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The operation to smuggle in weapons designer Tong Lin is not going well. The Secret Pavilion is truly well-fortified—naturally, or it would be a joke of a spy academy in the first place—and a whole person is not an easy thing to disguise. The group of them end up discussing options for hours before eventually deciding to just try it.
Thus a fine morning meets Su Mucheng and Fang Rui casually ambling through the grounds toward their room, wheeling a large, covered vase.
It can only be their bad luck that Officer Jiang is there that day to witness it.
“That…jar…” he says slowly, walking over to leisurely inspect their ensemble. “What’s inside it?”
“Fermented vegetables,” Fang Rui replies cheerfully. “You can’t tell from the shape? It’s fairly distinctive, I thought.”
Jiang You sneers, not enamoured of the food. “So large? Who needs so much?”
“We’re having a party,” Fang Rui explains. “Qiao Yifan has always loved fermented vegetables, so we’re letting him get as much of them as he wants. Such a kind child, he wanted to make sure everyone else has enough too. How could we refuse?”
“There can’t be so many people who want that kind of food. With a size like that…” Jiang You looks the vase up and down caustically. “Just about big enough for a person, wouldn’t you say?”
Fang Rui gives the vase a considering look. “I don’t know, it’s a little small. Who’d want to sit in it, anyway? The smell would be incredible.”
Jiang You snorts disparagingly. “Open it.”
“You like the scent? I’m sure Qiao Yifan would be happy to share—”
Jiang You rips open the lid.
Fermented vegetables go flying.
“Maybe Qiao Yifan would not be happy to share,” Fang Rui amends. “He does value them. Quite attached.”
Jiang You glares at him before disbelievingly stuffing his hand into the vase and knocking away the top layer.
“Ha!” he crows as he immediately comes into contact with an upturned face. “I knew you couldn’t be trusted. Sneaking in this kind of… This…” He stares blankly into the vase.
Qiao Yifan blinks back up at him. “…Hello.”
“You. Why.” Jiang You seems incapable of getting his thoughts on this development into any clearer words.
“Wow, you really went that far,” Fang Rui comments with every sign of sincere admiration. “I’ll admit, when our master of disguise Yifan suggested testing the others this way, jumping out in the middle of a party and seeing who reacts appropriately, I didn’t think much would come of it. But you stuck your hand right inside with no rationale at all. That’s dedication.”
Jiang You seethes. “You still lied to an officer.”
“As a student in a spy academy intending to put forth a test to other students of a spy academy, I’m not sure what else you expected,” Fang Rui points out reasonably. “News here travels fast.”
“Is there a new situation we should know about?” Su Mucheng finally comes forward to ask. “A new protocol to follow, or is this…a personal hobby of yours?”
“You!” Jiang You roars impotently. “You and everyone you know! You’re—”
Su Mucheng smiles sweetly.
“…not worth my time,” he weakly concludes.
Su Mucheng’s smile is so understanding as to be immediately infuriating. Jiang You stalks off in high dudgeon.
Jiang You is from a group antagonistic to whichever high-class person Su Mucheng is aligned with—whoever the Ye family is, Jiang You doesn’t quite dare personally get on their bad side. From the way Su Mucheng handles things, Fang Rui gets the impression the good Officer Jiang is more than a little wary of interacting with his own superiors, too.
“So we need another way,” Fang Rui informs the rest of the room afterward. Tong Lin is not a large man, but he’s definitely less convenient to transport than Qiao Yifan, who is patient and used to strange fieldwork.
Of course, they can always try again when Jiang You and his personal vendetta are less likely to be around, but Fang Rui isn’t very willing to chance it.
“Cause a distraction?” Qiao Yifan offers. “We can get a few people out of the way beforehand.”
Mo Fan looks up.
“No killing,” Fang Rui reminds. “It causes more problems than it solves.”
Mo Fan looks down again.
“Technically, if we calculate the time at the entrances correctly…” Luo Ji muses.
“I can carry him over the walls fast enough,” Tang Rou suggests too readily.
Fang Rui stares off into the distance. Why are they all like this?
No, that’s unfair. Su Mucheng knows what she’s doing.
Fang Rui takes a deep breath. “You definitely cannot go over the wall without being seen. Especially not while carrying another person. So we will not be trying that.”
“We can fight off anyone who sees,” Tang Rou continues, getting even more interested as she thinks the difficulties through.
Mo Fan pulls his blade out a little.
“No killing,” Fang Rui repeats, exasperated. Somehow he didn’t anticipate joining this room would involve so much exhortation for peaceful solutions. Does Mo Fan even understand what a spy organization is?
Actually, Fang Rui gets the feeling Mo Fan isn’t here willingly, which is a weird premise for a position that requires loyalty and cooperation, but it’s not like he talks about it. Or anything else, to be honest.
Fang Rui begins to sweat as he realizes the blade has not been sheathed again.
Su Mucheng laughs. “There’s a better way.”
Very, very reluctantly, the blade disappears.
Tang Rou is visibly disappointed until she registers the point under discussion. “Oh, the way you leave to see your…” She gets a mischievous look about her.
“He’s not my secret lover,” Su Mucheng says helplessly. “The girls just ask fewer questions when they think I’m meeting up with my fiancé.”
Tang Rou hides a laugh behind her hand. “You are meeting up with your fiancé.”
Su Mucheng’s glance is amused. “If I were of a high enough class to be his fiancée in truth, I wouldn’t need to trade on his name as a fiancé in the first place.”
While Fang Rui has to admit he’s pretty interested in this turn of events—Su Mucheng, their illustrious leader and top honeypot with skill enough to avoid ever following through, is functionally engaged?!—they’re getting more than a little off track. “There’s a way out?”
“And a way in,” Su Mucheng confirms with a slight sigh. “But it’s only for the girls, set in the hotspring baths. To bring in someone else…”
Right. “You could blindfold him?”
“I think that would be more suspicious?”
Luo Ji frowns. “But surely if the two of you are there he wouldn’t think of looking at anyone else?”
What a line! Fang Rui is impressed, even if he’s mostly sure Luo Ji isn’t doing it on purpose.
Of course, Luo Ji is all about data, so there’s every chance he’s serious. Has he observed so many people with eyes stuck to the girls instead of anything else they were all doing? Fang Rui looks over at the two as objectively as possible. He does remember being fairly impressed with their appearance bare seconds before Tang Rou invited him to a knockout fight instead.
It isn’t entirely implausible, either; his own team outside has Zhou Zekai as an excellent visual distraction. And if he isn’t their type, there’s always Miss Wu.
He hopes Old Wei is taking care of them now that Fang Rui can’t run cons anymore. He’s probably the one who sold Fang Rui out to the headmaster in the first place, but maybe that was a one-time thing. Crooks do find the government hard to say no to.
“I can corral him,” Tang Rou says with complete confidence. Fair enough, the bow maker doesn’t look particularly athletically capable.
Tang Rou’s noble background means blending into a crowd as a young miss on an outing takes practically no effort. Fang Rui, a con and a thief, doesn’t bother trying to walk the same roads as her. Qiao Yifan slips away to be distractingly sneaky where the guards will notice, since Mo Fan got a forbidding look about him when they suggested he pretend to fail at hiding from pursuit for a full half day.
To be fair, Mo Fan may not even know how to balance being sneaky with getting attention—his reputation as the ghostly Black Impermanence isn’t for nothing.
In the end, Mo Fan guards invisibly from the crowd as Tang Rou, the bowyer, and Fang Rui slip onto a set of rarely-used walkways in a garden. Fang Rui really must give Wu Yuce a little more appreciation the next time he sees him. There are so many things to remember about being a woman? Which doesn’t even get into doing the makeup well! Luckily Fang Rui is well-versed enough in distraction to already have the vernacular and the voice, but still.
In any case, ideally he’ll never have to say anything at all.
The baths are filled with far too much steam and far, far too many women for their plans. Tong Lin doesn’t know the first thing about moving like a woman, and the ladies of the Secret Pavilion are not stupid; there’s virtually no chance of their getting through without attracting attention.
Naturally, Fang Rui decides the solution can only be to attract even more attention.
Their group has just about reached an impassible knot of women when the missing belongings are discovered. Fang Rui ducks away in precisely the manner that will arouse most suspicion and leads the ladies on a chase through the surroundings.
Tang Ruo, one hand on Tong Lin’s arm as if strolling with a close friend to prevent any untoward action, continues forward with the kind of confident, unaffected nonchalance that parts seas around them. The two of them aren’t spared a second glance.
Fang Rui gives them as long as possible before finally darting out of the baths toward their home territory.
“I didn’t even get anything!” he wails as soon as he’s led them close enough for backup. “It was just for fun and skills testing anyway, you know how it is. None of you are missing anything, check!”
The girls murmur as they pat themselves down only to discover that they are indeed in possession of all of their articles. After a last suspicious look and a few threatening gestures, the group turns back to properly wash off all that worked-up sweat and incidentally catches the attention of room inspector Guo Yang, still lingering near their grounds. With the sort of divine timing only Su Mucheng and Luo Ji can calculate, he trails off after this group of scantily-clad ladies to “monitor their suspicious appearance” and completely forgets any progress made on the flirtation that took up the entire time he should’ve been inspecting the premises.
Tang Rou and Tong Lin are nowhere to be seen.
“You didn’t actually take anything?” Luo Ji finds this quite unlikely. These are the girls of the Secret Pavilion, after all. They don’t make such low-level mistakes.
“I reverse pickpocketed them while they were attacking me,” Fang Rui sighs. Dodging their blows while getting everything back in place wasn’t easy—indeed, these are the girls of the Secret Pavilion.
Luo Ji spends a moment calculating. “Improbable but possible. Impressive!”
Sometimes Fang Rui wonders if Luo Ji is aware that most people take being so blatantly fact-checked poorly. Luckily, Fang Rui is more proud that Luo Ji needs to explicitly work the odds when it comes to his skills in thievery and falsehoods than anything else. Luo Ji’s ability to predict or determine truth through calculation alone is a little terrifying.
As they all can be, when it matters. See: widely-pursued weapons developer now hiding safely inside a high-alert spy headquarters with none the wiser.
Just another successful day for the number one greatest spies of all time, no contest.