minister on skirt

Chapter 56

Chang Ying followed the wood bearers back to the pier, and after putting it down, several people sat on the wood, wiping sweat, chatting.

Now that the sun has set and the lights on the boat have not all been turned on, Changying was sure that they were planning to steal her wood to embarrass her, and was planning to call Zhou Liang and the others over, when suddenly the sitting people stood up .

In the dim twilight, they looked around a few times, and then they probably found it safe, so they quickly lifted the wood to the slope.

Then I saw several people standing above pushing the wood down, and the wood weighing more than one hundred kilograms slid into the river one by one.

The plopping sound was lost in the surrounding chiseling, and did not attract any movement.

Chang Ying frowned and lay in ambush.

Is Su Xinrong planning to destroy the evidence?

She inhaled slightly and looked at the figures in the twilight. Before she could make any more movements, the calm water surface suddenly began to ripple again, and then several heads popped out. After saying hello to the people on the shore , and immediately swam away in a strange posture.

Why do you say it is strange?

Because the three or four people who popped out of their heads seemed to be carrying something on their shoulders and walking underwater, one shoulder was stiff and motionless, and they were in the form of two pairs.

And here just finished a round, and then a few people came up, followed the same pattern, and left three or four times.

Seeing this, Changying didn't understand anything. The wood that was thrown into the water by those people before was transferred to other places through the bottom of the water!

In order to trick her, did Su Xinrong dig a big hole?
Suspicious in her heart, she waited for the river to calm down and the people carrying wood on the pier to withdraw, and then walked through the dark place.

There are guard posts at intervals on the river bank, but there are obviously fewer people in the section downstream out of the shipyard, and this section is two or three miles away from the area just now.

At the corner leading to the Li Canal is a river bend, in which many civilian transport ships are moored.

She walked along the river for another half a mile, when she heard the sound of water coming from the front again. Under the rising moonlight, the river water shimmered, just like the people who carried heavy objects into the water before, and those people came out from between several boats again. nod.

Then a piece of wood as thick as a sea bowl surfaced, waiting for the people on the boat to catch up and drag it up, but it was the same batch of wood that was carried out from the pier earlier!
The voyage life of a ship is closely related to the timber, and the timber used for the tank boats is selected from all over the world, and each piece is very valuable.

Now these people are secretly smuggling ship materials, and they are so covert and skillful at digging the corners of water transportation? !

——No, what an important place is the pier?How could it be possible to allow others to sneak into the bottom of the water to steal wood?It must be caused by someone secretly cooperating.

Could it be that Su Xinrong...

Changying was a little suspicious, it wasn't that she looked down on Su Xinrong, but how courageous it was to accomplish such a thing?What kind of meticulous methods are needed?

Su Xinrong's qualifications are there, and she was not familiar with water transport before being transferred to the supervisory department. This is by no means something that can be handled in a short time.

Could it be that these people were the pits she bribed to dig for her?If it wasn't someone she bribed, why did she lure her away?

"who?!"

There was a sudden shout from the boat.

She memorized the ship's emblem, then slipped into the shadows and retreated back to the pier the way she had come.

Maybe she should go to Xu Lan...

When returning to the original place and going uphill, she suddenly bumped into a wall of flesh. She rubbed her forehead and took two steps back.

"...General Huo is here too?"

Changying's mind was still wandering on the boat, when she saw this man suddenly, she didn't react, she grinned out of desperation.

Huo Rong, Xu Lan and others had dinner with several people from the Water Transportation Department, and they knew that there would be shipping materials arriving tonight, so they planned to wait until the completion of the work before going back.

I went out for a stroll after dinner, and ran into this guy unexpectedly.He looked her up and down: "Where did General Shen come from?"

He didn't see her at the dinner table just now, if Xu Lan wasn't there, he would have thought that the two of them had started a separate affair.

Changying's thinking is much simpler, it's rare that the old man is willing to talk to her, how can he care about reminiscing about the past now?

Looking behind him with her head, she said, "I wonder if General Huo's guards can swim? Can you do me a favor?"

Tong Qi's face froze.

Huo Rong held his sword and did not move.After a while: "What's the matter?"

"An errand!" Changying walked up the stone steps at the same level as him, "Someone stole the wood from the wharf, and they are familiar with it, it looks like this is not the first time.

"I just spotted their boat. If you have water-based guards and I want you to ask them to help you dive there, there must be something tricky on the boat!"

Huo Rong frowned for a moment: "There are guards on both sides of the canal, you mean they have government officials?"

"If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it." Chang Ying frowned deeply. "Whether there is collusion is hard to say, but the matter of stealing wood is certain."

Huo Rong thought for a while, and motioned for her to lead the way.

Soon we went back to the previous river bend, the boat was still there, it looked messier than before, but it didn't change much.

"That's the boat with the eagle embroidered on the sail." Changying pointed to the river.

Huo Rong winked at Tong Qi, Tong Qi pursed her lips, took off her shirt and went into the water.

Chang Ying listened to the barely audible sound of the water disappearing, and said to Huo Rong, "I didn't know they could swim two or three miles while diving with such a heavy log on their backs."

Huo Rong looked at the boat calmly: "There are many trackers who can pull hundreds of catties along the wharf, and a piece of wood is nothing to them."

Chang Ying frowned again: "But I don't understand how much effort they took to steal a few pieces of wood..."

Huo Rong thought for a while, then looked towards the dark area not far downstream: "Materials used for official ships may be very rare in private docks."

Having said that, Changying understood.

There are both government-run and private-run docks along the river wharf. The government-run ships on the canal are naturally controlled by the government, while the private-run docks usually build ships for merchants.

Official ships are strictly controlled and the materials used are exquisite, which is incomparable to that of civilian ships.The materials for stealing official ships are sold to the dock for private use, and they can be sold for a good price no matter what.

Taking the materials used by the Jiutiao boat tonight as an example, if a few or a dozen pieces of material were missing, it would not be possible to find out without careful inspection, but the money sold by the government-private collusion directly fell into their pockets.

She originally wanted to catch Su Xinrong, but she didn't expect to tear out a hole.

"Master, there is no wood in the boat!"

While speaking, Tong Qi had already returned, and he wiped his face when he popped up by the river and said.

Changying paused: "I saw them dragged onto the boat with my own eyes."

Huo Rongding stood for a while, then suddenly began to remove his clothes.

Changying watched helplessly as he stripped down to his shirt, and said at a loss: "You, you also know how to swim?"

Huo Rong exercised his muscles and bones, and squinted at her: "It's a great honor to see that the eloquent General Shen also stutters one day."

(End of this chapter)