Quan Dean's words were like a pill that settled Hu Xiaotian's nerves, and the facts bore them out. Wei Hualin had suddenly vanished without a trace, yet no new successor had been appointed as Seal-Holding Eunuch of the Palace Gardens Bureau. The emperor had ordered Liu Yuzhang to remain in the palace to recuperate, which meant that Liu Yuzhang would continue to preside over the bureau. Naturally, a fierce contest between Quan Dean and Ji Feihua lay behind all this, and the outcome undoubtedly meant that Quan Dean had gained the upper hand for the moment.
The people most pleased with this outcome were, of course, Hu Xiaotian and his companions. Liu Yuzhang felt no particular joy. He belonged neither to Quan Dean's camp nor to Ji Feihua's. Unfortunately, the Palace Gardens Bureau had become the object of their struggle, and he had inadvertently fallen into the crack between them.
After this affair, Liu Yuzhang grew increasingly idle and indifferent. He simply handed all his duties over to Hu Xiaotian. Once Hu Xiaotian held the bureau's power in his hands, he naturally put his own people to work first. He entrusted the maintenance of the imperial gardens and woodlands to Xiao Dengzi, put Xiao Zhuozi in charge of the medicinal storehouse, and assigned Shi Xuedong to oversee the storerooms and the Wine Cellar.
Hu Xiaotian believed there was another reason Ji Feihua had managed to find him so quickly: the man very likely had informants inside the Palace Gardens Bureau. Using his authority, he reassigned the bureau's eunuchs on a large scale, sending all the suspicious ones to maintain the gardens alongside Xiao Dengzi. Every eunuch who remained on duty at the bureau had his background thoroughly investigated, and anyone who had been particularly close to Wang Desheng was removed