"Lin Kuang's suicide out of fear of being held responsible is the Northern Office's settled conclusion." In Delu Palace, the Son of Heaven sat high upon his golden stone dais, his expression still unreadable. He merely asked, "So many years have passed. Do you mean to reopen his case?"
"Lord Lin Kuang did indeed kill himself back then. There is no doubt about that. But the reason for his suicide could not possibly have been 'fear of being held responsible.'"
Jiang Wang said, "The Red Kiln Case, the Gold Thread Case, the Purple Satin Case... These major cases, once famous far and wide, were difficult, tangled, complex, and dangerous. Lin Kuang solved every one of them with his own hands. I have pored over the case files, and whenever I encountered the details, I was often left gaping in astonishment. If Lin Kuang had been someone who feared responsibility, he would never have solved those cases. How could the Green Badge's greatest constable since its founding have been afraid to take responsibility?"
The fact that Jiang Wang could recite all the famous cases Lin Kuang had solved showed just how much effort he had put in behind the scenes. He must have pored over those thick case files, studying them again and again.
In truth, anyone who had read those files could get a general sense of what kind of person Lin Kuang had been.
He continued, "When a suspect dies in a cell, is that not the guards' responsibility? Is that not the jailers' responsibility?
"Why, when Tian Fen died in prison back then, was it Lin Kuang who supposedly killed himself out of fear of being held responsible?
"People now say that Lin Kuang arrested Tian Fen by mistake. But when Tian Fen died, the suspicions surrounding him