"You staged the scene, but you made far too much noise. You nearly tore the roof off. But look here." Gu Chuan nudged a damaged sack of rice with his toe. "The cut is too clean. It was made with a sharp blade. What thief would bring a knife this fine?"
He pointed to a section of rope in the corner that had supposedly been "torn apart."
"And this rope: there are scorch marks where it broke. You burned through it first, then pulled it apart by hand. Was that supposed to look like a thief had struggled? It was unnecessary—and it left evidence."
"The stupidest mistake was the ground."
Gu Chuan's voice turned colder.
"To make the place look chaotic, you scattered hundreds of jin of grain everywhere. But you forgot that thieves hauling off tens of thousands of shi of grain would inevitably leave plenty of footprints and wheel tracks. Yet the ground here is clean enough to look as if it's been washed. There's nothing but your own footprints."
"Tell me, Wang Hu. Are you just that stupid, or did you think the Grand Master of the Crown Prince's Estate, sent here to investigate, was an idiot too?"
Wang Hu's back was soaked with cold sweat.
He had thought he'd covered his tracks perfectly. He hadn't expected that, in this young man's eyes, the whole affair was riddled with holes. All the contempt and disdain he'd felt earlier had turned to fear.
This guy wasn't human! He was a monster!
"Your subordinate... deserves to die!" Wang Hu slammed his head against the ground.
"There's no need for you to die." Gu Chuan turned and looked toward the vast darkness at the back of the warehouse. "Now take your men and seal off every warehouse that was supposedly