Chapter 158: Success or Failure (II)

Zheng Miao took a deep breath and composed his expression: "Prefect Wenren, there's no need to panic. I'm here to get to the bottom of all this, piece by piece."

"Summon Wu Qi."

Wu Qi, the Penal Clerk, shuffled into the hall, shaking like a leaf, and laid out the whole story.

The forged requisition letter hadn't been given to him directly by Zi Yongshou.

Sometime around late March, Zi Yongshou had accompanied Mu Jiazhi to the countryside to investigate a case.

That day, Wu Qi clocked in and found the requisition letter on his desk, a note from Zi Yongshou sitting right next to it, asking Wu Qi to pull his ID documents from the Household Office and place them in the right drawer of Zi Yongshou's desk, for him to grab when he got back, with a thanks for the favor.

Wu Qi didn't suspect anything and went ahead and fetched the ID documents like he was told.

And guess who got stuck returning them later? Same poor schmuck.

Again, while Zi Yongshou was away on official business, a note just showed up on Clerk Wu's desk out of nowhere, telling him to get it done and not bother reporting back.

Under Mu Jiazhi, the Penal Office had always been about getting things done over following protocol. Moreover, since Zi Yongshou never checked in about it afterward, Wu Qi got busy and completely forgot about it.

Luckily, careless as he was, Wu Qi had at least hung on to both notes.

Zheng Miao told him to go fetch them.

Sure enough, both notes were collages—they fell apart the second they got wet.

But when they pressed further on who might've slipped into the Penal Office and left those notes on Wu Qi's desk, every clerk in the room just looked at each other, clueless.

It'd been so long—who the hell remembered something that minor?

And just like that, the lead on the forged requisition went cold.

But Zheng Miao was certain this whole setup had been in the works since after Prefect Qian died.

Seeing the case was a tangled mess that wouldn't crack in a day, Zheng Miao made the call on the spot: seal off the Tongzhou Prefectural Office, effective immediately, and everyone—officials and staff alike—would bunk there until the case broke.

Naturally, that got the officials buzzing.

Some had their own stuff to handle and really didn't want to be stuck there like suspects in a holding cell.

But this case dragged in three big names at once—the former prefect, the assistant prefect, and the vice-prefect—and just about everyone in the room answered to one of them, so leaving wasn't an option even if they wanted to.

Speak up now, and you'd look guilty by association.

The officials were fuming but didn't dare say a word, when it was Le Wuya who stepped up for everyone and asked the obvious question: "Sir, if we're all stuck inside the yamen, who's going to run Tongzhou Prefecture?"

"Internal work goes on as usual," Zheng Miao replied without hesitation. "Anything outside, my people will cover it. If anything goes sideways, I'll take full responsibility."

At that, who had anything left to say?

Zheng Miao moved fast, but he still dotted his i's and crossed his t's. That night, he sent riders to the Provincial Administration Commission and the Regional Military Commission, asking both to send people to help run Tongzhou, while also writing up a memorial to the emperor laying out everything that was going on in Tongzhou.

Feng Long and Ling Yingxun read the letter and were both left speechless.

...Tongzhou really knew how to stir up trouble in the most original ways.

Still, neither of them pinned the blame on the new prefect.

Wen Ren had only been in office for about a month. If they hung this mess on him, Tongzhou would turn into a swamp no one would ever want to touch.

With backup lined up, Zheng Miao threw himself into the case, body and soul.

He sent teams out—some to Lingao to track down witnesses, others to Taicang to dig into Zi Yongshou's land deal.

Zheng Miao stayed put in Tongzhou, zeroing in on how Zi Yongshou ended up locked up.

He didn't have hard proof, but Zheng Miao couldn't shake the feeling something was off.

If Wei Yixian really was behind this, the guy was clearly meticulous and ruthless, based on what he'd shown so far.

If Wei Yixian had caught wind that Zi Yongshou was planning to run, he should've let him bolt, then had someone tail him and take him out quietly—that'd be the clean play.

But hauling the guy home and locking him up there?

Only someone with a screw loose would pull something that dumb.

...

But the deeper he dug, the less sure Zheng Miao became.

First off, Zi Yongshou did have a bruise on his neck from a solid hit, and it was mostly healed by now.

And the injury matched his story perfectly—he said he got jumped on the street two weeks back, and the bruise lined right up with that.

Second, the bowls, basins, and other vessels Zi Yongshou used while trapped in the well all came from the Wei household's daily supplies.

The Wei household's servants lived more comfortably than ordinary commoners, so even if a basin or bowl went missing, no one paid it any mind.

No one could say when these items had disappeared or how.

The Wei household couldn't explain it.

Third, because Tongzhou was plagued by frequent Japanese pirate raids and was not entirely peaceful, the Wei household had exceptionally high walls, with servants patrolling on a fixed schedule to guard against thieves.

Only someone with extraordinary skill could have carried Zi Yongshou—a frail scholar weighing over a hundred jin—over walls and past the night patrols undetected.

Upon Zheng Miao's investigation, Mu Jiazhi's previous duties had been concentrated on criminal litigation, and he had only formally taken over Tongzhou's military affairs after Zi Yongshou's disappearance.

He did have a capable team of constables and jailers, but on the night of Zi Yongshou's disappearance, these men were either at home or on duty, each with alibis.

In the following period, due to Zi Yongshou's unexplained disappearance, Mu Jiazhi intensified inspections severalfold, and these men dared not slack off in the slightest, spending most of their time at their posts—even having to jog to get home for a hot meal. They simply had no opportunity to commit the crime.

Finding nothing on Mu Jiazhi, Zheng Miao turned his attention to Le Wuya.

But upon inquiry, nearly everyone in the yamen said the same thing: the Prefect was a kind and honest man.

It was true that he had recently assembled a contingent of prefectural troops.

But first, the Prefect had imposed strict discipline on them, forbidding them from leaving the compound for fear they would cause trouble.

Second, these young and inexperienced lads had just been recruited from outside Tongzhou City and were utterly unfamiliar with the city's layout. If sent out, they would be lucky to find their way around—how could they possibly infiltrate the Wei household silently and carry out such a delicate operation?

Third, matters of such importance should be entrusted to trusted confidants, not to men who had just been recruited. Who would assign life-and-death missions to newcomers?

As for trusted confidants, Wen Ren Ming Ke did have a few, but only a handful, all brought from Nanting County.

Zheng Miao questioned each of them in turn, and all of them pleaded complete ignorance.

Hua Rong was too young and had never trained in martial arts, with bones too soft and delicate. Zi Yongshou was more than a head taller than him, so there was no way he could have secretly brought Zi Yongshou in.

Yuan Zijin had decent strength, but not much else.

Zhong Piaoping lived up to his name—his movements were elusive and hard to track, making him a true master of stealth. Unfortunately, he was smarter than he was strong; he was better suited as a scout, and in terms of physical strength, he was just as weak as Hua Rong.

Yang Zheng was skilled in hand-to-hand combat, while He Qingsong was big and strong, but neither had what it took to pull this off.

The only one with a military background was Qin Xingyue, yet he was lame and could barely walk.

Zheng Miao looked into every lead, and in the end, he managed to rule out both Le Wuya and Mu Jiazhi.

...

The first report came back from Lingao County.

Ever since the Lingao County magistrate caught wind of a connection between the poisoning death of Zhang Erlang and the case of Prefect Qian, he'd gone all out to track down everyone involved.

His persistence paid off—he managed to uncover a clue from a corpse identification case in neighboring Longtan County.

After summer began, a naked man's body was found in a mountain stream in Longtan County.

The spot was quite remote, and by the time a fisherman discovered the body, it had been so waterlogged that his face was swollen and his body bloated.

The examination showed he'd drowned, with no other injuries.

As the weather grew hot, many people went swimming in the river to cool off, and accidental drownings were not uncommon.

But strangely, no clothes, valuables, or ID were found on the riverbank.

The Longtan County magistrate had no way to identify the man, so he followed standard procedure, hiring a sketch artist to sketch what he might have looked like. The resulting portrait was circulated to neighboring counties, hoping to confirm his identity and find his relatives, to figure out if it was murder or an accident.

Before any relatives could be found, the Lingao County magistrate caught wind of the case.

This wasn't him being paranoid.

Prefect Qian of Tongzhou Prefecture had drowned in a river in his jurisdiction.

And now, with Zhang Erlang's death making the case even more tangled, he had become unusually sensitive to any drowning incident.

He went ahead and wrote to the Longtan County magistrate, requested several copies of the dead man's portrait, and offered a reward to encourage locals to come forward.

On the second day after posting the notice, two farmers who had come to town for market saw the reward poster and the portrait, and started chattering excitedly in front of it.

The clerk standing nearby noticed their unusual reaction and asked what was wrong.

One farmer hesitated, saying, "This... isn't this that guy?"

The other was also uncertain, muttering, "Looks like that 'great immortal' guy that Zhang Erlang hired."

The clerk perked up. "Zhang Erlang? Which Zhang Erlang?!"

"Zhang Erlang from our village. The one who had money but no luck to spend it," said the first farmer, balancing a carrying pole on his shoulder. "He said he'd hit a rough patch at the start of the year—everything was going wrong—so he wanted to hire a 'great immortal' to get rid of the bad luck. That immortal sang and danced, jingling all sorts of trinkets, quite a lively show. Plenty of folks from our village went to watch."

He gestured. "That immortal looks a lot like this dead man."

The Lingao County magistrate jumped on this lead, immediately sending the portrait to Zhang Erlang's village for the villagers to look at one by one.

Sure enough, the unidentified corpse turned out to be the fortune-teller who had calculated where the Zhang family's gold and silver were buried.

Going by what the villagers said, the Lingao County magistrate made some adjustments to the portrait and circulated the revised version again.

With the corrected image, the man's true identity was quickly figured out.

His name was Jin Ergou—a man who looked like some kind of immortal but actually made his living as a con man and a drunk.

The last time anyone saw him was back in May, at a tavern in Longtan County.

Even though the weather was warming up, he was still wearing his colorful Taoist robe with two chicken feathers stuck in his hair, and the tavern waiter remembered him quite well.

According to the waiter, he wasn't alone—there was a man sitting across from him.

Jin Ergou was in high spirits, eating and drinking heartily, laughing and talking loudly, apparently discussing some kind of business deal, going on and on about money, getting rich, and his cut.

The waiter was used to boastful merchants, but he found it odd that a Taoist priest would be so money-hungry, so he gave them a few extra glances.

Compared to this lively "feather duster," the man drinking with him was quiet and reserved, only occasionally saying a word.

Later, when the feather duster got drunk, his companion helped him out of the tavern.

The waiter tried to help, but the man refused.

By the time the Lingao County magistrate had gotten this far in the investigation, the constable dispatched by Zheng Miao from Tongzhou Prefecture had just arrived.

After quickly catching up on the case with the Lingao County magistrate, the constable immediately brought the waiter to Tongzhou. He had the waiter sit in a pavilion on a man-made hill, holding a telescope to observe from above, while Zi Yongshou, the Wei household servants, and the prefectural clerks walked back and forth below without stopping, so the young waiter could spot any familiar faces.

The waiter, excited about the reward money and getting his first chance to use such a rare thing as a telescope, was practically bouncing with excitement.

Zheng Miao sat beside him, with the ever-restless Le Wuya hopping around nearby.

The telescope was indeed a rare treasure. In his previous life, Le Wuya had only seen one from afar in the emperor's treasure cabinet and had always wanted to play with it.

But it had been placed too high, with no ladder nearby, and he wasn't tall enough to reach it. He'd been bitter about it ever since, and when he got back to the office, he'd complained bitterly to Zheng Miao about it.

Unexpectedly, Zheng Miao had good taste and knew people—when he'd been a big official, he'd managed to get two of them himself.

Le Wuya picked up the other telescope, looking left and right, his excitement just as much as the young waiter's.

Seeing him with no dignity at all and a mischievous streak he couldn't hide, Zheng Miao shot him a sideways glance and reminded him, "Prefect Wenren, please maintain some composure."

Le Wuya, peering through the telescope, ignored him. "Lord Zheng, Lord Zheng, do you think this thing can see what the stars look like?"

Zheng Miao stood up, walked over to him without a word, and twisted the knob on the telescope.

The tubes slid out, extending by half a foot.

Things in the distance became even clearer.

Le Wuya was thrilled. "Wow, there's a squirrel on that tree over there!"

Zheng Miao watched him, unsure whether he was genuinely carefree or deliberately putting on an act, but seeing how genuinely happy he looked, he couldn't help but respond, "...Mm."

After letting him fool around for a bit, Zheng Miao sat back down and happened to see Zi Yongshou walk by below.

When he saw Zi Yongshou, the young waiter didn't react at all, still grinning from ear to ear.

Zheng Miao breathed a small sigh of relief.

So it wasn't him after all.

But when the next group of people passed below, the young shop hand's smile suddenly disappeared.

He squinted and looked for a moment longer, then suddenly grew urgent, reaching out and smacking Zheng Miao hard on the thigh: "Sir!"

The kid had a strong hand, and he nearly hit him in the groin, making Zheng Miao wince and suck in a sharp breath.

The young shop hand also realized he'd been rude, but seeing that Zheng Miao was a friendly guy and didn't put on airs, he said hastily, "Sir! That man! That man!"

Zheng Miao pressed his thigh, bent over, and barely managed to stand up to look: "Who?"

The interruption threw the young shop hand off, and he couldn't explain clearly anymore.

Zheng Miao passed the word down: "Have that group that just passed walk by again!"

Before long, the group of Wei Mansion servants who had just passed came back, with hesitant looks on their faces.

Even without the telescope, Zheng Miao noticed that one servant among them was hunched over with his neck tucked in, his posture really off.

...He must've realized something was off and tried to hide it, but that just made him stick out even more.

Zheng Miao raised a finger and pointed: "Who is that?"

Wang Cheng beside him answered promptly: "His name is Ma Si, a household-born servant of the Wei Mansion. Sir, what shall we do?"

Zheng Miao said, "Lock him up. Also, lock up his family members separately and interrogate them individually to find out where he was during the time of the Lingao incident!"

With that, Zheng Miao turned around and saw Le Wuya actually aiming the telescope at Zheng Miao's thigh, grinning with a double entendre: "Gotcha where it hurts?"

Zheng Miao, speechless, snatched the telescope back and confiscated it on the spot, while silently thinking to himself:

Could Wei Yixian's brain really have been kicked by a donkey?