No one in the room could answer that.
Li Yuchun said, "What is the reason for an evil spirit to steal the tax silver?"
Prefect Chen thought for a moment. "Evil spirits and fiends never consult their conscience. They do as they please. Searching for a reason is merely asking for trouble."
The girl in the yellow skirt had a different view. "Human flesh tastes better, doesn't it... wait, let me finish these buns first."
She wolfed down the two pork buns, her own face puffing up into a little steamed bun itself. She swallowed with effort, took a sip of tea, and then continued the earlier topic, now ready to speak freely about human flesh:
"Evil spirits act without restraint. Silver may not be as tempting to them as a living human being. Even if they wanted the silver, theft or robbery would be safer than directly intercepting tax silver."
In the capital of Great Feng, hijacking tax silver in broad daylight carried far too great a risk.
Prefect Chen nodded. "That makes sense. It's not out of the question that someone orchestrated this."
Li Yuchun narrowed his eyes. "Then who would orchestrate having evil spirits steal the tax silver? What would be the reason? And why did it have to be this particular shipment, exactly one hundred and fifty thousand taels?"
"So we can think of it this way: the mastermind needs a huge sum of money, but can't afford to make too much noise... or more precisely, can't be seen to be amassing wealth without restraint." Prefect Chen's heart stirred.
"So they set their sights on the tax silver?" The girl in the yellow skirt pursed her lips, their color vivid.
"The route of the tax silver shipment was random, decided on the fly by the hundred-man commander Xu Pingzhi of the Imperial Blade Guard. Yet the spirit was able to lie in wait in the river ahead of time... There's very likely an inside man in the escort team." Li Yuchun glanced at Prefect Chen. "Go to Yunlu Academy and find a Confucian master to perform a heart inquiry?"
The girl in the yellow skirt shot him a sidelong glance. "Are you looking down on the Observatory's qi-reading technique? I already told you, every soldier escorting the silver was completely in the dark."
The line of thinking was blocked again. The three fell silent.
The air grew still.
Li Yuchun bowed his head to study the case files. Prefect Chen sighed and groaned. The girl in the yellow skirt fiddled with the feng shui compass at her waist, thinking that she had to leave the Jingzhao Prefecture before sunset and go to the palace to cadge a meal off the Elder Princess.
The imperial chefs' skills were the finest in the world.
Compared to the other two, this girl named Caiwei was more of an advisor, assisting with the case.
She held no official post, and though she was one of the officials in charge of the case, she didn't shoulder much responsibility.
Prefect Chen's eyes flickered, testing. "The case is progressing slowly, and time is pressing. It truly makes one burn with anxiety. Lord Li, what say we go and consult the Duke Wei?"
The middle-aged man shot him a sideways glance and snorted. "You civil officials have capital inspections, and we Night Watchers have ours too. To be honest with you, this is the assessment the Duke Wei has given me."
Prefect Chen smiled bitterly. "If this case can't be cracked, I'm afraid the seat beneath my backside won't be mine to keep. The whole court is watching us."
The two exchanged a silent look, the atmosphere heavy.
...
"If it really is the work of evil spirits, then I'm completely out of options!" Xu Qian's face went pale, feeling the sky's deep malice toward him.
This world had monsters and demons. The yao race had existed since ancient times, hunting and being hunted by humans in turn.
Deep in the southern borderlands, in the ranges of the Hundred Thousand Mountains, lay the Ten Thousand Yao Kingdom, the largest stronghold of the yao race.
Five hundred years ago, the kingdom of the West, led by the Buddhist sects, declared war on the Ten Thousand Yao Kingdom. They fought for a full sixty years, and at last crushed the yao kingdom.
History books called this campaign the "Six-Year Extermination of Yao."
From that time on, the yao's fortunes waned, and they gradually declined. The Buddhist faith, meanwhile, soared — Buddhism and Daoism flourished.
To put it in Xu Qian's modern terms, in that contest at the top of the food chain, humanity had won.
If the tax silver was done by yao, then he could only save himself and the Xu family by recovering the silver.
As a bronze stubborn piece at the peak of Essence Refining, Xu Qian felt he couldn't turn things around.
The autumn season brought cold, damp air, and Xu Qian was drenched in a cold sweat.
He was afraid.
Having merged with the original owner's memories, he knew that escape was impossible, and he knew even more keenly that in this society, where imperial power was supreme, human rights were too weak.
Life and death, reward and punishment, all lay in the whim of another.
He'd once fantasized about returning to the ancient world and showing off by copying poems, and he'd thought it would be wonderful. But reality had slapped him hard.
Even after transmigrating, he still had to take a beating from society.
"No, that's just a guess — just a guess from the Jingzhao Prefecture yamen. I can't let their guess influence me. I'll do it myself, analyze it myself... there's still a chance to fight, still a chance..."
His fierce will to survive calmed him down quickly, and his logic once again became rigorous and clear.
"Why would a yao spirit steal tax silver? Isn't human flesh tastier... even if they needed silver, they wouldn't need to go after tax silver... I've heard in books that yao women are all gorgeous and have perfect figures... I wonder if there are catgirls or doggirls..."
"Thwack!" Xu Qian slapped himself. "Start the reasoning over!"
The most important principle of reasoning was to subtract — to list clues one by one and sort them through.
Otherwise it was just a tangled ball of yarn, and the more he thought about it, the more tangled it would become.
The case of the missing tax silver had two most obvious clues:
One: the demonic wind!
Two: the explosion after the silver fell into the river!
Aside from martial artists, every cultivation system had the ability to stir up a demonic wind. So 'Clue One' could only serve as proof that a 'cultivator' was involved, and couldn't give a more detailed target.
That reduced the suspicion on the martial artist Second Uncle — though it didn't rule out the possibility of a conspiracy with another.
The explosion in Clue Two was an unreasonable detail. In battles between high-level cultivators, explosions were common. But in this case of the missing tax silver, there was no physical combat, so the appearance of an explosion was unreasonable.
"Unless the explosion was unavoidable!" Xu Qian murmured.
"Among the various cultivation systems, is there any discipline that needs an explosion to achieve its goal?"
Xu Qian thought for a moment and came up with nothing. Then he realized with a start that he'd made the same mistake as the Jingzhao Prefecture.
The Jingzhao Prefecture's approach had been flawed from the start. Based on the most obvious clue in the case, they'd decided the culprit was a yao spirit, and then they'd charged headlong down that road, never turning back.
That wasn't wrong — but the problem was that the judgment had been too hasty.
Xu Qian, though he'd merged with the memories, still took the modern man's thinking as his guide, leaning on his past life's experience. He preferred to comb through the case files, to chew over the details that were hard to notice, and only then come to a conclusion.
"This road is blocked for now. So let me change direction and break through from somewhere else. First, let me rule out the possibility of evil spirits, and assume this was a carefully planned, man-made incident."
"Then the culprit must have left a flaw in the case."
"Locard's Exchange Principle tells us that whenever a crime is committed, the perpetrator inevitably leaves direct or indirect traces at the scene..."
"There are two broad categories of traces, though I can't remember the specifics exactly — they should be things like handprints, footprints, tool marks, vehicle tracks, and so on."
"The flaw isn't in the two most obvious clues, but in all these various traces..."
Based on the description in the case files, Xu Qian reconstructed the process of his uncle escorting the tax silver in his mind.
Adrenaline was pumping wildly, and his brain cells were hyperactive. If information could be given a visible form, they'd be like koi in a pond, fighting madly for food, the water's surface churning.
Again and again he reconstructed the scene, again and again he examined it.
The various pieces of information and clues from the case files converged, and his brain was like a CPU running at full speed.
As the pieces of information were assembled, the case became clearer and clearer.
Without realizing it, Xu Qian felt himself entering a certain state. His soul drifted lightly upward, breaking through his mortal flesh, breaking through the building, and rising above the capital.
It was as if time had flowed backward. The eastern sky was faintly bright, the sun about to rise. Xu Pingzhi led a group of armored soldiers, escorting the tax silver toward the Ministry of Revenue.
At the fifth double-hour... they reached Guangnan Street, and suddenly a demonic wind came howling. The horses were startled and bolted into the river.
Boom!
The river surface exploded, and muddy waves churned to the sky.
That explosion also seemed to ring inside Xu Qian's heart. He kicked his legs out by reflex and snapped back to wakefulness.
Weariness showed in his eyes, but his face was full of excitement and ecstasy.
"I know it! I know it! Hahaha, I've solved the puzzle!"
Xu Qian cackled with laughter, pounding the bars. "Someone, someone come quickly!"
The jailer on duty was startled awake, grabbed a firebrand, and shouted, "What's all this noise? You asking for a longer life?"
He banged the bars to scare Xu Qian.
Xu Qian stepped back, letting go of the bars so his fingers wouldn't get crushed, and said in a low voice, "I want to see the Prefect."
"A prisoner, wanting to see the Prefect... why don't you take a look at yourself in a puddle first." The jailer laughed in spite of himself, and thrust the firebrand through the bars at Xu Qian.
Xu Qian retreated again to dodge it.
"You dare dodge?" The jailer touched the keys at his waist and grinned. "I'll break your legs today."
"I have crucial information about the case of the stolen tax silver. I want to see the Prefect. If you delay the case, you'll be the one responsible." Xu Qian stared at him.
The jailer's face stiffened.
...
The inner hall. The girl who'd finished her meat buns went back to chewing sugarcane. Now and then she'd fish a few candied fruits from her deerskin pouch and eat them with it.
On one side, clouds of gloom and misery; on the other, a carefree spirit.
"His Majesty ordered us to crack the case in five days — that's because if we drag it out too long, the silver will never be recovered." Prefect Chen paced back and forth in the hall. He couldn't sit still. "But time is so tight, and we're at our wits' end." Cracking a case took time.
The Prefect smacked his palm. "I'll go myself to beg the Duke Wei. Give me the case files."
Li Yuchun hesitated. "I'll go with you."
The girl in the yellow skirt glanced at him, beaming. "Now that's the way. With our great master strategist of the Great Feng making a move, you two won't need to be held accountable by His Majesty."
"But losing points in the Duke Wei's eyes — that's more serious than being held accountable by His Majesty." She laughed, showing two small, white fangs.
The middle-aged man's face darkened.
A yamen runner in a black uniform came in, head bowed, and said, bowing, "Prefect, the jailer reports that Xu Pingzhi's nephew, Xu Qian, has just said he has crucial information about the stolen tax silver case and wishes to see Your Honor."
The three of them all looked alert at the same time.
Xu Qian... if memory served, he was only a marginal figure, with no connection to the case. After the initial interrogation and questioning, he'd been confirmed as a person irrelevant to the case.
Prefect Chen thought for a moment. "Bring him here."
Shortly, Xu Qian, still in his prison uniform with streaks of dried blood on his body, was brought up by the yamen runners, the chains on his wrists and ankles clattering as he walked.
PS: As an eighteen-year-old, first-novel newcomer, I'm nervous.
That's all for today, just three chapters.