Old scores at the alliance table

The alliance meeting took place beside the repaired bridge. The table had been pieced together from old doors inside the pass, and all three sides brought their own guards and scribes, with the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect seated in the middle as witness. Xue Beng first laid down a state letter bearing Xue Ye's seal and demanded the return of the six impounded shiploads of grain that very day.

Heaven Dou's military authorities had originally wanted to hold the negotiations in the city, but Spirit Hall feared that once the gates closed, its witnesses would be trapped inside alone. In the end, Ning Fengzhi chose the open ground beside the bridge. A table was hastily nailed together, with a tarpaulin stretched overhead to keep off the rain. When everyone arrived, they discovered several coachmen from the Soup Kitchen outside the city standing in the distance. They could not read; they only wanted to know whether the grain unpacked last night could go into the cooking pots today.

After reading the letter, Bibi Dong added just one line in the margin: inspect the moldy grain first, ship the sound grain first, and seek compensation for losses in transit according to the actual amount. She had Yue Guan hand over the newly inventoried warehouse receipts from inside the pass. Rotten grain would not count as delivered, nor would anyone be allowed to hold edible grain back as a bargaining chip.

Xue Beng took the warehouse receipts to Ning Fengzhi and asked how a shipload of damp grain could have sat inside the pass for three days before anyone opened the sacks. Ning Fengzhi found a warehouse-sealing order among the port entry records, bearing none other than Shen Ming's forged seal. He added that page to the old case files under joint