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

Bai Zhi didn't rush to prove she was right.

She re-listed all the important determinations she had handled in the past ten days, totaling forty-three items. Each item was clearly marked with the location of the original document, who had reviewed it, and who would be affected if there were any errors. She was only responsible for answering the questions; she didn't handle the final review. Ah Liu looked at the pile of papers on the table: "Miss Bai, are you preparing to interrogate yourself?"

Forty-three items were not all assigned to the same group of people. The mother checked the grain and old accounts, Wei Zhi and Zhao Yue checked the palace time and seal, the twelve witnesses of Yong'an's reinstatement were randomly selected from pages, and Bai Zhi herself was only responsible for explaining why she wrote it that way at the time. She even put the original manuscript on the table and required that those reviewing it not look at her new interpretation first. If everyone listened to "what Bai Zhi was thinking at the time" first, the final review would only be based on her reasons, not the original evidence.

"Yes." "Who's in charge?" "The accountant."

The first mistake was minor. Regarding the pinholes on the four obituaries, she had written "all four holes are the same size," but after re-printing, she found one hole was slightly larger. Her judgment remained the same, but the word "same" was incorrect. She immediately crossed out "same" and wrote down the time of the second printing and the person who verified it. The onlookers, however, became increasingly uneasy.

The pinhole error was only half a point off, not changing the four-point judgment, yet it was still recorded completely. The second error, copying "within ten days" as "ten days," is more problematic: omitting "within" unnecessarily narrows the candidate range. The third error wasn't a misreading, but rather an overstatement of the source level—Su Qiao's document was merely a dyeing workshop register, but she casually wrote "old file," easily leading readers to believe it was an official document. The three issues differed in severity; Bai Zhi neither swallowed the minor errors with "no major mistake," nor exaggerated the minor errors into a complete collapse.

Someone asked, "If you keep admitting your mistakes one by one, who will trust you in the future?" Bai Zhi replied, "Trust the original evidence, not just me."

"The original evidence might be wrong." "Therefore, a re-examination is necessary." "The re-examination might also be wrong."

"Then we'll check again. But different mistakes have different consequences. If the pinhole is off by a fraction, we'll change the word; if we mistake someone's identity, someone could die, so we'll check again."

The emperor, standing nearby, asked, "Who decides what deserves further examination?" Bai Zhi turned the paper over and said, "First, who will be harmed if something is written incorrectly?" The second instance was copying. The original record for the right back tooth of the woman's corpse in Nangou was "to be extracted within ten days," but Bai Zhi copied it as "ten days," omitting two words, thus narrowing the scope. She corrected everything, leaving the old words unerased and writing the new ones next to them.

The real trouble is in the eighth line of the fifth list. We had been reading one of the creases as "Liang Su". The old paper craftsman from Yong'an looked at the original paper again and found that the second character was not "Su", but "Zhang" (帐). Liang Zhang, the old transfer account of the Liang family of Qingzhou.

Liang Su's mistake revealed to everyone for the first time how a simple literacy error could be attributed to a living person. The Qingzhou Imperial Guard scrutinized him for two extra days because of the name "Liang Su"; several ordinary official documents underwent an extra layer of scrutiny, and some even began to speculate whether he had been in cahoots with Zhou Qi all along. The fact that he wasn't imprisoned or tortured didn't mean nothing had happened. Suspicion itself consumes a person's time, reputation, and normal work.

The old papermaker tilted the original paper under the lamp, and only then did the difference between the charcoal powder and the indentation become apparent. The real second character is not "肃" (su), but "帐" (zhang). The reason we have this preconceived not is because there is too little evidence, but rather because the fact that "Liang Su did indeed know Bai Zhi and had checked the Qingzhou account" is too obvious. The more obvious the facts are, the easier it is sometimes to fill in the blank strokes with a character that one wants to see.

Seeing the character "Liang," and knowing that Liang Su had indeed spoken with Bai Zhi in Qingzhou, we casually filled in the remaining half of the character to form the name of a living person. As a result, Liang Su was secretly watched for two more days, and official documents underwent an extra layer of verification. There was no arrest, no injury, but suspicion had already fallen on him.

Bai Zhi stared at the original page for a long time, and finally wrote down the correction herself: "The eighth line was misread; it was originally read as 'Liang Su,' but upon verification, it should be 'Liang Zhang.' Therefore, Liang Su was listed as a related witness for two days without any factual basis, and Bai Zhi is responsible." I said, "You're not the only one who misread it."

"I was the one who wrote the last word."

She wrote the corrections and had them sent to Qingzhou that same day. A-Liu lowered his voice: "Will Lord Liang scold me?"

"Yes." "Then what should we do?"

Bai Zhi put down her pen: "Listen."

Before the corrections had even been sent out for two hours, a message appeared simultaneously on twelve notice boards throughout the capital: "Bai Zhi's verification is flawed; the general ledger is unreliable." Some demanded the removal of all the Wang family grain deeds, medicine accounts, the four lists of records, and even the figures for Jiangbei's re-registration that she had verified. Bai Zhi only asked, "Which page is wrong?" The other party replied, "If it can be wrong once, it can be wrong all at once."

After the corrections were issued, Bai Zhi didn't sit by the wall waiting for news. She had the guards list the three official documents that Liang Su had delayed over the past two days due to extra verification: one was about the allocation of grain in Qingzhou's granary, one was about the repair of the old post station, and the other was just a family letter. The first two hadn't caused any actual damage, but the family letter arrived a day late. She didn't consider the fact that "no one died" as harmless; she only clearly stated the confirmed impacts: two days of extra guarding, three delayed documents, and Liang Su's reputation being questioned. What compensation to seek was up to Qingzhou and Liang Su themselves; she wasn't going to write a fancy "compensation already made" statement first.

The next day, Liang Su neither asked for silver nor for a public apology. He only requested that the Qingzhou Imperial Guard release the records of the extra guard duty for those two days, lest years later someone only see "was watched by the Imperial Guard" and use it as new evidence. Bai Zhi agreed. If the conclusion is changed but the traces left behind are not, the old suspicions will continue to linger like the names of the dead.

"We can re-examine it," she said. "The original will not be destroyed or sealed. Anyone who questions a particular page should state their name, explain where the error is, and we can re-examine it."

The number of people clamoring for the withdrawal of the accounts quickly decreased. It was easy to say "none of them are trustworthy," but much more difficult to point out which entry was wrong.

The review process didn't involve starting the entire book over just because someone on the wall started making noise. Bai Zhi first sorted the pages by their impact: pages that would change the conclusions of detention, identity, and death were processed first; pages that only involved size, wording, and source level were processed later. Each item included the start time, the reviewer, and the result. This way, "there might be an error" wouldn't become an excuse for endlessly delaying all the work, nor would it mean leaving high-risk judgments to the end just because it was troublesome.

That day, someone even came specifically to ask if Bai Zhi should be temporarily suspended from investigating the case since she admitted to making mistakes. Bai Zhi herself answered "it can be discussed," but she didn't actively try to clear her name by avoiding the issue. She needed to explain the process of creating the pages she had already written, but the final review could not be decided by her. Separating the right to explain from the right to decide is more effective than simply removing someone from the case.

That night, Liang Su replied with only two sentences. Bai Zhi misread a word, so he noted it down: the Qingzhou account remains open, don't use me as an excuse to close it. Bai Zhi pasted the letter next to the correction page; the old account, the mistaken account, the correction account, and Liang Su's objection—four sheets of paper hung side by side, none of them put back in the cabinet. Her mother watched for a while: "Zhou Qi wants you to make a mistake once, so that everyone will only have one conclusion—Bai Zhi is untrustworthy."

After reading the four sheets of paper side by side, the mother didn't praise Bai Zhi for "knowing her mistakes and correcting them." She simply asked, "What if you find a fifth one?" Bai Zhi replied that she would hang it up again, and even a sixth one. Whether the wall would be big enough to fit the paper wasn't a problem to be solved today for the future. What truly needed to be prevented was hiding past mistakes in a cabinet to make the accounts appear clean. Zhou Qi's approach was exactly the opposite: she acknowledged that the world could make mistakes, so she wanted one mistake to directly render the entire person ineffective.

After that day, the review page added a new section: the scope of the error. A pinhole camera wouldn't automatically implicate the identity; misidentification could affect detention and the death penalty; an incorrect source level would require a re-examination of all subsequent judgments referencing it. Not every error requires a complete overhaul, nor can "minor errors" be ignored. Errors must be clearly identified first to prevent them from being used as a tool to dismantle all cases.

Bai Zhi didn't reply, but simply pressed down a piece of paper that had been blown askew by the wind in the corner.

The next day, an unsealed small box was delivered. Inside was a pair of scissors and a copy of the fifth list, on which was written: "Errors in the accounts should be cut." Bai Zhi put the scissors back and wrote two words on the back of the paper: "Do not cut." The box was returned that night, this time with a stack of Zhou's Dyehouse account pages inside.

The scissors in the box weren't sharp; they seemed deliberately chosen for show. The paper only had the words "Errors should be cut" written on it. Bai Zhi put the scissors back, neither cutting nor throwing them away, but simply writing "Don't cut" on the back before putting them back. The second time the box arrived, it contained three months' worth of Qian Fang's account pages. The other party knew very well that simply scolding her for checking errors wasn't enough; they needed to provide the next piece of evidence that would truly make her doubt herself.

The top line was written very slowly: Bai Zhiruo refused to cut it incorrectly, so she went to ask Qian Fang's wife. He hadn't written a single word in three months.