December 23, a secluded alley in West City, the Li Family's old shop.
The shop's doorboards had already been taken down, but the snow outside remained unswept, marked only by a few wheel ruts of varying depths.
As soon as Uncle Li's caravan returned, he personally stopped its leader to question him.
Then he followed the men escorting the goods around the courtyard for nearly half an hour.
When Zhang Zai entered, Uncle Li had not even changed out of his robe, still coated in yellow sand, before ushering him into the counting room in the rear courtyard.
"Zihou, sit." Uncle Li reached back to close the door, then poured a bowl of hot tea himself and pushed it over.
"That matter you entrusted to me this time-I took it to heart.
The caravan came back the day before yesterday. I've brought you word from over there."
Zhang Zai accepted the tea but did not drink, merely resting it on his knee. "Please, Uncle, tell me."
"However..." Uncle Li was in no hurry to speak. He first waved a hand, keeping his voice very low.
"Let me say the unpleasant part first: this information is neither an official Court Gazette nor a dispatch from the post roads. It is street gossip!
Street gossip-a scale from the east, a claw from the west, pieced together from the mouths of porters, tea drinkers, and pawnshop folk. Half true and half false, not to be believed in full."
"You're a clever man, Zihou. You can weigh it for yourself."
"Please speak freely, Uncle."
"First, that censor auditing the farmland." Uncle Li lowered his voice.
"Zheng Bingzhi-that's his name, isn't it?"
"My men saw him during the first month. Tsk, the way he went about things-tsk, a truly incorruptible official.
Every day he went