The Old Steward's first words were that Qiu Ren was dead.
Bai Jin sat beneath the Medicine Vault's narrow window and set the broken old lock on the corner of the table. Hu Liena was checking the signatures in the ledger, while Qian Renxue turned over a sample packet and found the old place name of another storehouse written on the back.
"I killed him," Bai Jin said. "Try another line."
The Old Steward's throat bobbed. He had more than fifty levels of Soul Power. Normally, he never needed to raise his voice in the storehouse for the pharmacists and laborers to obey him. Now the door stood open and medicinal supplies were still being issued in the outer room, yet he did not even dare leave his chair.
"Back then, they only said the goods had been seized at an outlying site. Who knew where he got them?"
Hu Liena pressed the inspection slip in front of him. Beneath the medicine's name was a line of small print stating that a living person had been used as a catalyst and no one was to approach the storage site. The Old Steward's own signature sat beside that line.
He did not say he knew nothing again. He reached for his teacup, but when his fingers touched the rim, half the hot tea spilled. Bai Jin moved the cup aside and told the Deacon outside to bring water, then asked him to carry in the storehouse's old duplicate ledger.
The duplicate ledger had been hidden behind a shelf, not in the iron chest, and had been moved along with the old shelves when the storehouse was relocated. Every gray-market payment had another page explaining who handled it and where the goods were moved for storage. After Bai Jin smashed the Black