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

Chapter 7 My Father Taught Me How to Check Accounts

The Ministry of Works' account books were delivered at noon the following day.

The person delivering the money was a young clerk, in his early twenties, whose face seemed to say: "I'm just a gofer."

He placed the three blue booklets on the table and then took out a receipt.

"Lord Shen, this is the old account book for the repair of the Yongning River. Please sign for it."

I glanced at him: "Master Zhou isn't here?"

The clerk bowed his head: "Lord Zhou is very busy with official duties."

"Busy drinking tea?"

The clerk lowered his head even further.

I didn't make things difficult for him.

The errand runner usually doesn't know much. Making things difficult for him would only make me, the new official, seem petty, and would serve no other purpose.

I signed the receipt.

The clerk took the receipt and left without even having a cup of tea.

Ah Liu stood at the door watching his retreating figure and whispered, "Young Master, he runs faster than a debtor."

"Because he knows that this ledger is more troublesome than debt."

Ah Liu looked at the three blue booklets on the table with a somewhat awe-inspiring expression.

"With just these three books, three censors have already died?"

"That's what Gu Xingzhi said."

"Would someone like him lie?"

"It's hard to say."

I don't think so.

Why?

"He seems too lazy to lie."

I thought about it and realized that there was actually some truth to it.

Three account books were spread out on the table.

The cover was clean, the corners were slightly worn, and the binding was neat. It looked like three very ordinary old ledgers.

Ah Liu leaned closer: "Young Master, what are you looking at now?"

"Look at the paper."

"You don't look at the ledgers, you just look at the paper?"

"My dad taught me that."

Ah Liu shut up.

He has a natural reverence for my father. As long as he hears "what the master taught him," even if I say that we should worship the Kitchen God before looking at the accounts, he will probably light incense seriously.

I opened the first ledger.

The first page has a slightly yellowish paper color, the ink has sunk a little, and there are fine rough edges.

normal.

The second page is also normal.

On the third page, my finger stopped.

This page is slightly whiter than the previous two.

It's very light white.

If you don't look at it against the light, it's easy to miss.

I held the account book up to the window.

Sunlight shines through the paper.

The light coming through the first two pages was a dim, yellowish hue, while the third page was a bit brighter.

Ah Liu also came over to take a look.

After looking at it for a while, he asked, "Young master, aren't these all just paper?"

"We're all human, but there are living and dead."

He immediately took a step back.

"Let me give you an example," I said.

"Could you please choose something less scary next time?"

I ignored him and continued flipping through the pages.

Page 7.

Page 11.

Page 6 of the second book.

The third book, pages nine and sixteen.

There are seven pages that are incorrect in the three account books.

It's not just the paper that's wrong.

The ink is wrong too.

Old ink sinks in, and the color seeps into the paper. New ink floats on the surface; even if it's intentionally aged, it will still have a slight sheen upon close inspection.

The ink on these seven pages shines with restrained brightness.

The person who makes the antique finish is very knowledgeable.

But it's still not old enough.

I checked the binding thread again.

The ledgers have been reassembled.

Choose a thread color that is as close as possible to the old thread, but the stitches can be slightly tighter. The old pages will loosen from being flipped through too many times, but the new ones will be taut and more even.

Ah Liu watched me flip through the pages and couldn't help but ask, "Young Master, is this what they call tampering with it?"

"Um."

"They were so careless."

I shook my head: "It's not that they were careless, it's that they were very careful."

"How did you figure that out?"

"My dad used to say that accounts can deceive people, but paper can't."

This is true.

I started looking after the salt administration accounts for my father when I was twelve years old.

Private salt, official salt, and counterfeit salt—the three accounts were mixed together, creating a mess that could drive an accountant to the brink of illness. My father didn't teach me the Four Books and Five Classics; he only taught me how to spot the devil in a pile of impressive numbers.

He said that numbers are written by people for people to see, while paper is what time leaves behind.

People lie.

There isn't much time.

I folded the corners of all the incorrect parts on the seven pages.

Let's look at the content again.

Stone procurement.

Timber procurement.

freight.

The craftsman's wages.

All of them are major items.

I didn't touch the small amount of money.

Big money, change the page.

This is quite particular.

Rewriting the entire book would leave too many traces. Replacing only the most important pages is easier and less likely to be noticed by ordinary auditors.

The first three censors were probably fooled in this way.

Or rather, they discovered it, but didn't live to speak out.

Ah Liu swallowed hard. "Young Master, is this account fake?"

"It can't be said to be entirely false."

"How so?"

"A fake page was inserted into the real ledger."

"Isn't this still a case of falsified accounts?"

"For you, yes. For the Ministry of Works, this means the paperwork is complete."

Ah Liu's face showed an expression that said, "Officials really have no shame."

I continued reading those seven pages.

What first attracted me was the stone.

The account book states that the Yongning River dike was repaired for 30 li, using 3,200 cubic meters of Hengshan bluestone, at a unit price of 2.3 taels, for a total of 7,360 taels of silver.

Looking at the unit price alone, there's not a big problem.

But when I saw the shipping cost, I smiled.

Ah Liu immediately tensed up: "Young Master, please don't laugh like that."

Why?

"When you smile, I feel like someone's going to be in trouble."

"This time, it might be someone else who's unlucky."

I pushed the ledger toward him and pointed to that line of numbers.

"From Hengshan to the Yongning River, it's an eighty-mile dry road. The account book says the transportation cost is two qian and eight fen per cubic meter of stone."

Ah Liu took a closer look.

Then, sincerely ask, "Is it expensive or cheap?"

I sighed.

"It's cheaper."

"Isn't cheap good?"

"If you buy a cartload of firewood from the east of the city and have it delivered to the west, do you need to pay for the delivery?"

"want."

"Does the fare increase the longer the journey?"

"Yes."

"Those three thousand cubic meters of stones were hauled from the mountains eighty miles away to the riverbank, all by land. At two and eight-tenths of a cent per cubic meter, it might not even cover the cost of fodder for the livestock."

Ah Liu finally understood.

"So the shipping cost was written too low?"

"right."

"Shouldn't they have exaggerated the amount of money they were greedy for? How can they be greedy if they understated it?"

I glanced at him.

That's one of Ah Liu's advantages.

The question he asked was silly, but it was silly in a practical way.

I closed the ledger and turned to another page.

"If the bill shows a low shipping cost, it means the real problem isn't the shipping cost itself, but the stone."

Ah Liu was even more confused.

I rephrased it: "What if they didn't transport the bluestone from Hengshan at all?"

Ah Liu was stunned.

"So what did they use?"

"Cheap stones. Local ones, low-quality ones, maybe even rough stones randomly quarried from the riverbank."

"But the account book reported Hengshan Qingshi."

"Therefore, the freight cost cannot be high. If the freight cost is high, there will be records of carriage companies, porters, and checkpoints along the way. The more records there are, the more loopholes there will be."

Ah Liu suddenly realized: "They simply wrote down the shipping cost to make people think it was a small amount of money, so no one would check it carefully."

"right."

I looked at the neat rows of numbers in the ledger.

"The accounts were done very cleverly. The bulk of the expense was hidden in the stones, and the smaller amount was concealed with the transportation costs. If one didn't know the route from Hengshan to Yongning, the accounts would seem perfectly clear to the average person."

Ah Liu asked, "Young Master, do you know that road?"

"have no idea."

"Then how do you determine this?"

"Because I don't know, I have to go and see."

His face stiffened: "Where to?"

"Yongning River".

"Now?"

"tomorrow."

Ah Liu breathed a sigh of relief: "That's alright."

"Let's also check if the route from Hengshan to the river is really by land."

He caught his breath again.

I ignored him and continued going through the accounts.

There's also a problem with the page about the artisans' wages.

The account book stated a six-month construction period, with a maximum of 360 river workers hired daily.

If a 30-mile section of the river embankment could be repaired, and if 360 people worked continuously for six months, it shouldn't have ended up like this, "leaking after only one year."

Of course, this is just a judgment.

To confirm this, we must go to the site and inspect the river embankment.

Look at the stones.

Examine the seams.

Let's see what the local people are saying.

I flattened the seven corners again, leaving no obvious marks.

Ah Liu asked, puzzled, "Young Master, aren't you going to mark it?"

"Who are you going to show this to?"

"For His Majesty."

"It's not the right time yet."

Why?

"Because I only have doubts, not evidence."

I pointed to the ledger.

"If the paper is wrong, you can say it's a replacement page from the warehouse reorganization. If the freight is wrong, you can say the Ministry of Works arranged other transportation. As for whether there's a problem with the stone, we'll have to see the river embankment to determine that."

Ah Liu scratched his head: "Being an official is really troublesome."

"yes."

I looked at the three account books on the table.

"That's why there are so many corrupt officials."

In the evening, news also came from Manager Chen.

Fang Yuanshi has not been found yet.

However, some people found that the last time he appeared outside the Ministry of Industry before he disappeared was on the evening of the 22nd day of the twelfth lunar month.

The next day was the Little New Year.

His house was empty.

I put this message together with the seven fake pages in the ledger, and the more I looked at it, the more it made sense.

If Fang Yuanshi was a clerk in the Waterway Bureau, he would very likely have seen the original accounts.

They may even have participated in copying the original accounts.

Once the ledger was updated, he became someone who had to disappear.

Ah Liu asked in a low voice, "Young Master, could Fang Yuanshi have already...?"

He didn't say the word "dead".

I didn't answer.

Sometimes, silence is clearer than words.

I put the account books away and got up to walk to the window.

The alleyways of Chengpingfang had already darkened, and the gatehouse had lit its lamps. The lamplight shone on the courtyard walls, where the two newly repaired areas were still clearly visible.

The emperor gave me a cage.

The Ministry of Works gave me three fake accounts.

My father made me memorize the routes through the palace.

The princess said she didn't believe me.

If I do the math, I haven't even been in the capital for three full days.

My days are quite fulfilling.

So busy, it felt like I was rushing to be reborn.

Ah Liu asked from behind, "Young Master, are we really going to the Yongning River tomorrow?"

"go."

"How many people are you bringing?"

"You."

Ah Liu almost burst into tears: "Why me again?"