Decisive Action

Second update.

"A retainer wearing a Four-Cornered Scarf, with a Jiangnan accent..."

Sun Shaozong stood with his hands clasped behind his back, pondering with a hesitant look on his face.

The Four-Cornered Pacification Scarf was a square, boxy hat. Its lofty, oversized shape made its wearer appear more imposing, but it was ill-suited for running about or doing labor. Peddlers and laborers therefore disliked it; only scholars conscious of their status generally wore it. Common folk jokingly called it a "bookcase."

And scholars who prized their status were unlikely to perform such "menial work" at an ordinary person's side.

Moreover, because everyone in the capital—from officials down to commoners—generally harbored xenophobic sentiments, Duan Qing, a local hoodlum, looked down even on scholars wearing Four-Cornered Scarves. How could he possibly bow and scrape before an outsider?

Thus, it could basically be inferred that the person inside the carriage was most likely either wealthy or influential.

As things stood, merchants might not truly rank last among the four occupations, but for an outsider merchant to completely cow an unruly hoodlum in such a short time would not be easy.

Taken together, the person in that carriage was most likely an official—an official whose interests were entangled with Lu Mingsi's.

A Ministry of Revenue official?

Though that possibility was considerable, there was still a substantial margin for error.

Otherwise, Sun Shaozong would not have been so hesitant. He could simply have sent men to the Ministry of Revenue to question every official who had joined within the past few years.

The same xenophobic sentiments meant that no matter where they originally came from, anyone serving as an official in the capital would quickly adopt fluent Beijing speech.

There were quite a few Ministry of Revenue officials from Jiangnan, but there could not be