"Why?" Li Shuyi asked.
Bai Xiaowen smiled. "This letter follows a pattern. Look at the first character in the first column, the second character in the second column, and so on. You'll find four key characters."
Li Shuyi checked them one by one, her eyes widening.
"'Do not trust my surrender'?"
Bai Xiaowen nodded. "He used a humble word for 'I.' He's telling us that his surrender is false and we mustn't trust it."
"Is that really what it means? It looks like a coincidence to me. Why didn't Lu Xun hide the message at the start of each line? Why bury the characters like this and assume we'd find them?" Li Shuyi remained unconvinced.
"The Lu Clan must have been coerced," Bai Xiaowen said. "Lu Xun's letter would certainly have been checked by Zhou Yu. A message at the start of each line would have been too obvious to fool him."
After a pause, Bai Xiaowen continued, "Lu Xun doesn't actually care whether we decipher it. He's leaving himself a way out. If our army misses the message but eventually pacifies Jiangnan and accuses him of feigning surrender, he can produce this letter."
Bai Xiaowen imitated Lu Xun's tone.
"'My entire family was under the blade. I had no choice but to comply. Yet I warned Your Majesty of Zhou Yu's plot in code.'"
That way, the Lu Clan could at least escape punishment.
Li Shuyi nodded. "Lu Xun has a lot of tricks up his sleeve."
Bai Xiaowen smiled. "We shouldn't underestimate him. I'd say he's no less cunning than Zhou Yu."
"If we know the surrender is a trap, what should we do?" Qiao Rui asked.
"Zhou Yu is already moving to my rhythm," Bai Xiaowen said. "In my reply to the Lu Clan, I said we