Night had fallen, and he raced all the way there.
At the Southern Commandant Office, Jia Huan hurried into Commissioner Ouyang's office.
Ordinarily, Commissioner Ouyang would have left for home long before this hour. Knowing Jia Huan would come looking for him, he had deliberately stayed and waited.
"Hundred-Household Commander Yan of the Qi'an Office Guard Station has been taken into custody."
Commissioner Ouyang took an official letter from his drawer. The signature at the bottom was unmistakably that of Brush-Holder Eunuch Dai Quan.
"On what charge?" Jia Huan asked.
Commissioner Ouyang said gravely:
"A Hundred-Household Commander secretly investigating a brush-holder eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial is a serious overstepping of his authority-a crime of usurpation!"
"Impossible!" Jia Huan's heart sank, and he said coldly:
"He's being framed!"
Without his orders, Scholar would never have acted on his own initiative.
Commissioner Ouyang's brow furrowed deeply as he said solemnly:
"That is only one charge. Someone has also reported that Hundred-Household Commander Yan tortured and murdered junior eunuchs of the inner palace to force information out of them."
Jia Huan laughed soundlessly, his smile icy:
"That old gelded dog fabricated such clumsy charges!"
Commissioner Ouyang shook his head and sighed:
"I warned you last time. Eunuchs have lost their manhood. They are narrow-minded, obsessive, sinister, and selfish, and they prize face above everything else. Offend that eunuch, and sooner or later he will retaliate."
Of course he knew this was a frame-up.
The Embroidered Uniform Guard had a hundred ways to kill someone. Why would they torture a junior eunuch to death right under the eunuchs' noses?
"I'll go to the Ministry of Justice prison!" Jia Huan turned to leave.
"He isn't at the Ministry of Justice!"
Commissioner Ouyang called him back:
"The inner court has cells specifically for punishing