With a muffled clang, a throwing knife drove straight into the courtyard gate, pinning a thin slip of paper beneath its coldly gleaming blade.
The first two times someone had delivered a message by throwing knife, the hot-tempered Tuoba Sanniang had chased after them. Now she could not be bothered to move. She called to Thirteenth Son, "Little Baldy, go get it. You know the most characters."
Yang Xingjian got up before dawn every day to wait at Dou Jing's government office, and had long since left. Thirteenth Son sighed and trudged into the courtyard.
Xu Baozhen said slowly, "We've searched everywhere day and night for days without finding a single lead. Now word is spreading like wildfire that the Donkey-Riding Lady hid herself deliberately, so the Setting Sun Courtyard could use her disappearance as an excuse to stir up wind and waves in Luoyang-empty the cage and replace the birds."
A flicker of surprise crossed Tuoba Sanniang's eyes before she said approvingly, "If I didn't know Wei Da's circumstances, that really would be a fine scheme."
Qiu Ren said, "During the Battle of Jade City, the martial heroes of the Central Plains saw her ride into battle alone on her donkey, never missing a shot. With skills like hers, who would believe an expert could so easily be 'received by Guanyin'? It's a reasonable guess."
Wei Xun had learned from Changqiu Temple that the former prefect of Luoyang who first classified the disappearances as "ascension to immortality" was named Cui Dongyang. But after asking Yang Xingjian, he learned that the man had been demoted over some affair two years earlier, then died in office of illness and despair. Only afterward had Dou Jing been transferred from Chang'an to Luoyang. Wei Xun had slipped into both Dou's government office and