The morning of the thirteenth day of the seventh month.
In the Ministry of Personnel's Selection Bureau, documents piled up like mountains.
Wei Nisheng sat behind his desk, his Vermilion Brush falling again and again as one document followed another.
Unfortunately...
His eyes were on the paper, but his mind was elsewhere.
What Xu Bingwen had said last night had fallen like a stone into a cold pool. One might well say...
The ripples had long settled, yet the lingering swells remained.
Qi Zhao had enlisted Xu Bingwen's help, but Xu Bingwen had chosen another path.
This route was quicker, subtler, and safer.
One night's visit had bought him a favor.
That way, once Qi Zhao fell, Wei Nisheng would have little choice but to put in a few words for Xu Bingwen and let him fill the vacancy left by Vice Minister Qi Zhao.
And Wei Nisheng could first sell that favor on to Kou Yuan, while also pushing Zhang Zai into the Shaanxi Office of Clear Accounts.
With one slight shift of a piece, Qi Zhao became an isolated pawn.
Wei Sheng laid down his brush and tapped the desk, silently reciting an old maxim:
"Affairs succeed through secrecy; words bring ruin through disclosure.
Qi Zhao's defeat would lie not in his scheme, but in its disclosure!
To hand someone fire without knowing what he wished to burn was like holding the sword Tai'a backward and offering another man its hilt."
"Heh, but Xu Bingwen certainly dared to gamble.
With this disclosure of his, if I didn't pass the favor on, the fire would start with Qi and inevitably spread to Xu.
Having drawn fire onto himself, how could he alone escape?
If Qi Zhao fell, he could not wash his hands of it.
*Ah, the wise