Confucian and Taoist Cultivation Starting from the Equipment Slot

Chen Zheng is always meticulous in his work. Every item on this list is marked with a specific date and location, without a single ambiguous speculation.

"Let's talk about the goods first." Chen Zheng pointed to the top item on the list, "The batch of goods that our family lost was the last shipment brought back from Shengtian Prefecture before the long night."

The manifest listed cloth and medicinal herbs, but I found another manifest in the county government's customs archives. It showed the same batch of goods, cleared customs on the same day, but with one more item.

His finger moved to a circled line of text: "Qingshan raw jade, three boxes."

Chen Zhuo looked up at him.

Green Mountain raw jade is the material for making high-quality Green Mountain inkstones. The blue high-quality Green Mountain inkstone in his hand was made from the Green Mountain raw jade that Chen Tiansheng collected in his early years.

This item is not considered a contraband, but it is extremely valuable; three boxes of raw jade are equivalent to half a year's revenue for the Chen family.

If the extra items on the invoice are raw jade, then this batch of goods was not ordinary commercial goods from the beginning.

"Why are there two different shipping documents in the customs archives?" Chen Zhuo asked.

"This is the first point of suspicion," Chen Zheng said, pushing another transcribed document over.

"Both invoices are genuine and have the customs stamp, but one was declared upon entry and the other was added upon exit."

"I asked an old customs officer, and he said that this situation is rare. Usually, the cargo owner takes the initiative to request that the information be added."

For example, if there are fragile items in the goods, the declaration at customs is too general, and a detailed list is only provided when leaving customs to avoid damage and compensation.

Conversely, while cloth and medicinal herbs don't need to be added to the register, it's valuable items like raw jade that are at risk of being lost.

Chen Zhuo said, "So someone deliberately concealed the existence of the original jade when entering the pass, and only when they discovered the risk of losing it upon exiting the pass did they have no choice but to make a replacement record."

"Yes." Chen Zheng nodded. "The old clerk can't remember who filled in this order."

"But he said that the customs clerk on duty that day was a clerk named Duan Feng who now works in the county government."

"Duan Feng?" Chen Zhuo noted down the name.

"After the goods went missing, my father went to the Gongyuan Gang. Who injured the Gang's leader at that time?"

"That's the second thing I want to talk about." Chen Zheng pointed to the middle of the list, his finger landing on a name.

"Takijin, the leader of the Gongyuan Gang, a ninth-rank martial artist, recently claimed that he had gone mad from practicing martial arts."

But I found a doctor who treated his injury.

The doctor said his injury was not internal, but a fracture caused by a blunt force trauma, and that the person who injured him was extremely fast.

He was cornered and beaten up in an alley on his own turf, without even getting a good look at his attacker's face.

"To be able to cripple a Sequence Nine martial artist on the territory of the Gongyuan Gang and still escape unscathed..." Chen Zhu pondered, "There are no more than ten people like that in Qingshan County."

Takijin, after all, has been immersed in Sequence Nine for many years, so he still has considerable strength.

"And he was beaten on the third day after our goods were stolen."

After saying that, Chen Zheng added, "I checked the city gate records before and after my father's attack."

"In the last month before the Long Night, a total of seventeen caravans entered and left Qingshan County, six of which were heading towards Shengtian Prefecture."

Of these six caravans, one had its escort team changed at the last minute before departure.

It had originally hired people from the Qingshan Escort Agency, but canceled the job the day before departure and replaced them with a group of martial artists without escort agency affiliation.

The goods transported by this caravan have not yet been delivered to the recipient.

"Whose caravan is this?" Chen Zhuo blurted out upon hearing this information.

Chen Zhengeng's revelation indicated that this information was unusual, and Chen Zhuo shared the same opinion.

Chen Zheng turned to the last page of the list. "It's not recorded in the county annals, and the city gate records don't mention the owner's name either. This column is blacked out."

But the city gate guard in charge of registration remembered that he said blacking out that column was an order directly issued by the county government.

He paused, then continued.

"The fact that the owner of the caravan could directly alter the cargo owner's information on the city gate records indicates that the owner of the caravan was either a person from the county government or had connections with the county government."

The day before the caravan set off, someone saw the deputy leader of the Gongyuan Gang and a clerk from the county government dining at Chunfeng Restaurant.

Spring Breeze Pavilion.

Upon hearing this name, Chen Zhuo silently pondered in his mind.

Ding Xiuyuan, intelligence trading, the clues about the source stones point to the Gongyuan Gang, and the deputy leader of the Gongyuan Gang has a private meal with the county clerk, Duan Feng, the county clerk, and then added the goods manifest for that batch of goods.

Just as Chen Zhuo was pondering, Chen Zheng continued to reveal more information.

"There is another person, and that is our stepmother, Xie Yaoyin."

Chen Zhuo's brow twitched slightly, but he did not interrupt.

He had already sensed something was amiss; since his stepmother had arrived, he hadn't seen his father much.

"She did not show any suspicious behavior."

Before coming to Qingshan County, she lived in a small village outside the city for less than half a month. The villagers had a very good impression of her, saying that she had helped several families get free medical treatment.

After arriving in the county town, she never went out to socialize. Occasionally, she would go to the outer town market to buy some needles, thread, and fabric, and each time she was accompanied by a maid.

I have also checked her accounting records. She kept detailed records of every expense of the Chen family, and the income and expenditure were balanced with no shortages or income from unknown sources.

From any perspective, she was a competent housekeeper and mistress.

Chen Zheng paused for a moment, then said, "But there's one place I think you should know about."

"She's investigating the Chen family's assets. Not the accounts, but the old files from the past ten years or so."

Records of decisions made by the father when he first took over as head of the family, including copies of land deeds for several estates outside the city acquired by the grandfather, and correspondence between the Chen family and Shengtianfu Trading Company over the generations.

There are also records of our Chen family's goods being robbed several times. Not just this time, but going back, the Chen family would have a batch of goods robbed every few years.

Some were recovered, some were not.

Xie Yaoyin retrieved all these old files and looked them over. After reading each one, she put it back in its original place without taking it away or copying it.

She didn't even try to hide it; I only noticed it when I saw her signature in the library's borrowing register.

In other words, she was openly and honestly getting to know the family, and everything she did was within the bounds of propriety, leaving no room for criticism.

Chen Zhuo remained silent for a moment.

It's in accordance with the standards and there's nothing wrong with it. This statement sounds reasonable.

But sometimes the biggest problem is that there is no problem.

A widow from out of town married into the Chen family and first managed the household affairs in an orderly manner, which improved the treatment of the servants.

Then they went through all of the Chen family's old files from the past ten years, including records of the robbery of goods.

He didn't believe these things were isolated incidents; he was certain that his stepmother had some ulterior motive!

He looked at Chen Zheng and asked, "Brother, do you recognize the term 'Originium'?"

Chen Zheng paused for a moment, then slowly shook his head.

"Never heard of it. Is it related to goods?"