"I looked into the background of the dead man, Liu Jing."
Beneath the wavering lamplight, Black Sash Hu Yan spoke first.
"He came from Luzhou, and his ancestors were provincial and commandery officials under Eastern Qi. He became commanding commandant of the secondary capital's Jinwu Guard at thirty-two, which should have been quite an achievement. But he spent the next ten years marking time here in Jiangdu. The first few years were all right, but in recent years he grew increasingly disgruntled. He often told those around him that the place was gradually becoming nothing but Southern Chen men, that he couldn't get used to living here and wanted a transfer. But after ten years of hard work, he couldn't stomach simply leaving with nothing to show for it. He kept wanting to earn some merit..."
Everyone reacted somewhat at this.
At this point, Hu Yan glanced at Zhang Xing, who sat in the shadows where he had been all along, only half his face visible, then swept his gaze around the others. "Yesterday's case is quite clear. Duke Zhou was merely a false target. The actual intention was to kill Liu Jing, and my view largely agrees with what Zhang Sanlang said yesterday: this was very likely infighting among Jiangdu's officials... and I think we may well have been too clever for our own good last night."
"How so?" Bai Yousi tilted her head slightly.
"Inspector, think about it. Given Liu Jing's behavior, might he have reported some of Jiangdu's inside affairs to us?"
Hu Yan answered earnestly.
"The only northerner among Jiangdu's powerful elite-and a northerner with sufficient motivation to report inside information to us-was assassinated at a banquet on the very day we arrived in Jiangdu... was there really some conspiracy aimed at us? To my mind,