My father ordered me to kill the emperor, but His Majesty bestowed a princess upon me instead.

The night wind outside Ci'en Temple was cold.

When I came down from the clock tower, my palms were sweaty.

The small copper key lay in his palm, the three characters "Thirty-Seven" on the key handle stained dark red with blood, making it look less like a key and more like a death warrant.

Yan Xiaoyi examined the short crossbow from all angles, his expression unusually serious.

"Army crossbow".

I asked, "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," he said. "I've seen this before."

"Where have I seen you before?"

Yan Xiaoyi looked up at me.

"Lord Shen, you're asking too many questions."

I nodded.

"Is there a rule in your line of work that you shut up when it gets to the crucial part?"

He thought about it.

"almost."

"Was it taught by Gu Xingzhi?"

"No." Yan Xiaoyi tossed me the crossbow. "You'll learn by yourself if you live long enough."

That makes a lot of sense.

I wrapped the short crossbow in the tattered horn of my grey robe.

The item wasn't large, but it was incredibly heavy.

False accounts for military crossbows, the imperial treasury, and the Ministry of Works.

The investigation into a river management case, as it unfolded, seemed to open a door before me. Behind that door lay not riverbanks, not stones, not a few corrupt officials from the Ministry of Works, but a much deeper ditch.

The ditch was full of tents.

They were all dead.

Yan Xiaoyi glanced at the sky.

"It's past midnight. Shall we head back?"

I looked down at the keys.

"Go to the south of the city."

Yan Xiaoyi seemed to have misheard.

"Now?"

"Now."

He frowned: "Lord Shen, don't you seem to value your life?"

"meeting."

"Then what do you call this?"

"Cherish the evidence."

Yan Xiaoyi stared at me for a while, and finally sighed.

"Now I understand a little why His Majesty said you were troublesome."

I also want to go back to the mansion.

Really.

I want to wash my face, drink some hot tea, lay out everything in my sleeves, think slowly, investigate slowly, and ideally take a nap. In my dream, I'll still be that ordinary, unlucky person who has just arrived in the capital and only needs to figure out how not to kill the emperor or be killed by my father.

But not now.

The moment the bell of Ci'en Temple rang, the situation for tonight was already exposed.

The gray-robed man was injured, and the crossbowman was defeated by Yan Xiaoyi. The inner guards will find their way here sooner or later. If there really is something in the old warehouse in the south of the city, the people clearing the accounts won't wait for me to wake up.

They are more diligent than I am.

They are always very diligent in killing people to cover up their crimes.

Just as they stepped out of the back alley of Ci'en Temple, A-Liu peeked out from behind an old locust tree.

I paused in my steps.

What are you doing here?

Ah Liu hunched his neck, still clutching the letter I had given him in his arms.

"I'm worried about you, young master."

"Didn't I tell you to go back to the manor?"

"Yes."

"Where are you now?"

Ah Liu carefully looked at his feet.

Ci'en Temple.

Yan Xiaoyi chuckled beside him.

Ah Liu immediately defended himself: "On the way back to the manor, I kept thinking that something was wrong. Every time the young master told me to go back first, something bad was bound to happen. I was thinking that if the young master really died, at least I would know where to collect his body."

I looked at him.

He added quietly, "And send the letter out as well."

The words were unpleasant to hear.

He's not a bad person at heart.

I didn't curse him.

"Keep up."

Ah Liu's eyes lit up, then dimmed again.

"Where to?"

"The old granary in the south of the city".

The color drained from his face instantly.

"Now?"

I didn't answer.

Ah Liu looked at me, then at Yan Xiaoyi, and finally sighed resignedly.

"Young master, I've discovered that there's one advantage to working for you."

"What?"

"Save lamp oil."

Why?

"You don't need to sleep day or night."

Yan Xiaoyi nodded in agreement.

That makes sense.

I suddenly realized that if Ah Liu and Yan Xiaoyi became close, sooner or later I would have two more people around me advising me to resign.

The old granary in the south of the capital was located near the old canal.

In its early years, Daliang used the Grand Canal to transport grain. Later, the canal was rerouted, and a number of old granaries were abandoned. Although they were officially abandoned, some of them were still listed in the official register and were occasionally borrowed by various government offices to temporarily store materials.

The more unusual the place, the better it is for hiding things.

Because it was half-dead.

Dead warehouses go unchecked, live warehouses have ledgers, but warehouses that are neither dead nor alive are the most troublesome; everyone can claim to have managed them, and everyone can claim not to have.

We had just turned into a narrow street in the south of the city when Yan Xiaoyi suddenly stopped.

I stopped too.

Ah Liu was a beat slow to react and almost bumped into my back.

"What's wrong?"

Yan Xiaoyi didn't speak, but only looked up at the street corner.

A broken lantern hung on the street corner, and a man carrying firewood stood under the lantern.

He carried firewood on his shoulders and had a very straight back.

It's him again.

As I looked at that person, my heart sank.

He is not a member of the Ministry of Works.

It doesn't seem like an inside guard either.

This person has a very familiar smell about him.

It wasn't the smell, it was the posture.

Many people who came from the Southwest Army stood like this. It looked casual, but their feet could move at any moment.

The woodcutter looked up.

The firelight shone on his face.

Xu Sandao.

Ah Liu gasped and immediately hid behind me.

Yan Xiaoyi glanced at me, then at Xu Sandao, raised an eyebrow slightly, but didn't say anything.

Xu Sandao put down the firewood bundle, his voice low and deep.

"Young Master."

I really wanted to correct him and stop him from shouting indiscriminately on the streets of Beijing.

Although this place is remote, it's not completely deserted at night.

I could only keep my voice down.

"Third Uncle."

Xu Sandao's gaze swept over Yan Xiaoyi, then fell on the short crossbow in my arms.

"Are you investigating a case for the emperor again?"

He asked the question very calmly.

But I could hear the coldness inside.

I said, "I'm checking the route."

"What road?"

"The road into the palace, the road to the imperial treasury, the road through which weapons flowed out."

Xu Sandao's eyes flickered.

I lifted a corner of the gray robe that was covering the short crossbow.

"The fact that crossbows could be sent to Ci'en Temple to assassinate those holding tents shows that the control of military equipment in the capital is not clean. If someone can send crossbows out, someone else can send other things in."

Xu Sandao stared at me.

"so?"

"So when I investigated the imperial treasury, it wasn't to whitewash the emperor, but to find the cracks in the emperor's inner circle."

That's half true and half false.

It's only partially true because the inner treasury might indeed be involved in palace affairs.

I'm only half-fake now because I'm more interested in investigating the Fang Yuanshi and Yongning River cases.

But in front of Xu Sandao, telling the whole truth is tantamount to courting death.

Xu Sandao remained silent for a long time.

Yan Xiaoyi, standing nearby, suddenly asked lazily, "And who is this?"

I didn't answer.

Xu Sandao didn't even look at him.

The two of them exchanged a single glance across the darkness.

I suddenly felt a chill in the street corner.

Yan Xiaoyi, who was usually so lazy he seemed boneless, had at this moment shifted his toes slightly by half an inch.

Xu Sandao didn't touch the knife, but his shoulders relaxed.

This is not relaxation.

This is a sword that can be drawn at any time.

My scalp tingled.

If these two start fighting here, the Jingzhao Prefecture will be able to find a seventh-rank censor who was accidentally injured on the streets of the southern city tomorrow.

It's me again.

I immediately replied, "We're on the same side."

Yan Xiaoyi looked at me.

Xu Sandao also looked at me.

Their eyes both conveyed three words:

Who's with him?

I could only add, "People who don't want me to die anytime soon."

This statement worked well.

Neither of them made a move immediately.

Xu Sandao said coldly, "The time the master is giving you is running out."

I said, "I know."

"The 20th has passed, and three days have now gone by."

"I remember."

"Young Master, if you are truly investigating the path to assassinating the Emperor, then do not present your investigation as a meritorious act of protecting him."

These words are like the back of a knife, unsharpened, yet they weigh heavily on one's bones.

I looked at him.

"Third Uncle, if I want to kill the Emperor alive, I need to know who else wants to kill me."

Xu Sandao did not answer.

He picked up the firewood again and turned to walk into the shadows.

Before leaving, he left behind a message.

"The old granary in the south of the city, you're not the only one who knows about it."

My heart skipped a beat.

"You know about number thirty-seven too?"

Xu Sandao did not turn around.

"I don't know number thirty-seven."

His voice came from the darkness of the night.

All I know is that half an hour ago, three cars headed south of the city.

Ah Liu's face turned pale.

Yan Xiaoyi clicked his tongue.

"Looks like you're getting even less sleep."

I didn't say anything, and just walked away.

Xu Sandao did not stop him.

This only made me more uneasy.

The fact that he didn't stop me means he also wants to see me continue investigating.

Or rather, he wanted to know who I was investigating for.

The old warehouse in the south of the city was even more dilapidated than I had imagined.

A row of dark warehouses stretched along the old canal, with peeling paint, rusted door nails, and creaking wooden signs in the wind.

There was no one guarding the granary at night.

No, to be precise, it's not on the surface.

Yan Xiaoyi squatted down by the wall and glanced at the muddy ground.

"Someone just left."

I walked over.

There are tire tracks on the ground.

Three paths.

If the wheels don't press down deeply, it means the load on the vehicle isn't heavy, or it has already been unloaded and then reloaded.

Ah Liu whispered, "Xu Sandao didn't lie to us."

I said, "He rarely lies to me."

"That's good."

"He usually forces me directly."

"..."

Ah Liu stopped talking.

We searched through the warehouses one by one.

Wooden plaques hung on the old warehouse doors, some of the characters already faded and blurred.

Thirty-two.

Thirty-three.

Thirty-four.

The further you go in, the stronger the musty smell becomes, mixed with a hint of fresh straw rope.

New straw rope.

Things were just moved here.

Yan Xiaoyi walked ahead, carrying a short crossbow he had seized from Ci'en Temple. He said he was sleepy, but his eyes kept scanning his surroundings.

This kind of person is the most enviable.

While others are working themselves to the bone, he can be more composed than others even when he's being lazy.

Finally, we found Warehouse Number Thirty-Seven.

The iron lock on the door is still there.

The keyhole is very small.

I took out the bronze key.

Ah Liu stared at the key and couldn't help but ask, "Young master, what if it doesn't open?"

"That means we came to the wrong place."

"That's good too."

"But someone will come to kill us and silence us."

Ah Liu immediately said, "Then let's open it."

Insert the key into the lock.

With a gentle turn.

Click.

The lock is open.

As soon as the warehouse door was pushed open, a cloud of dust rushed out.

Ah Liu almost coughed out, but I quickly covered his mouth.

It was dark inside the warehouse.

Yan Xiaoyi lit a tinderbox, and the flames illuminated the empty ground.

The warehouse is very large.

But it was almost empty inside.

All that remained were a few broken boxes, a few bundles of rotten straw rope, a pile of scattered sawdust, and a few patches of fresh ashes in the corner.

Ah Liu said disappointedly, "Late again?"

I didn't answer.

You may be late, but that doesn't mean you'll be done late.

Clearing out inventory is the hardest part.

Especially when cleaning up hastily in the middle of the night.

I crouched down to look at the ground.

The dust on the ground had been swept, but it was swept too hastily, leaving some fine stone dust in the corners.

Stone powder.

It's stone powder again.

There was a drag mark along the wall, as if some box had been placed there and its bottom corner had scraped the ground when it was carried away.

I walked over and measured the indentation with my hand.

A small box.

It was about the same size as the empty iron box in the dark room of the Tao family's iron workshop.

In other words, the iron boxes from Tao's ironworks may have been just a transit point; the actual storage location was here.

I looked at the straw rope again.

There was a little black oil stain on the straw rope.

Ah Liu whispered, "Is this engine oil?"

I glanced at him.

Ah Liu immediately straightened his back.

"Young master, I spoke with the people at the carriage shop, and this is the smell of axle oil."

Not bad.

This child is becoming more and more like a normal, living person lately.

I used my short blade to pry open a broken box.

The box was empty.

The second one was also empty.

The bottom of the third box had a layer of plywood.

The plywood had been pried open, but a small piece of paper was stuck in the corner.

I slowly picked it out with the tip of the knife.

The edge of the paper was very small, only two fingers' width away.

There are a few incomplete characters on it.

Yongning... stonework...

Materials entering the warehouse...

I held my breath.

Yongning.

Stone.

Warehouse materials.

This is enough.

The quarry stones from the Yongning River channel did indeed have a written connection with the inner warehouse quarry.

Just as I was about to fold up the paper, Yan Xiaoyi suddenly whispered, "Don't move."

I froze.

He walked to the other side of the warehouse, squatted down, and picked something out of the ashes.

A small iron rivet.

The rivet was not an ordinary door nail; it was more refined than a regular iron nail, and there was a groove at the end.

Yan Xiaoyi glanced at it, and his expression darkened.

"Rivets from the armory."

My heart sank.

Are you sure?

"Sure."

"Have you seen this before?"

"I've seen a lot."

This time he didn't say where he had seen him before.

I didn't ask any further questions.

When some people are about to shut up, it's best to let them stay silent for now. If you push them too far, they might knock you out too.

I took the rivet.

It's tiny, but feels like a cold piece of iron when held in the palm of your hand.

The presence of armory rivets in the Yongning River case seems illogical no matter how you look at it.

Unless this place has stored more than just stone ingots.

It also stored military equipment.

Or perhaps someone from the armory was involved in the transfer.

Ah Liu suddenly whispered by the door, "Young master, there are footprints here."

I went over to take a look.

There was indeed half a footprint in the dust inside the threshold.

The footprints were incomplete, but deeper than those from ordinary cloth shoes, with clear edges.

Official boots.

Moreover, there is a horizontal stripe on the sole of the boot.

I squatted down and looked at it for a long time.

Ah Liu asked, "Can you tell who it is?"

I said, "I can't tell."

He had just breathed a sigh of relief when I added, "But you can tell he's not an ordinary constable."

Why?

"The soles of the constable's boots are worn and tattered from walking a lot. The horizontal ridges on the soles of these boots are very clear, which means the boots aren't old. Someone who can wear new official boots to clear the warehouse in the middle of the night can't be a lowly errand boy."

Yan Xiaoyi added a sentence.

"His official rank is not low."

I recalled what the man in the gray robe said on the clock tower.

Don't trust people who wear official boots.

This statement was not a figurative expression.

There really were people wearing official boots who came.

And earlier than me.

Suddenly, a bird called out from outside the warehouse.

It's very light.

But if birdsong is too timely in the middle of the night, it's no longer birdsong.

Yan Xiaoyi extinguished the fire with a folding torch.

The entire warehouse was plunged into darkness.

Ah Liu even held his breath.

There were footsteps outside.

not much.

Two people, at most three.

They didn't come in immediately, but stopped outside the warehouse door.

Someone whispered, "The lock is open."

Another person asked, "Is the person still inside?"

The third voice was even lower.

"burn."

Ah Liu's eyes widened instantly.

I cursed inwardly.

Here we go again.

Are all these people in the capital good at besides silencing witnesses, sealing off doors, and setting fires?

The sound of oil being splashed could be heard outside the warehouse door.

A pungent smell seeped in through the crack in the door.

Yan Xiaoyi asked in a low voice, "Should we attack?"

"No."

"Then let's cook it?"

I touched the old bricks by the wall.

"The warehouse is so old, they can't just fix one door."

Ah Liu whispered in the darkness, "Young master, how did you know?"

"Because the old warehouse needs to be fireproof."

"So, have you managed to defend against it now?"

"no."

"..."

I touched the back wall and sure enough, I found a sealed ventilation opening.

The bricks were added later and are looser than the ones next to them.

I inserted the short blade into the crack in the brickwork and pried it open.

Not moving.

Yan Xiaoyi sighed.

"Get out of the way."

He kicked it.

The brick wall made a dull thud and a crack appeared.

Ah Liu stared wide-eyed.

"Brother Yan, how much is your foot worth per month?"

Yan Xiaoyi thought for a moment.

"It depends on the employer."

I said, "Stop talking nonsense and continue."

He kicked it twice more, opening the vent and letting in a blast of cold air.

Flames were already rising from below the warehouse door.

The kerosene burned quickly, and the wooden door soon began to crackle.

We crawled out through the ventilation opening.

To be precise, Ah Liu went through first, I followed, and Yan Xiaoyi came out last.

When he came out, he even had time to push the weeds outside the ventilation opening back to cover up the traces.

As soon as they landed, the fire at the front door of the warehouse suddenly escalated.

The people outside thought we were still inside.

One of them whispered, "Let's go."

They turned and left.

Yan Xiaoyi looked at me.

"Chase?"

I stared at those figures from behind.

The night was too dark to see faces clearly, but one could see that the soles of one of the men's boots landed firmly, and the edge of his official boots flashed briefly in the firelight.

Chasing doesn't guarantee you'll catch up.

Even if we catch up, we might not be able to defeat them.

More importantly, I have something in my hands now.

The items included: a tattered piece of paper from a tent, rivets from the armory, key number 37, a short crossbow, and half a copy of an inner warehouse stamp.

Tonight has been chaotic enough.

If things go wrong again, it might not be a case investigation, it could be a death sentence.

I shook my head.

"Don't chase."

Ah Liu breathed a huge sigh of relief.

"Young master is wise."

Yan Xiaoyi raised an eyebrow.

"rare."

I looked at the burning Warehouse No. 37.

The firelight illuminated half the night in red, and the wooden beams collapsed little by little, as if someone were burning pages of a ledger before my eyes.

They gained the upper hand again.

But we didn't win cleanly.

I looked down at the armory rivet in my palm.

What Fang Yuanshi left behind was more deadly than I had imagined.

The Yongning River case does not involve a single river.

Someone used a river to link together the Ministry of Works' silver, the Imperial Treasury's names, and the Armory's contents.

Ah Liu asked in a low voice, "Young master, shall we go back to the manor now?"

Just as I was about to answer, the sound of horses' hooves suddenly came from afar.

Not just one horse.

It's a team.

Yan Xiaoyi frowned: "Soldiers."

My heart sank.

The fire had barely started when the soldiers arrived.

They came way too fast.

Soon, several lanterns lit up from the intersection outside the old warehouse.

Someone shouted:

"By order of the Ministry of Works, investigate the fire at the old granary south of the city!"

Ah Liu's expression changed drastically.

"Young master, they're from the Ministry of Works!"

As I watched the lights getting closer in the distance, I slowly stuffed the tattered tent and rivets into my arms.

They started the fire.

They brought the people here.

If I'm stuck here now, the story told in court tomorrow will be:

Shen An, from the Censorate, broke into the old warehouse at night and set it on fire, destroying the tents.

This pot of dirty water came faster than fire.

Yan Xiaoyi looked at me.

"Lord Shen, shall we run?"

I looked at the lights and gripped the short blade hidden in my sleeve.

"No."

Ah Liu almost burst into tears.

"Then let's fight?"

"nor."

"So what do we do?"

I looked at the burning Warehouse Number Thirty-Seven and whispered:

"Call for fire!"

Ah Liu was stunned.

Yan Xiaoyi was also taken aback.

I took a deep breath, turned around, and shouted towards the outside of the old warehouse:

"Fire! The old warehouse in the south of the city is on fire!"

"Shen An of the Censorate is here!"

"Help! Put out the fire!"

There was a noticeable commotion over the area with the lights on.

I kept shouting, even louder than them.

"Anyone who dares to stop the firefighting efforts will be accused of destroying evidence!"

Flames shot into the sky.

The officers and soldiers stopped in their tracks.

This time, I won't run away.

I stood before the fire and first called myself a witness.