Chapter 283: Disaster Arrives (5)

As the onlookers buzzed with discussion, the escort team had already disappeared around the street corner.

Qin Xingyue forced himself to get a grip on his churning emotions, turned around, and walked upstairs.

When they parted, Wang Cheng had taken the travel permit but not the official credentials.

The two had clearly just locked eyes moments ago—if Wang Cheng wanted help, all he had to do was call out and have Qin Xingyue vouch for his identity.

But he didn't.

...What was he thinking?

What made Qin Xingyue even more certain was that Wang Cheng would never stoop to extortion or blackmail!

That kid was always meticulous in his work—even when gathering information, he'd feel things out indirectly, testing the waters with subtlety.

Deliberately playing the bad guy, using extortion and intimidation as a cover to fish for info—that was their master's style.

Qin Xingyue's mind was a mess, chaotic thoughts flooding in like a tide, surging past him while he floundered like a drowning man, unable to grab hold of any floating debris.

He walked faster and faster, until he was practically sprinting back to Le Wuya's room.

But when he pushed open the half-closed door, Le Wuya was already sitting at the table, chowing down.

Seeing Qin Xingyue burst in looking like death, he gave him a calm once-over.

"Eat first, then work." Le Wuya swallowed his food. "I've already tested it for poison."

With just those two sentences, a good chunk of the restlessness and panic in Qin Xingyue's chest was smoothed away.

He obediently sat down and reached for his bowl—

"Stand up."

Coming from the military, Qin Xingyue had an instinctive obedience to short, direct commands.

He shot to his feet instantly, back ramrod straight.

"Don't eat with all that weighing on you—it's bad for your health. Go pour me a cup of water."

Qin Xingyue obediently turned around.

Fetching a cup, pouring water—within a few breaths, the suffocating panic and tension eased up considerably.

Le Wuya took the cup from his hand: "The responsibility for everything in Dansui is on my shoulders, not yours. Your only job is to eat well. Got it?"

"...Yes, sir."

No talking during meals, no speaking after bedtime.

The meal ended in a strange, eerie calm.

"Learn anything?" Le Wuya set down his chopsticks.

Qin Xingyue told him everything he'd seen and heard.

After hearing the whole story, Le Wuya praised: "...Well played."

—Wang Cheng had walked straight into a den of thieves without a clue.

Whatever he'd said to that You the Second's wife, anyone running a cloth shop in a small county town either came from a master-apprentice line or a family business—the people in the shop were as tight-knit as family. Once the door closed, the clerks would swarm him and take him down easy.

By then, with everyone singing the same tune, they could turn black into white.

Le Wuya put down his teacup.

Qin Xingyue asked urgently: "Where are you headed, sir?"

"Full from eating—time to take a walk and digest." Le Wuya said. "If I get caught, I'll just head to the jail and pick up little Wang."

...

Le Wuya led Qin Xingyue through seven or eight alleyways when they suddenly spotted three old-timers past sixty squatting by the roadside.

Qin Xingyue, now suspicious of everyone, was quietly stewing when he saw Le Wuya approach them with a big smile: "Finally some signs of life! Gentlemen, looking chipper, are we?"

One of them, full of vinegar, shot back: "Spry my ass!"

Le Wuya didn't get flustered at being cursed at—instead of taking offense, he smiled and asked pleasantly: "Oh? What's that all about?"

The old man in the ragged undershirt, hearing his accent, squinted through his cloudy old eyes and looked him over: "By the sound of your voice, you're from up north, huh?"

Le Wuya smiled pleasantly: "That's right."

Seeing an outsider, the old man let loose his grievances: "You be the judge! Where in this world is there such nonsense? At high noon when it's hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, they won't let us out—I haven't been done in by the plague, but I'll be baked to death by the sun in my own house! And just when it finally cools down a bit, and the three of us take a breather by this wall, along comes some official in a uniform chasing us back inside!"

"So why don't you go back, old-timer?"

The old man was emboldened by his own sense of righteousness: "What do I have to fear from him? When the constable comes, I'll go back—and when he leaves, I'll come right back out!"

Le Wuya squeezed in and perched on the edge of a stool: "You don't seem too scared of them."

The old man answered without hesitation: "Magistrate Zhou—good man! Just a bit too stubborn, and timid—afraid of trouble! But what good does being afraid do? Look at this—disaster comes when it comes, doesn't bother to ask anyone's permission."

Le Wuya smiled to himself—this was the third group.

Since he'd arrived in Dansui, almost every mouth had said that Zhou Wenchang was a good official.

This Magistrate Zhou's reputation among the common folk was solid, no doubt about it.

"You were around for the earthquake too?"

The old man immediately started boasting: "I didn't feel a thing—ate and slept as usual. It was my old lady who said she heard the earth dragon turn over and felt the ground shake. Ha! We get this every few days around here—we're used to it!"

Le Wuya latched onto this thread of information: "Do earthquakes happen often around here?"

"Yeah." Another, more introverted old man timidly chimed in. "Dansui sits right next to the mountains, and the mountain god has a nasty temper—flies into a rage every couple of days. What can we do about it?"

The third old man had been staring up at the sky the whole time, his eyes perpetually rolled back as if his soul had wandered off. At this, he rolled his eyes back down to normal, fixing Le Wuya with a murky gaze: "Digging every day, digging every year—dig right into the mountain god's heart, and of course he's going to get mad!"

Before coming, Le Wuya had looked over Dansui's records.

The Jin region had always been rich in mineral deposits, and Dansui's annual tax revenue came mostly from mining taxes.

"Are there a lot of mines around here?"

"Not bad." The eye-rolling old man pointed toward the distant, rolling mountains. "Right over there."

He said in an indifferent tone, "Weren't the people in those three buried villages all miners?"

Le Wuya didn't probe further, instead turning to casual chatter, chattering aimlessly without a hint of fishing for information: "Today we saw three people tied up at the city gate. Who were they?"

The talkative old man, opening his toothless mouth, said cheerfully, "Three balls-less brats!"

Le Wuya let out a puzzled sound: "Eh?"

"I don't know You the Second well—he moved here from elsewhere, and I can't afford his fancy stuff anyway. But Yan the Third and Blackie Liu are locals, always throwing their weight around the market, cheating folks on weights and measures. And at a time like this, they still pull this kind of crooked stunt—they deserve what they got!"

"The one dressed in silk—that's You the Second, right?"

"Yeah, who else would wear silk like a bellyband?"

Le Wuya squinted slightly.

—How interesting.

Le Wuya was about to ask more when he blinked and said, "Old man, pack up your stuff and get inside."

"Why?"

He pointed ahead: "The patrol guards are coming."

The talkative old man looked where he pointed but saw no one.

He turned back, only to find the two young men who'd been chatting with him had vanished without a trace.

The talkative old man sucked his teeth, about to say more, when a shout came from the depths of the night: "Hey! Old Man Cui! Why are you three out on the street again?! What did the magistrate say?"

The talkative old man ducked down, snatched up his stool, and ran: "Hell! Here they come again!"

The quiet old man scurried after him.

Only the old man with the white eyes stayed put, leaning against the wall, aloof and detached, his vacant eyes rolled up, staring at the endless night sky, muttering, "Retribution, retribution."

...

Le Wuya stepped out from the other end of the alley.

His folding fan was fluttering faster than usual, a clear sign of the turmoil churning inside him.

Qin Xingyue whispered, "Sir, do you trust those three old-timers?"

Le Wuya rapped him sharply on the forehead with the fan's spine: "What, seeing ghosts everywhere now?"

Qin Xingyue winced at the sting, and after a moment's thought, realized how silly his suspicion was:

The master had led him through a maze of twists and turns before they'd stumbled upon those three old men cooling off.

If the mastermind behind this could train even these street-corner loafers into top-notch actors, then the whole city of Dansui would've been a puppet show in their hands long ago.

Qin Xingyue calmed down a bit and asked, "Sir, aren't we going to the yamen to get Wang Cheng out? If you show your credentials, you might be able to spring him."

Le Wuya shot him a meaningful look.

Qin Xingyue's scalp prickled under that piercing gaze.

He rubbed the back of his head: "Sir, did I put my foot in my mouth again?"

Le Wuya prompted him patiently: "Tell me, why was Wang Cheng taken in?"

"He was set up for extortion!"

"And what exactly was the charge?"

Qin Xingyue recalled what Shopkeeper Chen had passed along: "...'If you're willing to pay up, I'll have your man released'..."

His words died in his throat.

Qin Xingyue's face gradually went pale.

The master's right.

They couldn't rescue Wang Cheng!

The master's status was no joke—as an envoy from the capital, he really could get those three out just by dropping a word to Magistrate Zhou.

If Wang Cheng were just some thug who came to extort, his crime would be plain extortion.

But if the master went to bail him out and admitted he was his man, the whole thing would turn into soliciting bribes!

—The Left Assistant Censor-in-Chief, sent to oversee disaster relief, letting his underlings squeeze bribes out of merchants who'd slipped up.

If word of this got back to the capital, Wang Su would probably grin like a cat that got the cream and have the impeachment memorial written up overnight.

As cold sweat beaded on Qin Xingyue's forehead, Le Wuya stayed calm, idly wiping his fan: "This little Dansui, a mere speck of a place, has already laid a web of traps for us."

Though Qin Xingyue had suspected as much, hearing Le Wuya say it flat out still sent a chill down his spine: "But we rode here day and night, getting here so fast—who could've set a trap for us? The messenger sent to the capital hasn't even... hasn't even..."

His voice trailed off, and a wave of dread washed over Qin Xingyue.

Could this so-called 'earthquake' and 'mudslide' be part of the 'trap' too?

...And Zhong Piaoping, still missing and unaccounted for—could he—

Would he be the next to suffer? Or...?

Just as he was gripped by alarm, a cool hand pressed on Qin Xingyue's shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze: "I'm telling you, don't underestimate our enemies, and don't underestimate those two boys either."

"Neither of them is easy to handle. Maybe, when all seems lost, they'll find a way out."