With the sudden deaths of Director Zhao of the Northern Office and Commandant Liu of the Jinwu Guard, who wielded enormous political influence in Jiangdu through their control of the Temporary Palace, and with the Jing'an Directorate's Patrol Group formally taking over the palace just two days after arriving, then dispatching fully armed Jinwu Guards to accompany the group south across the river, a tremendous political and public uproar swiftly brewed in Jiangdu in early November.
Officials and commoners alike were uneasy, and rumors ran rampant. The vast majority aimed their accusations at the newly arrived and notoriously ill-reputed Brocade-Clad Patrol Unit, believing that these people had driven the palace's two heads to their deaths as soon as they arrived, disrupting everyone's peaceful lives. At the same time, however, almost everyone also felt that something might be wrong at the palace, and that the court might have sent the Jing'an Directorate's Patrol Group specifically to deal with it.
Some officials, in particular, knew something of how Liu Jing had died first, in a bizarre assassination that was unlikely to have anything to do with the Patrol Group, and so their thoughts went further.
But none of this had anything to do with Zhang Xing, who had sealed off the palace and shut himself inside to audit its accounts.
Now, nothing in this world could withstand someone taking it seriously, or acting with the force of thunder and the speed of wind. Thus, once Zhang Xing began auditing the accounts with that very vigor, he quickly found an enormous, glaring discrepancy.
He found it very quickly indeed. Bai Yousi had only just crossed the river when he spotted the first signs, then swiftly substantiated them, expanded his investigation, and confirmed his findings...
Moreover, this enormous shortfall in the palace stores involved