A place for Xiao Tang and his henchmen to live temporarily in Weishengjun Tonglu County, is a courtyard not far from the north gate of the county seat, originally this mansion was owned by a large family, but after the Hedong bandits, the owner here took the whole family to the clan relatives on Hebei West Road to avoid trouble, and only an old steward was left in the house to guard.

In order to make Xiao Tang live comfortably in the county seat, Gong Zhi County and Li County Lieutenant of Tongyu County asked the Chinese officials of the Tuo Ya to inform the steward of the mansion to clean up inside and outside, and then invited Xiao Tang, Xiao Jiasui, Hua Rong, Wang Jin and others to live in it. It's just that after Xiao Tang lived here temporarily, he politely declined Gong Zhixian's kindness to find some maids and servants for him to call, except for Qiong Ying's mother and daughter and Ye Qing and his wife, now this mansion is almost all known to Xiao Tang's henchmen who act in the official mansion and the green forest.

After all, Xiao Tang now needs to rely on flying pigeons to communicate with Baozhou, Liaodong, Qingzhou Ershan, several cottages on Jingnan Road, Xiaojiaji, Mizhou Banqiao Town, and even Liangzhejiang Road, Baiyun Mountain, Fujian Road, Wuyi Mountain, etc., which are currently being resettled. However, Xiao Tang's leaders who operated in various parts of the green forest also needed to set up pigeon houses in their local areas so that the pigeons that were trained and could recognize the nest could reach their destination accurately.

However, Xiao Tang did not have a base for himself to plan all kinds of matters in the green forest in the Hedong Territory at the moment, not to mention that he was now acting in the capacity of the government, and there were many people around, so there was no way to get in touch with his henchmen and brothers in other places some time ago. Shi Xiu came on this trip, not only to help Xiao Tang fight and kill, but also to carry a few carrier pigeons used to deliver letters to Bianliang in Tokyo, and now Yang Xu, Yan Qing and other brothers in Bianjing Xiao Mansion received a message with Xiao Tang's secret order and then conveyed it to various places, which was also more secure and secretive.

In ancient times, in order to transmit encrypted official documents or letters, methods such as word splitting and cryptic words would be used. According to legend, the earliest military intelligence encryption information transmission in Chinese history is the chief mastermind of King Wu's war, the founding father of the Xingzhou Dynasty for 800 years, Taigong Wang Jiang Ziya, he uses copper plates, bamboo plates to make face engraved patterns, and the two symbols are called Yin symbols, according to the length of the Yin symbols, representing the various military orders issued secretly and the various battlefield secrets transmitted. Then Jiang Ziya created the "Yin Book", all the plots were conveyed to the military generals outside with the Yin Book, the Yin Book usually sent three people to deliver letters, each letter only had a part of the secret order, and the person who sent the letter did not know the full content of the letter, so even if the enemy intercepted a letter, he could not see through his own conspiracy.

In the Song Dynasty, the Song army adopted the rule of secrecy of military communications as a word test, according to the record in the "General Essentials of the Martial Arts", a five-word poem with about four crosses, but a Chinese character must not be repeated as the decoding key, and the two sides of the exchange of sound and information compiled a code book of forty phrases in advance, each word in the poem corresponds to a phrase, the order of the phrases is temporarily randomized, and at the same time the numbers are marked on the ordinary official documents, and the party who receives the secret order can compare the numbers on the decoding key book and the official documents. Interpret information such as requests for support, enemy movements, and material needs.

Xiao Tang's plan in the green forest is very important, and he must not leak out, and he has also thought of using alum water to write a confidential letter that is dry and wet. However, whether it is this method or the flying pigeon to pass the book, although it was not popularized in the Song Dynasty, but there are also some people who are good at using this method, such as the Southern Song Dynasty Xu Mengxin's "Three Dynasties and Northern Alliances", it was recorded that when Jingkang's shame, Song Qinzong Zhao Huan learned that the silk was written in alum, and he saw it in the water, so the Jin army besieged Bianjing, and he took the alum book as an edict and issued an order to urgently summon all the generals to lead the army to rescue the driver.

In other words, even if Xiao Tang wrote the secret order with alum water and then passed it on by carrier pigeons, it was still possible to be intercepted, and there was a risk that all the plans would be exposed.

Xiao Tang also thought about trying to use the anti-cut code created by Qi Jiguang as a means of transmitting the secret order, but how to use the initials of the upper word and the finals of the lower word to cut out the pronunciation of another word, firstly, Xiao Tang did not remember it completely, and secondly, this method also involved the use of eight tones of local dialect pronunciations. At that time, after Xiao Tang pondered for a long time, a flash of inspiration suddenly flashed in his mind, and he couldn't help laughing out loud. Because Xiao Tang later realized that he obviously knew a very simple "ciphertext" that others could not guess the content, he was used to the life of the Song Dynasty, and for a while he did not think of the way that could play an absolutely secret effect when transmitting the voice.

And the method that Xiao Tang thought of was pinyin.

In ancient China, there was no pinyin alphabet, but the method of straight or reverse cutting was used to phonetize Chinese characters. Since the beginning of the phonetic cutting movement in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, later generations have successively tried to use the Latin alphabet and its variants, or the ancient languages and characters issued by the Beiyang government to indicate the pronunciation of Chinese characters (now commonly used in Taiwan, China). The Hanyu Pinyin commonly used in later generations was created by the "Pinyin Scheme Committee" established by the Chinese Character Reform Committee in 1955, and it was written in pinyin with alum water as the content of the secret letter.

Subsequently, Xiao Tang ordered Yan Qing, Shi Xiu, Shi Qian, Xiao Yi and others, as well as two or three fine henchmen selected from all over his command to identify pinyin, first with straight sound, it didn't take long to be familiar with the pinyin alphabet, although the official dialect of the Song Dynasty and later generations of Chinese have a lot of differences, but the use of pinyin can still roughly let the other party know the content of the "ciphertext". Therefore, now Xiao Tang is very relieved to communicate with various places with flying pigeons, and the transmission of carrier pigeons is only because the information is transmitted in this way accurately, flexibly and not limited by terrain, even if Xiao Tang writes "ni men tong tong dou shi da sha bi" in front of Cai Jing, Tong Guan, Gao Yu and other powerful traitors, who can guess what he wrote?

Here, Shi Xiu had already sent someone to write the ciphertext, and he picked a carrier pigeon with smooth feathers, bright color, gray and white body, only a carrier pigeon with a gray-black head and a gray tail tied a pinyin written in fly's head on its legs, and went out of the study, and was about to throw out the carrier pigeon to let it fly straight to Bianjing Xiaofu.

At this moment, Shi Xiu suddenly saw Hua Rong just walking into the mansion, and said, "Brother Hua Rong, where is Niu Heizi now?" The other generals of the army didn't come with you to visit your brother? ”

Hua Rong smiled slightly, and said: "Niu Heizi is now helping Wang Jin to select and train soldiers outside the county, Huyan Commander, Guan Dujian and others are now in the county government with Luo Xueyu, and the surviving members of the enemy family and her general manager are in the back house, surrounded by their own henchmen, San Lang is at ease." ”

Shi Xiu bowed his head and said: "That's good, after all, the big thing that my brother is planning is like a sea of blood." Although there is nothing wrong with the transmission of the letter in this ingenious ciphertext, it is not possible to teach others to see the clues if they are careful to sail the ship of ten thousand years. ”

After Shi Xiu finished speaking, he threw his arms into the sky again, and the carrier pigeon bound with the secret letter fluttered up in the air and flew straight to the south.

But when Shi Xiu and Hua Rong had spoken a few words, and were about to return to the hall to communicate to Xiao Tang, they suddenly heard a roar outside the wall, and a flying stone shot in the air, hitting the carrier pigeon that had just spread its wings and flyed.

"Grunt" a pigeon chirped, and the carrier pigeon immediately fell from mid-air after being hit by the flying stone, and the gray-white feathers were also sprinkled and swirled all over the sky.