The Comprehension Test
Inside the Imperial Study of the Qianqing Palace, an unusual scene unfolded. Emperor Kangxi, Yinreng, Prince Fuquan, and his son Lingguang observed four commoners. These four men, dressed in coarse cloth, were neither officials nor palace servants.
On the floor, Lingguang had unrolled a complex mechanical blueprint. Step by step, he detailed the structural components of the silage processing machine to the four men. Yinreng watched in silence, quickly deducing the purpose of this exercise.
After Lingguang finished his lecture, Kangxi looked at the commoners. "Did you understand?"
"We are utterly slow-witted, Your Majesty!" the four men panicked, falling to their knees. They had comprehended nothing.
Rather than showing anger, Kangxi smiled in relief. He ordered his head eunuch, Liang Jiugong, to escort them out with a generous reward. The men left bewildered, having been paid for their own ignorance.
Yinreng stepped forward. "Imperial Father, I presume this wasn't the first batch of test subjects?"
"The third," Lingguang sighed in frustration. "Out of all of them, only two Ministry of Works officials grasped about thirty percent of the mechanics."
Internal Monologue (Yinreng): The Emperor is running a controlled stress-test on our technology's security. He wants to export the machines to the Mongolian steppes to save on our own transportation costs, but fears the Zunghar and Khoshut tribes will reverse-engineer the technology and break our monopoly.
"The transportation costs to the grasslands make exporting the finished feed a logistical nightmare," Kangxi admitted. "But if we give them the machines, we lose our leverage. My concern is whether their craftsmen can dismantle and replicate our equipment."
Yinreng approached the Emperor's desk. "Imperial Father, reverse-engineering requires an understanding of core principles. To safeguard our monopoly, we do not need to hide the machine; we simply need to weaponize its complexity."
Yinreng drew two dots on a piece of paper, labeling them A and B. He connected them with a straight line, and then drew a second, highly convoluted path resembling a tangled maze connecting the same dots.
"There are two ways to get from point A to point B," Yinreng explained, covering the straight line with his hand. "If the enemy never sees the straight line, they will assume the maze is the only valid path. We must deliberately modify the machines we sell them. By adding superfluous gears, redundant circuits, and useless mechanical bottlenecks, we artificially inflate the difficulty of replication."
Kangxi's eyes narrowed in realization. "How long would this obfuscation delay them?"
"Even with their best engineers, dissecting a deliberately misleading schematic will cost them at least two to three years," Yinreng stated. "And two to three years is more than enough time for our Qing military to build an insurmountable stockpile of provisions."
Yinreng continued, outlining a multi-tiered monopoly. "Furthermore, the machinery is useless without the biological component. The silage requires a specific chemical fermentation agent to prevent rotting. The formula for this catalyst is known only to Lingguang and myself. We control the cement for their silos, the machines for their harvest, and the catalyst for their fermentation. We dictate the supply chain."
At this, Lingguang slapped his forehead. "Wait! Uncle, is *that* why you asked me to redesign the machines to look more complicated without affecting their function?"
The room fell silent. Kangxi and Fuquan stared at Lingguang.
Lingguang rummaged through his satchel and produced a modified, highly convoluted blueprint. "When the Mongolian envoys arrived, the Crown Prince told me the court might need to export the machines. He ordered me to add dummy components to the design to confuse anyone trying to dismantle it."
Fuquan groaned. "Why didn't you show us this immediately? Why let the Emperor run these tedious comprehension tests?"
"You didn't tell me why I was teaching them!" Lingguang protested innocently. "I thought it was just a standard tutoring assignment!"
Internal Monologue (Yinreng): Lingguang's mechanical genius is unparalleled, but his contextual awareness remains catastrophically low. He requires explicit operational parameters.
Kangxi sighed, massaged his temples, and ordered Fuquan to oversee the manufacturing of Lingguang's decoy machines.
.....
The Information Trap
Once the others departed, Yinreng presented Kangxi with a red-sealed letter from Tang Nineteen, the covert operative managing Yinreng's commercial and agricultural assets.
"Wenchun, the Zunghar envoy, has located Tang Nineteen and is attempting to bribe him for the silage manufacturing secrets," Yinreng reported.
"Shall we have Tang feign compliance?" Kangxi asked.
"No, Imperial Father. He should genuinely comply," Yinreng smiled sharply. "He will sell them exactly what they ask for, but strictly fragment the intelligence. If Wenchun pays for silo construction blueprints, Tang will provide them—but omit the geographical and humidity requirements for a viable site. If Wenchun pays for the feed processing steps, Tang will explain the harvesting and packing—but completely omit the existence of the chemical fermentation agent. Without the catalyst, their feed will rot, and their investment will be void."
Kangxi laughed heartily. "You are bleeding the Zunghars dry while selling them poison. Wenchun will despise you."
"He already hates us for holding the monopoly," Yinreng replied rationally. "I prefer he hates us while our treasury holds his gold."
With Kangxi's authorization, Yinreng quickly drafted orders for Tang Nineteen. The pricing structure was to be extortionate and compartmentalized, maximizing the financial drain on the Zunghar envoy.
...
The Unwanted Cargo
Following the Emperor's birthday festivities, Kangxi executed his diplomatic strategy. Through calculated negotiations, he granted commercial privileges and technological support to loyalist tribes like the Korchin, while systematically isolating the Zunghar and Khoshut factions.
Before departing the capital, Prince Bandi of the Korchin hosted a farewell banquet for Yinreng, fully aware that the Crown Prince had influenced Kangxi's favorable terms. Heavily intoxicated, Bandi attempted to cement their alliance through blood.
"Your Highness," Bandi slurred, "You are eleven. Soon you will need a consort. I have three daughters. You can take your pick, or take them all as concubines."
Internal Monologue (Yinreng): A standard feudal political transaction. However, accepting a foreign aristocrat into the inner palace at my age brings zero strategic value and immense political scrutiny.
"You are drunk, Prince Bandi," Yinreng said flatly, signaling Bandi's attendants to carry the man back to his quarters.
Yinreng exited the tavern and approached his private carriage. The vehicle lacked royal insignia to avoid drawing attention, but internally, it was an engineering marvel, equipped with advanced shock absorbers and spacious hidden storage compartments beneath the seats.
As he stepped inside, Yinreng immediately detected an anomaly. The air carried a faint scent of foreign cosmetics.
Moving silently, Yinreng suddenly flipped the seat compartment open. Crouched inside, trembling in terror, was Tajiguli—the beautiful Uyghur girl Wenchun had previously attempted to gift to Yinreng as a honey trap.
Before either could speak, shouts erupted outside. Yinreng dropped the seat cover and lifted the window curtain. Wenchun and a squad of Zunghar guards were aggressively scanning the street.
"Your Highness! Please save me!" Tajiguli's muffled, desperate plea came from the compartment.
Yinreng's expression remained entirely neutral. He stepped out of the carriage, placing himself in Wenchun's line of sight.
"Envoy Wenchun," Yinreng called out cheerfully. "Have you lost something? If an item has been misplaced, I can deploy the capital guards to assist your search."
Caught off guard, Wenchun immediately masked his panic. "A misunderstanding, Your Highness. My men are merely admiring the capital's architecture."
"Excellent. We wouldn't want our guests losing their property," Yinreng smiled politely, gesturing for Wenchun's men to move along.
Once the Zunghar envoy disappeared down the street, Yinreng re-entered the carriage and ordered the driver to depart. "Come out," he commanded coldly.
Tajiguli scrambled out of the compartment, collapsing onto the floorboards to kowtow. "Thank you, Your Highness. I will never forget your mercy."
"Your Mandarin is flawless, lacking any regional accent," Yinreng noted analytically. "Wenchun invested heavily in your training to make you an effective spy."
"I was not trained by Wenchun," Tajiguli replied, her voice trembling but clear. "My father was a Han scholar from the Central Plains. He failed the imperial examinations and traveled north as a merchant to make money, but was betrayed and sold into slavery in Xinjiang."
She detailed a concise, brutal history: Her father was purchased by her mother, a powerful woman of mixed Han-Uyghur descent. They married, and her father taught Tajiguli the language, culture, and texts of the Central Plains. Two years ago, a rival faction slaughtered her parents and seized their assets. Because of her exceptional beauty, Tajiguli was kept alive as high-value currency, traded among warlords until she was presented to the Zunghar leader, Galdan, who ultimately used her as a diplomatic bribe for the Qing Crown Prince.
Internal Monologue (Yinreng): A logical progression of events. Borderland human trafficking driven by economic desperation and tribal warfare. She is not a trained operative; she is a displaced survivor of systemic violence.
"If your father was Han, why did he never return to the Central Plains once he married your mother?" Yinreng asked, testing her logic.
"My mother refused," Tajiguli answered. "In Xinjiang, she had power, wealth, and status. In the Central Plains, she would be a foreigner, rejected by my father's extended family. She kept him there, so he poured all his homesickness into teaching me."
"So you refuse to return to the Zunghars," Yinreng concluded.
"I have no family there. If I return, I am merely livestock to be traded or a concubine to be used," Tajiguli said, her fists clenched. "My father told me to see his homeland. I want to try living here as a human being."
"You believe your beauty will not make you a target here as well?" Yinreng asked bluntly.
Tajiguli paled, understanding the harsh reality of her vulnerability. "I know the risks. But I must try."
Yinreng evaluated the situation. Bringing an undocumented foreign fugitive—specifically one associated with a hostile envoy—into the heavily guarded Imperial Palace was a severe security breach. However, her fluency, cultural knowledge, and hatred for the Zunghars made her a potential asset.
"Understood," Yinreng said. He knocked on the carriage wall. "Change of destination. Do not return to the Palace. Head to Prince Yu's Mansion."
Tajiguli sat frozen, entirely uncertain of what her fate would be in the hands of this calculating eleven-year-old prince.