"The more cases you investigate, the more kinds of ambush you have to guard against."
Wu Dong let it advance and turned back. Sui Zaihua had removed the two Play Masks, revealing two faces neither had ever seen. He pressed around them; there were no signs of disguise.
The old man laid the two Play Masks on the ground. "[Sun] and [Liu]."
"What do they represent?" Wu Dong walked over. "I didn't find much useful information on the Joy-in-Death Tower in the case files. I thought you might know something?"
"Because these are only tentative deductions I've made over the years. They haven't become substantiated findings, so I haven't entered them yet," Sui Zaihua said softly. "I think the Shaolong Joy-in-Death Tower is a Three Kingdoms play."
"There are four people at the top: the Lord of the Mask, [Sima], and beneath him, [Sun], [Liu], and [Cao]. Four Play Masks in all," Sui Zaihua continued. "Here, they sent two of them to exercise very absolute control."
"..." Wu Dong fell silent for a moment. "I discovered in the Prefectural City that Qiao Changyue once held a secret meeting with the head manager of the Jade Pavilion. But according to the city's records, after that meeting, there was no change in the transactions between the Director of the Bureau of Artifacts and the Jade Pavilion. The quantities of heart amber all matched, too."
"So I thought," he said, looking at Sui Zaihua, "what they discussed was who the Jade Pavilion would sell the heart amber to after acquiring it."
Sui Zaihua nodded.
"The heart amber business is a vital pillar of the Jade Pavilion. Qiao Changyue used it to force them to sell the heart amber they acquired to the Joy-in-Death Tower. That's why I came to examine the Jade Pavilion's