Wu Daoqing left the Shen Residence, but did not immediately move on.
He simply stood in the narrow alley outside the residence's rear wall.
With his back against the cold blue-brick wall, he closed his eyes and drew a deep breath.
At first, Shen Duan had said he wanted the Case Files transferred.
Fine. That was perfectly normal.
When trouble struck, you had to hold the evidence in your own hands, not let it fall into someone else's.
After all his years in the Ministry of Revenue, he needed no one to teach him that.
Then Shen Duan had said that everyone who had handled the granary accounts was to be transferred to Fengyang Prefecture.
That, too, was understandable. After all, anyone left in the Southern Capital would be a sitting target.
Send them to Fengyang Prefecture, the only place untouched by trouble, and no one could question them.
But the final sentence had chilled him to the bone.
"Every single person who handled the accounts."
Wu Daoqing was no fledgling newly entered into officialdom.
Over his years in the Ministry of Revenue, he had done far too much for Shen Duan.
Some things Shen Duan knew about, some he did not, and some he pretended not to know.
Wu Daoqing had risen from Department Secretary to Vice Director not merely through Shen Duan's patronage, but through his own discerning eye.
And through the instinct honed by years of clawing his way through heaps of Tax Grain and Silver.
Now that instinct was telling him: this matter implicated him.
Shen Duan had said the shortfall of forty-seven thousand shi of grain was the work of those guarding the local Ever-Normal Granaries, stealing what they were entrusted to protect.
Most people would probably have believed him.
But Wu Daoqing would not.