Maodi's one-line contact.

Zuo Maodi waited for a while, and a fat businessman walked in, this businessman was not tall, but the width was equal in width and vertical, with a formulaic smile on his face, and when he saw Zuo Maodi, he hurriedly stepped forward to ask for peace: "Lord Zuo, the villain meets Lord Zuo!" ”

Zuo Maodi nodded and said, "I heard that you entered the batch of rice paper, how is the condition?" ”

"Please rest assured, this rice paper is from Ningguofu, you must know that the south is very chaotic, and the price of rice paper in Ningguofu is also rising, and this batch of rice paper can be wasted a lot of effort when it is transported to the northern capital!"

Zuo Maodi nodded and asked, "Okay, did you bring the paper pattern?" ”

The shopkeeper listened to Zuo Maodi say this, and quickly took out a few pieces of paper from his arms, the shopkeeper looked at the desk, confessed, and then picked up Zuo Maodi's brush on the desk, and said while writing on the paper pattern: "My lord, you look at the paper pattern, the words and ink rhyme are clear, the layers are clear, the backbone is reserved, the momentum is beautiful, thick but not muddy, light but not gray, its words and paintings, leaping on the paper, the spirit is flying, and the eyes are shining!" ”

In order to sell the paper, the shopkeeper praised the paper pattern hard, Zuo Maodi listened to the shopkeeper's nonsense, and looked at the paper pattern, although the shopkeeper blew it well, but this rice paper is really good.

"Okay, send a hundred dollars to this official at your price!"

The shopkeeper was overjoyed when he heard Zuo Maodi say this, and quickly agreed, and at the same time promised to deliver it tomorrow morning.

The shopkeeper was taken out by his family after finishing his business, and there was no one in the room, so he cleaned up a few paper patterns left by the shopkeeper, and then took out a book of Analects and flipped through it.

Zuo Maodi did not close the door, but opened the door of the study, and the family members in the house saw that the master was reading seriously, and from time to time he wrote two strokes on the paper.

Outsiders saw this and thought that Zuo Maodi was reading the Analects, but in fact, Zuo Maodi was receiving news from Nanjing.

Zuo Maodi is Ma Cheng's most important spy in the upper echelons of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, if there is nothing important, he will never take the initiative to contact, this news is very important, so he asked Qianhu, the head of the Beijing Department of Military Intelligence, to send it personally.

In addition to Ma Cheng in Nanjing and Zuo Maodi in Beijing, even the shopkeeper who delivered the letter did not know what the news was this time, only a string of numbers.

Just now, the shopkeeper had already written all the numbers on the paper pattern by selling rice paper, and outsiders thought it was scribbling, but they didn't know that this was important information.

This kind of primary password also needs a codebook, of course, it is the Analects in Zuo Maodi's hand, the password invented by Ma Cheng is a set of four numbers, the first number is the number of pages, the second is the number of lines, and the third and fourth are the number of words, this kind of number is basically impossible to decipher with different codebooks. 33 Listen to the book

Zuo Maodi's codebook is the Analects, of course, the codebooks of other spies are different, there are those who speak the text and interpret the characters, and there are hundreds of family names, anyway, the spy uses that codebook only Ma Cheng himself knows.

Zuo Maodi pretended to read a book and converted the password into words, the first line of text was very simple, only six words: "Go to the south and tour, the new emperor is established." ”

Zuo Mao was taken aback at first glance, he knew that the Manchu army was besieging Nanjing, but he didn't expect Emperor Zhu Yousong himself to run away. Thinking of this, Zuo Maodi was really a little disheartened, he was ruined for this emperor, but he didn't expect the emperor to run away first.

When he saw the words "new emperor", Zuo Maodi was full of helplessness, and the emperor ran away, and those bigwigs in the court set up another emperor, I don't know which clan it is.

He was not interested in which clan would be the emperor, so he then deciphered the following passage: "Shangshu Beiyu, do shaving hair." ”

These eight characters can be much more powerful than the previous six words, the Manchu Qing Dynasty implemented a shaving order after entering the customs, and after the Manchu Qing Dynasty occupied Beijing in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, it immediately implemented the shaving order in Shandong, Shanxi and other places, but to the surprise of the Manchu rulers, those landlords and literati in the north who were willing to be obedient to the people, did not have much opinion on changing the dynasty, but as soon as the shaving order was implemented, the situation in various places immediately changed abruptly.

Especially in Shandong, where the Confucian sage Confucius was here, as soon as the Manchu Qing policy of destroying the clothing of the Han people was announced, the provinces that had been annexed to northern Shandong immediately rebelled again. This is one of the reasons why Dolgon attached so much importance to Zuo Maodi, and only by gaining the approval of the upper class intellectuals in Shandong could the Manchu rule in Shandong be maintained.

Because of the high level of popular opposition, Dorgon had no choice but to revoke the shaving order a month later. Zuo Maodi is a native of Shandong, and he knows that if the shaving order is implemented again, there will be fires everywhere in the north. Zuo Maodi felt a chill in his heart when he saw Ma Cheng's order, he knew that Ma Cheng was trying to reduce the pressure on Nanjing, and wanted to lead the water to the north, and constantly reduce the pressure he was facing through uprisings in various places.

After Zuo Maodi finished cracking the code, he threw the paper pattern into a ball and threw it into the paper basket, Zuo Maodi did not burn those numbers, because he knew that there must be Manchu spies in his house, and if he burned these numbers, it would seem that he wanted to cover them. It's better to keep the numbers for Dolgon, who doesn't know the codebook anyway, so it doesn't hurt to read them.

Zuo Maodi stood up and told his family to clean up the study, and he changed into casual clothes and went out for a walk. Of course, Zuo Maodi is not idle and has nothing to do, he goes out to visit a person, a ghost who is willing to write for him.

Although Zuo Maodi was loyal to the Ming Dynasty, he didn't want to be recorded on the pillar of shame in history after his death. But Ma Cheng's order still needs to be completed, so he needs to find a substitute for the dead ghost to block the knife.

Although Beijing City has gone through the war at the end of the Ming Dynasty and the scourge caused by Li Zicheng's entry into the city, it still has a population of more than 500,000 people. Originally, most of these people lived in the inner city, and the southern city was only where the workshops and warehouses were located. But now it is different, all the good houses in the inner city are occupied by the Manchurians, and hundreds of thousands of people in the inner city have been driven to the southern city. There are not so many houses in the south city to house the people in the inner city, so at this time, most of the people are building a straw hut in the open space, which can be regarded as a temporary place to live.

Because of Dolgon's care, Zuo Maodi has a good mansion in Nancheng, which was originally the house of a big businessman, just outside the Xuanwu Gate in Nancheng. Zuo Maodi went out of his own house, did not take a sedan chair, and went to Guangning Gate alone.

Guangning Gate is the Guang'anmen Gate of Beijing in the later generations, and the housing prices around Guang'anmen in the later generations are very high, and it is a good location of the first class. However, this place in the Ming Dynasty was not a good place, and in the Ming Dynasty, there was Pujitang, which was the nursing home of the Ming Dynasty, which was the poorest area in Beijing.

Zuo Maodi came to the front of the house in Guangningmen Caiyuan Hutong, which is next to the Guangningmen city wall, built in front of the fire road, which is a typical illegal building. Although this house is not legal, it can be regarded as saving a lot of money by relying on the city wall to build one less wall.

Zuo Maodi came to the door and slapped the knocker, shouting, "This is the mansion of Long Fu?" ”

Zuo Maodi called twice, and one of the people inside replied, "Come on, come on!" Is that the one coming? ”

As the door of the courtyard opened, an old man in a gray shirt appeared at the door. Zuo Maodi looked at his hand and said, "Brother Longfu, I didn't expect Brother Tai to have such a Yaxing, and he actually farmed at home!" ”

The old man didn't expect Zuo Maodi to come, so he quickly wiped the soil on his hands, and also bowed back: "I didn't expect it to be Zhong and Brother Xian, please please!" After saying that, open the door and ask Zuo Maodi to go in.

This old man's name is Sun Zhiqi, his name is Longfu, a native of Zichuan, Shandong, and a Shu Jishi in the second year of the Apocalypse, which is regarded as Zuo Maodi's fellow countryman.

But as the saying goes, when a fellow sees a fellow countryman, he gets a shot in the back, although this Sun Zhiqi is also from Shandong, he doesn't have a good impression of Zuo Maodi, who was also born in Shandong. Sun Zhiqi and Zuo Maodi's officialdom careers are different, Sun Zhiqi immediately took refuge in the limelight Wei Zhongxian, who was in the limelight, and was included in the eunuch party rebellion case in the early years of Chongzhen, and was dismissed from his post for the people.

After the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs, Sun Zhiqi bowed his head and begged, took the lead in shaving his head and braided hair with his family and servants, and changed into a full costume, and waited for the arrival of the Manchu master in Shandong wholeheartedly. In order to win the hearts of the people, the Qing court accepted and made him the right attendant of the Ministry of Rites.

Zuo Maodi is now Zuo Shilang of the Ministry of Rites, and he is a colleague of Sun Zhiqi, but because these two people are different and do not conspire with each other, they do not have any deep friendship in daily life. Today, Sun Zhiqi was also very surprised to see Zuo Maodi coming, but he couldn't figure out why Zuo Maodi came, so he hurriedly welcomed Zuo Maodi into his home after being stunned for a moment.