The Blade Without Equal
Read Chapter 7: — TWO LEDGERS
Su Shanhe was held in the county prison.
Tang attempted to free him by drugging the guards.
Lin stopped him at the cell door.
“If you break him out, he becomes guilty in everyone’s eyes.”
“You have a better idea?”
“Yes. Ask him where the records are.”
Shanhe had hidden a private ledger after discovering that someone had searched his house without stealing valuables.
He refused to reveal the hiding place to anyone except an imperial envoy.
Tang lifted the counterfeit badge again.
Lin almost admired the consistency.
The ledger was hidden beneath a bed in an inn.
To reach it without alerting men already following them, Lin arranged a disguise.
Tang ended up wearing women’s clothing and cosmetics.
He objected until Xiaoxi said, very seriously, “I think you can do it.”
Then he volunteered with heroic enthusiasm.
The disguise was terrible.
It worked anyway because nobody could believe what they were seeing long enough to stop him.
The ledger, however, was genuine.
It showed that imperial funds sent to maintain canal transport had increased while grain deliveries had declined.
The missing grain remained unexplained.
The next morning Li Sheng arrived with three thousand taels in silver notes, supposedly sent by Magistrate Zhou.
“Stop investigating,” he implied, “and Su Shanhe can go free after the river-god ceremony.”
Lin advised Tang to accept the money.
Tang stared at him.
“Since when are you corrupt?”
“Since five seconds ago. Smile.”
They later visited Zhou privately and tested him by asking for more.
Zhou reacted with genuine outrage.
The bribe had not come from him.
It had come from Li Sheng.
Xiaoxi asked the question that moved the whole case forward.
“If the grain was never really lost in the river, where did it go?”
Lin spread a canal map across the table.
An abandoned shipyard stood directly opposite the new river-god shrine.
The shrine distributed “blessed grain” to worshippers who donated silver.
At ten times market value.
The answer was on the map.