Chapter 286: Disaster Arrives (8)

The next morning, Le Wuya had Qin Xingyue go ask about the inn's standard meal, and learned that the usual fare was a bowl of sour soup noodles per person.

Le Wuya kicked up a fuss about not liking it and got Qin Xingyue to buy him something else.

As Qin Xingyue stepped out of the inn, Le Wuya, hair still a mess and eyes half-lidded with sleep, leaned over the upstairs railing and hollered: "Remember to bring back plenty of vinegar! They say the vinegar here is excellent!"

Shaking off all of yesterday's gloom, Qin Xingyue called back, full of energy: "You got it!"

The young attendant leaned against the counter, his eyes tracking Qin Xingyue's back out of the corner of his eye for a long while before he snuck a glance up at the second floor.

Once Qin Xingyue was gone, Le Wuya headed back into the room without even shutting the door—probably too hot to bother, leaving it open for a breeze.

The only thing between the room and the hallway was a flimsy bamboo curtain.

Watching the two act like it was business as usual, the young attendant couldn't help but wonder:

—According to his master's instructions, when the escort party marched by last night, these two should've raised a ruckus.

But the man who was arrested—maybe dazed from the beating—had his savior right there in front of him, yet didn't make a peep and went along quietly.

And that man surnamed Qin was even stranger. He shoved through the crowd to check out the commotion, asked around about what went down, then dusted himself off and went back to his meal.

...Could they have gotten the wrong guys?

Word from the city gate was that the three had definitely come into town together, shot the breeze for a bit on the street, then went their separate ways.

But rolling into town together didn't mean they were buddies, right?

Maybe they'd just paired up for the road to scare off bandits, then gone their separate ways once they reached their destination?

As one of the "little people," the young attendant only knew so much. He understood that after the disaster, someone would surely come from the capital, and Master Zhou needed to plant more eyes and informants in the inns and guesthouses around town.

It was his gift of gab and knack for schmoozing that got him assigned to Niu Family Inn—the one with the most coming and going—to help out Li Wu, who'd been the bookkeeper there for ages, playing host to folks from all over.

Dansui was a mining county—out in the sticks, nothing to eat, nothing to do. Even the inns were nothing to write home about. Outsiders would crash for two days max to rest their legs, then hit the road.

The intel said the guy coming would be a sharp-dressed, good-looking man from the capital, with one to three lackeys in tow. He'd book a room for three to five days the moment he arrived, and would grill folks about every little thing going on in town, big or small.

If he casually asked about the mudslide from a few days back, that'd be the nail in the coffin.

Once confirmed, the young attendant's job was to keep tabs on him, keep him calm, and report back the second anything seemed off.

Master Zhou paid well, and the young attendant cherished this gig he'd worked hard to land. He carefully ran through every requirement, then scratched his head, confused:

By that math, this pair of guests only hit four or five out of ten.

According to their travel papers, he was definitely from the capital, had a servant, dressed sharp, and was drop-dead gorgeous.

But that's where the first red flag popped up.

The young attendant knew that legit officials picked for their posts were rarely ugly or weasel-faced—at the very least, they had to have decent features.

But a guy who looked like Le Wuya? He didn't exactly scream "official."

Even if he was one, you couldn't help but figure he was all looks and no brains, having climbed the ladder on his face alone.

If Le Wuya really was the official they were after, the young attendant had already written him off.

And there were other things that didn't add up.

They'd only booked two nights.

When he'd been called in for a chat, that pretty young gent had only asked about local business and how to deal with the officials—not one word about the disaster the other day...

While the young attendant was mulling over a dozen different theories, the bookkeeper Li Wu, who was clicking away at his abacus, crooked a finger at him.

He scurried over and got a solid thunk on the head.

"You think darting your eyes around like that makes you look smart?" Li Wu scolded in a low voice. "Stand like a proper waiter! Lollygagging there with your hands tucked in, what kind of look is that? In a bit, those merchants from the west are gonna check out—go handle them. I'll watch that one!"

The young attendant rubbed his head, snuck another look upstairs, then scurried off to get the horses and carriage ready.

Niu Family Inn was the best joint in Dansui, and merchants from all over favored it as their pit stop.

Back in the room, Le Wuya opened his luggage and looked over what was inside: a beggar's getup, a set of women's clothes, and a Jing tribe outfit. After picking one out, he sat at the mirror, combed his curly hair flat, and slowly worked the red sandalwood beads Zheng Miao had given him into his hair.

Hearing the merchants next door making more and more noise as they hauled their trunks around, he pulled out a carnelian headband and slipped it across his forehead, then put on a pair of cat's-eye earrings.

All decked out, Le Wuya went to the door and peeked out through the bamboo curtain.

He'd noticed when they checked in last night that this room was in a seriously bad spot.

A single push of the door and the whole front hall could see right in.

So since last night, he had deliberately left the door open to cultivate the impression that he liked the ventilation, so that pushing the door open wouldn't draw attention.

Unlike that lively, clever young attendant, the bookkeeper at the front counter was a seasoned character—fixed in place like a carved statue, never straying, head down over his accounts.

Every time he turned a page in his ledger, he would casually glance up at the second floor.

But even a tiger dozes off sometimes.

During one of his upward glances, the bookkeeper knocked his brush off the desk and bent down to retrieve it.

At the next glance, the sound of the Western Rong merchants' laughter from upstairs rang out.

Before long, that group noisily descended the stairs.

The bookkeeper's gaze swept over them with great lightness, not lingering.

The bamboo curtain at Le Wuya's door swayed gently in the cross-draft, and no one stood in its gaps.

And Le Wuya, with the tall Western Rong merchant's arm around his shoulder, passed right by him without a second glance.

Le Wuya was of the purest Jing lineage. Because his appearance was so different from ordinary Dayu people, from childhood onward people had secretly mocked him as a "half-breed."

...Of course, never to his face.

Those who dared say it to his face had all been beaten until their own mothers wouldn't recognize them.

When he wore the official robes of Dayu, he appeared proper and refined, with an air of scholarly elegance—others could at most tell he had foreign blood.

But once he dressed as a Jing tribesman, his striking features—high nose and deep-set eyes—were immediately set off by the dazzling gleam of agate and jade, making him breathtakingly conspicuous.

The four Western Rong merchants standing on the second floor discussing their travel plans were all startled to see such a handsome Jing man emerge from the room.

One of them struck up a conversation in somewhat stiff Dayu speech: "Eh, when we arrived yesterday, weren't we told this room was still under renovation? How is it occupied now?"

To his surprise, Le Wuya answered in fluent Jing-tribe dialect: "I paid them enough silver, and they had it fixed overnight!"

His tone was witty and lively, really charming.

That was what Li Wu had heard them laughing about.

Among this group of Western Rong merchants, there happened to be a Jing tribesman. Thrilled to run into someone from his own tribe so far from home, he threw an arm around Le Wuya's shoulders and insisted on treating him to a drink.

Le Wuya naturally played along and stepped out of the inn with him.

Yesterday, when Qin Xingyue was frantic behind him, Le Wuya had stood by the window, sizing up everything around him.

At the street corner, there was a lazy beggar crouched in a dark alley, spending the whole afternoon picking lice instead of begging. Looked like he'd already eaten and wasn't hungry at all.

Across the street, about twenty paces away, there was an herbal medicine shop brewing decoctions, the smell of herbs drifting out until it finally shut up shop in the wee hours.

There weren't many people on the street, and a pharmacy apprentice sat on a bench by the door, bored, cracking melon seeds.

But this guy was so busy keeping an eye on him that he missed the sign right next to him that said: "Open until the third quarter of the Hai hour."

Clearly, Little A'Si had really stepped up his game over the years.

He'd waited patiently until the midnight curfew, and only when keeping watch any longer might have made people suspicious did he find a chance to slip him a message.

Le Wuya knew he couldn't stay cooped up here, only seeing the pretty picture they wanted him to see.

He smoothly played the part of a merchant heading to the next county to check prices, shooting the breeze with the Western Rong merchants.

The Western Rong folks and their wagons filled the street, blocking the apprentice and the beggar across the road from view.

With four pairs of eyes on him, he left through the inn's main entrance, climbed into a cart that stank of camel, and left town with the caravan.

When he split from the caravan in the next county, Le Wuya bought a sturdy old horse off them for a fair price.

He swung up onto the horse and looked around.

Dusk was falling, like it was about to swallow the sun whole.

He pulled out his map, figured out his route, then cracked the whip and took off at a gallop.

A lone streak of red shot down the empty road like lightning, a wild mountain wind tearing past trees, flowers, and open grassland.

Hoofbeats swelled from far to near, ripping through the quiet of the grassland.

Zhong Piaoping quickly gulped down the last of his water, carefully pushed the grass aside, and saw a man swing off his horse, casually take off his earrings, and pull some plain clothes out of a saddlebag...

He looked up, and their eyes locked.

Even though Zhong Piaoping had tried to clean himself up, Le Wuya spotted the blood on his neck and chest right away, shocked: "...You?"

In front of Le Wuya, all that demon-killing swagger Zhong Piaoping had vanished. He instantly turned back into the same old scaredy-cat and meekly told him the whole story from start to finish.

Le Wuya stayed calm, getting the gist of this crazy story while he changed.

He and Zhong Piaoping were on the same page:

This was an accident.

Wang Cheng got caught because those three merchants in cangues at Dansui County's gates were just too obvious.

As an imperial censor from the capital, he'd naturally have to check whether those three got what they deserved or whether local officials, after failing to squeeze money out of them under the cover of disaster relief, had framed them out of spite.

The mastermind just had to use You the Second's wife as bait, lie in wait, and slap a false charge on him.

But not even a god could've guessed that Zhong Piaoping would be sent to check out the mudslide and stumble on a live person dug out of the ground.

As for the constable A Shun, he wasn't just out to silence the miner—he wanted to kill Zhong Piaoping too.

If Zhong Piaoping hadn't been quick and suspicious, and reacted in time, flies would probably be buzzing around his corpse by now.

Le Wuya glanced coolly at A Shun, who Zhong Piaoping had just knocked out again, then walked over to the body on the cart, picked up its hand, and looked it over closely.

The hand had patchy calluses on the web between thumb and index finger and at the base of the fingers, faint rust-colored dirt under the nails, and the nail edges were worn down and rough.

...Yep, these were the marks of a miner who'd spent years swinging a pick and hauling ore.

No mud or sand in the mouth or nose, the neck was twisted to one side, and there were clear finger marks on it.

Seeing that, Le Wuya got what Zhong Piaoping was up to and praised him: "Xiao Zhong, nice work."

A faint flush crept up Zhong Piaoping's dark face, and he ducked his head.

He'd hidden here, first, to buy time to piece together exactly what had happened.

Second, he wanted to stall until the bruising and blood pooling on the corpse's neck showed up clearly.

That was the most direct proof.

—His palm was a whole hand-width bigger than A Shun's.

By holding onto the body, he made sure that mark would show, proving once and for all that he hadn't strangled the guy.

Third, he didn't trust the Dansui County government office.

In his book, A Shun was just a pawn.

Carrying a knife and killing in a sudden rage, he'd most likely been following orders, doing someone's dirty work.

The most likely people behind it were inside the yamen, or his direct boss.

If Zhong Piaoping had hauled the body back to the Dansui yamen in the dead of night to clear his name, he might've walked right into a trap, playing straight into their hands.

Then, with a made-up confession and beatings until he talked, he'd have died without ever knowing why.

The one saving grace was that not everyone in the yamen was necessarily on A Shun's side.

Take that low-level clerk who'd seized Zhong Piaoping's horse—his goals were totally different from A Shun's.

He wanted to save people. A Shun wanted to kill.

Otherwise, if everyone sent to help with the disaster were scum like A Shun, it'd be simple: the second they dug up a survivor, just smother them with a sack and say the disaster was cruel, no survivors in any of the three villages.

The waters in Dansui County ran way too deep.

There were crooks, spies, decent folks, and honest officials—a tangled mess, hard to sort out.

While Zhong Piaoping's head was spinning, Le Wuya had already changed into plain clothes, looking just like any ordinary guy.

He continued examining the miner's corpse and said, "Hiding here forever is no solution. Go report it to the officials, tell them the truth, just say you were scared and hid for a long time before making up your mind to come forward."

Zhong Piaoping: "If I get locked up, I'm afraid it could cause trouble for you, sir."

Le Wuya smiled: "If you do end up in jail, that'd be a perfect chance for you to check on Wang Cheng for me."

Zhong Piaoping: "...??"

Just as he was about to ask what he meant, he saw Le Wuya's brows knit.

A whole day and night had gone by, and the mud on the dead man's clothes had completely dried. When he gave it a light rub, bits of dried mud flaked off.

Le Wuya, unbothered by the filth, ran his fingers through the man's mud-caked hair, only to find a barely noticeable indentation in the skull.

Deaths from mudslides are usually caused by suffocation, crushing, hypothermia, drowning, or being hit by fast-moving debris.

For instance, when the mud and sand came rushing down, a rock tumbling down the mountain at high speed could have struck the back of this man's head, potentially causing such an injury.

However, a mudslide hits with the force of a mountain collapsing. If a rock hurtling through the air had truly struck the back of his head, an ordinary person would have died instantly.

Yet this man was only injured. After being dug out of the mud, he survived for quite some time, and in the end, was strangled.

Le Wuya's voice turned cold: "Xiao Zhong, do you remember when the disaster report said the mudslide happened?"

"It struck suddenly in the dead of night, and all the villagers in the three hamlets were still fast asleep, so—"

Zhong Piaoping's heart dropped.

He'd been so caught up in the schemes of the living that he'd overlooked a far greater contradiction:

Why would the villagers be sleeping fully clothed in the middle of the night?

If this man had been sleeping, with no idea the disaster was about to hit, then he would have been more likely to suffocate or drown in the mud. How could he have ended up with an injury to the back of his head for no reason?

But if he'd been startled awake by the mudslide and jumped up to run, bolting out of the house, only to get knocked out by a flying rock or branch—at that life-or-death moment, how would he have had time to pull on his pants?

...How could his belt even be buckled so neatly?

A heavy silence fell over the vast meadow.

Lost in thought, Le Wuya suddenly heard a muffled "woo woo" cry.

From the grass emerged a face, half-swollen from mosquito bites, twisted with indignation.

Zhong Piaoping pointed at him and said to Le Wuya with a deadpan expression, "Sir, this guy's lurking around all sneaky-like, like a spy sent to gather intel."

The so-called spy: "..."

Damn you.

Well, you've got a good eye.