"Let's go now."
Li Sanshun put away half of the Blood Token and asked no more questions.
Zhou Huai's residence was in the west courtyard of Law Enforcement Peak.
It had originally housed disciples investigating cases. After something happened to Zhou Huai, the courtyard gate had remained locked, yet the records said he had gone out to investigate and had still not returned.
Before leaving the front courtyard, Gu Qinghe brought only Zhao Rui and four North Mountain disciples.
The Imperial Envoy Group's congratulatory gifts were still under investigation, and Bai Chongshan had not been locked in Cold Prison. No one could say how many people in Law Enforcement Hall were passing messages to him.
The group went around the duty office and entered the old courtyard by a path on the west side.
The courtyard had been abandoned for six years.
Dead leaves clogged the cracks in the gate, and several tattered cobwebs hung beneath the eaves. Zhao Rui used the Major Case Order to open the sealing array. As the Array Pattern faded, Li Sanshun caught a whiff of old wood.
It was mixed with pine resin.
He stopped at the door.
"No one's lived here for six years. Where did the pine resin come from?"
Gu Qinghe took out Zhou Huai's identity token. "I come by once a year to check the seals in the house. There was none last month."
Zhao Rui drew his short blade. "Has someone been here?"
"Don't go in yet."
Li Sanshun crouched and took a sniff at the threshold.
[Detected traces of pine resin.]
[Detected traces of Grey Feather Talisman Paper.]
[Time since residue was left: within seven days.]
It was Grey Feather Talisman Paper, the kind used by the Imperial Envoy Group again.
Someone had entered Zhou Huai's residence within the past seven days.
Bai Chongshan had also arrived at Tai Xuan Sect within the past seven days.
"That old bastard moves fast."
Li Sanshun pushed the door open with his scabbard.
A thin string lay behind the door.
It ran up to the roof beam, where a small clay bottle dangled. If the door opened another half a foot, the bottle would fall.
Zhao Rui reached in through the window and severed the string, then took down the bottle.
Its mouth was sealed with wax. Inside was not poison, but a clump of burnt paper ash.
Gu Qinghe pinched a little of the ash apart. "Evidence-Destroying Powder. Once the bottle hits the floor, it'll wipe away any footprints and scents left in the house."
"Whoever came here was afraid we'd find him."
Li Sanshun looked inside.
Zhou Huai's residence was simple.
There was a bed, a bookcase, and two wooden chests. An old Law Enforcement Hall uniform hung on the wall, and the lamp oil on the table had long since dried up.
The four disciples checked the doors and windows first, then sealed off the house's four corners.
Zhao Rui opened the first wooden chest. It contained only a change of clothes and several copies of the sect's laws. The second chest was locked, and fresh scratches marked the edge of the keyhole.
Someone had picked the lock.
The chest opened. Inside were more than a dozen bundles of old case files.
Zhao Rui leafed through them one by one.
"The North Mountain medicine theft, the outer disciple disappearance, the West Mountain mine-slave brawl... They're all old cases from six or seven years ago."
Gu Qinghe picked up the bundle at the very bottom.
The cover read: West Mountain Cliff Fall Case.
Victim: Zhou Huai.
Li Sanshun took the case file.
According to the records, six years ago Zhou Huai had pursued a disciple who stole ore, strayed onto the West Mountain Abandoned Path at night, and fallen to his death.
His body was never found.
Three days later, the life-flame on his identity token went out, and Law Enforcement Hall closed the case as a death.
There was also an inspection seal at the end of the file.
Gu Changyue.
Li Sanshun looked up.
"Your father closed the case?"
"Back then, he was in charge of law enforcement patrols in the West Mountain mining area."
"So you kept Zhou Huai's identity token and didn't announce his death."
Gu Qinghe closed the door.
"The night before something happened to Zhou Huai, he came to see me. He'd discovered that someone was secretly operating an Earth Fire furnace in West Mountain and shipping a batch of Black Iron out of the abandoned mine. He suspected it had something to do with my father."
Li Sanshun said nothing.
"The next day, he fell off a cliff in West Mountain. Three days later, his life-flame went out, but his body was never found."
Gu Qinghe placed the identity token on the table.
"My father signed off on the case file and issued the order to pursue him. Zhou Huai had just discovered the Ding-Character Furnace when he met with disaster. I couldn't treat his death as an accident."
"You suspected Gu Changyue of killing him to silence him?"
"I did."
Gu Qinghe took out a yellowed duty roster.
On the night Zhou Huai fell, six years ago, Gu Changyue was supposed to stay at Law Enforcement Peak, but he had gone to West Mountain at the last minute.
The roster said he was inspecting the mine's sealing array.
The timing matched exactly.
"I didn't enter Zhou Huai's identity token into the Death Registry because I wanted to see who would come looking for his things."
"You waited six years?"
"For the first two years, three people secretly looked into his case file. One died on an assignment, one was transferred to the Imperial Capital, and the last was Yan Song."
At that, Li Sanshun picked up the identity token and examined it.
The life-flame on it had already gone out. There was no faking that.
Gu Qinghe had concealed Zhou Huai's death not to use him as a pawn.
She had been using a dead man to bait the living.
"Fine. That's settled."
Gu Qinghe paused. "Aren't you going to ask why I kept it from you, too?"
"If you wanted to harm me, you wouldn't have shown me the token just now."
Li Sanshun tossed the identity token back onto the table.
"Besides, I've kept plenty from you, too. Investigating a case is one thing; who doesn't keep a card up their sleeve?"
Gu Qinghe put away the duty roster. "There's a new scratch on the back of Zhou Huai's token. It wasn't there when I checked it last month."
The scratch was short, right in the center of the token's back.
Li Sanshun scraped at it twice with his fingernail.
A fleck of black wax came off beside the scratch.
The identity token wasn't cast as a single piece.
There was a hollow inside.
Zhao Rui brought over a thin knife and carefully worked its tip into the side of the token. The blade slid an inch in before meeting something hard.
Click.
The identity token split into two halves.
A tiny piece of folded oilpaper, no bigger than a fingernail, was tucked inside.
Everyone crowded around.
The oilpaper had grown brittle, and its outside was coated with waterproof wax. Gu Qinghe unfolded it with silver tweezers. A dozen thin lines had been drawn on it.
"A map of the West Mountain Old Mine."
The map marked abandoned mine tunnels, ventilation shafts, and three Earth Fire openings. A square was drawn by itself at the deepest point.
The Ding-Character Furnace.
A red line beside the square ran all the way to the West Mountain cliff.
Li Sanshun took out the unsigned congratulatory letter.
The iron filings from the Ding-Character Furnace in the corner of the paper were exactly the same as the black flecks clinging to the edge of the square on the map.
[Detected iron filings from the Ding-Character Furnace.]
[Detected traces of Spirit-Fixing Powder.]
[Map drawn: at least six years ago.]
Zhou Huai had left the map behind.
But the new scratch on the token had only been added recently.
Someone had broken into the house, picked the lock on the chest, set up a bottle of Evidence-Destroying Powder, and deliberately left a mark on the identity token to show how to open its hidden compartment.
"The intruder searched the house but didn't take the map." Zhao Rui tightened his grip on his short blade. "Did he want us to find it?"
"Not necessarily."
Li Sanshun turned over the map.
Two more lines of tiny writing were on the back of the oilpaper.
The first line had been scraped away. Only the character "Gu" could be made out.
The second line remained intact.
If I die, the accounts are beneath the cliff.
Gu Qinghe stared at it for a long time, then took out the cliff-fall case file signed by Gu Changyue.
Zhou Huai had suspected Gu Changyue.
Gu Changyue had personally closed Zhou Huai's case.
Now the map pointed to the cliff where Zhou Huai had fallen, and a ledger was hidden below.
As long as the ledger was still there, they could soon find out who had tampered with the Ding-Character Furnace six years ago.
Suddenly, someone outside tapped out a secret knock.
A North Mountain disciple passed an urgent report through the door.
"Executor Gu, a clerk from the Imperial Envoy Group has gone missing from Reception Courtyard. Before he left, he borrowed a West Mountain Old Mine Access Token."
Li Sanshun put away the map and pushed open the door.
"Bring Zhou Huai's case file. We're going to West Mountain right now."
But Gu Qinghe pointed to the first line on the back of the map, the one that had been scraped away.
Beneath the damaged writing was half of Gu Changyue's personal seal.
"Wait. Zhou Huai's last words were—go to the cliff, and don't trust my father."
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