Inside the Patrol Hall.
Yang Youguang, who was not particularly bright and had a fairly ordinary memory, stared at the meal trays spread across the floor. Sweat covered his forehead, and he was nervous.
Squatting on the floor, he kept trying to rearrange the trays, stacking them one by one, studying them carefully, then knocking them over again or taking the stacks apart.
To be honest, these trays used to serve condemned prisoners were dirty and heavy, objects no one normally paid any attention to. If Yang Youguang had not spent so many years as a jailer, handling these things every day, he would never have remembered which jailer had used which tray.
He was forcing himself to recall every detail now. Only after more than a dozen attempts did he begin distributing them one by one across an empty patch of floor nearby.
After quite some time, he found the angle most familiar to him. His eyes lit up, and he pointed excitedly at the tray Zhao Haochen had just handled. "That's it! That's the one No. 79 used every day. From this angle, it looks exactly the same. There's no mistaking it...!"
"Clack!"
Sure enough, the instant the tray hit the floor, the impact shook loose the palm-sized piece of wood, which fell off again.
"Excellent!"
The smile on Zhao Haochen's face deepened. With his hands behind his back, he said, "Yang Youguang, go rest in the Side Hall for a while. I'll question the others. If there's nothing else, you can go home soon."
"All right."
Yang Youguang stood and cupped his hands. "Please find the Inside Mole soon, my lord. Otherwise, the strain is too much for me...!"
Once he finished, someone escorted him away, and Wu Li summoned several people in charge of the Kitchen.